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It had been some little while since Alucard had last encountered a vampire worth the name.
A consequence of modernity, he supposed. Humans with their clever little weapons and their clever little plans had finally caught his species up. Where once a vampire could wipe out an entire settlement with impunity…
…well, that was still possible. But the would-be undead conquerors were no longer able to hold a region in the crushing grip of mortal terror after their conquest, as proved by the Police Girl's final (disastrous) mission as a living human. No matter how cleverly those aspiring tyrants worked to slaughter their prey, absences would be noticed, authorities notified.
And eventually, someone like him would come.
Yes, no longer was the battle between vampires and human hunters a desperate gamble for lives and regions. No longer was a vampire's tyranny absolute through the sheer disparity in power. Now, it was a mere matter of gathering the appropriate munitions and fending off the public until the enemy had been rendered silent. Vampires stalked the edge of society like jackals —turned into scavengers all— rather than striding through the center with the kingly hauteur of lions.
In the old days —in his days— it was not so. They had been kings, then, and not only the ones deserving of the title of No-Life King as he was. Even relatively young vampires could carve out vast territories, secure in the knowledge that the humans could do nothing to stop them. His kind had been self-regulating, with the political pressures created by various rivals jockeying for power ensuring that the making of a fledgling was a rare and deliberate calculation.
One did not turn dozens of fledglings at once, for fear of other vampires seeing one's growing power as a threat, and one chose one's prospective tools carefully, for fear of a reckless, arrogant, or otherwise inept fledgling pulling both themselves and their maker into an unfortunate dispute.
Said foolish or inept fledglings and masters alike had been gradually weeded out by rivals —to say nothing of the rare lucky hunter, or the pangs of ennui— and so over the centuries, Alucard's peers had dropped, one by one, to the wayside.
Nowadays the vampiric population was regulated by humans, who finally had the firepower —quite literally— to cull the reckless, the arrogant, and the incompetent themselves. A vampire who was not careful and clever ran the risk of attracting the attention of hunters, and from there things were more or less a forgone conclusion. Too, older vampires who had come to the attention of hunters in bygone years, but had been passed over due their overwhelming power, were finally hunted down and eradicated.
Thus, the overall population of vampires had become both much younger and much less experienced by the time the twentieth century drew to its close, although there were exceptions —such as the one whose trail he was on now. As laughable as it was, few of the vampires running around these days had outlived their human lifespan: many of those that came to his personal attention were less than ten years dead.
This one was certainly not so. She was closer to fifty years in her grave than five, although he would have known her had she been closer to five hundred. Her Irish antecedents would have made her a distant acquaintance rather than a direct neighbor —and therefore rival— but Alucard was still more than assured of being, if not the oldest vampire in the world, then certainly the oldest in Europe.
Still, it may be interesting to see if they had ever had any acquaintances in common. Her Master, now; he might have known the man, in bygone years, perhaps. But perhaps not, also. It might be worth a query or two.
Alucard was deservedly more interested and excited in the fact that, since this was so very near the border, and also that the townsfolk had idly mentioned a priest closely questioning various witnesses, he might stand a chance of encountering two clever, experienced foes tonight.
He indulged himself in a silent chuckle. Truly, he was spoiled.
His target had worked hard to hide her trail, but there were not too terribly many places for her to have gone, with her plethora of ghouls, if she wanted to escape notice. Underground was one option, and considering the spread and shade of the various tunnels that snaked beneath the town, Alucard knew it was the safest option for the undead.
His deductions were borne out when the service building he was approaching burst into flames, an irregular occurrence for most such structures —particularly when he recognized the tinge of magic amongst the explosions. Pleased, he quickened his pace.
Further confirming his guess, some of the target's ghouls emerged before he could reach the remains of the building, digging themselves out of the rubble with commendable speed. No few of their garments were noticeably old: further proof that his target was no youngster herself. Their flesh was also not heavily-manged, which meant that she did not feed voraciously nor allow her ghouls to do so.
Few modern vampires were that neat: they tore into their prey like the proverbial piranha and then let their ghouls roam at will, scraps of pestilence marauding around the countryside to bring doom and despair wherever they went. In their foolishness, those vampires thought that surrounding themselves with an army of shambling louts would serve as protection rather than a glaring warning sign to those who hunted the undead. Vampires wise enough to train their ghouls, to keep them on a tight, disciplined leash, were very much a rarity these days: certainly, this one must have been at least a century old.
He drew the Casull, and watched with interest as the growing horde wavered rather than charge him with jaws agape, evidently torn between two overriding imperatives.
Given the fact that their indecision did not end even after he decimated more than a dozen with a quick flurry of bullets, it was clear that their mistress was both occupied —unable to issue clarifying orders— and under threat —splitting the ghouls' two most basic instincts, to defend their master and attack intruders.
Alucard's grin was needle-sharp, baring fangs that shone hungrily in the light of the flames.
That meant only one thing.
He went to work quickly, wishing to be thorough and eliminate the least little trace of obstacles so that he and the Judas Priest could spar with equanimity. It would not do, after all, for such a pathetic wretch as a mere ghoul to get in the way of their fun.
For all of his ferocity, though, there were so many ghouls —so very many, with more piling out of the half-intact building and dragging themselves up from the very dirt beneath his feet— that Alucard did not cleave through them nearly so quickly as he might wish. After a few minutes, the vampiress in question was also evidently able to issue new orders, for they ceased their dithering and charged him as a pack.
Bothersome.
But ghouls were always, in the end, simple obstacles to be brushed from his path, or swatted aside like the insects they were. No mere familiar could give him more than a few seconds' pause, and though the seconds steadily added up, still, it was no more than five minutes later that he finished with the entirety of the horde and stepped through the crumbling lintel of flames and into the half-destroyed vestibule.
Alucard was surprised by the appearance of his target —more surprised still to see that she was not tacked all over the room in dismembered bits. Oh, her head was half sawn off, and her front was covered in blood, but she was still, broadly speaking, intact. This, after facing Iscariot's own trump card?
Very impressive, indeed.
She was clutching her tattered throat and leaning against the wall, and he was pleased to see that she was struggling to heal the injuries that had obviously been inflicted by a blessed blade. Some of the blood that had dyed half of her grey coat a glossy crimson had a familiar scent to it, though, and Alucard narrowed his eyes. Had she…?
He knew from experience just how viciously Father Anderson guarded his blood; to have inflicted an injury that shed so much of it was… unprecedented. It did not matter that he would have healed: as a hunter, Father Anderson knew well how troublesome it would be if a vampire got access to blood shed from his living flesh.
Granted, the fact that the paladin's bayonets had cut deep enough that the white gleam of her spine peeped through the gaping rent in the target's neck showed that whatever injury she had inflicted, Anderson had been more than well enough to take umbrage for it.
Her attempts to heal were stymied by Alucard's gracious introduction of a silver bullet to the knee —he was not pleased, either, that another vampire had both dared and managed to drink the blood he was so persistently forbidden from.
She hissed and buckled; then, seeing him, cast her free hand out as a streak of fire raced towards his head. He sidestepped, watching her paw at the shattered mess of her knee, realize that this, too, was inflicted by blessed silver, and then look wildly around her for her ghouls.
They would not be coming.
Alucard had to commend both her quick thinking and her strength; knowing she could never heal it in time, she did as an animal in a trap would do and tore off her own crippled leg, blood creeping towards her injury to heal and supplement her missing limb as she cast it aside and straightened up.
He shot at her again, but she was wary now of his bullets and flitted out of the way, magic flexing and coalescing in her hands as the flames around the room brightened. What followed was an enjoyable few minutes of cat and mouse: she striking out at him with various missiles, he returning with the Casull, both of them dancing around each other in the empty room.
A vampire powerful enough to survive a direct encounter with Father Anderson was not one he could ignore, unfortunately: the torrent of invective his Master would pour upon him for "neglecting his job" to "play with his food" did not bear thinking about, particularly when she could simply order him to avoid the priest and that would be terrible punishment enough.
So, balancing the fun of fighting an older and more experienced vampire (for once) against the joy of roughhousing with Father Anderson…
Concrete bricks shattered as his target was bodily thrown through the nearest wall, and Alucard sauntered after the crippled vampiress, idly regrowing his incinerated arm with a crackle and squish of wet gristle. On his way through the gap, he wrenched a crooked iron rebar out of the crumbling edifice.
She really was commendably tenacious: her bones were scraping back together even now, and licks of flames continued to crawl over her form in an instinctive, ebbing defense even when he thrust the bar through her chest and into the soft earth and grass beneath. Her body jerked against the ground, her torn throat spasming —she might have had some interesting things to say, had her vocal cords not been cut earlier— as more blood pooled under her stiffened form.
Her spine was shattered, and he'd punctured the outer edge of her heart. That should be enough to pin her in place while Alucard went and found his archnemesis: Anderson would no doubt appreciate the chance to finish the job. And he did deserve something for being neglected so long, didn't he?
Strolling through the burning building en route to the epicenter, where the priest would surely be, Alucard mused on how he might present the opportunity. The rather pointed nature of his display would certainly mean that he had chosen to let her live, which in turn would prevent Anderson from accusing him of weakness or ineptitude —in theory. The man was clever; he might find a way to insinuate it despite the obvious facts.
The flames scorching the remnants of the building really were quite remarkable; deadlier to humans than ordinary fire, for it caught and burned and would not stop until greater magic was brought to bear or it had destroyed everything that could be burned. Devastating, particularly against normal civilians.
Luckily for them, there were none here. Alucard had yet to catch the priest's familiar heartbeat, nor his distinctive breathing, but perhaps he was buried deeper under the rubble. In that case, the vampire thought as he stepped into the room that seemed to be the source of the explosion, he ought to douse the flames now, to prevent unnecessary impediments.
A snap of his fingers had his shadows spilling out from his feet, surging over the walls and across the small building as they hungrily ate every trace of the fire and its magic out of existence. That should please his Master's accountants as well as the priest, since collateral damage was always so terribly frustrating —for them.
The very thought seemed to conjure his beloved nemesis: the air currents in the room shifted subtly as a bayonet flew, and Alucard dodged the blade aimed at his heart with the usual grace, not looking at the source until after it had flown past him. His eyes lowered, the first words of their dance ready on his lips, and-
The world crystallized and froze within a single moment of horror.
Alucard was not allowed the luxury of even a second of denial: the moment he saw Father Anderson where he should not be —where there was no breath or pulse to mark him— the vampire looked again with his third eye, and saw the truth for what it was.
To say that his soul shattered was too kind and too brief a description. Never, in all his centuries of life and unlife, in all his eons of horrific blasphemies and desperate prayers, had Alucard known the depths of such utter and complete inconsolable despair.
"No," he said, as if that could change it, stop it, destroy the image of red eyes and bloodless skin stretched mask-like over Father Anderson's warm living tones. "No."
He was-
He-
Alucard rematerialized outside again, face tipped back to the blood-tinted harvest moon, drawing in steady, cold, useless breaths. It did nothing to calm him, but the habit was still there, even centuries later. His powers stretched out to their utmost, peeled to the breaking point, trying to find the lie, the untruth, the delusion, the edge of this false reality that surely must be there somewhere. The alternative was too awful to contemplate.
Because-
No. No. It couldn't have happened. It could not. It went beyond tragedy, beyond farce, to think of the enemy he had so loved and loathed, who had overcome every challenge Alucard piled on his head, whose irrepressible humanity burned and blinded as fiercely as the sun, who was everything he had ever dared hope for and more-
It was inconceivable that this could be taken from him by mere random accident.
Because if Alucard had been wrong, and that slash in the vampiress's throat and been inflicted before and not after, then she would have been desperate enough to lunge for the priest and drink every drop he could give her. Every virgin drop. And that… that would have been enough.
That would have been fucking enough!
It was an insult beyond any insult he had ever suffered, an indignity, a humiliation, a joke. He would have been less enraged in his days as a voivode if some thief had broken into his castle and smashed and destroyed every priceless treasure he owned –because none of those were ever as unique as they claimed. Enough skill, the right materials, and so-called irreplaceable treasures were easy enough to mend or mimic.
But this.
It was not just a thief destroying all he held dear: it was a thief who didn't care. Who didn't see the value of what had been carelessly torn to pieces and trampled under her feet. Who smeared and dirtied and ruined something far more precious than a mere material treasure could ever be.
Alucard's slow, measured breathing did nothing to quell his growing rage. It gnawed at the very core of him, tearing at the boundaries of his manufactured form as a red glow hazed on his skin and his hair and coat ebbed in a wind that did not exist. Centipedes slithered through the swarm of eyes and teeth and other scraps, their pinchers razor-sharp and gnashing in a froth of constant fury.
This would need to be —dealt with. Certainly. Attempting to calm himself was a laughable futility, but even with this much distance between them Sir Integra would sense the sheer magnitude of his mounting rage before long and she would, inevitably, give orders about it. Alucard was in no mood to be bound by orders.
He stretched his awareness out again, this time with a purpose.
Father Anderson had fled while Alucard tried wrestle control over himself —not unexpected. He was still in the area, and numbed enough from shock that he could be at least momentarily set aside: he did not have the mental space to do anything foolish, not yet.
The other one was still here, however, and alive enough to make weak, ineffective scrabbling motions in the dirt as she tried to free herself. Alucard would attend on her shortly.
One last deep breath, and he was calm enough to act. It was the work of a moment to bundle himself into a largely human form, forcing his amorphous body back into the right shapes, and then Alucard turned on his heel and stalked, every manufactured muscle rigid with anger, towards where he had left her.
The issue with what he intended was that there was ultimately still nothing he could actually do.
He could leave her pinned in the dirt to burn and sizzle in the sun —a long and lingering death of unimaginable pain— but that was not enough. He could apply his centuries of experience in finding the tenderest nerves, craft for them the most stomach-turning of torments, but it would not be enough. He could split her mind open with the finesse of an axe and pour in his hatred, his malice, his every vehement wish for her suffering, and it would not be enough.
There was no agony he could inflict —not the most gruesome wounds nor the most cruel humiliations— that would satisfy him. He could unleash the full ferocity of his tortures upon her every day for a thousand years, and it would not be enough to vent even a particle of his anger. What he had lost, what she had taken…
No.
There would be no satisfaction, no enjoyment, gleaned from this. There was no point.
But Alucard refused to leave things be without at least demonstrating his displeasure.
He finished his work an hour or so before sunrise, cold undead blood soaking him from head to foot, sour on his tongue and sticky on his hands. The unfortunate one's screams had rung out for miles, his ingenuity wrenching the noises forth even when there was barely any throat to scream with, and though he was done, it was still not nearly enough.
Alucard had not killed her. Alien as it was to him, there was still a slight flicker of… not hope, no, but possibility. Humans were so clever, so innovative. It had never been done in all the thousands of years in which vampires had existed, but… was it not possible, in theory, that perhaps in these modern days a cure or a reversal might be found?
If there was even the faintest glimmering speck of such a hope, then the blood, spirit, or flesh of the vampire who had turned Father Anderson might be invaluable.
And so, despicably, she must live.
The huddled pile of mutilated flesh beneath him was in no condition to think, much less move, but Alucard nonetheless took the time to summon several of his best familiars —crafty witches who had not been crafty enough when faced with his overwhelming power, alas— and set them to the task of storing, guarding, and disguising what was left of her. They had kept their guile and their magic after they had become part of his teeming ocean of death: as a group, they might even have brought down this wretched insect themselves. They were certainly capable of imprisoning her now.
Not that he was usually inclined to risk said familiars by sending them out against his opponents, though. Competent magic-users were hard to find nowadays. Competent anything was hard to find these days. It was why the Judas Priest had been such a treasure of an enemy: not only competent, but skilled and deadly beyond any human Alucard had ever faced.
With that imprisonment taken care of, his mind turned to a far more important task: finding Father Anderson, and… and…
Alucard was not sanguine on anything after merely finding him. The priest's mind would be delicate: everything about him would be delicate now, and the slightest wrong move could shatter whatever fragile equilibrium he'd managed to claw together for himself.
That he had managed to do so was never a doubt in Alucard's mind. Newly-turned fledglings sometimes took hours to awaken: Anderson had done so at once, and still had the intelligence to get as far away from his pseudo-Master as possible before she could snare his mind or body in her commands. Certainly, his tenacity and endurance had remained.
Leaving his familiars to weave their webs of disguise and imprisonment, Alucard set off, following the trail Anderson had left as he'd stumbled into the forest girdling the town. His scent was easy to track: his own dried blood, yes, but also charred cloth and molten silver, and the subtle harsh note of burning paper that Alucard had always associated with blasphemy.
Oh, Judas Priest. A judas now in truth, cast out from the bosom of the church he had loved and protected so dearly.
Not being numbed by horror and shock —he was still too angry— Alucard moved much, much faster than the priest; it was no more than fifteen minutes before he slipped out from the shadow of the trees just in time to see Father Anderson step onto the holy ground of the church —and immediately flinch back, burned.
The expression of shock and sudden anguish on Anderson's face was terrible to witness.
"You need to adjust your mindset," Alucard said, and was careful to keep his face, his voice, his posture utterly neutral. Not a flicker of emotion, not the barest hint, must stir the surface of what Anderson could perceive. Not until Alucard knew which direction he was thinking in.
Startled at the sound of his voice, Anderson jolted and whipped around to face him, staring in even more apparent shock. Seeing crimson where green should be was still stomach-curdling, but Alucard kept his face blank.
"What?" Anderson said hoarsely.
"The church," he replied, moving only his eyes as he flicked them at the distant steeple in indication. "The holy ground. If you want to get in, you need to stop believing it will hurt you."
Anderson swelled righteously at that, mouth curling in the familiar snarl as he began another tirade —but then he paused, flinching just barely, as instinct sharpened his teeth into a sharklike row of fangs.
Alucard very carefully did not react, simply watching and waiting as Anderson pressed his lips back together and shifted his jaw slightly, trying to undo the change. After a few moments, he seemed to master it, and spoke again.
"You're saying willpower can overtake sacred ground?" he hissed in a furious undertone, as if he believed higher volume caused the shift.
Alucard blinked, and thought that if anyone's willpower could do so…
But no. There would be no jokes now, no merriment, no risk of mockery.
"The sacredness of that ground is a matter of belief," he replied instead, pointedly. "If you were to set foot in a mosque or a synagogue, it would not burn you, because you have no faith in them —and vice versa. Thus,"
Moving with careful deliberation, he walked past the priest, keeping his movements smooth and slow and nonthreatening. When Alucard had crossed the invisible line of holy ground, he turned to face him again.
"-if you have no faith —no belief that it will harm you— then it won't," he finished simply, spreading his arms in demonstration.
Anderson's mouth twisted. "You expect me to believe that it's not simply a matter of you being obnoxiously powerful?"
Alucard was flattered, but not currently willing to express it. Anderson seemed to be as he had always been: and that in and of itself was not a terribly encouraging sign. Rather worrisome, in fact.
"You must have noticed while hunting that vampires of disparate ages are able to, on occasion, take sanctuary in a church," he said, attempting to impart the information gently. Anderson needed shelter right now, and this building was the nearest. Overcoming ingrained religion was a regretful necessity. "If they are ignorant as to what can and can't harm a member of their species, or arrogant enough to think that God has no power against us, then they can enter without harm."
Something wavered in Anderson's gaze then, and Alucard felt inclined to wince. No, no, no, he had meant that as a reassurance. He did not mean to further destabilize the priest's balance, to undermine the foundations of his very livelihood.
How awful it was, to see this from the outside.
Alucard had been pious while he lived, but at least —and what a bitter silver lining it was— at least when he had been overcome by undeath, it had been a choice made in extreme despair as everything he had fought to build crumbled all around him. At least it had been a choice, and his last living act was choosing to spit his mouthful of blood in the very eyes of God.
For Anderson, there had been no such choice. He was bereft, his faith stolen and raped and swindled from him by uncaring hands even as he clutched at it in desperation. The pain in his changed eyes was hard to see, but he soon sublimated it, as every warrior ever did, to anger.
"Why are you here?" he spat, bristling at Alucard as both fists clenched in helpless fury. "Have you come to gloat, vampire, or- or-"
His vitriol sputtered out as he seemed to remember, belatedly, that humanity was no longer a high ground he could claim. They were both vampires, now. The thought visibly had him tremble, and Alucard could no longer bear it.
"Come into the church," he said quietly, in a perverse parody of their usual roles: a vampire beckoning a priest to seek comfort in the arms of God. He touched Anderson's arm, and was not skewered for his pains: could the priest even still call his bayonets forth?
A thought to agonize over another time.
Slowly, Alucard coaxed him onto the holy ground. The priest's trembling grew worse as he passed the barrier and was not scorched, but they really did need to get inside a building before too much longer, and this was as good —or bad— a place as any.
Tenderness was not in Alucard's nature, but he could be courteous, and he knew the care and delicacy that attended upon such tasks as caring for any wounded creature. That Anderson's wound was not visible was irrelevant: he needed silence to rest, darkness to shelter, and something to shore up his injuries.
Alucard knew where to provide it.
It was not surprising at all that Anderson protested Alucard's decidedly unorthodox entry into the sacristy, but he did not have the patience or the inclination to find keys. Since it was a room where the priests would disrobe, there were no windows: it would suit admirably for shelter. This was neither the time nor the place to be finicky about where and how they took shelter.
He crossed the room by ancient memory and opened the storage cupboard, rummaging around until he found the rattling bottles of communion wine: something that would suit admirably for shoring up Anderson's spirit.
The sacristy for shelter, wine to numb his wounds, and silence, which would come soon enough. Alucard had done all he could for now.
Withdrawing with the nearest bottle in hand, he turned to face the priest, who had remained standing near the door, all in a huff.
"Wine?" Anderson scoffed, sounding downright paternal. Next he'd be scolding Alucard for hanging around with the wrong crowd and breaking into forbidden buildings.
"'This is my blood, which will be given up for you in the new and everlasting covenant,'" Alucard quoted wryly, extending the bottle towards him. If Anderson could not have regular blood —and the thought that the Judas Priest would willingly imbibe it at any point, never mind so close to being a human, was more ludicrous than him becoming a vampire to begin with— then at least he could have the religious facsimile of it.
Anderson did not seem to see it the same way, for he jerked back as though Alucard was offering the lighted end of a torch rather than a bottle of rather mediocre red wine.
"You-"
"Spare me the tedious speech about blasphemy," Alucard sighed, seeing the telltale signs of Anderson winding up for a tirade. He flicked the bottle, sloshing the contents invitingly. "There is no greater blasphemy than what has already occurred."
They could agree on that much, surely? That what had happened to the priest was a crime and a horror and a tragedy? That something to dull the senses might be welcome?
Anderson scoffed under his breath, but took the bottle all the same.
"Why should you care?" he growled under his breath, removing the cork with a swift twist.
"Do you think it pleases me to lose a worthy enemy in such a fashion?" Alucard asked sharply, appalled and betrayed and perhaps a tiny bit hurt. Did the priest think Alucard valued him so little, that this, that he wouldn't care that…
Startled, Anderson's gaze flicked up to meet his own. The priest said nothing, fingers tight around the wine bottle, and Alucard locked down on his expression again. One flash of genuine emotion was quite enough, particularly under the circumstances.
There was an excruciating moment of silence as Anderson seemed about to mention whatever he'd seen, before he evidently thought better of it.
"I'm not lost," he said, and Alucard boiled all over again at the arrogant carelessness of it, the disrespect that Anderson seemed to show himself, the lack of value he placed on his own life-!
"You can no longer face me as a man," Alucard snarled. "Only a human can defeat a monster. And that-"
At the reminder of what had been stolen, all the clawing desire for violence which he had visited upon that thing reawakened with a roaring vengeance inside him, and Alucard's talons carved his own flesh bloody as his fists clenched.
That imbecile, that oaf, that greedy clutching leech, that-!
There were no words to encompass his rage. To treat Father Anderson himself as a mere vessel to drain in her desperation, to take him away, to steal him from Alucard on accident-
His building fury was cut short somewhat by the abrupt movement of the priest taking a gulp of the wine straight from the bottle, and Alucard watched Anderson's throat bob while trying not to feel sick. No blood, no life, no subtle warmth that called him, when once he could have watched the ticking pulse in Anderson's neck for hours and be content.
Not that Anderson would have allowed any such thing, of course, but now the memory of that impetuous fire only made Alucard feel worse.
"You were the one making her scream like that, then?" Anderson asked when he finished —clearly aiming to be calm, but with a distinct edge of budding hope.
"I gave her ample leisure to regret her… impulsiveness," Alucard replied, jaw tense. "If she had any idea what she destroyed —what she ruined-"
His voice rose, before he forced himself to be calm, to be silent.
Anderson was at least drinking the wine, was silent and still and thoughtful before him: he had not shattered, not yet. Alucard had done all that he could, but the thought of leaving was not even to be considered. The thin veneer of calm and composure was just that: a fragile shell coating the priest's desperate soul. Alucard needed to find out more, to find out what he needed to do to-
Not fix this. Fixing this was impossible. But he wanted to-
-to help.
Of a sort.
In his own way.
He had already taken what steps he could, and he nudged his familiars, requesting an immediate update. They reported that the vampiress had been contained and imprisoned; caged within a soundless void that nothing could cross except by their —and therefore his— power. The stasis would keep her fresh, unable to heal or act; and, most importantly, unable to call upon her… her fledgling.
Alucard bristled all over again just thinking the words, of how they attached Anderson to her like a chain. Filthy. Vile.
Oh yes, aside from any questions of contamination or elapsed time, his familiars were quite right to store that one in such a way. At this moment, and for as long as Alucard could make it so, Anderson was as free of her as it was possible for a fledgling to be.
Her mind could no longer touch his. She did not even deserve to remember that he existed.
Anderson drank again while Alucard was thus engaged, and he watched, depressed, at how the priest's throat was closing against the wine already, making him struggle to force it down. His body was drying out, and dubious transubstantiation or not —this might not even be a Catholic building— the "blood" he drank was of the entirely wrong kind.
He said nothing as Anderson sat on the nearby bench —not a collapse, but not too far from it. His newly-crimson eyes were dull and unseeing, the hand that held the wine dangling off one knee.
What to say? What could be said?
The only thing Alucard knew to offer now was silence, his own dead heart sinking. He had preserved the host of this infection on a hope —but truly, he knew deep inside how vain such a hope was. Perhaps there might, maybe, be something of a cure sometime in the next fifty years or so, after intensive study, but…
…perhaps not.
Probably not, in fact.
Alucard entertained the prospect, not out of optimism, but because the alternative was simply too awful even for his desecrated soul to bear. Even the concept of losing Alexander Anderson to vampirism was too ghastly to contemplate. So Alucard did not, and pinned all his hope on a fool's chance: even false hope was better than such despair.
Anderson did not speak to him, instead lifting the wine to his lips again, drinking despite his struggle. Stubborn, he was, as ever. It speared a single grey shaft of light through the irrepressible gloom that threatened Alucard's spirits.
Feeling confident that such a motion would not be rejected, he silently moved to fetch his own bottle, returning to the opposite end of the bench as he, too, sat in the dim darkness of the empty sacristy. Anderson did not fuss: did not react, really, except to drink again, staring sightlessly ahead.
Removing the cork with a briefly-sharp talon, Alucard tilted the bottle back and mimicked the priest.
He was old enough and powerful enough and well-fed enough that the wine was as nothing to him; not particularly palatable, no, but that judgement wouldn't have changed even if he had still been human. The wine ordered for churches was cheap and of no impressive vintage to begin with.
They sat in silence for a while, no sound but the occasional slosh of wine as they drank, and the even more infrequent half-stutters of Anderson's reflexive breathing.
Alucard knew that his presence and above all his silence must be confusing for the priest, but he was disinclined to offer anything else. Anderson's mental state was still fragile, and with the slight clouding achieved by the wine, it would be unwise to start any arguments.
Alucard was here. If it was needed, he would speak. If it was needed, he would explain. If not… then at least the priest would have the assurance of his presence. He certainly knew Anderson well enough to know that any attempts to probe his mental state, however well-meaning, would be met with violence. And besides, if he remained silent…
Alucard's patience bore fruit when Anderson finally exhaled impatiently and scrubbed a hand down his face, shoulders slumping with all the weight of the world.
"What do you want?" he groaned, and Alucard gave a tiny shrug.
"I am… reluctant to press you," he said carefully, and drank again. "What do you want?"
Anderson flinched.
"Exactly," Alucard muttered. He would not needle and probe, no, but he could wait until Anderson spoke for himself. Alucard could slowly and patiently coax out the thread of his thoughts, then spin whatever comforting cocoon he could manage. "I will remain here until you decide, I suppose."
"Why?"
Alucard shrugged at the exhaustion in the priest's voice, how he was so clearly wearied beyond measure by the older vampire's antics.
"Why not?"
There was no answer to that: nothing Anderson could say without dredging up all their history together and why it was altogether improper for Alucard to offer his nemesis so much comfort.
Because, indeed, why not? As another man, Alucard was intimately familiar with all the worst that the priest could bring to bear: who better to weather the storms and flares of his distemper? As vampires, Alucard was his senior in power and experience by many centuries: who else could give such advice? There was no one better. There could be no one better.
The silence in Anderson's lack of answer lengthened and deepened, drawing on to become another silence all its own, and the both of them continued nursing their respective bottles, drinking slowly rather than fidgeting. Alucard was not much inclined to it in any case, but Anderson was clearly —understandably— restless.
He was also getting worse at it. Alucard's gaze flicked sideways as Anderson almost choked on a single gulp of wine, and the slowly burgeoning dawn shed enough light into the church that Anderson's red eyes gleamed as he grimaced at the half-empty bottle. The animal flash, that uncanny half-glint of tapetum lucidum, was positively revolting.
Anderson didn't seem to notice; he glanced at Alucard, shoulders already bunching defensively. Alucard looked away and didn't speak, taking a drink of his own and making no show of how much easier it slid down his throat. Anderson was no doubt all too aware of why he had such difficulty swallowing, and loathed it.
He kept at it, though. Of course he did. Mere physical incapability would never stand before Father Anderson's will, and he glowered at the wine as though it were a personal affront as he continued forcing it down, drop by spiteful drop.
The priest was struggling against both the wine and the rising sun, however: Alucard could feel it as a faint prickle on his skin, but Anderson's bulkier figure was already sagging more than mere tipsiness could account for, bowed down by a leaden exhaustion that owed nothing at all to nature —or to wine.
"Your options at this point are fairly simple. Either die, or keep going," Alucard said carefully at length, judging that Anderson was relaxed enough —or at least in enough of a stupor— to take this with whatever crumbling fragments of equanimity he had left.
"Die," Anderson muttered under his breath, the answer instant and unflinching. Alucard twinged down to his very soul, and that was enough to make the priest glance at him, a faint glint of surprise in those dulling eyes. "You don't want me to die."
Alucard turned his own head to look at him, astounded and incredulous that that was even a question.
"You are perhaps, without exception, the finest enemy it has ever been my privilege to face," he said slowly, attempting to drill this simple fact through the dawn-stupor and whatever faint haze of drunkenness they'd managed to acquire. "I would prefer not to be so thoroughly robbed, but…"
Too true. Too raw. He looked away, jerking just barely in a faint shrug, and swallowed his words with the rest of his wine.
Anderson digested that piece of information for a few moments, and his teeth grated a little as he ground them unhappily.
"Does respecting my choices extend far enough that you'll help me make them?" he muttered at length, and when Alucard glanced at him, nodded to the weapons hidden by his duster. "One of those guns was built for me, wasn't it?"
Alucard sucked in a sharp breath —an involuntary reflex that had not troubled him for decades.
Reaching inside his red coat, he withdrew the Jackal —and how bittersweet the joy of that day now, when Walter had presented him with this weapon crafted particularly for the man at his side, when he still had a challenge gleaming on his horizon— and laid it across his knees.
Anderson fell silent when the black gun was revealed, and Alucard saw his hand twitch.
"Assist," Alucard said, his fingers drumming on the grip, his voice deceptively neutral. "Assist how? Provide the gun? Put the bullet in your brain myself? Is that how you seek to circumvent the sin of self-murder? Is that what you ask of me, Alexander Anderson?"
His voice rose as he went on, but Alucard was unable to control it. Resignation! From his priest, of all people! To just give up- to roll over and die like a dog-
"And what else am I supposed to do?!" Anderson snapped, fracturing a thin line in the glass of his bottle as he slammed it against the ground and turned to glare at Alucard more fully. "Drink blood? Turn away from my faith and my duties? Cast aside my humanity to exist as a misbegotten abomination? Is that what you ask of me?"
"Dying now would be a waste," Alucard spat. "And I would have hoped that you, of all people, would reject resignation."
"Reject it for what?" Anderson asked, his voice sharp despite the encroaching stupor dulling the edges of his syllables.
Alucard could not answer, not even as those blazing, terrible eyes stared at him from behind the priest's lenses.
"Well?" Anderson snarled impatiently. "You don't want me to die, vampire: fine. What do you want me to live for? What is going to make existing like this worth it?"
I don't want to lose you very nearly escaped Alucard's mouth, but he clamped his teeth over the words just in time. That was entirely too emotional, too full of sentiments his priest would not accept.
"I didn't want this," Anderson went on, and Alucard trembled as the words he had been seething over for so long slipped out of the priest's mouth. "I didn't ask for this. I never consented-"
Too much, too much, it was entirely too much, and Alucard rose to his feet sharply, with a roar.
"Do you think I don't know that!?
He whirled, snatching Anderson's short bristly hair and using that grip to wrench his neck back as he pressed the barrel of the Jackal to his heart; craning Anderson's body in his grip like the prey the priest wasn't and never should have been.
"Not one drop of blood has crossed your lips," Alucard hissed, their eyes boring into each other. "If you die now, perhaps enough of your soul will still be clean enough to escape damnation. That's your hope, is it not?"
"And so what if it is?" Anderson snarled, cold dead hands closing about Alucard's cold dead throat. His nails had lengthened with rage, just the same as his teeth, and they pierced Alucard's flesh like razors. "Matthew 26:41."
Ah.
Of course.
"'Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is ready, but the flesh is weak,'" Alucard quoted wearily. Anderson's glare did not slacken or change.
"I don't want to be this," he growled back. "And I'd like to be destroyed before I can change my mind."
And that… that was enough, in its own way, to tell Alucard of the priest's mental state. His own mind raced even as the two of them held each other in that matched deadly pose of predatory intent —he with his gun against Anderson's heart, Anderson with his hand on Alucard's throat.
Not resignation, perhaps, but… sacrifice. Anderson was not currently suicidal, but rather meant to fling himself upon the sword before he was dragged through the triumph of blood-spattered corruption and undead instincts. He did not want to be a vampire, and wished to eradicate the infection before it took hold.
That, Alucard could work with.
So thinking, he flicked on the safety and removed the Jackal.
"It's nearly dawn," he said. "You should make these decisions with a clear head, not one muddled by panic and exhaustion."
Anderson looked very nearly betrayed, for a heartbeat; he clearly expected Alucard to act with more violence. Too bad for him; Alucard fully intended to wring every fragment of hopeful possibilities out of that corpse, and for that the both of them must survive. For now.
Then rage came, as always, and Anderson snapped his jaws as he leaned into Alucard's restraining grip, fangs slicing the air with commendable aggression.
"Alucard!"
"Sleep," he said, ignoring the clench of Anderson's fingers on his throat as one talon pierced all the way through to his windpipe. "You've not taken blood yet, and you will not have taken blood when you awake tomorrow. If you're going to make such a permanent choice, you should at least do so deliberately. Without the influence of wine, might I add."
Anderson snorted incredulously, but he did seem to take the point, shoving Alucard away as though too disgusted for contact.
"And who gave me that wine?" he asked, apparently taking no notice of his own talons or the blood smearing them.
"I think we can both acknowledge you needed it," Alucard replied, unruffled. He let his body heal, tucking the Jackal back away. "Sleep. Rest. Think on this, before you make your decision."
Anderson's returning glower was somewhat hampered by the increasing dullness in his eyes; dawn was coming on fast, and his eyelids dragged downwards even as he did his spiteful best to set Alucard ablaze with the force of his glare.
"You admitted you have your own agenda," he said. "You want me to stay like this."
This was truth. Unabashedly, that was true. Did he expect Alucard to deny it? They were past all denial, now. Alucard therefore paused for a moment, considering how to answer that —and also how to answer without getting flayed, or at the very least punched.
Thinking of that, though, inevitably reminded him of how the writ and holy blades were probably not something Anderson could still call, and his jaw flexed as he looked away.
"I would lose what I value in you either way," he growled reluctantly, prying the words out from between his ribs. "I respected and admired the enemy who had the skill and the strength of humanity to finally give me a worthy challenge. If you survive, you will lose that fire —sooner or later, you will lose it— and you will not be that opponent, anymore."
He had seen it too many times already. Even conditional immortality was powerful beyond measure, and the sheer strength of that energy burned every scrap of humanity away to ashes, no matter how that power was ever obtained.
"Monsters must always be defeated by humans. You have to be human."
Anderson was opening his mouth to respond when Alucard forced himself to look at him, and the priest shut his mouth hastily.
"I will not have even the pleasure of your company if you die, so yes, I would prefer it if you did not ask me to euthanize you," Alucard spat tersely.
Anderson glared at him, but his sagging eyelids fluttered, and he looked like he was fighting the urge to collapse where he sat.
"I don't need you to destroy myself, vampire," he almost-mumbled, swaying a little. Despite his unsteadiness, Alucard didn't doubt him one jot; his nemesis was just simply that impressive.
"And yet I would do it if you asked," he said. "For the respect that we share, and for your skill as a warrior, and your place as my beloved enemy. I would do it. If you would do me the honor of feeling your heart inside my hands, I would reach into your chest for you. I would seize your heart and crush it."
"I asked for a bullet," Anderson muttered after a second, blinking blearily at him. The expression was rather endearing, despite the topic under discussion.
"You would have me put you down like a rabid animal?" Alucard asked, raising an eyebrow. Anderson's brow crumpled, more incomprehension filling his features, and he dragged a hand down his face, rubbing his eyes beneath his glasses.
"Enough," he said. "Just-"
Alucard cocked his head attentively, but the priest's words seemed to fail him. Alucard waited, with patience even, but Anderson seemed no more inclined to speak than before, struggling through the thick fog filling his thoughts.
They had time. There was still time, and that faint glimmer of impossible possibility. Anderson had not taken blood —would never take blood— and Alucard had the vampire that had created him locked safely away. However faint a spider's thread it was, there was still a single strand of hope left that he —that they— might be able to fix this.
Then Alucard felt the tug of the sun rising, and Anderson's balance visibly wobbled. He jerked his face up from his hand, but the day already had him in its clutches and mere alarm wouldn't save him.
"Alucard-"
He was flattered by the call for assistance as Anderson scrambled clumsily to his feet, overcome with the instinctive urge to flee even as the inevitable creep of rigor mortis hit his spine and froze his muscles. Give credit where it was due: Anderson managed to stand on his feet for all of two seconds before it overcame him, and Alucard did as he was bid and slid an arm under his enemy's chest, letting Anderson sag to his knees, head dipping, arms dropping.
"I may have banked on your newly-unbalanced sleep schedule preventing any hasty decisions on your part," he leaned to murmur in Anderson's ear, helping ease his body slowly onto the ground rather than suffer the indignity of a wholesale collapse. "The newly-turned are terrible at keeping track of the sunrise."
Anderson jerked faintly, an inarticulate sound of anger or protest or both stuttering faintly in his chest.
"I will find a place where the local priest won't trip over you," Alucard promised, shifting to look him in the eye. Anderson's glare was fearsome as ever, but there was something in his gaze, a shadow behind the creeping stupor of daylight sleep. Not resignation, perhaps, but… surrender. Perhaps even, if one looked at it in a certain light, trust. "And I will be there when you awake. Then, perhaps, we will settle things. And if you truly wish it…"
Alucard stroked the priest's unbeating heart.
"I will take your heart myself, and give you peace."
After all, he owed his beloved enemy no less than that.