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07.
a meager substitute
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The doors of the crypt burst open with a bang.
"Alucard!"
The butler marched into the large, bleak chamber and up to the large, black coffin in center. He gave it a light kick, a deed only he, other than the master of the house, dared to commit. "Get up, or I'll scruff up this precious box of yours."
"You'll lose your foot."
The lid of the coffin moved an inch to the side. Walter could hear scuttles, produced by creatures of many legs, and whispers from within its depths. A single crimson eye glared at him. "Angel," the owner of the eye said in his portentous velvet tone, "there is much I let you off from, but disturbing my rest is cutting it close."
"I'll bloody cut your head off while I'm at it," Walter snapped. "Where's Integra?"
"Where's Integra?" Alucard repeated. The situation became less irritating and more ludicrous. "Is this a joke, or have you actually gone senile? Where would Integra be if not—"
Her blood in his veins tugged at him.
He followed it. Followed it out of the manor, across the city, to the opposite side of the river.
Not here.
Integra was not here.
"I wouldn't be down here at seven in the bloody morning even if I'd planned the greatest prank of my life." Walter nudged the lid with his foot. "For God's sake, get up."
It slid off, not because Walter's insistence had any leverage on Alucard, but because the vampire himself was perturbed, though his face was devoid of any sign of it. The lining of the coffin was satin; to the human perception there was nothing to suggest that it contained substances beyond silk. He sat up. His hair melded into the shadows and there it crimped agitatedly.
"She wasn't in her room—again—but this time she'd left a note—"
Twice in a row the morning tranquility was shattered by his master, his master who held secrets, who had become overnight a mystery to him and even to the butler who had known her since birth. Curious, curious, curious, and a monster does love curiosities. My Master, you shouldn't tempt me so.
"Well, she's not dead."
"Alucard!"
"Why the fuss?" He slung his arms over the walls of his box. "She must have had some business to take care of."
"Business at the crack of dawn, in God knows where, without mentioning a word of it beforehand? By herself? Does this sound normal for her to you?"
"I wasn't aware there was a standard of normalcy in this house," Alucard said, mimicking Integra's answer to his similar question yesterday. "My Master is in that period of her youth when humans get up to all sorts of shenanigans; in fact, I remember you at this age most fondly."
Walter scowled.
"You should consider it fortunate that all she's doing is acting on her wanderlust, out of the many lusts," he purred, "available."
Walter chose to ignore the nuance. "Yes, along with breaking into tears and firing her tutors," he muttered.
"My dear Master is being unpredictable. How lovely. I love unpredictable." Alucard licked his fangs.
Walter glanced sharply at the vampire as he lifted himself out of his last domain. The red of his eyes was as unnervingly lucent as ever, and when he drew himself to his full height, the hunter's instinct twanged. Alucard had a beautiful head and it would look so much better on the floor, bleeding.
"So you have tickled this sleeping dragon to see our maiden back in her tower," Alucard drawled. "Shall I go and snatch her up?"
"I'd appreciate it if you would desist from speaking of her with such frivolity," Walter said, unamused. "You know where she is, just bring her back safely. Her note said she would be back before breakfast but it's already—"
"Really, Walter. You used to be more fun than this." Alucard conjured his hat and put it on as he lumbered past him.
It was when his back was to him that Alucard suddenly turned and pinned his toxic gaze on his old partner.
"You've mellowed quite a bit, haven't you, Angel of Death?" he murmured. "The occasional bout of coarseness like the one just now notwithstanding, you're the quintessential English gentleman. Yet I do wonder." Alucard cocked his head. "What goes on beneath that facade?"
Walter arched a brow. "Facade?"
"We are juvenile at heart, as Integra said. And sometimes I wonder." Shadows fluctuated in the background. "Is the proud Reaper of the battlefield content to be the old dog fetching newspapers?"
Walter merely smiled. "I could ask the same of you."
Alucard laughed. "As if I have a choice!"
"But I know you take delight in that," Walter shrugged. "We keep our boundaries as servants of this house and serve our lady to the end of our days. That is the entirety of our existence." He matched Alucard's gaze. "For we are only ever dogs, as you've put it, and dogs can be weapons and protectors and even called family members, but in the end will never amount to more."
He framed each word deliberately.
Never amount to more.
Alucard's lips curved up without mirth. "Well phrased."
Walter clapped him on the shoulder. "Best leave now. It's raining and I don't want her to catch a cold."
He pretended not to notice how still the vampire was, how silent he had gone, when usually he would have complained about the prospect of getting wet. He left him there in his hollow and climbed up the stairs.
In the kitchen there was a drawer full of knives. The sharpest were in the front, the dullest in the back. And no matter how often Walter whetted the ones in the back, they never seemed to serve as precisely as the ones in the front. They were old knives; worn, decrepit, useless.
His greatest fear was that one day Integra would look at him the way he looked at those knives. He knew she would never, yet his fear was not to be assuaged by rationality and gnawed on him, with many teeth, not unlike those of the monster he had left. Bastard. Asking those kinds of questions. The bloody wanker needed to be reminded of his place and he would make sure he stayed there. Walter kicked the door to the basement shut and slouched against it, rubbing his temples.
Hypocrite.
"I'm..." Could he deny it?
Hypocrite.
Could he?
Hypocrite.
A bitter laugh tore from him.
The master was not the only person fettered by nightmares. The vampire was. The butler was. Every single living and unliving thing in this accursed household.
And his, his were a terror he had started fifty years ago.
xx
xx
"We met in a dream?" Seras asked. "Really?"
The rain had slowed but was not stopping. Integra shielded her from the drops that fell fat and cold from the cusps of leaves above. How strange. She was so small. So warm. She could feel her heartbeats. This little girl was Seras, who had her chin on her chest and was peering up at her with blue eyes alight with the beginnings of trust. Integra held fast to that light.
"Really."
"But how come I don't remember you?"
"Oh, it was a fleeting dream," Integra said.
"What did we do?"
"We—" Survived. "We played together." She chuckled. "You had daisies in your hair."
She was recollecting a spring morning when Seras had barged into her office with a bunch of daisies, some in her hair, indignant that the gardener had been throwing them out as weeds. "Can you believe it? It's an outrage, Master Integra! Here, see? I rescued the lot. Let me put them in a vase."
Which is a dream now, a mere dream.
"Oh." Seras quieted. "I like daisies. They're my favorite." She grew thoughtful. She looked down for a while, until it appeared she had come to a decision. She looked back up, and any and all tentativeness was gone from her eyes.
"Thank you," she said, suddenly shy.
Integra tightened her embrace.
"You're welcome."
The girl was brimming with curiosity. "Why—why did you ask me to forgive you earlier?"
I left you, and I have nothing to show for it.
Her mouth said, "If you hadn't been startled, you wouldn't have run into that filth."
Seras shook her head. "That man, he's been here before," she mumbled. "I heard some of the girls talking about him. They told Mr. Carter there was a creep lurking in the woods but," her voice harshened, "he only said they shouldn't make things up."
"And this Mr. Carter, he's the head of the orphanage?"
Seras nodded.
Integra fumed. Fucking incompetent birdbrains parading as heads and endangering the people they were supposed to care for because they just did not care. She abhorred these types.
Seras fidgeted in her arms.
"Are you like—like an angel?"
Integra blinked.
Seras ducked, blushing. "It's just—you came out of nowhere and—you're so pretty—"
She was working herself up into a flurry of stammers that Integra knew well. Ignoring her continuously smarting heart, she took a step back and spread out her arms.
"I certainly don't think angels are supposed to be this bedraggled," she said, and Seras let out a tiny giggle.
"You saved me," the child said.
And you, you have...
She smiled wanly. "I'm neither an angel nor much of a savior. I'm simply, Integra."
"Integra," Seras pronounced. Carefully, without familiarity, without recognition, yet with the shine that effuses in a person's aura when she realizes she has found a kindred spirit. It was, thought Integra, enough. For her, for now, it was enough.
The rain, it seeped into her black dress, seeped into her very bones. They rattled, not only because of the chill, but also because the air around them chose that moment to pressurize.
She felt rather than saw her servant emerge out of the trees behind her. For she was watching Seras, the way the blush fled from her cheeks and her eyes hardened with hostility in a transition so rapid, it was as if the giggling child had been a mere illusion. She moved in front of Integra, hands clenched, guarding her from the newcomer.
How certain things never change.
Seras, will it always be that you'll rush in to protect me?
Integra turned to grasp her gently. "It's fine. He works for me."
Seras went wide-eyed at her. "That scary-looking mister works for you?"
"Don't let his looks fool you," Integra said in a stage whisper. "I am far scarier than him."
Seras stared. But she said, "I believe you."
What a bizarre family reunion.
Alucard was standing unnaturally still, even for him. Only his irises behind his tinted glasses were in motion, studying the mess on the ground. Then his pale mouth twisted with the darkest humor. At her approach his gaze snapped into hers.
Again, Integra? he seemed to be asking.
"Alucard," she began.
"My Master. When I said you should have picked a storm to run out, I didn't mean it literally."
"This is hardly a storm." Integra eyed his blotchy fedora. "Are you pouting?"
"I would be, but..." Alucard leaned forward. "I see you have a surprise for me."
"And I see you are here, and that I should have known better than to think a note will placate Walter."
"Obviously, his concern was unwarranted. Impeccable aim, my Master." His pupils slitted. "Though I would have drawn it out."
"Circumstances," she told him. "Consider it a chew toy for your hound."
"Oh, and should its bite transcend the limits of flesh and tear through the soul in the bowels of hell, it would be a sweet thing indeed." Alucard's form rippled. He would have rather blood caking under his nails and bones powdering between his fingers and screams deafening his ears as he gutted the worm which had dared to offend his master in such a fashion. But a chew toy it was. He jutted his chin toward Seras. "Surely not in front of your new friend?"
Integra turned. Seras was watching them avidly. The rain was now a drizzle, the clouds were breaking up.
This was a survey, she had told herself, as she walked out of her room, out of the house, out of the car. Shitty lies, however, did not become truths whether they were repeated twice or twenty. If she would end up going back to the manor alone, and not with an additional passenger in the car—she would be disappointed in herself.
Yet therein lay the question. Was this about Seras, or was this about herself? Was this best for her? Was she not being selfish? Dragging her, a child, into her world again?
Seras surprised her by barreling into her.
"Seras?"
"Are you going to leave me?"
"What?" Integra breathed.
"Is that why he's here?" Seras glared at Alucard. "To take you home?" She shook violently. "Please! Take me with you! Please? I'll be good! I'll do all the chores! I can do the dishes and the laundry and—and—"
Integra gaped as Seras continued to babble. "You want to come with me?"
"You said we met in a dream!" Seras cried. "That means something, right?"
Don't leave me!
Don't leave me!
Integra swallowed. She rubbed the girl's back almost absently, waiting for her sobs to subside. "Yes," she said. "It means everything to me."
"It's why you're here." Seras looked up at her, pleading. "So you could come and get me."
How could she say no to those eyes? She would be lying anyway.
"If that is what you want."
"I want to go with you. I want—I want to become like you." In that moment, the child was older than her age, face etched with a fervor Integra had witnessed so often on paler cheeks. "If I go with you, could I learn to shoot like you do? Could you teach me?"
Certain things never change.
She was not an angel. She was not God. Knowledge of the future did not fix the past. It seems, she sighed, we're fated to be. Misfits. Miscreants. Children who were forced to grow up too fast. In the end, what difference was there between this orphanage and the manor? It was simply that there were less actual children and more adults, and they stayed because they had nowhere else to go. They flocked to her because they knew she was the same and she would accept them when no one else did. Isn't that right? Seras. Alucard. Walter.
The rain had stopped.
"Alucard," she called.
"Master." His answering tone was eerily flat. Integra was aware he was processing what had just played out before him and she would have to deal with him later. First things first.
"Give the body to your hound and let it leave no trace. Meet me at the entrance afterwards." She paused. "And lend me your coat."
Again, she felt rather than saw the quirk of his lips. "But it's summer."
"You don't think I'll meet any head of an establishment looking like a drowned cat, do you?"
Seras jolted at that. "Integra?"
"Let's go, Seras." Integra took her hand. "Let's go and get you home."
xx
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Mr. Carter of Hortense Children's Home was not fond of children. He did not regard this as an issue. There were cooks who did not like eating and vets who did not like animals. He, at least, fed the children three meals a day and provided them with warm sleeping quarters. Beyond that he could not be bothered. The girls had been particularly annoying this week with their tales of a make-believe stalker in the woods, and he had had to shut them up quickly. Such gossip risked hurting the orphanage's reputation and the donations made, and why would he be in this job if not for the hefty sums?
He was sipping his morning coffee when there was a knock on his office door. "Come in," he said, assuming it to be his breakfast.
It was not.
In walked the oddest pair of people he had ever seen. A girl entered first. Her hair was wet, her skin was dark and she was wearing a red coat. In summer? Teenagers and their nonsense fads. She also wore glasses, behind which blue eyes stared straight at his desk as if she owned it. She was followed by a towering man in a black suit and red cravat, whose look was indiscernible due to his shades. Mr. Carter found himself unnerved by the conceited grin on the man's face that was a radical contrast to his companion's cool mien.
"Mr. Carter?" the girl addressed him.
"Y-yes. Michael Carter," he answered, then remembered he was talking to a child. "Who the blazes are you?"
"Integral Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing." She sat down without being invited. "Do you enjoy your job, Mr. Carter?"
"Hell who?" The name did not ring a bell. "Buggering what? Who do you think you are?"
"That's no way to speak to a young lady." She flicked a speck of dust off her clothing, before giving him a smile that for some reason made him break out in a cold sweat. "Fortunately for you, I am here for something very simple. One of your wards, Seras Victoria. I'm requesting her removal from this facility and placement in my care."
"In whose care, now?" Mr. Carter asked stupidly. "Seras Victoria? What's she done this time?"
"Excuse me?"
"She's a troublemaker. Been transferred twice in six months, doesn't listen to the instructors, gets into fights and runs off on her own. Unlucky, I reckon. Nasty bit of circumstance."
Integra's fingers twitched.
"Is that so," she said.
"You're welcome to take her off my hands. Though," he sneered, "you're just a kid yourself, aren't you?"
"Are you happy with how you're running this institution, Mr. Carter?" Integra asked suddenly.
"What did you say?"
"I have heard," she continued, "that some of the children have been complaining of an unsavory character frequenting the woods. Have you done anything about that?"
"What? Are you a buggering investigator now?" Mr. Carter pounded his desk. "It's all nonsense! They make up all sorts of stories because they want attention, the conniving little chits!" Having regained his bravado, he jabbed a finger at Integra. "You, girl, you're touched in the head if you think you can barge in and demand things out of me. Bring an adult, proper paperwork and let them do the talking while you keep your trap shut."
She startled him by emitting a laugh. "Pardon me. It's only that I'm so used to getting my way." Her smile fell. "And I am not about to end that streak."
"The bloody hell are you—"
It was then the tall man came into his line of vision and removed his shades.
Red.
Eyes. Not two, not three. Many, many red eyes.
Obey my Master, a dangerous voice said in his mind.
"Michael," Integra murmured. "I'm afraid I'm lacking the proper paperwork. Why don't you draw some up for me?"
"Yes..." Michael said sluggishly.
"And while you're at it, consider seeking another job. After all, the children here need a responsible, intelligent adult to take care of them and not a complete buffoon," she hissed.
"Not...a complete...buffoon..."
"Good." Integra regarded the man and his vacant expression pitilessly. She did not condone the use of vampiric hypnotism on civilians, yet she spared no charity on those foolish enough to anger her with their own ineptitude.
Alucard chuckled darkly beside her.
"Red and black."
She glanced up. "Hmm?"
He crinkled his eyes. "We match."
Integra looked down at herself. Red and black. "Yes," she said. "I appreciate that you altered it so I don't resemble a Victorian cross-dresser."
"Are you saying my fashion is outdated?"
Integra rolled her eyes.
The hypnotized man filled out a form. The sun was getting stronger and Alucard was feeling a bit peckish. "After he's done, may I eat him?"
"No, Alucard. Behave."
"But I have risen in the morning for two days in a row, and if my hunger for your answers is not to be sated, then at least for blood it should."
Integra did not reply. She filled out the rest of the information. Signing at the bottom with a flourish, she made to stand. "Now that's done and over with, let's head back before I develop an ecosystem in these wet clothes."
Alucard blocked her path.
"Integra," he said, "who is that girl?"
Her face was impassive. "And with your ears I'd thought you would have picked up on it. Seras Victoria, a ward of this orphanage, now mine." She attempted to slide off her seat and was blocked once again.
"Who is she to you, that you would go to these lengths to secure her? I have never heard you mention this girl before. I have never known you to desire any form of female companionship, and now you've come all the way here to foster this girl, because of a dream?" Alucard let the questions escape him like the rainfall earlier, his composure collapsing, the monster able to take only so much. "The dream you hide from me."
Integra inhaled. "Alucard—"
"You're so close yet you're so distant." With a mournful air he sealed the stretch between them and gripped the arms of her chair. "You can treat me like the dog I am and leave me scraps and order me to roll over, but even a common mongrel basks in the trust of his master!"
Integra gazed at him, this man, this vampire she loved and trusted—wanted to trust—but she knew that the day she told him her secrets would be the day that this farce of a peace would be extinguished forever. She could not have that, especially now when Seras would be living with them. She did not want her life to spiral into chaos again when this was her second chance and she was so tired of it all.
She lifted a hand and stroked his cheek. She granted him a piece of her truth.
"I wish I could tell you."
"Integra," he croaked.
Should she do it? She had wanted to for some time. For thirty years, really. She wondered how he would react.
There was one way to find out.
She brushed a kiss to the corner of his pale, cold lips.
He froze.
It was a very brief kiss. Not even worthy to be called a kiss. More like a susurrus. But it was enough, and her lips burned. "Take this as a meager substitute for the answers I am unable to give you," she said.
His eyes were so red, Integra almost feared they would drop as tears.
She ducked under his arm and exited the room.
She did not hear him come after her.
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NOTES
This chapter was published on October 30, 2016.
It has been updated for grammar, punctuation, formatting, and word choice on January 29, 2021.
The original end note for this chapter can be found in the link in my profile.