Chapter Text
Bloody russet fur matted and stuck wetly to her uniform trousers as Chansonrai pressed close to her, sides heaving. She wasn’t in much better shape, for that matter; most of the blood on her uniform wasn’t hers, but in addition to the scrapes and a nasty gash from a broken branch that had snagged her earlier, she had plenty of hard bruises, probably a twisted ankle, and an almost certain concussion. She couldn’t bring herself to care at the moment and, unless circumstances improved drastically in the next few minutes, it wasn’t likely that she would care later. She’d join the shambling masses surrounding them and Chance would just vanish the way her fellow D-11 officers’ daemons had.
Chance snarled and darted forward to snap at a slinking panther daemon and Seras whirled, looking for its corresponding human. The undead officers surged closer, taking advantage of her distraction, and she barely managed to knock aside the grasping hands with a wild baton strike. She could see a church close by, but getting there meant extricating herself from these… zombies… and then she could very well be pinned in place by them. It would give them a few minutes to regroup, though, and she and Chance desperately needed the breather. The walkie talkie at her hip crackled with static as she batted away another of her fallen comrades with the baton before yelling for Chance to run.
Thank god for the physical training they’d taken in the academy. She and Chance were both fast naturally, but training gave them stamina and fear gave them wings. Seras managed to throw the bolt on the wooden church doors, Chance’s tail scarcely through, before the enraged panther daemon shrieked and the heavy door jolted alarmingly. She braced against it, panting but focused, and listened hard to the moaning zombies and the growling daemon, trying to track their movements. The windows in this little stone church were intact, but any of them could blow out a window at any moment, hell, the panther could probably leap right through the glass –
“Seras,” Chance hissed, her voice breaking with strain. Seras whipped around to see the fox crouched low, hackles high as she stared at a man emerging from the shadows of the church.
“Welcome, child,” he intoned, arms outstretched, walking forward into the meager light of the moon through stained glass. Darkness clung to him – no, wait, it was just that he wore a black robe. A priest? Seras might have relaxed, but Chance’s uneasiness kept her on guard. Where is his daemon? The thought barely crossed her mind before the panther emerged from between the pews. She hadn’t heard glass break, how did it get in? Was there an open back door, would those zombies appear next?
“Ghouls, dear child,” the priest said. Seras’s attention snapped back to him and her hand strayed to the last loaded gun on her belt. “It’s no use,” he said almost gently, stepping even closer. “Guns won’t hurt me. And your comrades are now my ghouls, not zombies.” He smiled; even in the muted moonlight, his white teeth glinted far too sharp and long to be human. Seras had the gun up and had fired off three shots in quick succession before the observation really had time to sink in. The bastard didn’t even jerk as the bullets hit him where his heart should have been, but the panther launched forward and sunk hooked claws into Chance. The fox daemon screamed even as Seras turned the gun and shot the panther point blank in the head. Instead of dropping dead, the beast shattered into shadows and reformed beside the nave, snarling. Seras would have dropped to check on Chance except the priest had moved in those bare seconds and now held her by the throat. He lifted her easily and she choked; her legs flailed but she had no leverage to make a strong kick, not that it would do her much good against this monster –
Chance slammed hard into the man’s knees, knocking him over and sending them both spilling across the hard stone floor. Seras slammed into a wooden pew and felt it splinter beneath her, felt the jagged wood tear her open, but she was more worried about Chance, who was within the furious priest’s reach, and the currently unaccounted for panther. The priest lunged for her, though, hand wrapped tight around her throat again as he leered down at her, pinning her to the floor. She had more leverage now, but her struggles just made him laugh, fangs bared in a vicious rictus grin. “You’re a fighter, aren’t you? But I don’t need another vampire, I need another loyal slave. I’ll kill that damned fox of yours and break you…”
The pews shrieked as they slid across the stone floor, the panther shoving them aside in her pursuit of Chance. Seras choked on a furious sob as she contorted, trying to break his grip and rescue her daemon. His skull caved in under a hammering blow from her baton powered by desperation. The priest reared back slightly, but didn’t loosen his hold. Chance shrieked and Seras felt her pain echo in her own ribs, phantom claws raking her stomach, threatening to disembowel her –
“Are you done?” Everything stilled at those words, at the deep voice and flat affect echoing in the stone church. “Playing with your food… pathetic. Then again, I wouldn’t expect more from trash like you,” the newcomer sneered.
The priest snarled and leapt to his feet, dragging Seras up with him. It was supremely uncomfortable, but the vantage point let her see the red-clad newcomer and the bloody, limp form of her daemon, so still beneath the coiled panther glaring hatefully at the man in red. “What business is it of yours? Get lost, you rat!” Despite his bravado, the priest dragged her backwards when the other man stepped forward, holding her like a human shield.
“The name’s Alucard. I work for the Hellsing Organization, disposing of gutter trash like you.” Seras stopped listening to them at that point, more focused on the still form of the fox now inches from her. The panther stayed crouched like an ominous storm cloud above her, but Seras could see the shallow rise and fall of Chance’s blood-matted sides. A surge of relief and hope rose, but was crushed under the thunder of gun fire that blasted the newcomer into pieces. She hadn’t realized she’d hoped for a rescue until the opportunity died messily before her.
The panther stalked towards the remains of the man, leaving Chance in a broken heap. The priest cackled in triumph until a hand formed out of the blood and seized the panther by the throat, tearing it out so ruthlessly that the daemon was nearly decapitated.
“Guns won’t hurt me,” said the figure clotting into shape from blood and shadows. The limp panther fell at his feet, wavering at the edges like mist escaping from a broken bottle. Blood red eyes and bone white teeth gleamed in the shadows before the man – man? devil, more like – stepped forward, guns blazing, and mowed down what had once been her comrades.
The priest dropped her and scuttled back, hands outstretched before him. He spoke in a quavering voice. Seras ignored him.
She pulled herself to Chance’s side, hands shaking as she tenderly brushed matted fur away from the fox’s face. Seras buried her face in the mostly clean fur at the crook of Chance’s shoulder and couldn’t decide if her daemon dying or her own flayed torso made the action hurt so much.
After so much gunfire, her ears rang in the silence. She vaguely wondered who won as heavy steps drew near, but screwed her eyes shut and kept her face pressed to Chance’s shoulder. “You’re dying. Both of you, actually.” The faint sympathy in the monster’s voice surprised her enough that she looked over at him. The red-clad man crouched beside them, elbows resting on his knees, gun holstered and hat tipped back. She stared at him as one hand reached out and plucked out a chunk of wooden pew that had embedded in her side. She gasped in reaction and then wished she hadn’t, since it made the wound throb even more painfully. “You have virtually no chance of survival and your daemon is even worse off – but you don’t want to die, do you?”
“No, I don’t,” she rasped. He smiled that sharp, bone-white smile.
“I thought not.”
Seras woke slowly, fingers knotted in long fur, face pressed close to a warm body, and she thought it must have been a terrible dream. She’d had nightmares most her life and losing Chance had been a common refrain, but here she was, snuggled up against Chance’s silky fur –
Wait. It was late spring already, Chance had already lost her silky undercoat and now her pelt was mostly coarse guard hair. Even with her winter coat, the longer strands weren’t this soft. If this wasn’t Chance, then who has she sleeping with?
“You’re awake? Good, you slept deeply, but you needed it.” The voice was deep, slightly rasping and rough, but affectionate. It came from the red-eyed dog daemon curled around her. Seras stiffened instantly, knowing such contact was intrusive on her part, but the hound huffed with amusement before setting her massive head on Seras’ shoulder and playfully nudging her ear with a broad, wet, cold nose. Seras yipped in surprise and then slapped a hand over her mouth as if to pull the sound back into herself. The dark dog daemon laughed, jaws gaping in a canine smile that showed viciously sharp teeth.
Seras gawked at the daemon, acutely aware of just how close she was and that this wasn’t Chance. She belatedly untangled her other hand from the long, thick fur blanketing the daemon’s neck and shoulders like a lion’s mane.
“I – I…! I’m sorry, this is –” Seras babbled. The daemon huffed again, though whether with impatience or amusement, Seras couldn’t tell.
“Be settled, fledgling,” the daemon said. “I am Iubasgyrea. You are now in our care, so be at ease.”
Fledgling? Our?
Yes, our fledgling, said a foreign and familiar voice inside her head. She started violently, looking around for the source of the voice.
“I think perhaps she is not completely awake, Basgyr,” the voice remarked aloud. Seras turned wide eyes on the man leaning through the wall beside the bed. A Cheshire grin revealed teeth sharper even than the dog daemon’s and the sight of it brought memories rushing back.
“Chance!” she shouted, struggling up from under the dog and the tangled blankets. “Where – ”
Two sets of blood red eyes pinned her in place. “Your daemon was very badly injured, more so than you could heal on your own during the conversion. For now, I have taken her within myself that she can use my energy to recover. She is… rather unenthused with this arrangement,” the vampire said dryly. “Basgyr has taken it upon herself to keep you company in the meantime so you don’t get ‘lonely’.” The quirk of his mouth as he said it made Seras think they had argued fiercely about the daemon’s decision. Before the daemon could make a remark and start another argument, the door opened and diverted their attention.
“Good, she’s awake. Sir Integra wants you to begin training her immediately.” A tall, thin man stood in the doorway, holding a folded bundle of clothes in one hand and a bucket of ice in the other. A tawny spider with striped legs rested quietly above his vest pocket. He set the bucket and clothes on a plain wooden table before turning to bow politely to Seras. “I am Walter Dornez.” When he straightened, the spider perched on his shoulder. It paused a moment before also bowing. “And this is Moran. Unlike Basgyr, she is quite reserved, so please don’t be offended if she doesn’t speak to you directly.”
Basgyr harrumphed and flowed off the bed like a shadow over water. When she stood at her full height, Seras wondered if she’d mistaken a bear for a dog – but no, her features were more delicate than a bear’s, her snout thinner, her ears longer. She was simply massive. “She won’t be able to change into her uniform with you lot about,” Basgyr informed them. “I’ll have her at the training grounds in a trice. Off you go.” Walter bowed again and took his leave. Alucard did not.
“Who do you think you are, the lady of the manor? Pah.” He deliberately pulled out a chair and sprawled at the table. He plucked a packet out of the ice and glanced at the label before pulling what looked like a straw from his pocket and using it to pierce the bag. He started lazily sipping from the straw as Seras watched, bemused. Then she caught a whiff of copper and her confusion fled.
Seras was very well acquainted with blood. She’d been soaked in it during her parents’ murder, tasted her own frequently from split lips and bloody noses during childhood fights, had felt the stickiness turn to flakes as it clotted and dried on her skin and clothes even during the attack on Cheddar. Blood had an old and familiar scent. Never before had it roused the immediate, ravenous hunger the way it did now. Fangs curved, sharp and prominent, where she was sure she’d had no fangs before; her mind recoiled with disgust even as her belly loudly protested its emptiness. She clapped one hand over her mouth – to hide her teeth? to keep from retching? she wasn’t sure – and wrapped her other arm tight around her midsection as if the pressure could keep it quiet.
“She’s got a good appetite,” Basgyr said approvingly. The daemon tried to nudge Seras off the bed and toward the table. She shrank back so sharply she toppled off the other side of the bed.
“And a human’s revulsion,” Alucard countered. A bag of blood came sailing over the bed from the direction of the table; it barely had time to touch the ground before Seras had chucked it back. “Focus on getting her fit to train. She can feed later.” She didn’t hear him leave, but when she peeked over the mattress, he was gone and only Basgyr remained to huff and fuss at her.
Integra, Seras discovered later, was a stern woman who didn’t entirely approve of Seras’ conversion. The woman sat behind a massive desk, stacks of paperwork scattered on the mahogany surface, a laptop sharing space with an inkwell and leather blotter. Seras couldn’t see a daemon with the woman – well, other than Basgyr, head at the level of the woman’s shoulder even though the demon sat beside her – and wondered if her daemon was small, like Walter’s, or just out of sight behind the desk. Or maybe she was a witch - the aura of power she possessed made that a distinct possibility. The weight of Integra’s gaze made Seras want to fidget, but the weight of Integra's critical stare effectively pinned her in place while her master’s heavy gloved hand kept her still.
“It's only been a few weeks. Do you really think she’s ready for a mission?” Integra leaned forward, fingers steepled and brow furrowed.
“She won’t progress in her training without experience in the field,” Alucard said.
Seras would have protested being spoken about as if she wasn’t present, but her master’s master raked her with her gaze. Keen and glacial eyes scrutinized her through a smart pair of spectacles, taking in the nervous tension in her shoulders as well as the natural way her posture had fallen into parade rest. The Hellsing fatigues were different from what she’d worn as a cop – and frankly, Seras thought the skirt was a bit too revealing – but it felt good to be back in uniform, at least. She carried a harness holster at her shoulder and another holster at her hip; the presence of the guns was comforting, familiar, even if their weight didn’t register the way it would have when she was human.
Seras couldn’t say she was looking forward to killing anything, but she was more than ready to get out on a mission. Hopefully she could learn more there than on the training field with her infuriatingly confusing, unhelpful master, who seemed to think that telling her she could do something was the same as actually teaching her to do it. Thank goodness for Basgyr, a much more thorough and patient teacher. But Basgyr wouldn’t be accompanying them if she and Alucard were sent on a mission, which made Seras nervous all over again.
Finally Integra sighed and stood. “I’ve had a call about a murder spree in Birmingham. Let’s go.”
Seras watched Integra and Basgyr step into a limo, Walter at the wheel. Integra was already on the phone, receiving reports from the scene, making marks on a map she put in her lap as soon as she was seated. Before the car peeled out of the drive, Integra rolled down her window, pressed the phone to her shoulder, and said, “Alucard, you know your orders – search and destroy.” Then the window rolled up again and they were speeding away, leaving the vampires standing on the drive.
She still hadn’t see Integra’s daemon, so she figured the woman was indeed a witch. She absently wondered what sort of bird her daemon was – an owl seemed appropriate for their line of work, but she seemed more like an eagle or falcon type of woman… She hadn’t even finished the thought before Alucard grabbed her by the scruff of her neck and hauled her through a series of portals to get to the site.
Basgyr’s heavy paw and heavier head rested on Seras’ stomach as she stared at the ceiling. She’d made the shot, just like her master said – in the dark, with no scope, at an impossible distance.
What am I becoming?
“A true Draculina,” Basgyr replied, “even if you still won’t drink.”