Now, dear reader, let's move forward in time a little, say two years or so. It is 2030. We are also changing the setting, so forget the monastery enveloped in the soft, feverish caress of an Italian summer. Instead, take a look at the rain-beaten English countryside. We are not far from London.
Leaning against her desk, Sir Integra Hellsing watches the full moon through the bay window of her office. Only this mocking, fickle star presents itself to her, to her mind, and obsesses her. With an impatient flick of her wrist, she grinds her half-finished cigar into her cup of tea turned tepid. The smell of it combines with that of cold tobacco, lingering in the silent room.
The clock will soon strike two.
An unannounced staff member enters the dimly lit room, holding a report in his clenched hands, which he places on the desk. Sir Integra dismisses him with a glance, sits down and leafs through the paper. The report is short, but not, as it seems, sweet - rather sour, on the contrary; for as Integra lays down the last page, she sniffs derisively, and her eye gleams with anger.
With annoyance and resentment, she pushes the paper away from her. The intimate, bitter conviction that it's all happening again, in the same way, overwhelms her. Only this time, she is older, the shadow of her former glory. Like the Vatican and Section XIII, the Hellsing organization had also taken a blow 30 years ago, a blow whose wound had yet to heal. Even since his return, the overall strength of her organization had weakened. All she had left to do was to maintain their influence until her last breath, after which vampire hunting would once again be a state affair conducted by gentlemen in cravats.
A sharp coughing fit halts her train of thought for a moment. The hollow of the handkerchief she covered her mouth with turns a little crimson. It's been a while since she paid attention to it. Nonchalantly, she reaches into her blazer pocket for another cigar.
There were days when she didn't believe she was aging, that only her soul and her appearance altered with the sun. And then there were the other days. Those gray days when she feels inferior to everything - and everyone - around her, threatened by her own mediocrity, frightened to discover that a muscle loses its vigor, a desire its strength, a pain the sharp temper of its edge. And it's by looking at her hand that she measures the change that has taken place over all this time. She is astonished not to find her twenty-year-old hand before her eyes...
This time the door opens with a little more panache, just in time before a second cigar corpse reaches the teacup. Integra's expression is placid as she turns to face the two creatures of the night.
"Good evening, my master."
The voice is the same, the inflection gentle on the same words, the irony biting, always. But the effect on her has changed, lessened. Perhaps she has the impression that he is speaking to someone else. Something no longer amuses her as much when she says: "Your report, my servants."
One is wrapped in his great red coat, the other in her salient uniform, not a fold out of place for these two agents of death.
"Nothing you don't already know."
Integra clicks her tongue. "You used your control restriction system, Alucard, again."
"Why not? Does it revive unpleasant memories to you, my master?" Integra glares at him; he smiles sardonically. The young blonde woman at his side makes herself small. "Besides, I had no other way of getting rid of the trash tonight."
"Cut your nonsense, servant. The only reason you're allowed to lift your seals is because we trusted you'd do it properly. Do not make me regret it. It's out of the question to make a scandal every time you go on a mission. Take a cue from your fledgling, who uses the weapons of Iscariot."
Seras, a little pleased that attention is being drawn to herself, takes the opportunity to lighten the mood. "You should try them, my master, they're not so -"
"That's beyond the pale. Police girl has always been an ambivalent Draculina, so be it, but the day I use Vatican weapons has not yet come."
"Master, you're so mean again!"
"Enough now. No matter how good they are, I will not use them. I will not use weapons designed for humans. I'll settle for Walter's weapons, made for me, even if inferior. If you'll allow me, sir Integra."
"You're as nostalgic as I am, vampire," Integra retorts, a smile on her lips. She pauses, taking a drag on her cigar. "Too bad, I guess I'll have to send Seras alone on future missions, then."
The man has a dry laugh. "How cruel of you, sir Integra."
"So it is! The pact will go on; you will both help Section XIII when needed and, in exchange, they will continue to supply us with their weapons. Actually, I don't know if I could afford to leave you in the doghouse, Alucard, with all these cases of resistant vampires."
"And how long do you think this truce will last, my master? A truce between Rome and London... no, between the Catholics, and the Protestants. When they have fashioned new bullets that defeat even greater vampires, the Hellsing organization will no longer be needed to them; it will take only a second to breach the peace." A red glint shines in his eyes, through his glasses. He holds out his hand, which he closes in a fist. "When we could crush them now that they're weak."
"I wouldn't be so confident that they'd be capable of improving their arsenal. Whoever made these (she points to the gun Seras holds in her arm of black flames) died 5 years ago, so I've been told. They've never been able to improve their designs since then. Anyway, I have no desire to go to war with Rome." She smiles, softly. "Perhaps I am getting old, perhaps I want to save you and me from another war. Either way, we'd be weak on all sides to be attacked by those who produce these new vampires. The Hellsing organization isn't ready to suffer the same casualties it did 30 years ago. I can only count on you two. The rest of my men are useless without Iscariot's weapons."
"I don't mind it," Seras says gently, "Iscariot has been pretty fair with us so far. Except for the poor Heinkel, who boils every time she sees us."
Alucard all but huffs in response.
"Well, my servants," said Integra, this time definitively throwing away her cigar, "it's quite late for an old lady like me. Good work, see you tomorrow."
For our gentleman dressed in red, the day - or rather, the night - was just beginning. The man paces the great corridors of the basement, lights from the windows shining vividly from the full moon. Yes, the moon usually appeared to him, at the zenith of its phenakistoscope spectacle, shrouded in a flaky, whole, nacreous gleam. And yet tonight, it shone through a raw twilight, russeted at its extremities like an earth scorched with fire. He breathes in the perfume of the night, an unpleasant scent of burnt carbon, unpleasant but heady. He had a feeling…
He, too, had a feeling that something would happen soon. Or maybe he was hoping for it too ardently, to wake up from his torpor. Long gone were the days of his proud rival, of the thrill when his blade pierced him once more. How many times had he dared to wish for his own death? And now he had to operate in spite of Section XIII; with Section XIII?
And yet, decimated as it was, his heart still pulsed with life. His beloved women could look at him with wet eyes, and yet he had become trivial to them - he had been sent back to the world of shadows, he was, for them, no more than a fragment of a dream, a filament of a bygone time. Perhaps, with all those souls he had killed inside him, including hers , his oldest and most cherished one, the vertigo of his isolation seemed all the clearer.
Despite his master's glances at him, which sometimes lasted longer than they needed to, he no longer found the dry, fierce quiver that once lit up her eyes. A shell had been woven around her heart. First, it had been Walter's betrayal, then his own leave. Of her own will, she had pulled away from him, from them. All that mattered to her now was Hellsing's legacy, and to that end, he would be no more than a dog. He had returned back to that time, over fifty years ago, when he was just a dog, Hellsing's dog, sent out to slaughter worthless vermin. She was sullen, and so was he.
And his dear disciple; thinking of her, his lips smiled, and yet were compressed; his eyes gleamed, and yet he knit his brow. How could it be otherwise? He should have known, like a daughter to her father, that she would grow and blossom away from him. The seeds had been taken care of, only for the harvest to be collected by another hand. That was the way it was and he could not change it.
Was that why he had come back? To be a mere black dog? Hadn't his pride deceived him in not giving up his life, his loyalty? Or was he craving for the love of his master, of his servant, while he had been emptying himself during these thirty years? And did he eventually recover them, all to himself?
As he stood leaning on one of the arches opening onto the courtyard, musing in the moonlight, he spoke softly:
"Ah-ah, this won't do. However," he added, dropping his voice, "this frenzy is quite temporary. It will be gone tomorrow."
The moon soon faded behind the sinuous weave of clouds covering the south of England, the stings of the autumn sun peeking through with difficulty. Sir Integra and Bishop Makube used to meet in the late morning at a private hotel not far from the British Museum.
The director of the Hellsing organization gets out of her black car. Seras accompanies her, dressed in civilian clothes. Alucard is absent, his shadow never far from hers nonetheless.
The front of the hotel is as typical as it gets, with its polished white stones, striped with braids of bricks, and flower-filled balconies. The mansion is several storeys high, with frosted windows regularly aligned along the façade, surrounded by a simple stone frame. A butler ushers her in politely and leads her along endless corridors, on whose walls paintings and photographs follow one another impersonally. The atmosphere is silent, and the two women's muffled footsteps on the carpet do not make a rustle. They soon arrive at the rear courtyard, in fact a vast greenhouse, set into the very side of the hotel, communicating with the first floor through the salon's French windows. The greenhouse, shaped much like the nave of a church, with slender iron columns jutting up to support the arched stained-glass windows, spreads out its lush vegetation, its blankets of powerful leaves, its spindles of blooming foliage. Sir Integra, in the midst of these superb blooms, is moved by a shiver. Behind the massifs, a second, narrower alley runs around the greenhouse. The sound of a voice emerges from there. At the end of the aisle, Bishop Makube, seated alone on a marble and iron table, beckons to the two women. His scar takes on a strange, misshapen crease as his face breaks into a formulaic smile. Integra exchanges glances with Seras: they are surprised to see him without company.
"Well hello," says the bishop urbane but screwed to his seat.
The two women return the nod and sit down at the table.
"I hope you haven't waited too long, this time," says Integra.
"Not at all, you are just on time." He gestures and a waitress arrives with a tray of tea. "I've already ordered a pot to tide me over."
The service is silent. Integra has her hands folded, staring coldly at the bishop in front of him. Seras follows the waitress's movements with an uncomfortable eye; she doesn't like being served. In fact, the whole place makes her feel uncomfortable.
"I let you read the report, it speaks for itself." Integra places the file on the table; the bishop grabs it casually and skims through it. After a moment, he sighs.
"Well, it goes from bad to worse. Are you quite sure these vampires have the same decomposing power as Alucard, and yourself, Miss Victoria?"
"I think so," Seras responds, playing with the shadows of her arm as to emphasize her point.
"Could you still eradicate them with our weapons?"
"Yes, well, with a few shots."
"So, the power is weak, but present. But, sir Integra, don't we have every reason to believe that this is the return of Millennium? Didn't they have the remains... of her ? To be able to create vampires with such abilities?"
"May I light a cigarette, Father?"
"Go ahead, go ahead."
"I don't think Millennium is back, not like 30 years ago," says Integra, taking out her snuff-box, and helping herself to a long pinch. She coughs a little before resuming: "But I think their 'occult research' has been unearthed, yes."
"I see that you suspect private interests in your paper?"
"Indeed. Most probably another secret organization is behind these attacks, purely to make money. In recent months, all attacks seem to be isolated cases. There is little or no connection between the victims. As for the killers, they all flee or commit suicide before being captured. There doesn't seem to be a previous human identity behind any of these vampires. It's as if... as if they appeared out of thin air. Usually, isolated vampire attacks are on their own relatives. But in this case, there's no obvious link between the victims and the assailants. The number of attacks is growing and it's always the same pattern… They look like hired killers."
"Are you implying that this could be an organization that creates hitmen, literally terrorist vampires?"
"Perhaps, yes. What is better than mindless agents, who can kill any target discreetly and efficiently?" Integra smiles sarcastically as she says this. "That would explain the fancy names that have ended up drained of their blood recently… Some people must be prepared to pay a considerable sum to ensure that their target passes on."
"In short, a guaranteed assassination, with no way of tracing the initiator. At worst, the vampire fails, and dies before he can be questioned. If this is indeed the situation, the sums of money involved must be... well, the organization is possibly tentacular. A peer-to-peer network, a killer for a customer. A leaderless organization."
"Precisely. It's an information war, and a technology war. I believe, Father, that our own organizations are outmatched by such issues. We, too, will become nothing more than hired killers for our governments."
"Iscariot's mission is to eradicate heretical vermin, sir Integra. Not helping governments."
"If you say so. Anyway... Things might get a little busy tonight. The SIS has indicated a possible attack on the village of Wells, in the west of England. Seras and Alucard will be on site. Please do not interfere during the operation."
The man gives a little chuckle, then rubs his hands together. "Will you evacuate the village? Or are you planning to lure them?"
"Does the possible death of fellow Britons amuse you, Father? How we operate with the police is none of your business. Just observe from the sidelines."
"Very well. We'll have our troops at your disposal if needed."
"I thank you for your cooperation, Father, but I doubt we will need it. As far as I'm concerned that's all. I'll leave you the report if you want to see the details, but you know the broad outlines."
Saying this, Sir Integra rises, followed at the heel by Seras who gulps down her cup of tea in a single sip, surprised that the discussion comes to an end already. The old woman tucks back her hat on her golden hair. The bishop makes no move to escort the two women and only adds in a low voice: "Do not take any extra help for granted, Integra."
Seras squints deprecatingly at the man. "You owe England that much," says Integra, "you slaughtered us, Father, thirty years ago."
"Maxwell was…" An expression of disgust passes over the features of the clergyman. "That's how it is."
Integra says nothing for a moment, then heads for the exit. She stops one last time, without looking back.
"I couldn't have collaborated with him as I am doing with you. You'll be as kind to my successors as I am to you, I hope."
"We have a little time before that, nonetheless," says the bishop, stowing the report Integra had left on the table in his briefcase.
"Perhaps, Father, perhaps."