For all of his faults I could list, none can ever overshadow the unconditional brotherly love that he has shown this tired old man. He was slow to warm, but once the coal of his breast began to fire, it quickly became a blast furnace. Never in my life have I felt such unwavering devotion, even from my own wife, to both me and my beloved son. For every year that he has been my associate, he has shown me, time and time again, that he would have jumped into Hell itself for me, and he would have done it because he wanted to. None could ask for a better friend, one so close he could be called "brother".
-excerpt from the journal of Abraham Van Helsing
Chapter 22: The Brother You Know
The ice cream truck rolled to a stop in a nearly empty parking lot. The sun, high in the sky, beamed at just the brim of mid-morning bliss. Although, the environment was anything but blissful. Six Gun gave a big sigh, and turned towards Alucard, who had completely disassembled both of his handguns, and was cleaning them with a generous amount of oil. How he had managed to do it while on the move, in a van with terrible shocks, at high speeds on horrible roads, was beyond him.
"Where to, boss", he asked in his southern drawl.
"Do you remember where Alley's alley is at?"
"Who?"
"Fuck it", Alucard declared, "I'll drive."
In a matter of seconds, he reassembled both guns, reloaded and holstered them. He stood up, sliding past Six Gun and into the driver's seat, and turned the key. Six Gun slid onto the long bench that Alucard had slid out of, and hung onto the rings above his head for dear life. Seras looked past him, trying to get a glimpse of Alucard's eyes. She needed to know if Alley was in danger.
She never got a glance.
...
Alucard slammed on the brakes, and drifted the truck onto the corner street. He quickly straightened out, and stopped just in front of the alley where Alley resided. He hit the E-brake, and opened the door, stepping down to the street.
Seras jumped out right after him, quickly catching up to him.
"Why", she asked.
Alucard stopped in his tracks, and turned a questioning eye down towards her.
"Excuse me?"
"Why are we visiting Alley?"
Alucard stared her down, very intently observing both of her eyes, trying to understand the implications behind her question.
"We're celebrating", he responded simply.
He straightened up, and walked quietly into the alley. He was followed closely by Seras, and at a distance by two confused mercenaries. Alucard silently stalked forward, hiding his tall but slim frame behind cover wherever he could get the chance to. Seras didn't like what she was seeing, and flashes of those kids in the warehouse began pulsing in her mind.
Without thinking, she shouted, "ALLEY, WE'RE HERE!"
The mercenaries looked at her strangely. Alucard ignored her all together, looking down further into the alley, scanning his eyes from side to side. The briefest flash of movement and sound further down the alley made him twitch towards his gun. Seras felt like a deep weight was sinking into her chest, and her ears began to ring.
Suddenly, a blur of motion, and Alley leapt through the air, throwing a can at Alucard. It soared towards his face at blistering speeds, but Seras had seen him move faster before. Dodging it would be no great struggle for him. She could almost see how his next move would be to dodge, pull out his gun, line up a shot-
The can dinked off his face.
"Ow", Alucard said, with that same wicked grin adorning him as always.
"Gotcha", Alley shouted triumphantly.
"Sure did", Alucard said, approaching her swiftly, and gentle hauling her up into a cradle hold. "That was a hell of a throw!"
"I've had practice", Alley replied with a smirk. "Homeless caravan tried to move in here. Didn't stand a chance!"
"Wouldn't expect them to", Alucard told her, as he began mercilessly tickling her.
"Gah, stop it", she shouted through her laughter.
"Guess what", Alucard told her, ignoring her please.
"WH-A-ha-ha-HAT", Alley asked through her giggles.
"Remember what I said about the four tasks paving the road to England?"
At this, she perked up, and a look like a mixture of wonder, hope, and excitement spread across her face.
"Well two of those things just happened!"
A huge smile opened her mouth.
"What did you do, what did you do?!"
"Well, I beat the shit out of Half-Moon."
"Good!"
"And I also found and confronted the Third Party."
"WHAAA?! No way! Did you kill 'em?!"
Alucard smiled in a way that seemed dreary, heavy, and entirely unconvincing.
"Yeah", he told her. "Something like that."
Alley caught on immediately. She looked at him for a moment, puzzled, and then her expression fell.
"Oh no", she said, "was it-"
"Never mind that", Alucard told her, forcing his grin to return. "We're celebrating! The biggest step has been accomplished; now it's only a matter of time before we make you a proper English girl!"
Alley was a little slow to the uptake, but after a moment of hesitation, her smile returned, and she said in a mocking British accent, "Propa English?! Blu-tee 'ell!"
Now it was Seras' turn to laugh out loud. Alucard chuckled in concert. The two mercs tried to act professional.
"I think you're going to love it there", Alucard told Alley.
"Is your weirdo apprentice going to be there", Alley asked.
"Hey!"
"Yep", Alucard told her.
"Nice", Alley told Alucard, "she's cool."
"Oh."
"Kinda weird, but cool."
"Alright, you!"
"But", Alucard told her, "you can't keep calling her 'your apprentice'. I call her 'Police Girl', but that's only because she supposedly was one."
"Hey! I'll have you know I was a downright good one!"
"Basically, what I'm saying is that you've gotta make up your own name for her, in order to teach you about 'originality' or something like that."
"Hmm", Alley hummed, scratching her head in thought. "Her real name is something dumb like 'Seras', right?"
"Hey", Seras countered, "Seras isn't a dumb name!"
"Yeah", Alley replied, "tell that to the five other people who are too embarrassed to admit they share a name with you. So, you sired her?"
"Yep."
"So, in a way, I'm kinda like your adopted daughter, and she's kinda like your step-daughter."
"Exactly."
"She's like my sister, then", Alley said, turning her head in thought. Her face lit up, and she said, "Sissy."
She thought about it some more, and a bright smile beamed across her face as she said, "Sissy Seras!"
"Good name", Alucard told her.
"I love it", Seras said, a smile growing on her face.
Alley raced forward, with glee in her posture, and threw her arms around Seras' neck, enveloping her in a warm, tight hug.
Suddenly, the whole scene changed for Seras. She was no longer hugging Alley; she was Alley, laying on a metallic table covered in candles and her own blood. She could feel two stinging wounds on her neck, and she was shaking and crying in fear. She watched as a tall man dressed in a red duster, red-tinged glasses, and a wide red hat walked slowly towards her, with his eyes pointed downwards. He reached down, and grabbed a man in a white coat that had been stained with blood... her blood. The man's face contorted into one of horror.
"Please, lord", the man begged, "have mercy!"
The tall man in red hoisted him up to his feet, dusting off his coat. For a moment, the man in white seemed to be relieved. Then, with one long, slender hand, the man in red grabbed him around the neck, lifting him up into the air.
"You want mercy", the man in red asked him tauntingly.
The man in white gave a strangled cry.
"Here's your mercy, you little shit", the man in red sneered.
The man in red squeezed, and Alley could hear the man in white's neck make cracking sounds. Blood began to flow out of the man in white's mouth, staining his white coat. Eventually, the man in white stopped moving all together, and the man in red tossed him away like an unloved doll.
The man in red turned his gaze on Alley, and she instinctively began crying again. Maybe she had done something wrong, and this red man had come to punish her. She felt wrong. Everything felt wrong. She had probably done something wrong.
"Shh", the man in red said, kneeling down where he stood, and showing her his palms. "It's all right, I won't hurt you."
The man in red's eyes, that she could see over the edge of his glasses, looked down at her neck, where the bite was. Alley curled up, trying to hide it, ashamed of it. The man returned his gaze towards her eyes.
"How do you feel", the man asked her.
Alley felt like a lot of things. She felt tired, she felt injured, she felt sad, she felt hungry, but most of all...
"I'm scared", she told the man in red.
"Me too", the man in red told her. "Want to know what I'm afraid of?"
Now, Alley was curious. This tall red man, who looked scary, and could throw a big person like a little doll, was scared of something? What was there that could make such a man scared? She nodded, beaconing him to tell.
"Dogs", he told her. "If I hear them bark, I get really, really scared. Some really bad people did some really bad things to me when I was young, and they used dogs to keep me awake throughout. There, now you know a secret of mine. So let me ask you a secret of yours. What's your name?"
Coraline, she thought, and she was about to tell him so, when he realized that he had asked her to tell him a secret. Her name wasn't a secret, so she would make it a secret.
"I", she stammered, "I don't know."
The man looked at her, with a look in his haunting red eyes that suggested... pity?
"Then I'll call you... Alley", the man told her. "I'm Alucard, but you can call me whatever you want."
The man chuckled, saying, "You can call me 'daddy' if you really want to."
"Ok", Alley said, as she swung her legs off of the table. "Daddy."
Seras was herself again, and Alley was looking up at her inquisitively.
Alucard, Seras thought, is scared of... cute, cuddly dogs?
Alley tapped Seras on the forehead.
"Sissy", Alley asked inquisitively.
"Oh, sorry, Coraline, I was just thinking."
As soon as she said it, she realized she had made a mistake. Alucard raised an eyebrow, and frowned, and Alley gave her a neutral, deadpan expression, folding her arms behind her back.
"I'm not called that anymore", the little vampire told Seras. "I'm Alley now."
"Of course", Seras said, sweeping her up in a hug. "I'm so sorry, Alley!"
Alley returned the hug, telling her, "It's ok, Sissy."
After a moment of embrace, Alley raised her head, fixing a mischievous gaze on Alucard.
"Are we just gonna hang around here", she asked.
"Nope", Alucard told her. Her face immediately jumped into a glowing smile, as Alucard clarified, "I said we were partying, and we're gonna party. Get in the ice cream truck, and get yourself some free candy."
...
Alley, happily eating an ice cream cone, sat blissfully in the passenger's seat, wondering what wonderful things Alucard had planned for her. Seras sat beside her, munching on her own cone, slightly relieved, but not entirely convinced. She kept smiling big at Alley, but occasionally, she would throw questioning glances at Alucard's back. Sometimes Alley would catch her doing this, and raise an eyebrow at her in a way that made her giggle.
Alucard had sat back down in the passenger's seat, and had been asking Six Gun, who was now driving, about places to go in Philidelphia where a good time could be had. It was through this conversation that he had learned that Six Gun, until the beginning of this trip, had never even been to Philidelphia. When asked why the hell he was even on this trip, Six Gun had simply shrugged. With her vampire hearin', Seras learned from Alucard that Integra had never personally been to America, having more than enough to do in Europe, and deciding that it would be easier to deal with the continent by proxy. With that knowledge in hand, and knowing her on a far more personal level, he assumed that she had assumed that anyone from America would know enough about it to aid in navigation. Six Gun provided no comment.
Pip sat right across from them, and would occasionally make faces at Alley. It tickled Seras, who had mostly seen him as a semi-stoic pervert up until watching him interact with this small child, in more ways than one. To be honest, the way he handled her was kind of a turn-on. Occasionally, he would glance over at her, and she found it difficult to meet his eye.
They were heading towards a small park. If she had been freed from an alley, Seras would have probably chosen a different place to celebrate, but she wasn't about to judge. Today was Alley's day, and Alley was taking the reins.
Occasionally, Alucard would glance back at her. His expressions seemed to be pretty neutral, but it chilled her blood every time they met eyes. Just a few hours ago, he had slaughtered a warehouse full of children, and now here he was, trying to be a father to this vampire child. The duality made her brain hurt, and honestly, it made her a bit scared. If he could kill children in cold blood, what might he do to her?
What would he do to her?
...
"Well, here we are", Alexander Anderson said to the three other Iscariot agents, stealing a glance at another magnificent sunset that God had made just for him.
"You're certain this is where he is", one of them, an absolute dickhead named Charles piped up.
"Oh, no", Anderson berated sarcastically, "I'm certain this was the last place he was spotted! Soon, we'll be engaging in a world-wide scavenger hunt, searching for clues to his whereabouts, all wrapped in nice balls of tissue paper, marked, 'Catch me if you can, ya Catholic dickwads'. Yeah, dingus, I'm pretty sure he's here."
"'Pretty sure' is different from 'certain'", a hardass named Steve interjected.
"There's only two things in this life's what's certain", Anderson reminded him. "The existence of God, and the fact that you're a massive arsehole."
"There's no need for hostilities, Father Anderson", the third one, a nerd named Ciril said meekly.
"Tell that ta these two idiots", Anderson said, pointing to the other two agents. "They keep hurtin' me feelings fer no reason!"
"Well, that seems reasonable", Ciril said, adjusting his glasses on the bridge of his nose. "Would you two mind not antagonizing him? We do have a job to do, after all."
"Good Lord, Ciril", Steve sighed, slapping a palm onto his face.
"Alright, let's go over the plan", Anderson began, bringing their focuses back to the mission. "I'll go inside, find the three books, and you three wait out here to confirm I've got the right ones so we can leave."
"Wait, what", Ciril practically shouted. "That wasn't the plan at all! The plan was for Steve and Charles to capture the Librarian so that he could be brought to justice, while I look for the three books and you stand guard! You got it completely backwards!"
"Ciril, tell me something", Anderson countered. "What's going to look stranger; a six-foot-two giant of a man, imposing as all hell and scared up to boot standing guard outside of the local library? Or two priests and a nerd with a muffin top?"
"Its... not that muffiny..."
"Exactly. Now, it may take me a while ta find the books, so just stick to yer posts an' don't do nothin' stupid. And don't do nothin' that I wouldn't do. And also don't do nothing that I would do."
"What if it takes you a long time to find the books", Charles piped up. "Do you expect us to stand outside all day?"
"You callin' me illiterate", Anderson snapped.
"Wha? No, I just-"
"Sayin' I don't know how teh read just cause I grew up Scottish! How incredibly racist of ye!"
"Father Anderson, I can assure it was not my intention to be-"
"And look at the lot o' ye, muckin' about with some Anglish twit who goes around displayin' such horrid bias against poor, illiterate Scots!"
"What did I do", Steve shouted.
"Ya know what?! I don't wanna see the lot o' ye again! I'm goin' inside ta get me frustrations out in a healthy manner by learnin' ta read!"
"But-"
"STOP ANTAGONIZIN' ME", Anderson shouted, as he shoulder-charged the door to the Librarian's hideout, splintering it, and entering it without trouble.
The three agents looked at one another, and decided that engaging with Anderson any further would be detrimental to their mental well-beings. They stood by the car, pretending to have a riveting conversation about the latest football game, watching the door for anyone coming by.
...
It was a very nice park, Seras decided. It had everything you would want surrounding a park; nice restaurants, a couple of hobby shops, and even a small hospital. The park itself was large, well-kept, and seemed well balanced, with a good mixture of trees, but not enough to fully block out the surrounding buildings, large rocks for kids to climb on, and even a small creek running through it.
How a place like this existed so close to a city, she wouldn't ever know. It was one of the many paradoxes in her new life that she supposed one day she would simply have to accept. For now, she would just take in the world around her, and try to ask all of the right questions.
"So", Alucard said, turning to little Alley, who was holding one of his large, gloved hands. "What do you want to do first? There's the park, we could do some fine dining, ooh, they just finished building that movie theater across the way. I hear they're showing an English-dubbed Jin Roh!"
"Subs not Dubs, daddy."
"True. Point is, the day is yours."
Alley got a thoughtful look, and declared, "Park first! We can run around and do whatever we want, then go get something to eat and watch a movie!"
"Excellent choice", Alucard said, a grin spreading across his face. "Lead the way!"
...
The house was almost exactly how he had envisioned it; hundreds of books, slipped into shelves, forming precarious towers, cracked open and with bookmarks in them at various points. Some littered the floor, others were hanging off of ledges. The one thing that wasn't how he had envisioned it was the silver crucifix hanging off of Librarian's neck.
Librarian wasn't exactly how Anderson had envisioned him. He had imagined someone tall and strong, lean and mean, like Alucard. The fact that he stood at a whopping five-foot-two was testament that he needed to stop making such broad assumptions. In fact, he felt quite convicted. The man was short and thin, and entirely unimpressed by his entrance.
"So", the man said with a high-pitched voice and a sigh, "you've found me."
"Aye", Anderson affirmed, placing the busted door back into its frame.
"So", the man said, waving a hand as if to hurry him on. "Get it over with."
"I'm not here ta kill ye", Anderson told him, struggling to make the broken door fit back onto its hinges.
The man stopped in his tracks, clearly not expecting this response.
"Oh", he simply said after a moment.
Finally getting the door into a somewhat satisfactory position, Anderson turned back to the Librarian.
"I'm 'ere ta make a deal with ye."
Librarian let his arms fall to his sides. A questioning look began crawling over his face.
"What kinda deal?"
"Show me the three books you stole from the Vatican", he told him. "Then, give 'em to me. Then you can go."
Librarian's eyebrow shot up.
"I'm guessing the powers that be don't know about this little deal?"
"Aye."
"Which means you're gonna have to cover my tracks."
"Aye."
"Which means you're gonna have to burn my humble abode down."
"Aye."
"...along with all of my books."
"Aye."
Librarian looked upon his piles of books longingly. He looked at each large pile like it was an old friend or family member. He sighed.
"Deal."
"Good. Now... show me the books."
Librarian nodded, and walked around one of the shelves. He returned a moment later with three large, bound, leather books. Anderson graciously accepted. He set them down gently on a small table, and examined them. The first was a book labeled, "Heretics and Hecklers". He set it aside, and looked at the next two. The first one was titled, "A Comprehensive History of the Scourge, Alucard". The second one was titled, "The Manufacture of Regenerators, and why there have only ever been three".
He cracked open the first, and began to read.
...
While Seras couldn't say with certainty that the park was any fun for her, she very much so enjoyed watching Alley have fun in it. While she climbed over rocks, and hanged from the branches of the trees, and ran around in the thick, soft grass, she seemed very much elated. Seeing her smile, and have fun, and play, was enough to put Seras in a good mood.
It seemed to have a similar effect on Alucard. He approached her with a smile stretching across his face, not a sickening grin, but a genuine smile. He leaned up onto the side of the bench that Seras had chosen as her spot.
"Doesn't she look like she's having fun", he asked, almost absently.
"She really does", Seras commented. "She'll love it in England."
"Yeah", Alucard said, again in an absent way, almost like he was observing the moment in the third person.
"So", Seras asked, "how exactly are we going to explain to customs how we came to America with six men and a young lady, and left with three men, a young lady, and a small child?"
"We won't have to, obviously", he told her. "After all, it'll take years to finalize the-"
"WHAT?!"
Seras yelled so loud that it seemed the entire park turned their heads to see what was happening. Alucard casually turned an eye towards her, as her fists clenched into balls.
"You really thought it would be that easy?"
"We won! It's over!"
"We never win", he told her flatly, with no emotion in his eyes, "and it's never over. There's always another bloodsucker, always another demon, always another bureaucrat. Hell is never-ending."
"She should come home!"
"I agree", he replied swiftly, "but first she has to undergo-"
"SHUT UP", Seras shouted at him. "She bloody well doesn't, and you know it!"
"It's never up to me", he told her flatly. "If it was, she would have come with me to England the moment I found her. As it stands, the penny-pushers are just barely allowing me to keep her alive." He lifted his arms up like a puppet, saying, "See the strings, Seras? There's only so much we can do."
"When have you ever cared about bureaucracy?"
"I don't", he told her. "You know who does?"
It didn't take Seras long to figure it out. When she did, she began deflating.
"Oh."
"She loves Alley almost as much as I do", Alucard said with a wayward look. "But she understands how untenable her situation really is. Pulling me out of that dungeon and unleashing me upon the world was like dropping a nuke on a rat infestation, and the roaches who control the gold know that better than anyone else. They'll never stop holding me over her. Didn't you find it weird that within your first month, we were in talks with the Council about cutting our budget? Get used to it, it happens a lot."
Seras took a moment to ponder what she had just been told. What Alucard had just said seemed almost... out of character for him. He wasn't really a man trapped, especially not one who would be "doom and gloom" about it. She had got an idea about him that, whether she was overtly aware of it or not, he was the man with the plan. The fact that he didn't have the council bent to his will was an almost disturbing thought. It meant that they were either incredibly strong-willed, or they knew of Alucard enough to know that they should never give him a chance to rule them.
Perhaps Alucard truly respected Integra enough to not coddle her at every step. Or, maybe his general apathy had finally gotten the better of him.
Maybe he was just waiting for the right moment.
Seras would simply have to wait and see.
"So... when can we take her back to England?"
"I don't know", Alucard answered. "It could be months, maybe decades. It would probably cap out at around thirty years-"
"THIRTY YEARS?!"
"Maybe."
"Does she know?!"
"Yes", Alucard confirmed with a nod. "She was the first to know. She's been waiting for fifty years; she can wait a little longer."
Seras gave him a hard look.
"Are those her words?"
Alucard locked eyes with her, and gave a serious glare.
"Yes."
Seras absorbed that for a moment. It was a hard truth to swallow, even if Alley really didn't mind. Poor girl, she had been through too much already.
Perhaps there was some wider lesson to be learned from all of this, that maybe life wasn't fair, and would never be, as long as you adhered to someone else's arbitrations.
For now, she would turn this into a teaching moment.
"Anything else I need to get used to?"
Alucard hummed in surprise, then thought for a moment.
"I'm not going to insult your intelligence by addressing the Hunger, so I'll tell you the hard truth that no one else will; most of... no, just about all of your shits are going to be liquid."
"Oh."
"...and it's going to burn when you pee."
"Is that for everyone?"
"Yep."
"Oh, thank God. I thought you might've given me something when you bit me."
"No, that's... that's normal. And hey, don't worry too much, cause now she gets to live with Roach, which is significantly better than-"
"Daddy, daddy", Alley shouted, running up to him at a sprint, "come check out this picture someone spray-painted on the bridge!"
"It's not a rounded tower with two spheres under it, is it?"
"No, dummy", Alley said with a roll of her eyes, "it looks like a wolverine riding a white rhinoceros."
"Word. Let's check it out."
...
"Learn anything eye-opening yet?"
"Shut", Anderson responded, as he glanced through the first book on Alucard.
It had started at the end, and worked its way back to the beginning. Well, the 'end' may not have been the proper term; it had started in 1897 with the death of the ninety-something year-old Abraham Van Helsing, and was working its way back to the first sighting of Alucard. He skimmed through information that he already knew, or that was entirely speculative, and eventually considered just closing the book and never coming back to it.
He closed it, and stood up.
"I wouldn't do that", Librarian said.
"Do what", Anderson asked inquisitively, reaching into his coat.
"Move on before you've finished", Librarian told him. "See, my father, God rest his soul, always told me that I should never leave a book unfinished, because the only person I was hurting by doing that was myself. I would just be missing out on a story, or a moral, or some different perspective, and I wouldn't be hurting the author, because he already had my money. And the editor. And the publisher, and the- never mind, you get it."
Anderson nodded, and sat back down.
"Why did you destroy that meth lab?"
Librarian shoved his hands in his pockets, looking intently at the ground.
"Well, that... wasn't exactly on purpose."
"Elaborate."
"I was... uh... buying a book off of someone. I had trouble seeing it in the dim light, and I wanted to make sure I was getting my money's worth, so I reached to turn on the nearest light source, and kaboom. I was thrown off my feet, everything hurt, and I was pretty sure I was gonna be arrested, so I ran for it."
"Uh-huh", Anderson said, skipping faster through the pages.
Anderson came to the last chapter, and scrutinized it more heavily.
"... 'in the winter of 1841, in the Vatican, where Dracula was allegedly last spotted'? I... didn't know that. Huh. ...'where Alucard was first spotted, leaving the Vatican with Abraham Van Helsing later that same day'? Huh. Maybe they're the same person!"
"Well, Alucard is Dracula spelled backwards."
Anderson turned to Librarian.
He stared at him for a moment, and then he said, "Huh?"
"You didn't know? I figured that out the first time I saw the name."
Anderson glanced back at the book, then back at the Librarian. He looked down at the book again, then once more at the Librarian. He looked back at the book, shrugged, and continued reading.
"'In exchange for a temporary ceasefire, and safe passage from the Vatican, Alucard exchanged a vial of his blood'? Why?"
"How should I know? All I did was steal a couple of books from the Vatican."
"And then it just fookin' ends?! What a blightin' cocktease."
"You've got another."
Anderson swiveled his head towards the last book. The Manufacture of Regenerators. Hesitantly, he reached his hand out towards it.
...
Playing in the park had been great, and now it was time to eat like a king. When Alley said she was getting hungry, she found it a bit odd that Alucard had directed them to a restaurant instead of telling her to go find an evildoer to feast on. Maybe he just found it weird telling a child to go eat someone?
The place she had selected was quite fancy indeed. The server at the front initially looked the mercs and Seras up and down distastefully, and told them that they needed to make a reservation over the phone, but after Alucard had whispered something into his ear and pushed something into his pocket, his mood changed entirely. He quickly found them a table with a nice overview of the park.
"Is there anything I can get you fine people to drink", the server asked.
"Get the milk, Sissy", Alley told Seras with a smile. "The milk here is so good, I like to sneak in the back and steal some even when I've got enough change for a yoo-hoo!"
Alley sheepishly looked over at the now tight-lipped server, uttering a soft, "Oops."
"Police Girl is a grown woman, Alley", Alucard told her. "She doesn't want to drink milk."
"You know what", Seras said with a smile, wanting to humor Alley, "I'll get the milk."
The server nodded, and began writing their order down. Seras shared a wink with Alley. Out of the corner of her eye, though, she saw Alucard staring at her. If looks were lasers, there would have been a hole bored through her head.
As the rest of the table shared small talk, and Alley talked about how cool it must be to fly in an airplane, Alucard continued to simply stare at Seras. His look was stern, but outside of that, it was impassable. She had no idea what he was thinking, but she was afraid that she was doing something wrong.
When their drinks arrived, Alley raised her glass.
Seras copied her, and Alley shouted, "Good health!"
Seras giggled, and tipped her glass back.
She hadn't drank any milk since she had become what she now was. Perhaps she should have been this whole time. Not only did it taste like nectar from the gods, but that gnawing hunger, the one that scared her so much, dissipated the more she drank.
When the glass was empty, Alley told her, "Good, right?"
"Good enough to have another", Seras agreed with a smile.
"No", Alucard interjected, "I think you've had enough."
Seras, surprised, looked over at Alucard, who maintained his same expression. She gave a nervous chuckle, but he maintained the same expression. She raised her glass.
"It's good milk! You should try it!"
"You've had enough."
Seras dropped her act, saying, "I'm a grown woman, I can drink what I want."
Alucard slammed a fist down into the table so hard he left cracks in it. Alley jumped at the sound, and Seras shrieked. The two mercs reached for their sidearms. Alucard maintained the same eye contact, and the same level voice.
"You've... had... enough."
The whole table was quiet. In fact, the whole restaurant went quiet. The server nearest them walked quickly back towards the employee area.
"Uh oh", Alley piped up. "Time to leave."
The group slowly began to step into motion, with the mercs and Alley moving the fastest. Seras looked straight ahead at Alucard, and Alucard kept staring back. Eventually, Alley noticed neither of them were moving, and began tugging on Alucard's arm.
"Come on, we've gotta go!"
Alucard stood up, shook his head, and followed quietly behind Alley. Seras, still slightly panicking, stood up slowly, and followed the group.
…
The park seemed less bright and vibrant. In fact, Seras was beginning to see how the trees blocked out the light in odd ways, reflecting weird shadows. They creeped around, staying close to the ground, stalking the people who were unaware of their presence.
Alley played amongst these shadows, never knowing that they were closing in on her. Seras wanted to yell, to cry out, to scream that she was in danger, but Alley wouldn't have cared about the shadows. After all, they couldn't hurt her.
Yet.
She felt a presence slipping up beside her. A tingling sensation went up and down her spine, like the feeling of spiders crawling along her back. She trembled at the thought of the man beside her snapping her body in half like a twig with his bare hands.
"Hey", Alucard said gently. "Um... I'm sorry about what happened in the restaurant. I overreacted."
Now this was a real shock. It made her do something of a double-take. What she saw was a man who was having trouble meeting her eye. His hands wormed their way into his pockets, and his shoulders hunched. Despite how tall he was, he seemed quite small.
"Why did you react like that", Seras prodded. "I mean, Alley was drinking her milk just fine. Why did you suddenly have a problem with me?"
"Because it's different for you", Alucard said. "For you, it can be quite harmful. I want to see you reach your full potential. I don't want to see you get hurt."
So, he was reacting to protect her. Kind of endearing, when she thought of it like that. Or at least, it would have been, coming from a child.
Stunted brain development, a voice nagged in her head. She shut it out for now.
"You know what's really gonna harm me", she stated to him in the form of a question.
Alucard looked up at her.
"You being an arse all the time."
Alucard chuckled, adding, "Might give you pink eye."
"Exactly. Shake on it that you won't blow up on me like that again?"
"That's fair."
Seras extended her hand. Alucard tentatively accepted.
The scene changed for Seras.
Now, she was sitting at a table, with an assortment of bread, cheese, and meat along the top. Only, she wasn't in some great dining hall; she was in the great outdoors, as evidence by the blue sky above, the green grass below, and the trees she sat amongst.
No, they weren't trees. She wanted to do a horrified double-take as it registered in her mind that she was amongst a forest of sharpened sticks, and adorning each stick was a person. There had to be thousands of them.
She didn't want to look behind her, because she had already taken in the scene prior... no, he had already taken in the scene prior; behind him was a wall of death surrounding his capitol.
On these poles was a distinct mixture; on one hand, there were a small number of men, women, and children, who had been victims of the plague, and were now ridden, bloated carcasses ripe for spreading disease. For the rest, they were Turkish prisoners of war, all captured during an intense battle a few days prior, enough to fill twenty-thousand of these poles. Every once in a while, one might find a Janissary, who had been held captive for the majority of the war, now being put on gruesome display.
The plague victims had all died prior to their impalement, and served only to spread filth and disease throughout the Turkish military. The rest were to send a message. Many of the prisoners were still alive, and occasional moans could be heard from the impaled fields.
Many would consider these fields, in this moment, to be his magnum opus; the climax of his life.
This little spot that he had chosen was relatively quiet, mostly free from plague-corpses, and had a path large enough for one man to travel out of the city through if he knew all of the right steps. He had set up the table so that only two could eat at it, and had stripped down to only a simple robe. From this direction, his scouts had informed him, the Turkish cavalry would be advancing.
And he knew who led them.
It didn't take long for his unspoken call of parlay to finally be answered. Out of the shadows stepped an almost fully armored Radu the Handsome, who had made quite a name for himself even before this campaign. Now, he looked around, bewildered and dumbfounded, until his eyes met those of Vlad the Impaler.
His brother.
For what felt like ages, all they did was stare at each other.
Vlad could see why they had given his brother the name of Handsome, for he was, indeed. He was like him, but every wonderful trait that made him irresistible to the fairer sex seemed exaggerated tenfold. By comparison, it appeared someone had taken a stone to his face, and he had been told before that he was quite easy to look at. His armor was polished to a shine, and even though it was a rather base silver sheen, with only a simple star and crescent moon design on the chest plate, it accented him like a fine port on an expensive cut of steak.
Radu was a fully grown man, and Vlad hadn't seen him in so long, he wondered if Radu even remembered him.
Finally, Vlad raised his hand. Hesitantly, Radu approached him. He sat across the table, staring at Vlad all the while. They continued to gauge each other, staring into the other's brown eyes.
"How am I supposed to fight a man like you", Radu finally said. He threw an arm out to his handiwork, continuing, "Look what you do! How am I to fight such a man, who is willing to go to such lengths?"
Vlad simply stared at him in response.
For what felt like ages, all they did was stare. Vlad looked down at the table, and noticed that Radu's armored hand sat close to his unarmored hand. Hesitantly, he reached out with his hand, and took the armored hand in a simple cusp. Radu answered by tightening his steel-clad fingers around Vlad's own, gently. They held that grip, just like that, each staring at the other's hand.
The scene changed for Seras, and suddenly she was viewing it all in the third person, from the side of the table. Both men began to shed tears. Eventually, they both broke down in a crying fit, saying nothing, but sobbing openly.
Seras released her grip on Alucard's hand. She was back in the present. She looked at Alucard, who tried hard to avoid her gaze. Seras gave a firm nod, and that was the end of it.
...
This book wasn't giving Anderson nearly as much useful information as the last one. The first "Regenerator" was referred to only as "Resurrection 1". At one point, the subject's name had been mentioned, but the name had been smudged. The best Anderson could make out had been three letters of the first name, TRE, and four letters of the last name, MONT. It had made mention of him being sent to fight Vlad the Impaler after his two-year stint in prison, his breakout, twelve-year disappearance, and subsequent return with a peasant army, and it made mention of the fact that pieces of Vlad had been recovered by the Ottoman Turks, but there was no further information regarding the mysterious man.
The second one hadn't even been named. Its original purpose was said to have been the ultimate foil to Dracula, but it was said to have been destroyed due to a degradation of its mental capacity, though the methods surrounding its destruction seemed sketchy at best.
He got to the third one, and realized that it was him. He had been selected primarily because, 'his mental capacity had already been proven to be well below threshold-'
"AW, WHAT THE BLOODY FUCK EVER!"
'-and additionally, that his capacity for violence and almost obsessive nature surrounding the act of physical violence, especially killing, had made him a promising candidate and guaranteed him to be a most effective tool.'
"AW, COME THE BLOODY FUCK OFF IT!"
Apparently, they had been working for almost a full year, feeding him the blood of, 'the only willing, if unknowing, participant of the program', primarily by integrating it into several tonics that they had told him would make him healthier.
"...maybe I am an idiot?"
"Sorry?"
"Shut."
Apparently, after their last failure, he was the church's last great foil to Alucard. He was trained to be stronger, faster, and far less predictable than him. He was Alucard's Gary Oak.
Anderson read through the rest of the book, seeing that it stopped with him. When he hit the summer of 1842, where he woke up a Regenerator, he closed the book. He sat silently, thinking for a moment.
"There's a thought in my mind", Anderson admitted, "and it's nagging me. But it has no shape or form."
Librarian scratched his head, saying, "I think I know what you mean. You're trying to figure out who donated their blood to your cause?"
"First of all, my cause? I just now found definitive proof that what happened to me was no miracle, and was in fact forced upon me without my knowing, and you call it my cause?! Second, it doesn't really seem like this person knew what they were giving up their blood for, considering they were noted as being unkno-"
And just like that, it all fell into place in Anderson's mind. Who had given up their blood? Alucard. Who had he been tasked to destroy? Alucard. It all fell into place so smoothly that it made him feel sick. He put his hands to his head, covering his face, and rubbing his temples.
"Alucard", Anderson mumbled, "it's you. You're the one who made me like this. You're the father I've been missing."
...
"That movie was a banger", Alucard said, referring to Jin Roh, which they had just watched the English dub of, in theaters.
"It was so sad", Seras lamented.
"That armor design was cash money."
"I don't know", Alley said, "I kinda think the guns were lazy Nazi reskins."
"True", Alucard told her.
"I had no fu- uh, freaking idea what was going on during that whole movie", Pip declared.
"Post-war police-state", Six Gun told him.
"It was a tragic love story", Seras informed him.
"It was an excuse to make Nazi Japan fanfiction", Alucard offered.
"It was a movie", Alley declared with a triumphant smile.
Both Seras and Alucard laughed at that. The mercs chuckled. Alley beamed.
Alucard looked up, saying, "Well, here we are."
Alley looked down her alley, stretching and giving a big yawn.
"Are you sure you don't want to go hang out with Roach tonight", Alucard asked her again.
"I just want one night to say goodbye", Alley told him. "The old stomping grounds hold many dear memories."
"Well, if you need her-"
"There's a payphone down the street", Alley said, waving him off. "And besides."
She made a direct line to Alucard's mind, saying, This is faster anyhow.
Alucard raised an eyebrow, and asked, "How did you...?"
Alley smiled, winked at Alucard, and began saying her goodbyes to everyone else. Then she turned, and vanished into the alley, hiding amongst the shadows.
...
Shortly after her group of friends left, someone else sneaked into Alley's alley. She quickly hid behind her dumpster, grabbing a can from her pile, watching and waiting.
If it was a homeless person, they usually beat it after a can or two had struck them. If it was a gangster, they usually beat it after two or three. But this person was well-dressed, with a small mini-skirt, and a brown uniform that looked like it was decorated with buttons and little pieces of lace.
The more that Alley observed, the odder this stranger became. It was clearly a boy, because she could smell boy on him, despite the skirt and his rather small size... he looked like a midget compared to Daddy... and he had large cat ears poking out of the top of his light blond hair. He had a certain calming smell about him, like wild flowers in a field, and startling lavender eyes that felt rather disarming to look into.
With a start, she realized that he was staring right at her.
"Oh, hell-o", he said in a cheerful voice that sounded warm and welcoming... and German. He bent down to stand more at her height, asking, "Who are you, you adorable little creature?"
Well, the jig was up. Might as well make the most of it. She hurled a can in his direction, sending it straight towards his face. He caught it with one hand, and examined it.
"Ooh, good choice", the boy said, tossing the can in his hand, "light, but just solid enough to hurt when it hits!"
So, he was versed in can-throwing? Now he had Alley's attention.
"Nice skirt", she said, deciding to complement him right back.
"Thank you", he replied with a smug grin. "They're so much more comfortable than skin-tight shorts!"
"I know", Alley told him in affirmation. "I don't know why more men don't wear them!"
"Scotland certainly has the right idea", he said with a giggle.
"So do you", Alley told him.
The boy covered his mouth and giggled more. He sure did a lot of giggling.
"What is your name, little one", the boy asked in his high voice, tossing the can over his shoulder, and placing his hands on his hips.
"Alley", she responded, hesitantly making her way out into the open.
"A pleasure to meet you", the boy responded, tugging at the corners of his skirt, and giving a deep curtsy.
Alley giggled. Whereas most people her age were stubborn farts, she found subversion rather funny. The way this boy acted gave her the giggles. She drew closer to him.
"I am Schrodinger", the boy told her, kneeling down in front of her. "But since we're friends, you can call me 'Felix'!"