Chapter Text
Chapter 1
You're Invited!
In a dimly lit dining room, in a secret location, sat a portly, blonde man at the head of a long table. Wild and rousing classical music echoed throughout the room from a record player of such exquisite quality and age that it would make any appraiser faint.
Humming along to the music, the man grinned as he cut into the succulent roast before him. He lifted a decadent forkful of meat, dripping with sauce, into his mouth and chewed. “Ah! Fantastic!”
A silent figure slid out from the shadows, a soldier, carrying a bottle of wine. The red eyed man poured more bloodred wine into the dining man’s glass, then departed back to his shadowy corner with a bow. It was only a few moments later that there was a polite knock at the door.
“Oh! Waiter! Get the door please. My friend has arrived!”
The soldier-turned-waiter obliged without a word, opening the doors for a lanky, tall, and peculiar man fidgeting with the folders he held under his arm.
Major dabbed the corners of his mouth with the edge of the napkin tucked under his collar. “Herr Doctor! “He laughed and beckoned his comrade to join him. “Come! Don’t stand there like a stranger, my friend! The cooks have been quite exceptional tonight! Come! Come sit with me!”
“You’re so generous Herr Major!” Doc bowed then did exactly as he was asked, walking over briskly to the seat prepared for him. He was flustered, even though there was no reason to be. The two men were thick as thieves, but the doctor was a perpetually anxious man.
“A dinner is a small price to pay if it means I get to hear about your latest project idea. I do love your experiments!”
“A-ah! Thank you.” A faint blush bloomed on the doctor’s cheeks. “I’m excited to start. You see, I’ve been considering the fact that-“
The Major held up a hand to stop the doctor from continuing. “Try the pork loin first. Drink some of the wine. You are a dinner guest after all, and the night is young.”
Doc set his folders aside and fiddled with his glasses. “Excuse me, I got ahead of myself.”
The soldier from before returned to pour Doc a fresh glass of wine and the two men ate. Major led the light conversation, keeping Doc from getting too distracted by his project idea. Doc never ate enough. Major always considered it a shame, one of life’s greatest delights was food and eating. To live is to eat. To live is to kill. To live is to kill and then eat what you killed. What an amazing cycle!
When Major was satisfied by the number of bites Doc had taken, he gave him the floor.
“So, this project of yours…”
Doc’s eyes lit up. “Yes my Major!” He cleared his throat and retrieved two folders. One was significantly thicker than the other.
“See these folders? This one.” Doc prodded the thicker folder with a long, bony finger. “This is just some of the information I have been able to gather on Alucard and the nature of his vampirism. We have been very successful on that front, as you can plainly see, but, in this one.” He lifted his finger and jammed it down hard on the thin folder. “Is all we’ve managed to get about regenerators.”
“Oh-ho! That isn’t much!”
“Exactly! There’s hardly any accessible information out there! And the Vatican keeps everything so tightly hidden, I’ve had no luck sending spies to infiltrate. They always get caught!”
“The Vatican has had centuries to perfect its secrecy.” The Major grinned, swirling his wine leisurely. “You have to admire it.”
“It’s obnoxious.” Doc grimaced, angrily looking through his bare-bones regenerator folder.
Major chuckled. “Why? Have vampires become boring to you?”
“No! I, it’s merely annoying.” He chewed on his finger. “I see their paladin in action and it frustrates me that I barely know anything about the process or even the true extent of his abilities.”
“He is of little importance. Alucard is what I’m after. The Vatican’s paladin is no real threat to us or our plan.”
“I agree but, I want to study him! Who knows what other chance I’ll get!”
“Ah. I see. You’ve been overcome with an unbearable curiosity is that it? This has nothing to do with the success of our plan and more about your own obsession. I love it! Let’s do it!”
“Herr Major! I haven’t even told you what I plan to do!”
“I assume you wish to capture him somehow?”
“Well yes but-“
“Then I approve it. It will be fun! It’s been boring around here. What do you need? Soldiers? Weapons?”
Doc was taken completely off guard. “Herr Major! Thank you! I will not need those though. I have already worked out a fun little scheme!”
“Oooo! Yes, tell me!” Major leaned in, chin resting on his hands.
Doc opened up another folder. Inside were the profiles of different people Millennium had gotten to work for them by giving them the gift of vampirism. They had vampires all around the world, just waiting to follow their orders.
“In the northern reaches of Montana, there’s a rather impressive militia group. Their leader recently accepted our gift, ah, here he is. Buck Hardstaff.”
Dok pulled out the profile sheet of the man in question. Thick neck, broad shoulders, black hair buzzed down short, and the most glaring feature, an iron cross tattooed on the right side of his face.
Major snorted. “Buck Hardstaff. Funny little name. Ja, I remember him. Dok, do you really want to trust this operation with neo-Nazis? They are cosplayers compared to us.”
“I agree but they make useful idiots.”
“Useful idiots are good, but I doubt they’ll be able to survive the paladin.”
Dok grinned. “Ja, it is highly unlikely, but I don’t need them to survive, I just need them to set the trap.”
Dok offered Major another set of papers that outlined his plan. “You see, this group is positioned in a remote, hard to access location. This will isolate the paladin and delay any rescue attempts. They have the manpower and facilities to hold him until we can pick him up, and even if the whole operation is a failure we won’t suffer any losses to our core force. Low risk, high reward.”
“Mmm, very intriguing idea. I still doubt they’ll be able to subdue him-oh! Wait a moment! I’m just seeing it.” Major chuckled and picked up the paper to study it closer. “Oh Dok, haha! How clever!”
“You think so?” Dok was nervous, hoping that Major would continue approving of the operation. “I have no proper regenerator subjects to test it on but if my theory is correct, this technique will paralyze the paladin’s abilities.”
“And the cosplayers? Will they be able to utilize it effectively?”
“I have already arranged the logistics. They will be fully prepared to carry out the operation. Whether or not they succeed…” Dok shrugged. “But if they do.”
“We’ll be in possession of the Vatican’s greatest innovation.”
A wide, toothy smile spread over the Major’s face. He laughed, quietly at first, then growing into a joyous racket.
“I love it!” He clapped his hands together. “What fun! I am eager to start. But first, we will need to draw him into our trap.”
“Herr Major, I have already planned out the perfect bait.”
Anderson was hiding.
He was sure that Maxwell had people looking for him. He had been holed up on the roof of one of the Vatican office buildings for a few hours now, trying to figure out the best things to say and do to appease his boss. Obviously, he hadn’t had any good ideas, so he sat on the cold roof tiles, watching the gloomy city skyline. A cold wind was blowing, stinging his face with icy blasts. A normal man would have retreated inside after only a few minutes on a day like this, but Anderson’s regenerator body produced heat like a furnace. The cold didn’t bother him much.
The boredom, on the other hand, certainly did.
“Father Anderson!”
“Ach, shite.”
He turned his head to see a blonde head poking up through the roof tiles. A roof access. Damn. He should have recognized that.
“Father! Thank goodness I found you!”
It was Timothy. A sweet, agreeable lad that served as one of Maxwell’s assistants. Poor thing was shivering as he carefully climbed up onto the roof.
“Chief has been demanding your presence for hours now!”
“Aye, Ah know.” He sighed and got to his feet. “He must have put you through hell. Sorry about that.”
Resigned to his fate, Anderson followed Timothy back down into the building, feeling like a convict being led to his execution.
“Why were you up there anyways Father?” Timothy asked once they were back in the halls.
“Just enjoying the beautiful day.”
Timothy nodded quietly. The two men walked quietly for a long minute.
“It’s because you wrecked his new car, isn’t it?”
“Yep.”
“That’s fair. I would hide too if I did that.”
The halls were relatively quiet, but the closer they got to Maxwell’s office the busier it became. Busier than it usually was. It made Anderson suddenly very alert.
“Something has happened.”
“Timothy! Get in here!” Shouted a man running past before he disappeared into Maxwell’s office. “Bring the paladin!”
Anderson forgot all about the car and rushed inside.
It was a flurry of activity inside the spacious office. Maxwell, sitting at this desk, had a contingent of assistants flanking him and a stack of papers in front. The TV was turned on and loudly playing an American news segment, creating a terrible cacophony.
“Good, you’re here.” Maxwell said to Anderson without looking up. He stretched out his right hand towards Anderson, his Bishop’s ring prominent. Anderson, dutifully, approached the desk and took Enrico’s hand in his. He leaned over and placed a kiss on Maxwell’s holy mark of office. In a way imperceptible to everyone else in the room, Anderson rubbed his thumb along the Maxwell’s palm.
Maxwell’s lips twitched up into a fleetingly brief smile before going back to business.
“Sit.” He motioned to a nearby chair then snapped his fingers at an assistant. “Cigarette. Father, would you like one?”
“Aye, thank you Chief.” Anderson said as he sat down.
An assistant opened a lacquer box and gave the Chief a cigarette, then scurried over to Anderson to give him one as well. Maxwell placed his in his lips and waited. Five assistants all flipped their lighters open and jostled to each other for the privilege of setting Maxwell’s drug of choice aflame.
“Mm. Grazie.” He took a deep, languid inhale, then let it out in a slow steady stream. “You, you, and you.” He pointed to three of the assistants, including Timothy and the man who had won the lighter race. “Stay. The rest of you are on standby.”
The group sadly shuffled out past Anderson, who had lit his own cigarette, and since then had been fixated on the screen.
“Maxwell, what the hell happened?” News footage was showing an entire town burned to the ground. Dark streaks of carbon spattered the snowy earth as the ruins continued to smolder. There were bodies, blurred out for broadcast, but that didn’t hide from Anderson’s eyes that they were small bodies; child sized. There was frozen blood everywhere, as if beasts had ripped and splattered their victims in a frenzy. What really made Anderson’s blood boil was the last shot. A swastika, drawn in blood, in the middle of the charred town chapel.
“You would know if you hadn’t been hiding.” Maxwell leaned back in his chair, puffing away at his cigarette. “Maze, Montana. A remote town in the northern reaches of that forsaken land. It started as a place for companies who employ illegal migrant workers to dump them out of sight until they needed them. As such, the entire town is comprised of Mexican nationals, primarily Catholic of course. A priest by the name of Father Dean was granted permission to found a chapel there to administer to this flock of good people, so far from their homes. He really did a good job improving that place, made it into a proper town.”
One of the assistants walked over to Anderson and handed him a manilla folder. He opened it, starting at the page with Father Dean’s profile. A round-faced, jovial looking man stood there smiling holding a couple of town children in his arms.
“The place wasn’t even incorporated before he came.”
Anderson was fixated on the picture. “He’s dead, isn’t he? Along with everyone else.”
“No, that’s what’s concerning me. He’s missing, along with every other adult in the town. The only bodies left were, well, children.” Enrico motioned back to the news, which was repeating more footage of blurred small corpses.
Realization dawned on the paladin. “The virgins…There are vampires out in Montana?”
“Bizarre isn’t it? But that’s what I suspect. Turn up the volume Timothy.”
Timothy rushed to pick up the remote and raised the volume. Two news talking heads were debating their theories about the perpetrators.
“-look what was drawn in blood! It’s obviously the Montana Dawn! They’re notorious in that region, yet the government hasn’t done anything about them! This could all have been prevented if our governor actually cared!”
“Now now hold on, don’t, don’t go blaming our good governor on this! This is a complicated issue, and we don’t even know for certain that it was them! This could be a trick to pass the blame on an easy target.”
Maxwell scoffed. “Alright, enough of this. This is actually less helpful than I thought it would be.”
Timothy turned it off. The two other assistants began setting up a projector screen.”
“The Montana Dawn is a large, organized, well-funded neo-Nazi militia located in those northern wastes. The Americans have been loathe to deal with them, both because of fear of being accused of government overreach, and because, let’s be honest with ourselves, there are plenty of like-minded individuals in positions of power who relish having these vile brutes carry out activities that they wish they could do themselves.”
The lights were flipped off and the projector on. A man with an iron cross tattoo on his face glared out at them.
“Their leader, in all his trashy glory. Buck Hardstaff, and before you ask yes, that is his legal name, we checked. A pathetic bastard who fancies himself a savior of the white race. Due to his affiliation, I suspect that he and his group have been in contact with Millennium, giving them access to the artificial vampire technology we’ve been watching slowly appear all over the world.”
“That’s a stupid fucking name.” Anderson growled, staring at the man’s face. He etched his features in his mind, memorizing his prey target. “He won’t be so smug when Ah cut his hardstaff off at the stem.”
Maxwell chuckled. “Yes, I imagine he’ll scream very nicely as well. Self-proclaimed hard men like him always do.”
The next series of images were of an extensive compound. Tall watchtowers, searchlights, gun turrets placed along the tall outer walls, and razor wire fencing around the entire perimeter, and two ridiculously large flags sticking out from the middle. One, the traditional American flag, and the other a bastardized Montana state flag, with the Black Sun symbol in the middle instead of the original design.
“Your mission is three-fold. One, you are to confirm the presence of Father Dean and the other missing members of his flock. If any are alive and human you must see to it that they survive. If they are ghouls, give them a merciful death. Two, kill anyone who tries to interfere with your mission. Three, I want captives for questioning. If possible, please capture their leader instead of killing him outright. If that proves impossible, at least save us a couple of lieutenants. I want to confirm their relationship with Millennium and get possible leads on other groups and agents they may know about.”
“Yer trusting me with taking captives?” Anderson chuckled. “Ye should send another team fer that.”
“I am trusting you to do this because you’re the best man for the job. We’re dealing with an unknown number of vampires in an extremely hostile environment. The weather is calling for continued snow storms and potential blizzards in that region for the foreseeable future, and you notoriously are resistant to extreme cold. I am not risking a whole squad of Iscariots for these shit-brained yokels when you are capable enough to deal with it alone.”
“Fair enough. More for me. When am Ah being sent out?”
“Today.”
Timothy brought over a thick sealed manila envelope to Anderson.
“All the documentation and information you’ll need are in there. You’ll be flown over to Montana on our private line, then given this-“
The next image was of a large, rugged looking snowmobile.
“-to get you through the snow. It will be located at a small base camp we have started setting up 80 miles east. All the gear you need will be prepared and loaded for you so all you need to do is get on and ride. You are to go straight to the compound, execute your mission, then radio me. I will be coming to the camp after you’ve already left for the Montana Dawn compound. I still have a few meetings with the Americans, to obtain official authorization to take control of the situation.”
Anderson laughed. “Haven’t done that yet?”
“Easier to ask forgiveness than permission. Besides, they don’t give a shit. A bunch of illegals get murdered and they celebrate. I’ve already gone ahead and started on-the-ground logistics.”
A map of the entire area was shown on screen, with lines and arrows showing the planned movements of their different forces.
“Backup will be waiting at the base camp there, circled in blue. Once you have neutralized the enemy compound they will meet up with you to help transport the captives. If there are any civilian survivors that need aid we will be equipped to deal with that as well. On the rare chance that you do find yourself needing help or rescue, do NOT hesitate to tell me, do NOT let your pride get to your head.”
“Yer being silly, Ah won’t need help.”
Enrico shot Anderson a harsh glare. “Anderson, while this may seem a simple mission, there are still unknowns I can’t prepare for. You will be isolated, in shifting dangerous weather, dealing with vampires. Go straight to the compound, execute your mission, radio me, return. No detours.”
“Got it.” Anderson took one last drag of his cigarette and jammed it straight down into a crystal ashtray. He got up and rolled his shoulders, body already aching for a fight. “Chief Maxwell.” He walked over to Enrico’s desk, his heavy boots clomping along the tile floor. “Ah assure ye, in the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ, Ah will bring the righteous wrath of God down like ae storm and rip these freaks to shreds. Their cries of woe and pain will rise up above the swirling winds, carrying their screams back to your ears.”
“Oh?” The lit cigarette hanging from Maxwell’s lips sent a thin trail of smoke snaking up past his brilliant violet eyes. “Will they? Will I hear them scream for forgiveness? For mercy?”
Maxwell reached out a hand for Anderson to take and stood up. Their eyes were locked on one another, lost in the building thrill of revenge and fantasies of righteous bloodshed.
“Ye’ll hear them, Bishop. Ah’ll make them suffer for every man woman and child they have killed. Ah will make the wolves cry blood for every lamb of our flock they slaughtered.”
“Good! Very good!” Maxwell started to laugh, manic and wild, and his dear paladin joined in. The assistants were not afraid, they all smiled, all of them also eager for Sword Dancer Anderson to descend once more.
“Go with our Lord Father Anderson! In the name of Jesus Christ! Amen!”
“AMEN!”
The Vatican jet had safely reached cruising altitude in the winter atmosphere. Anderson was sitting pretty in the spacious interior. He didn’t always get to fly private; it depended on the mission, so he was quite enjoying being able to sit in a huge plush chair, stretch all the way out, and imbibe an inhuman amount of scotch as he daydreamed about killing. His only other company besides the pilots and the 2 flight attendants were gear and supplies for the mission.
That, and the one envelope he had not yet opened.
It was nestled between the official mission documents that Maxwell had given him. A smooth cream envelope, with Maxwell’s personal seal, not the seal of Iscariot. The paper smelled faintly of the Bishop’s cologne. This was a personal missive; one Anderson knew to wait until he was well and alone to open.
He looked around one last time to make sure he was safe before eagerly tearing the top open. It was a letter on Maxwell’s stationary, written in his flowing, gorgeous hand.
“Dearest Alexander,
I have not forgotten about my car-”
“Fuck.” Anderson sighed, his stomach dropping. “Really hoped you had...” He muttered, taking a deep breath to brace himself.
“-but these current events take priority. I know you loathe having to restrain yourself to take prisoners alive so I’m going to offer you a fun little incentive. Bring me the leader and I will consider all of this nasty business forgotten. If you don’t, I am personally dragging you to whatever dealership I desire and I will make you buy me whatever model my heart fancies. Maybe that will teach you not to take joy rides with the recruits.
Good luck darling,
Your beloved Lilla~”
“Father?”
Anderson jumped and swiftly tucked the letter away. A flight attendant was looking at him with concern on his face.
“Are you alright? You look pale.”
“No, Ah’m fine, hey, can ye do me ae favor and just, bring me ae whole bottle of scotch? Ah’m going to need it.”