My father hated me. And not in the "I'm gonna beat the shit out of that kid for smashing my TV" sense, more like the "I wish your mother had died before she had you" sense. Naturally, I developed a sort of hatred for him right back. I guess that's how I got started hating secret societies; my father was part of the infamous Order of the Dragon, a not-Christian "Christian" secret society that designated it's members as "Draco's"...in fact, that's where I got my ill-fated nickname from. Needless to say, I hate the fuckers... and now I get to annihilate them for fun. Who says miracles don't happen?

-excerpt from the Vampire Journals

Chapter 8: Little Miracles

"Surrogate", Alley corrected, a frown creasing her adorable face.

"S-sorry", Seras asked.

"Surrogate daughter", Alucard clarified. "She needed someone to keep her alive. I was the only one around."

"You're the best, daddy", Alley told him with a smile.

"Oh, I don't know about that", Alucard told her with a similar smile. "I think you're the best!"

With that, Alley squirmed out of Alucard's hands, and began running circles around him, chanting, "Daddy, daddy, you're the best!"

Alucard grabbed her up and began tickling her, saying, "No, you're the best!"

Seras' eye twitched as she watched her normally rude, disrespectful, impassionate Master play with a small child like she was the most wonderful thing in the world. She had never seen him devote time, energy, or effort into something on his own willingly, yet here he was, playing with this small child as if she were his own. Her brain was doing mental gymnastics trying to wrap itself around this concept.

"Um, so", the southerner spoke up, "this is your daughter?"

"Look", Alucard told him, "I'll explain everything later, alright?"

"Yeah, be patient", the small child echoed with a giggle, as she jumped up onto Alucard's back. "Let's go to England, daddy!"

"Oh, I'd love to take you home, sweetheart", Alucard told her, with a trace of sincerity in his voice. He sighed, and his pitched dropped to a mellow and melancholy level he hadn't used before. "But you know the rules."

"No siring children", Alley echoed with a similar melancholy. "And they wouldn't believe you if you said you hadn't."

"I got locked away for it before", Alucard reminded her, with that same melancholy tone. "You remember how long that lasted?"

"Almost thirty years", she echoed. Tears began brimming in her eyes. "It was a long thirty years."

"But I'm back now", Alucard told her, excitement returning to him, "and I plan on staying for a little while!"

"Yay! Vacation", she shouted.

Alucard threw his head back and bellowed laughter.

"Yeah", Alucard said, "a real vacation!"

Almost as soon as he was done with his sentence, he began to hear sirens off in the distance; ambulance, not police.

Very odd.

"That reminds me", Alucard thought out loud, "right now actually isn't a very good time for us to be around you."

Alley made a pouty face but offered no further resistance. Clearly, she understood whatever situation they were in was over her head.

"You remember the drill", Alucard said, as he knelt down next to her.

"I know, I know", Alley responded with an exacerbated huff. "Lay low, stay out of sight, run if there's trouble."

"I will find you if I need to", Alucard finished, "and when this is over."

She ran up to him and hugged him around the neck. He gently returned her hug.

"We will come back", Alucard told her gently. He grew a smug smirk, adding, "So long as you stay alive, of course."

She released her hug, and gently booped the ancient vampire on his long nose.

"I'm more worried about you not coming back", she said, in an honest and straightforward way that only children could.

"I will", Alucard told her, reassuringly. "I promise."

"Cross your heart", Alley asked, as she used her finger to trace a Christian cross over her heart.

Alucard gave her a toothy grin, saying, "And hope to live."

Alley threw her arms around his neck one more time, and then turned, dashing further down into the alleyway. For a moment, Alucard didn't move, staying stock-still in his kneeling position. Then he nodded, and stood up, dusting himself off.

"No questions", he told the group present. "I'll explain everything later."

With that, he quickly walked out of the alleyway, into the brightness of the lowering sun. The rest of the group blankly followed behind him, wondering if he would make good on his promise of an explanation, or if this incident would be chocked up as another "wacky adventure".

Alucard led the group back towards the area where the news reporters had set up in front of the Schutler house. Motioning for the others to stay back, Alucard muscled his way through the small crowd that had gathered around the "news anchors", who Alucard was fairly certain were a bunch of brainwashed followers. James Baird was still thinking like he was back in his prime. The media would find some way to cover this up today.

He listened to what the anchor was making up for a moment, just to find a good opportunity to ruin it.

"A shooter is on the run after murdering an elderly woman inside this house you see behind me", the anchor told the camera, "the house-museum of-"

"When", a voice shouted from the crowd.

"Oh, um, earlier today-"

Alucard pushed through the crowd, snatched the microphone away, and yelled, "WHEN DID I ASK?!"

The cameraman began shaking the camera, trying to get him out of the frame. Alucard advanced on him, grabbing the lens of it, and pushing it into his face, so that whoever was watching could see his large grin.

"I know you're watching, false king of the city", Alucard said. "I hereby challenge you for the crown. If you find my car before midnight, it's a duel! Otherwise, I got shit to do. In other words, be there or be square, bitch!"

Alucard dropped the mic and walked back into the crowd like nothing happened. He returned to his group of people, and motioned them all to follow him, back in the direction of where they had parked the car. The confused group of humans and vampire followed behind him, uncertain about the road that lay ahead.

The intrepid figures made their way out through the city, and up to the abandoned house that served as their final rally point. As the sun began making its way towards the ground, Alucard had the Americans help him roll a hefty dose of freedom up towards the door, and then suggested that they take a break by running into town and grabbing cheesesteaks... on the company card, of course.

"In fact, while you're heading in his direction", Alucard suggested, "why don't you take that smelly Frenchman along? Maybe he can sniff out all of the wineries that I'll be raiding tomorrow. Better yet, why don't you all get stuck in that good shit 'til the sun comes up?"

Mercs tended to understand when they were being told to fuck off. Furthermore, they tended to respond to it rather graciously. As the three Americans made their way towards the door, Post Malone tapped Pip on the shoulder, and flashed him the company card. With that, the four of them left the building.

Which left Seras and Alucard alone in this abandoned house together.

Seras, mildly uncomfortable with that notion after the events of earlier in the day, immediately showed her apprehension when Alucard sat down on a ruined couch that looked like it was caked in dust, and patted the seat next to him. She gingerly stepped forward, as Alucard crossed his left leg over his right one, allowing his grin to fade from his face.

She made her way slowly to the open seat, brushing off the dust, and taking her assigned position. For a long, still moment, Alucard remained silent. Seras began fidgeting, wondering if she was about to get answers, or just more "tips". With a disgusting startle, she realized that Alucard's "tips" could well be another one of his dumb sexual innuendos. She decided to derail that train of thought as Alucard drew in a breath.

And he started to chuckle.

"The more I let you loose, the more you amaze me."

Seras was surprised by what she was hearing. She turned to look at her master with a bewildered expression. In response, he grinned.

"You've proved that you're capable of surviving for extended periods without me today, in that firefight you got yourself into. Even though I did save your ass at the end, there, you still had the most kills out of you and Pip. But killing isn't everything; hell, survival Isn't everything. Being able to thrive in a situation like that could be the difference between life and death. By the aggression you demonstrated in your first contact, I'd say you're well on your way to becoming a thriving operative in the field."

"How did you know", Seras asked, floored that he knew so much.

Alucard entertained the thought of telling her that he had literally just asked Pip for a debriefing a few hours ago, but keeping the mystery alive was far more amusing.

"I have my ways", Alucard told her devilishly. "That's not important; what is important is that you need to learn to cultivate that anger, and use it to your advantage."

"Oh... well... thank you", Seras told him. For a moment, she seemed like she had a question to ask him. She wringed her hand like it was a Turk's neck. Eventually, she worked up the courage to say, "Why did you save that man?"

"Who, Pip", Alucard asked. "I wouldn't really say I saved him; I mean, he just happened to be in the right place at the right time."

"I mean-"

"In all reality, if it came down to it, if Pip and Mussolini were drowning in a kiddie pool, and I had to save one of them, I'd save Mussolini."

"Oh... I... what I meant was-"

"Actually, if I were in a room with Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Pip, and I had a gun that only had two bullets in it, I would shoot Pip in the balls twice, just to make sure that if he survived being shot in the balls, he wouldn't be able to spread his filthy genes around."

"That's not who I'm talking about."

Alucard lifted an eyebrow, saying, "Well, then spill it, woman! Who did I save that made your noggin get a-joggin'?"

"That man in that warehouse", Seras told him. "The one that Anderson showed us."

"Oh", Alucard said neutrally, processing how he should take this conversation.

Technically, he could start it off under religious context. He could argue that God made his servants look appealing to everyone, including their enemies, like the Roman officer who walked James, son of Zebedee, up to the beheading block, only to turn around and kneel before the executioner, asking to be beheaded as a Christian. He could make it a personal argument. For most of his life, he had fought to defend good men like him. Old habits died hard.

Instead, he decided to make the argument a practical one.

"He's useful", he told Seras. "The guy's going around annihilating vampires and giants alike. Less work for me."

That didn't feel right at all. An argument could be made that Alucard had been wasting his energies, considering the man was as close to death as could be whilst still being on his feet. But the real kicker was that Alucard hadn't done it for practical reasons. He respected the man, damnit. The dude had decapitated a giant with a chainsaw like he had been auditioning as Doomguy, and he did it all without any special powers or even magic. And after it had all been said and done, the man continued to stand and fight against evil, despite the fact that he had been so heavily wounded that Anderson had texted him that he had slipped into a coma almost the instant he had gotten into the underground Iscariot hospital that had opened up for him. Frankly, Alucard was surprised that the man could walk at all with his massive balls weighing him down like that.

But admitting that might put him at risk of being in category one, which would mean that Alucard was nothing but a puppet to the wills of people who were smarter and bigger than him. He had been that way once, oh so long ago, and now he regretted it. He didn't want to live out the rest of his death with regrets.

Seras didn't seem to like that answer either. She shrank down, seeming to completely deflate at his answer, almost as if she had had a personal stake in his response.

"Then what about Alley?"

Alucard was about to answer when his phone buzzed. He whipped it out like a champ, the screen showing Seras a simple message from someone named Sir Haggis: *Kill = Break*

He gave a large grin in response to that. Seras watched as he typed back, *Thnx BB luv u XOXOXOXO*

Sir Haggis almost immediately typed back, *SUCK MY DICK YOU CRACK WHORE*

Alucard flipped his phone closed, and returned it to his pocket, chuckling.

"What did you ask again?"

"WHAT ABOUT ALLEY" Seras practically screamed.

Alucard was taken aback by her response. He hadn't seen her get really angry about anything outside of people killing people she cared about. What was making her so upset?

"I'm not molesting her or anything", Alucard said in a serious tone.

"That's not what I mean", Seras said, a wave of disgust coursing across her face.

"Then what do you mean?"

"What's the role she plays in all of this?"

"Her... role", Alucard asked. Truth be told, she didn't really have a role in any of it. She was an innocent victim. She was just... there. "I... guess she feeds me information."

"An informant", Seras sounded aghast. "She's an informant for you?!"

"Just for general things", Alucard told her.

"You're disgusting", Seras hissed through clenched teeth.

"Disgusting", Alucard said in disbelief, standing up from the couch. "Me? Disgusting? Why?"

Seras shook her head.

"Why am I disgusting? What am I missing here?"

Seras only shook her head in response, her face contorted into a look of anger. Alucard sighed. Women could be so difficult.

Can't live with them, can't live without them, his dad crowed in the back of his mind. Alucard pushed that thought away in disgust. He had lived without the touch of a woman in his life until 1921, thank you very fucking much, and he would continue to live unmarried for the rest of his... death.

For some reason, that thought stopped him in his tracks. He had lived for so long without someone to share this adventure with, and more than likely, he would continue to do so for eternity.

Because the only person he wanted to share his life with wanted him dead.

He really wanted to stop this train of thought.

"Seras, why am I disgusting?"

"If you don't know now, you never will."

"Oh, donkeyfuck. I've heard that before. Each time I hear it, it sounds dumber."

"You're just", Seras cut herself off by holding up her hands and shaking her head.

Alucard waited for a reasonable and logical response, becoming angrier with each passing moment. Why wouldn't she just explain to him what she saw? Why couldn't she just tell him how to better himself? He had needed that advice oh so long ago, and apparently, he needed it now. Why wouldn't she just...

Alucard glanced up at a broken window, taking note of the fact that darkness had fallen upon the world. That snapped him out of his thoughts. If James was fast, he would be here soon.

"You better go", Alucard told Seras, "it's about to get ugly here."

"It's always bloody ugly here", she commented sourly, standing up from the couch.

Alucard chose to ignore that comment.

"I recommend you go back to the room Anderson gave us. It's a Vatican safehouse, technically. It's about as safe as you could get." Alucard paused for a moment, and then told her, "Or you can go somewhere else. It's a free country! You can do whatever you want."

"Can I come back to life?"

…

"Yeah, I didn't think so", Seras remarked.

With that, she stormed out of the house, leaving Alucard alone again.

...

James led his little sortie through the neighborhood, avoiding streetlights and porch lights. He knew that Alucard's challenge had implied that it was a one-on-one duel, but after what he had done with his first group, he wasn't about to take him on alone.

He had brought an extra fifty men, most of them experienced warfighters, all of them armed to the teeth. He had heard that copper bullets worked best on vampires, so they were all loaded with the expensive solid copper bullets that were becoming increasingly rare to find. This had not been a cheap sortie, but it would be worth it. The police were already in his back pocket, so once Alucard died by his hand, no one would question his hold on Philidelphia, not the satanists, not other vampires, not even those damned Remnant.

As they advanced forwards, it became increasingly clear that the neighborhood was sleeping soundly. Hopefully, a prolonged firefight wouldn't wake them up quickly enough to intervene. He knew that sometimes Americans could be hyper-vigilant. And the fact that they had ready access to firearms made things much more difficult for him.

But he persevered, and that was why he would win.

Finally, they quietly reached the old abandoned house that one of his scouts had seen the car next to. The car wasn't there anymore, but that meant nothing at all. Maybe Alucard just wanted to have a nice strole out of here when he won.

IF he won.

It was fifteen minutes 'til midnight, so technically, the duel was still on. It being so late, he hoped that Alucard was packing up, getting ready to call it a night, and go do whatever else he considered important. The element of surprise, he figured, was on their side.

James motioned for one of his men to open the door, and search for Alucard. The man flipped a pair of night vision goggles down over his face, and quietly pushed the door open. James was amazed at how silent the door was, especially after all this time of being neglected.

The plan was that if his man was killed, or if he spotted Alucard, James would signal for his men to open fire on the house, shredding it with AP rounds first, then finding the shattered remains of Alucard, so they could pump him full of copper, and lay a silver cross on his chest. Then they would get the hell out of there before people started waking up.

The man looked around for a moment, and then crept his way into the house. James held his breath for what felt like hours. After five minutes, his man popped back out of the door, giving an "ok" symbol with his hands.

Confused, James decided to take a look for himself. He swept through the door quietly, and noticed almost immediately that he was in a choke point, with two walls closing him in for the first two feet. He also noticed immediately that he was staring down the barrel of a fifteenth century cannon. The third thing he noticed was the glint of moonlight reflected off wickedly sharp teeth.

"Hey, James", Alucard said through a thick grin, "vibe check."

James turned to sprint out of the house, but a boom from behind saw him flying in multiple pieces out of the house.

His hypnotized followers stood in awe for a quiet moment. Then, one by one, they seemed to wake up, throwing down their weapons, and running away. A few of them began looking around, confused. None of them fired on Alucard as he made his way out of the house; in fact, the man who had searched the house saluted Alucard as he walked past him to stand directly over James' decrepit body.

He had loaded the cannon with heavy grape shot, turning the giant cannon into what was essentially a four-gauge shotgun. It had put multiple baseball-sized holes into James' back, and making similar exit wounds through his chest, since cast-iron didn't tend to warp like lead did. His left arm had been completely severed, the appendage sitting nearly ten feet away from him, and his right hand had only two fingers left on it, the other two now bloody stumps. One ball had grazed his left cheek, tearing his skin off, letting blood dribble down his face. Alucard could smell that his life was now being measured in seconds.

Alucard put his glasses back on, removed a small plastic button from his coat pocket, and pressed it.

The button chimed out, "That was easy."

Alucard tossed the button over his shoulder, and began to walk away.

"Wait", James choked out from the ground behind him.

Alucard turned an uninterested gaze on him.

"You weren't hypnotized... the watch didn't work the first time", he said. "Why?"

"Why didn't I kill you?"

"N-"

"Simple; if I were to kill you, and that cursed item still had a hold on everyone you brainwashed, then I would have had to work harder to find all of your little sheeple. But I had a good friend of mine look into it; a friend that I've been texting for the past day or so. Alexander Anderson, ever heard of him? Well, he knows his shit, and he knows where that little watch comes from. Turns out, it's registered in a Heretical Artifacts catalog run by the Vatican. He crunched some numbers, and he said that if I killeds ya, everyone who followed you would be broken of their spell. Seems he was right."

"What", James said, giving a violent cough, "what stopped me from hypnotizing you?"

Alucard shrugged, saying nonchalantly, "Experience."

He turned to walk away.

"It's that thing", James hissed, "it's that thing I smell on you!"

Alucard cocked his head, and removed his Wallachian sword from its sheath.

"What, this thing", Alucard said, letting the blade glisten in the moonlight. "I don't think so."

In truth, what he held in his hand was an enchanted item; whereas whoever had owned the watch before James had more than likely sacrificed someone to curse his pocket watch... or maybe several someone's, with how stanky that thing was... Alucard had had a ritual performed on his sword, oh so long ago, that could break any curse... at a hefty price.

Back then, he didn't love anybody, and nobody loved him, so it would have been safe to bind a loved ones' death to a broken curse. Now, he did have someone he loved... immensely... so there was no use for the dumbass enchantment anyhow. He sheathed the sword.

"It's got different purposes", Alucard told him. "Anything else you want to bother me about before you croak?"

"Does... does it burn?"

"Does what burn?"

"H...Hell..."

With that, James deflated, his body becoming still, and his eyes glassing over.

"Night night, dipshit", Alucard told the corpse, as he strode off into the darkness.

A/N: Celebrating 454 people actually taking the time to read this shit is a mind-blowing concept. But... here we are. Thanks, everyone, for your continued support and appreciation! I know things seem crazy right now, but hold on to your horses, because we aren't even halfway down this trail!

A/N 2: Recently, I lost a follower. I'm a bit pissed about it. But instead of being mopey, I'm going to give you all some bonus content here in a chapter or two, a rough draft for a now abandoned chapter called The Mole People, staring Anderson and Alucard. I just couldn't find a good place for it in the story, but it made me too satisfied to delete it. So, after fluffing it up and editing it a little, I'll be releasing it as a standalone short story within this one. Shortly as in within the month, as thanks to all of you who stuck around. It'll probably come with a word or two from Pootis McTootis himself. But it'll definitely feature Alucard and Alexander Anderson getting back-to-back, in a badass way.

A/N 3: I just found out that the actual round would be a .455, not a .454. I've corrected that, because fuck you, Kouta Hirano, witchyo goshdarn thirteen references

A/N 4: Disregard A/N 3: Turns out, .454 Casull is an actual round... however, it's so outrageously big that it's used exclusively in revolvers. The optics of using it in an automatic handgun are just... I mean, you think the barrel's long in the anime? It'd have to be that long just to fit a spring big enough to stop it from flying apart with every shot. And the grip? Alucard's hand would have to be as big as a freakin' dinner plate just to fit around it. But... it's a real round, and if you're smart enough you can make anything usable, so I'll give it to Walter, and concede that Alucard's gun is, in fact, a .454. Seras' Harkonnen will shoot 12.7, however, because fuck Kouta Hirano. Although, that particular rifle won't be making an appearance in this fic, because it would have been a pain and a half to break it all down and get it past airport security.