Forgive technical errors and typos, I have no beta reader for this story. (sad face)
Chapter 2
The Coming Storm (2)
Coast of Southern Ireland
Even with a gaggle of French troops behind her, Vernadead in her thoughts, and her master a few paces ahead of her, Seras still felt uneasy. The sound of flesh-hunting zombies droned its way out of the shadows.
Seras heard the Frenchmen ready their weapons.
"Hold your fire until we're closer to the center." She called over her shoulder, "let the stragglers come to us."
The sound of guns being lowered responded.
It felt good to be in charge.
They arrived at their location. A small, stereotypical graveyard setting; a ramshackle church/mortuary off in the distance seemed to be the epicenter.
Alucard made a noise.
As if in response, the ghouls, zombies and other assorted undead stumbled out in all directions. Dozens of them.
No, hundreds.
Shocked by the number of monsters they were up against; the troops took a moment to react. Despite their best efforts, for every ghoul that was gunned down, two rose to take his place.
"Holy shit." Someone said over the din
Alucard glanced over his shoulder to make sure Seras was still behind him. She was.
With a nod from her master, Seras blew a hole straight through to the mortuary. The two vampires stalked through as the zombies closed ranks between them and the cavalry.
The French were unfazed.
Seras took some solace in that as the heavy stone door closed behind her muffling out the sounds of groaning, screaming, and gunfire.
Kris awoke in a dark, dank space. It smelled strongly of dirt, ash and incense. She tried to stretch her arms but found herself surrounded by walls. On all sides.
This didn't bother her as much as she thought it should have.
Kris took a moment to figure out what had happened.
She remembered the school. The nun telling her that someone was waiting for her. Walking through the sunlight to get to the office. She remembered the tall man and the short one standing with their backs to her.
What else?
Kris felt light-headed and dizzy. The smell of the dirt made her sleepy. Numbness started to take over again.
She shook it off with a rough shake of her head. The two men.
The tall one… blue hair, military uniform. The short one… stocky, again a military uniform, distorted…bat-like features.
Flanders' smile and voice.
Kris's mind flittered back to the night she first encountered him thirty years ago.
She screamed and banged her fists against the hard surface above her.
She was his leverage…
Again.
And maybe this time, no one would come to help her.
Kris screamed and called out a name that seemed so foreign after all this time she was surprised she even said it. She knew he couldn't hear her.
She screamed for him anyway.
Their footsteps echoed against the stone walls. It was quiet.
Seras brushed a cobweb out of her face. A door was opened revealing a set of stone steps leading down, a strong evil presence emanating from the bottom.
Typical.
Alucard rolled his eyes, "Victoria, go."
"Why?"
His 'why the fuck do you think' look answered her question and Seras jogged down the steps without further argument. A glance over her shoulder showed her master sitting at the top of those steps. Watching her.
Intensely, one might add.
She shrugged it off and reached the bottom.
The bottom of the stairs opened into a large room that held several stone coffins as well as an assortment of wooden ones. Cobwebs marked every corner and the smell of incense stung Seras's nose. A loud thumping at the far end of the room directed her attention.
"Come out you smug little bastard," she growled under her breath.
The thumping came from a coffin on a stone altar against the wall opposite the stairs. A fancy mahogany affair complete with leafing and a scorched… or was it etched… design.
The thumping stopped as soon as Seras reached it. "Oh, so now you wanna shut up?" she laughed and reached to open it.
/Seras!/ Pip's voice rang sharply in the back of her mind when she'd opened it a crack.
Before she could focus enough to respond a quick flash of shadow darted across the floor she tried to aim for it, but it eluded her. 'Master!'
Two shots rang out from the top of the stairs followed by a string incoherent words and attempted chase. It had eluded him too.
Seconds passed without a sound.
Alucard formed at the foot of the stairs across the room from Seras, "What was that?"
"I don't know." She shrugged, "Where is it?"
"It dashed outside the troops can handle it." He approached the mahogany coffin, "It came out of here?"
She nodded.
He opened it.
The coffin was empty and immaculately clean as though nothing had ever been inside.
All that was in there, was a note written on a piece of expensive-looking stationary.
Alucard picked it up and let the coffin slam closed; Seras inched closer to read it over his shoulder.
'So sorry we missed each other, darling. Maybe next time. –With love, Lucy & Mina.'
Both dashed up the stairs knowing what they would see in the graveyard even before they opened the doors.
"The nun is awake, mistress."
"That is no concern of mine." Mina sat at her desk casually observing the progress of Seras and Alucard through a large piece of crystal positioned between her and her lieutenant.
The Count's book of spells had helped her immensely.
"Looks as though the Count and his bitch are looking for Lucy." She leaned back in her chair, "Was there something you wanted, Flanders?"
Flanders remembered his previous encounter with Mina and almost rethought his request. Almost.
"As I said, the nun is awake, and though it may be no concern to you, she is making an awful fuss, and a horrid amount of racket." He shrugged, "I'd shut her up myself, but I'm not allowed to enter the room."
"Dymi will handle her."
Flanders winced, he hated the werewolf and all the little pet names Mina gave him. The dog been hired more or less to keep him in line. That, and he was the perfect lap-dog. Flanders always thought that he'd been more important than the pup, and frequently voiced this opinion indirectly.
"And I don't appreciate your tone." She scowled at him, "Do you have an issue with the restrictions I have set?"
Flanders said nothing. Remembering how violent she could get.
"Do you have an issue with the fact that I have brought you back from the dead, not once, but twice. Or with the fact that I have given you your stronger, bat-daemon form rather than that mangled human one? Or is it the employment, take your pick."
He lowered his gaze.
Mina scoffed at him, "You're EXPENDIBLE. Replaceable. Worthless. I employ you, give you room and board, and tolerate your horrible excuse of a presence because you're cheap and handy with a gun. What you have done in your past does not sit well with me, and you'd best keep that in mind next time you come in asking me for favors."
Flanders sighed like a child who'd just been scolded by his mother, "Yes, mist-"
Mina slammed her hand on the desk.
Flanders turned and bolted from the room.
"Bastard."
Mina returned her focus to the crystal. Alucard found the letter. She closed her eyes and contacted Schrödinger.
"Yes master?" he asked immediately.
"He's found it, kill them."
"How many?"
"As many as you can. All of them preferably. Hurry, you have ten seconds."
"I'll do what I can."
"Acceptable." She broke the connection, and watched the show.
Hunting vampires, one becomes accustomed to the blood and gore that comes with the job. But this was just brutal. Seras and Alucard scanned the carnage for survivors from the door. There were none so far as they could see.
The zombies were gone, but this damage didn't look like something the average brain-dead slave was capable of. Men were scattered across the length and breadth of the graveyard. Some impaled completely on cross-shaped grave markers, others only partially so. Some of the bodies that littered the ground had been gutted or were missing limbs or heads. Others still had their skulls cracked open and brains spilling into the grass, or didn't have brains at all.
The few that could've been 'survivors' had died of blood loss from massive chunks taken out of their chest cavities.
"Seras! Master Alucard!" one man gasped raising an arm from amidst a clump of limbs and torsos. No heads, but everything else.
Seras nearly pounced on him, "Can you stand? Walk? Breathe?"
"Maybe, maybe, and it appears so." He answered with a weak smile, obviously in a grotesque amount of pain. He had a gash, so deep Seras thought she saw bone going from his left shoulder to his right elbow. He coughed wetly.
"Try not to move, we'll get help."
"He'll bleed to death before they get here." Alucard said. When Seras looked up at him, he was staring off into the distance as though he hadn't said anything at all.
"What do you propose we do?"
"Shoot him, end it quickly and so he can't come back to attack us."
Seras's eyes widened. "Master…"
"Soldier," he asked, and when the man responded with a weak cough and Alucard continued, "What was it, exactly, that attacked you?"
"It was large…a black shadow." The man's eyes began to close slightly, "it looked…it looked like some kind of wolf…from…Hell…"
Alucard tried to ask more questions, but the man was already dead. The dead man's glassy, pink eyes stared at him accusingly.
"Maybe we can find the monster; it can't have gotten far…" Seras failed at sounding optimistic.
"If it is Lucy, she's long gone by now."
Seras screwed up her face at the reference, "Who's Lucy?"
"Mina's 'dear friend'" he said with some distaste.
"And who IS Mina, exactly?"
Alucard never answered.
When they returned, Alucard took it upon himself to inform Sir Hellsing of the graveyard fiasco. Leaving Seras to inform the other soldiers of the company that had died.
They took it rather well.
Seras couldn't help feeling somewhat responsible despite that.
She tried to get some advice from Pip, but he was strangely quiet tonight, and had been so after his outburst. She didn't think too much into it.
After a few hours Seras found herself wandering the halls of the East wing's upstairs. Where the commanders and other equally official people slept and went about their work. (the exception, of course being Sir Hellsing herself, who slept downstairs) She wasn't sure how she got there, nor did she care.
Several of the room's doors were shut. It was six in the morning and most likely everyone had gone back to sleep. She knew that she should be heading for her coffin soon as well. One door at the end of the hall was open though. At first Seras couldn't remember who'd slept in that room, until she heard his voice:
"…I earnestly entreat thee to assist me also, in the painful and dangerous conflict which I have to sustain against the same formidable foe. Be with me, O mighty Prince, that I may courageously fight and wholly vanquish that proud spirit, whom thou hast by the Divine Power, so gloriously overthrown, and whom our powerful King, Jesus Christ, has, in our nature, so completely overcome…"
Anderson.
Seras smiled to herself for reasons she couldn't quite place.
His faith is inspiring…
She leaned against the door frame to his room and listened to the rest of the prayer. Going so far as to nod affirmatively and whisper Amen, seconds after the priest had done so himself.
Her eyes closed, Seras stood against the door frame for some time absorbing the prayer and the conviction with which it was spoken.
"Ye want somethin'?"
Seras jumped at the sudden sound, "eh? No… I was just… uh…"
Anderson raised an eyebrow at her, but said nothing. He wasn't wearing his glasses. He looked strange without them.
"I was just…"
He shut the door in her face before she could think of a proper non-incriminating response. She thought it was better that way.
End chapter 2
Geh. Still not sure where to go with this. Must. Give. Thought. To. This.
Gonna try and write a few more chapters. I'll have to put a hiatus in effect soon. Not that anyone cares about that right now, but I think it should be said (no one starts getting into my stories until about chapter 7 or so). School is starting soon. Blech.
There you have it, I guess. Review as you see fit.