Chapter Text
The clocks in London had stopped.
Big Ben, of course, had been a casualty of the very first volley of Millennium's V2s, shattered and burned by an exploding rocket. Many other famous churches and their towers had suffered the same, as had every monument and tourist attraction worth the name. The few belltowers that had remained did not ring the hours: the inhabitants were too focused on hospital and refugee work to bother wasting time on yanking a rope.
The infrastructure of the city had been damaged beyond repair in places, and the power grid was either largely inoperable, in heavy use for aforementioned hospital work, or under repair. It was even odds whether or not an outlet would work, so there were not even digital clocks to mark the hours.
It lent a nightmarish quality to an already-hellish situation. The cold September air nipped at his cheeks and chilled his fingers as Father Alexander Anderson —perhaps not a priest for very much longer— scoured the city for any lingering undead. Unpleasant as it was, he welcomed the chill: it was a marked difference to the sprawling molten pain in his chest, which sent seams of embers through his veins with every pulse.
He tried to ignore it. There was a lot he was trying to ignore, as of the past few days.
One of those points of ignorance was the damned vampire loping along behind him, silent except for the occasional bellowing reports of his guns as he, too, picked off stragglers. Alexander would not have expected the Hellsing woman to let him roam free unsupervised even under normal circumstances, and these were anything but normal: her city shattered and burned, her people slaughtered, and what seemed like damn near her entire organization put to the torch.
Sir Integra Hellsing remained unbent, undaunted by the challenge, and met all her problems with the same ruthless efficiency. For his chivalry in guarding her in London, she allowed Alexander to remain. For their part in destroying her city, almost all the rest of the Vatican's forces were commanded to retreat. For the sake of allowing her pet full range of power, she had set her collection of disparate scientists to detangling the anomaly that had resulted from-
Alexander twitched, trying not to shudder. For all the searing pain that seamed his chest in spiteful embers, there was a needle-point of cold buried in his heart, a ghostly echo of the Nail with a chill so intense it stung. That piercing icicle sensation never wavered, never varied, and only intensified the painful feverish heat spreading through the rest of his chest.
Fucking Alucard. Why couldn't the vampire just let him die?
Alexander exhaled sharply under his breath, a half-scoff that went unremarked from his silent bloody shadow. He knew why. To be a vampire meant refusing to let go of things: it was very nearly a hallmark of their species. It didn't matter whether the vampire hated or loved him —he was Alucard's nemesis, and so the vampire would cling to him with every vicious, spiteful little burr the vampire was capable of hooking into him.
He wished it hadn't been the Nail. God Almighty (if God still listened to the prayers of a thing like… whatever he had become) he wished it hadn't been the Nail. Alexander would have almost preferred vampirism —at least that was straightforward. He had become damned, and so must destroy himself. Not whatever bizarre half-damned miracle that had overtaken-
Blasphemy.
Alexander turned himself to his nightmarish work, hunting through the charred corpse of London for any undead maggots, but even that was no easy distraction. Every time his blades cleaved a ghoul, he would remember the screaming, the bloody hands seizing still-living flesh in an iron grip, the panic and terror and betrayal in wide purple eyes-
"Teacher! Teacher!"
Maxwell should not have died like that. He should have known better than to plead for mercy, should have faced his death with the calm stoicism of any Iscariot, of any man of faith. But if he had known better, he would never have taken the path that led to an execution under Alexander's blades, would he?
If he had taught him better-
No.
What was done had been done and it was not his fault that Enrico Maxwell was such a foolish, stupid boy. Some children simply refused to learn. He had seen it before. He had raised many children at that orphanage and not all children had come to him because their parents were simply dead. He did his best to tend to them, to heal them, to raise them in the charity and mercy of the Lord, but sometimes children who had been broken simply did not heal right.
Too often, those broken souls found Iscariot, and there they found healing of the sort Alexander could not give them. He gave them a home: Iscariot gave them a purpose and something to die for.
There really wasn't much competition.
Maxwell had been one such foundling, and Alexander had hoped that Iscariot would steady him —and as Maxwell climbed the ranks, that the responsibility for others would bring him out of that defensive shell he had deliberately calcified around himself as a youngster. If nothing else, the political necessities of his increasingly high position would force him to cooperate others far more than he had as a boy.
"I need no friends. I need no companions. I need no father or mother! Teacher. Father Anderson. I will become great. I will. I will become great, and look down on all who have wronged me!"
It was a childish promise filled with childish rage and Maxwell should not have listened to it as he grew older. Alexander had thought that he hadn't: that Maxwell had folded that desire up and tucked it away along with all his other outgrown clothes and thoughts and hopes and dreams as he moved from childhood into adulthood. Instead, that wish had clung to him and festered.
Alexander was not a mind-reader. How could he have known? (He should have known.)
Killing monsters brought no peace. With the holocaust of fire that had cleansed Alucard's familiars, it was unlikely that anything had happened to Maxwell's corpse, but Alexander still dreaded finding a face he knew in every nest of ghouls he came across. He avoided that section of London for a reason.
Cowardice, perhaps. But he had killed Maxwell once already, and he was so very, very tired.
News from Iscariot brought him no peace. His objections and anger as the extent of Maxwell's hubris had become clear were well-remembered, and so was his final message to Heinkel. Alexander did not know if they had found the crime scene and he did not want to know. Circumstantial evidence and Sir Hellsing's protection of him painted a damning enough picture.
He did not particularly care that he had been cut off from the Vatican's communications. He would have done the same, had the situation been reversed. He had killed an archbishop.
He had killed his-
Heinkel was fine. Yumie was on the mend, or last he had heard. Out of all the Vatican's forces in London, Iscariot had weathered the apocalyptic unleashing of Alucard's familiars and the earlier onslaught of Millennium the best —no surprise there, really. They were trained to combat monsters, and the rest of the Ninth Crusade had been playing catch-up.
The casualties were still… appalling, last he had heard. Well over 90%, and that number was expected to climb as people succumbed to their wounds or further combat in the cleansing of outlying areas. Civilian casualties were just as gruesome, and likewise expected to worsen as the situation went on. Of the 2,000 crusaders who had come to reclaim England, less than a hundred would make their return to the Vatican. The civilian death toll, last he had heard, had already crossed into the second million.
There was so much, and all of it bad, that he could scarcely find solace in the one thing he had always been good at. It had become his nightly routine to tear through the hordes of ghouls —and occasional vampire— until he could find no more, and then trudge back to the hotel room he had commandeered.
For all her efforts in protecting him from political reprisal, he was not allowed in the Hellsing Manor; not yet, not now. Not when the current stage of investigation involved peeling apart and analyzing the seals that kept Alucard bound to the Hellsing family.
So Alexander had been politely banished to the outlying suburbs of London with her vampire in tow, with Alucard ordered to stay at his side unless commanded otherwise. Alexander was not interested in issuing commands to the vampire. Alexander was not interested in acknowledging the vampire at all.
For once in his miserable misbegotten life, Alucard seemed to respect that, trailing along silently as Alexander sought to bury his feelings in combat —and then, when that failed, to trudge back to the hotel to try and muffle them in sleep. The vampire was silent as he washed the blood and ash off, silent when he fell into bed, silent when Alexander closed his eyes in defiance of all safety.
Alexander could still feel his judgement.
He ignored that stare, but sleep did not come easy for him. Not anymore. Part of his efforts to clear the streets and tunnels of undead was simply an effort to wear himself out until his body, at least, could sleep. The rattling spin of his mind would cease whether he wanted it to or not, if he were exhausted enough.
It was still hard. His chest burned, pain crawling through his nerves and arteries, and even if he shoved away the chilling sensations of holy power and vampiric blood fighting for dominance in his veins, relaxing his mind into unconsciousness was still difficult when it felt like someone had cracked a Molotov cocktail open on his chest.
Nonetheless, Alexander closed his twitching eyelids and steadied his ragged breathing, forcing his body into compliance muscle by muscle. He would sleep, and if it was a restless sleep, a haunted sleep, a sleep plagued by nightmares and terrifying sensations, then at least it would still be sleep. He could recover a particle of strength, and give his mind a sliver of rest. He kept that goal uppermost in mind as he gradually drifted off into an uneasy slumber, sensing more than seeing Alucard wander off to stare out the window.
He couldn't breathe. The air would not come, his chest would not stir, and Alexander desperately wanted to claw at his throat, but his hands would not move, either. They were loose and ready at his sides as he watched himself from a higher vantagepoint across a shattered battlefield, across a moaning field of corpses, seeing a half-kneeling wreck of shredded meat and bone, bloodied, exhausted, gasping for breath. His green eyes burned.
Excitement fluttered through his chest, a savage and strange thrill unlike any he had ever felt, and he wanted to reach out, to pull himself closer, to gorge until he was blind and deaf with sheer satiation. Here the man was, held together by a few threads of muscle, quaking, wrecked, pushed past all mortal endurance, and yet still he stood, he fought, as though he could drag his tattered carcass across the battlefield and take the vampire's head through sheer adamantine will-
The Nail, the Nail, that holyblesseddamned Nail, held aloft, held high, and this was not how it was supposed to go at all, this was not right, this was blasphemy, how could his enemy betray him so, how could his enemy betray himself so, and he was lunging forward to desperately clutch that shard of miracle from his beloved nemesis but it sank into his own palm instead and it burned-
Everything was cold and dead and still as he clutched at that dying brand, spitting curses, pleas, cries of condemnation as that proud head lolled and those burning eyes flickered. He was locked in a stone tomb seeing light slip away under the far door and how dare the priest do this to him, how dare he abandon everything, the flames rising all around could not warm him if this fire was gone from his life-
His mind shied from it —these memories seen through the wrong eyes and the wrong body— and his sense of wrongness took him to the Hellsing estate. He remembered this: a chained dog waiting in a cell, a rabid mutt who had bitten once too often, too wrong, waiting for his judgement. He could hear it, thundering in shouted proclamations down the hall, a babble of heated voices picking apart who he was and what he had done- what they had done-
His judgement didn't come from a source he expected. Salvation did not come as he expected: the Hellsing woman swept into his stone cell with all the grace of the queen she served, eyeing him with a glare that was half its usual force: oh, her eyes were as strong as ever, but one was covered with a bloodied compression tape. Gone, or so he had heard.
"We will deal with his place in Iscariot and his punishment for what he did in London after we discern just what the hell that relic did to him and Alucard, and not one moment before. Or do you want to leave it a mystery and inadvertently execute another messiah?"
He flinched from that, too. He was no messiah, nothing like one, no savior-
(Just before the lances hit, Maxwell was in tears. He realized had never seen the proud boy cry, before. He never would again.)
That thought was worse, and he turned his face from it, recalling instead how he had got to that cell, the stunned murmurs and ashen incomprehension on every face as he was vivisected for their understanding, baring his flesh for their study as they struggled to understand what their brief puncture of the Nail had done to him. They pried with needles, with magic, with techniques both familiar and strange, and that was an awfulness, too.
Alexander had nowhere to turn for comfort, no anchor, for those memories led to older, darker things, colder basements where worse things had been inflicted on his shivering flesh, paying the price scream by scream for the invulnerability that was so much a part of him now, clenching his hands around the bars of his bedframe and his teeth on the strap wedged between his jaws to keep from biting through his tongue, praying with every cell of him to just survive-
Home was no comfort, for that inevitably reminded him of the children, of what he had done to them and asked of them and how he had led one in particular down the path of his own damnation: he had thought he was Abraham, but God sent no ram for his Isaac, and he had to become the butcher himself-
There was no refuge, nothing to hide him from the scalding memories, no remorse for the endless torrent of sins. He was stripped and laid bare, a bloodied framework of dripping bones that cried soundlessly for a peace that would never come, for there was nothing but the enormity of his crimes, forever-
Alexander's eyes snapped open, and he very nearly recoiled against the bedspread when he saw the vampire leaning over him, staring unblinkingly at his face. Evidently Alucard had grown bored sometime through the night, and found watching him more interesting.
"Interesting dreams," the vampire commented.
Alexander punched him in the face on reflex.
"Fucking —don't stand over me like that!" he snarled as Alucard was actually thrown backwards several feet by the force of it, trying to calm the instinctive racing of his heart.
"I wouldn't have to if I had some form of entertainment," the vampire commented when he steadied his posture, licking away from blood from where his lip had been cut open on a fang. "Would you prefer it if I spent my time watching you sleep?"
Alexander sneered silently, glaring at him. The vampire had been watching him sleep —just not quite in the same sense that he meant now. Looming over him so closely just meant Alucard had wanted proximity in order to rummage around in his mind, which was a much more overt intrusion.
Alucard smirked at his glare, knowing it was largely impotent.
"All this could've been avoided if you gave me leave to walk around while you slept," he suggested with a shrug.
"And wake up to the screams of the dying and corpses dancing in the street," Alexander muttered sourly, reaching over to the nightstand to fetch his glasses, sliding them back over his nose with absentminded efficiency as he sat back up.
The annoyance burning in his chest flared sharply, even though Alucard hadn't done anything but silently clench his fist.
"I think there's been enough of that already," the vampire said, expression oddly blank. Then he tilted his head and smiled. "You wound me, Judas Priest. Are you saying that I wouldn't be able to resist the temptation of warm human blood?"
Alexander glared at him with disfavor as he swung his feet out onto the ground.
"Are you saying you would?"
"I haven't bitten you yet, have I?" Alucard replied with a smirk, which widened when Alexander instinctively felt his neck.
Quicker than thought, he tossed a bayonet at the vampire's head: Alucard stepped aside and caught the blade before it could skewer his eyeball, but Alexander felt confident his feelings on that expression had been demonstrated and understood.
"Really, I'm downright shocked that you have such a low opinion of me," the vampire drawled, dropping the blade. "Even fledglings can control their bloodthirst —and my Master would be most displeased with me if I started a massacre. If you don't want me rummaging around in your dreams, give me something to do while you sleep… or try to, anyways."
Alexander bared his teeth. "That's your fault."
"Cowards that cast aside their humanity are punished," Alucard said with an abrupt cutting edge. The vampire's voice built momentum as he went on, until he was almost snarling himself. "You decided to use the Nail, you decided that the entreaties of your comrades weren't listening to, and you decided, like a petulant child, that besting me was worth more than your humanity. I tried to stop you."
That was more than he could stand, even in this state. Alexander shot to his feet, curling his hands around the welcome solidity of his bayonet hilts. Everything else was changed, burning down around his ears, or both, but this, at least, was the same. Steel still cut the way it always had, and he still fought with his old skill. Fury, bloodlust, wrath —all these were comfortable and familiar emotions, better and safer than what he was otherwise forced to contemplate.
"Say that again, vampire," he growled.
"Gladly." Alucard stepped forward, meeting him glare for glare. "You are a coward, who abandoned the people who relied on you, because you wanted power, and now you are suffering under divine punishment for your sins. Everything you feel now is your fault."
Alexander clawed entire new fistfuls of bayonets into existence with a roar, hurling all of them at the vampire with enough force to puncture steel. If he turned the sneering abomination into a tattered piece of meat instead, all the better. He could not stand to hear such things —not from Alucard, of all people. The truth of those words did not matter at all compared to the venomous sting of Alucard being the one to say them.
Rather than meet the fight he was clearly eager to start, Alucard cocked his head and twisted to one side, allowing the blades to riddle him without a twitch before abruptly puddling into darkness, oozing away to the other bed, and reforming. Alexander lunged after him, taking the upraised hand with a swipe of his bayonet, but the shadows that seized him were not so easy to cut.
They threw him to the other side of the room, and his head rang as it cracked against the cheap-painted wall. Alexander struggled, but great heavy coils of that bloody darkness snared him, holding him in place despite the frantic sweeps of his blades as though he had sunk neck-deep into tar. They stretched like taffy, yielding and sticky, but would not be cut no matter how hard he struggled.
He'd have expected Alucard to gloat, but instead saw, in the dim shadows halfway across the room, the vampire raising a hand to his ear. With great reluctance, Alexander subsided for a moment, glowering warily as the call was accepted and the phone stopped ringing.
"My Master."
Alexander couldn't hear the exact words, but he recognized Sir Integra Hellsing's voice, all the same, and he reluctantly stopped struggling in the hopes of better eavesdropping. Alucard, halfway across the room, looked down at his wrist and regrew the burned hand.
"None."
She said something that sounded like a query, and Alucard's eyes and teeth flashed in the dark as he cast a sly glance in Alexander's direction.
"Alive, unharmed, and most upset with my presence," he answered, apparently in response to a question about the priest's wellbeing. Sir Hellsing said something else, and Alucard leered at him. "It'd be concerning if I wasn't, wouldn't you say?"
Petty digs aside, his next words made Alexander's attention sharpen.
"Any progress with our condition?"
Stretching his sense of hearing to its limit, Alexander thought he caught the edge of Sir Hellsing's crisp refusal. His heart sank: even if he couldn't make out all the words, the frustrated tone of her voice did not bode well. Alucard's expression faded from a smirk into a hard line of neutrality, further confirming that guess.
"I suppose, then, that you will be changing tactics," the vampire said after a moment, and the shadows making a halfhearted effort to ward Alexander away faded and shrank into nothing. Warily, Alexander approached a few steps closer, just enough so that he could hear her voice.
"…in order for us to get samples —or for the researchers to tear you apart, whichever helps more."
"I'm saddened and dismayed that you think so little of me, my Master," Alucard replied, tilting his head without looking at Alexander. "One would think you would be more careful with such a cherished family heirloom."
Alexander felt a brief flutter of odd, disconnected amusement. It wasn't that funny of a joke —and he felt personally obligated not to find anything the vampire said or did amusing, just on sheer principle.
"My ancestors' records seem to indicate that being torn apart barely even pains you unless you allow it to," came the faint, distant voice at the other end of the phone, distracting him. "And I highly doubt it will come to that. In any case, return to us with Anderson once morning comes."
"Yes, my Master," the vampire replied promptly.
"And don't torment the priest too much in the meantime."
At that, Alucard only hummed aloud, teasingly uncertain. Alexander did not catch Sir Hellsing's response before the call ended, but he imagined it was not complimentary.
"Our presence is required at the Hellsing estate come morning," the vampire said as he turned to him, flipping the phone shut. "Will you be able to teleport with your Bible pages, or will I need to drag you along behind myself like an overgrown puppy?"
For answer, Alexander snarled at him, summoning another bayonet. His heart —poor abused organ that it was— twinged with excitement as Alucard smiled back, but Alexander didn't think much of the feeling. It was normal to enjoy fighting with the vampire, and if he could not get Alucard to leave him alone, he could at least get him to shut up.
Traveling to the Hellsing estate was unpleasant. Obviously there were no cars available, so Alexander had to follow Alucard using his holy writ —which had a distance limit. He could apply himself to the task multiple times in succession, of course, but that involved visually tracking the seething cauldron of bats that was the vampire's apparent preferred mode of long-distance travel, then aiming to arrive just behind it.
And then doing that a half-dozen more times, trying not to leap too far ahead or fall too far behind that constant stream of movement when it was nominally what he was using to orient himself.
It was exhausting.
Then again, Alexander was also personally exhausted himself, as he'd gotten very little sleep after many nights of equally-short sleep. In some ways, he was actually looking forward to their arrival: whatever else may happen or be decided, Sir Hellsing would at least be able to keep the damn vampire off his back long enough for him to pass out somewhere convenient.
He had never actually been to the Hellsing estate before: not while conscious, anyway. The vampire had apparently dumped his smoldering wreck at the feet of the few living human soldiers and told them to deal with it before evidently going to look for his Master, and Alexander had been packed off back to London in a van —which he'd used as a chance to doze.
Everything was at premium, now: sleep, food, water, rest, time. The fact that London's infrastructure had not shattered completely was a testimony to Sir Hellsing's sheer bloody-minded determination, but even she could not run an entire country on her own. Everyone made due with what they could scrape together, keeping things running on hope and spite rather than the tools and technology refined over centuries of industrialization.
Take the estate itself —Alexander had landed outside the gates, because he was not sure what magical defenses were or were not still up and running, but even from a distance the manor was a shelled-out crater of its former self, the lawns burnt black and the earth scorched by chemicals, the windows shattered, the front doors missing in their entirety. No one had bothered any but the most basic repairs, because there was neither time nor resources nor any true need for such a thing.
Not yet, anyway. They were only midway through September, but the season was still inevitably turning, the air growing colder with every night. Soon enough moving all activity down to the basement —which, if unheated, was at least still insulated and largely undamaged— would not be adequate protection against the elements.
The vampire weaving himself back together on the doorstep was not alone as Alexander approached —there was another red-swathed figure standing where the wreckage of the doors had been, except for where Alucard was garish and holly-bright, she was understated and crimson-dark.
"Welcome back, Master!"
The greeting came from Alucard's fledgling —only no, not a fledgling anymore. If the subtle but sharp increase in the power thrumming around her was not enough of a sign, the skeins of blood shadows woven into her no-longer-arm would have sealed the deal. Her smile was worn, but evidently genuine.
It slipped, a little, when those benighted red eyes flicked to him. Alexander was too tired to smile, though he did feel somewhat pleased that she remembered their first encounter. Hopefully the Draculina had had nightmares for weeks, if vampires were even still capable of such things.
Her welcoming expression slipped further as she looked him over, and began to look almost concerned. Alucard caught her expression and leered.
"The priest has had some difficulty sleeping of late," he announced smugly, as though it was not his fucking fault, from beginning to end.
Her eyes flicked back to her former Master, and Alexander had the distinct impression she was as fooled by that statement as the priest. A shade of disapproval entered her gaze, before Seras Victoria shrugged and plastered that disturbingly chipper expression back onto her face.
"That's been going around a bit," she said, ushering them inside like a mere human aide. "Sir Integra was up nearly all night, and she'll be up again already, no doubt. I worry about her."
Alexander blinked as she led them towards the basement, askance at both her audacity in turning her back to a hunter and also her very human chatter. Seras Victoria talked of the remaining Hellsing forces and their difficulty of schedules, their issues with supply lines, and how they and others were coping with the greater London problem, as though he were a Protestant minister stopping by for a cup of tea and not a Catholic zealot who had very nearly succeeded in sending her to her second grave.
It was… bewildering, particularly contrasted against his normal experience with vampires. Even her Master had the decency to treat him like a threat: even she, when she had landed amongst the Iscariot soldiers in London and scattered them away from her mistress, had not been so gawkishly… normal. It was almost unsettling.
She kept it up, though, her friendly facade never showing the tiniest crack even as she brought them down to the sub-basement entrance, and its long, long flight of stairs downwards. There were no lights, because the mansion's power supply was either cut or directed towards vitals only —Alexander couldn't remember. Neither vampire paused as they headed down the steps, but he had to stop and close his eyes for a moment, if only so he didn't trip over his own feet.
"I take it Sir Integra hasn't attempted to send you off to clear out ghouls?" Alucard asked his no-longer-fledgling, voice echoing up from the depths as the darkness swallowed both vampires.
"She tried," she said, and Alexander opened his readjusted eyes in time to see the clot of darkness that had replaced her arm shift, ribbons questing outwards in an unconscious show of irritation or dismay. "I said no —had some of the men take care of it. She needs someone to take care of her here, and I'm not needed out in the field for ghoul cleanup."
There was a faint, barely-perceptible pulse of power at the edge of Alexander's awareness as Alucard turned his head slightly. He did not say anything, but between that ripple and his own experience, Alexander felt fairly sure the two vampires had made a telepathic connection.
His skin crawled. There could be any number of reasons that he sensed that connection now —there was nothing else to block it or distract him, the two vampires were very close, the two vampires were very powerful— but part of him was afraid his increased perception was due to whatever strange connection the Nail of Helena had forged between them. So far there appeared to be no real tie, and he could only pray that that remained the case.
The vampire chuckled, and Seras Victoria flinched. Alexander wondered what the vampire was baiting her with, what venomous barbs he was jabbing into her composure.
"Is there any particular reason you didn't sleep well last night, Father Anderson?" she asked him aloud, directly, in an apparent effort to escape those barbs. He snorted at the fact she even had to ask.
"Ask your bastard of a Master that question."
It was hard to discern details in the unlit gloom, but he saw her turn her head towards Alucard, and he was fairly sure she was frowning.
"Master, Sir Integra did ask you to leave him alone," she scolded him —scolded, like he was a misbehaving child. Alexander was somewhat impressed that her Master did not rip her apart for the audacity.
He did not need to see Alucard's expression —or to possess their ephemeral tie— to know that he was grinning. When the vampire was not already upset, it appeared to be his default expression.
"If I am to be banished from the estate and locked in a featureless room, I demand entertainment," he said as they stepped onto the final landing, glancing over his shoulder at Alexander with —sure enough— another toothy smirk. "It would be your oversight to give me none, so of course I must toy with you to pass the time."
Alexander ground his teeth, praying for patience. He was used to misbehaving children, and none of them infuriated him this badly. Perhaps it was because children were not commonly expected to know better. One would think a 500-year-old vampire would have a modicum of sense and patience —or failing that, a way to entertain himself without wanton bloodshed.
Seras Victoria gave her former Master another scolding look, then glanced back herself.
"I'll pick up something for him to read," she promised Alexander as she led them down the dark, cavernous stone hallway. "So hopefully it won't be so bad, next time."
"Hopefully, I won't have to endure another night in his company," he muttered, and she sighed.
The makeshift labs cobbled together from whatever century-old equipment Hellsing had brought back unpleasant memories, and Alexander was reluctant to stride boldly into the center of the room, filled as it was with bustling scientists. Gallows-eyed, more unshaven than he was himself in some cases, and always with something in hand, even if it was only the stimulants that filled the air with the bitter interwoven reek of nicotine and caffeine.
Sir Hellsing herself was no small contributor, leaning against a far wall and watching the work closely as she lowered her lighter from a fresh cigar. She may have only one remaining eye to her name, but it missed nothing: the second they entered the room, her head turned. That movement stirred the scientists, who followed her gaze to finally notice the subjects of their intense, frantic study, and began to whisper amongst each other.
Sir Hellsing watched the two of them for a moment —only a moment— in a silently study of her own, before she exhaled a long stream of fragrant smoke and pushed away from the wall to join them.
"Alucard. Father Anderson," she said brusquely the moment she reached them. "You said that nothing has changed?"
"Aye."
"Of course, my Master."
That was not good news, but it was not bad news, either. Alexander watched her absorb that, lit cigar smoldering neglected between her fingers, with a decided frown on her face. Behind her, the gathered men and women murmured to each other, sorting theories, dividing possibilities.
"Describe your symptoms once more, then, if you please," Sir Hellsing said at last, a faint weary edge to her voice.
Alexander understood that. It was beyond the most farcical possibility that nothing had resulted from the miracle of having the Nail plunged into his flesh, and still less likely that the inadvertent addition of a vampire's blood into the mix had had no effect, but the more they tested, the less they were able to untangle the problem. Everything kept coming up clean, and paradoxically, the more he heard no change, the more tense he got.
"His damn blood keeps getting seared out of me," Alexander replied promptly, rubbing his chest with a venomous glare at the author of his suffering. "Other than that, though… so far, there doesn't seem to be much different."
"I believe I can feel the priest's pulse in my affected hand," Alucard added, looking at his charred palm and wiggling his fingers. "But as he said, that seems to be the sole effect from the Nail."
This did not appear to be the revelation the researchers were hoping for, and they began to mutter to each other once again. Sir Hellsing, unaffected, lifted her cigar and took another drag as she glanced them over.
She frowned after a moment, and her remaining eye flicked sideways.
"Tell me, why does Father Anderson look exhausted?" Integra asked her vampire, looking and sounding even less impressed than Seras Victoria had been.
"Him," Alexander spat as he stabbed a finger at Alucard, because two could play at this game of petty vindictiveness. "I swear, woman, if you don't control your damn vampire-"
"Alucard was told to behave himself," she replied, pinning her servant with a truly fearsome glare. Alucard merely grinned at her, unabashed.
"I grew bored, my Master," he drawled. "There was nothing in that hotel room to entertain me but the priest, and by your orders, I was not allowed to leave his side while he slumbered."
Sir Hellsing looked irritated, but she did not shriek or shout. She was too clever for that.
"If you can't restrain your childlike need to be entertained in regard to Iscariot's paladin, I'm perfectly capable of sealing you in your old basement cell until this matter is concluded," she said slowly, without breaking eye contact with Alucard, as she removed her cigar and tapped gently to knock some ashes to the floor. "We have quite firmly established that the Hellsing seals have no bearing on the Nail or what it has done to you both, and Seras is more than enough of a guardian for now."
They both looked to the younger vampire, who was politely pretending to ignore this conversation as she stood within arm's reach of Sir Hellsing, watching the scientists with the hawklike intensity and planted feet of a bodyguard. Alexander had to admit, she looked both formidable and loyal.
Alucard appeared to recognize this as well, mouth twitching downwards and shoulders rolling slightly in the vampiric equivalent of an exasperated sigh.
"Very well," he said, as though making a great concession. "I suppose if last night were repeated, the Judas Priest would fall on his nose before he took a dozen steps."
"I think you underestimate my endurance," Anderson bit off, glaring at him. "I'm still fully capable of making you eat your words, vampire."
Alucard grinned at him, sharp and promising, but before they could find out whether or not this stone was too old to absorb blood, the brief research huddle on the other side of the room broke up and one of the leaders approached. Sir Hellsing was the first to react, and her notice quieted the two of them as she nodded at the woman in an old coat —not a labcoat, but one she must have snatched from the rubble of some house to keep herself warm before she was dragged out here.
"Given what we and our Vatican associates have been able to ascertain from the remnants of the Nail, and the symptoms both parties have been affected with…" the woman began, her gaze sliding over two of them for a moment. She coughed and shuffled her papers nervously. "We can assume that whatever effects the divine artifact might have had either already ran their course, or they develop more slowly."
She eyed Alucard with an entirely warranted trepidation.
"The vampire, for example, may have effects that manifest at some sort of catalyst: some sort of fatal blow, perhaps, or further encounters with holy power," the woman said, looking to Sir Hellsing. "The Vatican's Father Anderson is noted already to have quite extensive resistance to vampiric infection, and both parties are male, so it may be possible that the Nail's, er, flame will run its course once the vampire's blood is burned out."
Sir Hellsing took this information in with another drag on her cigar, and exhaled her frustrations out with the smoke.
"In other words, we will have to wait and see," she said, her displeasure subtle but obvious, if one cared to look.
Then again, it did not require much looking: the attack on London and its allied locations had sent shockwaves throughout the world, and it was not just in England that governments felt the pinch. Monsters both mundane and otherwise would be eyeing the tottering pillars of power across the world, eager for a chance to overthrow them. As one of the few responsible for steadying those pillars, and one of the best of those few, Sir Hellsing was not happy to learn of potential quakes in her future.
Still, she kept an admirable lid on it, her gaze cold and calculating and remote. Not like-
No. He wasn't thinking about it.
"I would suggest that our forces collaborate, for the time being," Sir Hellsing said at length, addressing the gathered researchers and scientists. He was grateful for the distraction. "The organization of the Vatican special forces is in shambles right now, and I believe we would both benefit from pooling our resources, in this particular case. Vampire activity will soon be on the rise across the world, if it isn't already, and neither I nor you can afford the loss of our most powerful agents while that happens."
Alexander's folded arms tightened across his chest, but he said nothing as her words caused many in the room to look at him. He had done what was proper, and killed a man who abused God's name for the sake of his own power. No one could say otherwise.
"You can't assume we'll just tamely go along with this!" spluttered a man Alexander vaguely recognized from one of the other divisions, drawing himself up in righteous outrage. "The Vatican would never stoop so low as to-"
"The Vatican has wasted thousands of its most talented soldiers and hitmen on an ultimately futile attack on my city," Sir Hellsing snapped, her voice abruptly cutting sharp and clear as a knife as she stared the man down. "Perhaps cooped up in my mansion, you've forgotten, but I'm sure if you take a jaunt out to London, you can see what's left of them. Choose your next words very carefully, gentlemen, because you've already tried to make war on us once, and you can see where that's gotten you. Any military superiority you once had is gone now."
It was a brutal reminder, but an effective one, particularly when the whole room looked to the reason for that loss, and Alucard grinned an eager, hungry grin that showed every one of his fangs.
Refusing her was impossible, but that did not mean that the gathered men and women would not argue. Indeed, as academics, they knew very little else, and Alexander rolled his eyes as the babble of conflicting opinions began, the two groups of nominal allies instantly splitting into dozens of internal factions as they began to argue about how to cooperate, who should do it, how much, when, what about the expense-
He leaned back against the wall by the door, taking this opportunity to drop into a half-restful doze, which was the closest to true sleep as he could get while standing upright. They would come to an agreement, eventually, whether they wanted to or not: through the revealed extent of Alucard's power, Sir Hellsing now wielded the metaphorical stopping power of a brick through a windscreen, and she was perfectly willing to apply it as and wherever necessary. They may not like it, but they didn't have to like it to accepts facts.
Cooperate, or be annihilated.
It was an easy choice for some, though Alexander personally would not have given in unless it was in a similar such situation, where surviving would mean better protection for those he guarded. He was but a weapon wielded in defense of God's children, and though it was perfectly acceptable to abandon a particular weapon for a different, better one, throwing one's weapon away entirely was stupid.
But that was exactly what defying Sir Hellsing at this point in time would mean: with her vampire, she could clear the board; and no death, no matter how heroic, would be even so much as dust in her eye. Better to obey now, gather their strength, and strike again, differently, later.
That was the inevitable conclusion they would come to, and so Alexander leaned against the wall and dozed, trying to recover a few precious fragments of sleep. He needed food, too: he could probably beg some coffee off the scientists, which would at least hopefully be brewed correctly —it was a mixed chance with Brits, but most dedicated researchers brewed like they were trying to take the varnish off a spoon anyway…
Scavenging a hot meal was practically unheard-of in the week since the attack —unless it involved the application of boiling water to something dried— but he would take anything that was filling at this point, taste or health be damned. Eat, sleep, and cram every hour in-between with clearing out the undead: that was, by and large, the universal schedule of everyone not directly involved in refugee work or diplomacy, both things he was ill-suited for.
Killing monsters was methodical, good work that had a meditative quality, almost. The rhythm of fighting and killing was a soothing counterpoint to the turmoil of the rest of his life, and he would have been entirely content if it could go on forever. It was why he had tried to use the Nail in the first place, damn it all: a weapon could be used and used until the point of destruction and it would not matter nearly so much as using a man…
"The Archbishop Enrico Maxwell is dead," said the same sharp voice from before, and a chill that had nothing to do with temperature flashed through him as Alexander's head jerked up, belatedly refocusing to find the attention of the room centered upon him. "According to information reported by the remaining Iscariot soldiers, Father Anderson was directly responsible."
"Maxwell abandoned God for the pursuit of power," Alexander snapped, and for this he stepped forward, stung into defending himself. He had committed murder, certainly, but… "I did my job."
"You disobeyed direct orders from your superior during an active combat scenario," instantly returned a hard-eyed woman from Matthews. "You practically went rogue, and that was before you murdered the archbishop."
Which was also true. Alexander did not have it in him to flinch, but he looked down, away from the eagle-eyed accusations pressing in from every side.
He did not do things he would regret. He did not. It would have been dishonorable in the extreme to waylay Sir Hellsing in the street, like a mere common criminal: she was a leader, and both she and her organization deserved respect. She may return to her keep and rally her forces, and then and only then they would crush her all the same.
That was the main thing that had kept him from fulfilling Maxwell's orders. Capturing the enemy commander while she was isolated from her forces was tactically a good move, but it left a sour taste in his mouth. It was cowardly. The Hellsing Organization deserved the full might of their respect, and up until Alucard's fatal Level 0, Alexander had truly believed that it didn't matter if they captured her now or captured her later.
With the Ninth Crusade, they would be able to crush Sir Hellsing and every soldier under her command wholesale. Capturing her alone, unguarded, was a distasteful and disgraceful alternative to the death her mettle had earned her. She deserved to die with sword in hand, flanked by those who followed her and facing those she despised —not on the street like an unnamed soldier. Escorting her home did not matter in the long run, because they would sweep back over England and deal with her and her organization properly later.
Alucard, damn him, had torched that possibility as thoroughly as he had the rest of London.
"Saving the Hellsing woman alone was —at the time— grounds for punishment," the Vatican scientist went on, correcting himself hastily in Sir Hellsing's presence. "Even you can't say that your actions afterwards were anything short of inexcusable."
His fists tightened.
I did my job, Alexander wanted to say —but of course, the people from the other Vatican sections would not listen. They did not understand the credos of Iscariot: they were the betrayers, the scapegoats, the apostles who were not apostles. Everything he had ever done since being ordained as such had been a dirty, thankless task, an unpleasant necessity that would damn and darken his soul but still needed doing to protect the rest of God's flock.
Maxwell had abandoned God to serve power. Maxwell had needed to die. Someone would have killed him, even if it had not been Alexander: he had simply been the fastest and closest.
"Are you sure that's wise?" Sir Hellsing said, making him look up. "Past sins aside, Father Anderson is the single most powerful agent the Vatican commands. The Nail does not appear to have done anything which will harm his ability to kill monsters, at least at this stage, and while I cannot say I'm an expert on Vatican disciplinary tactics, I can certainly guess that what you have in mind will leave him unfit for duty for quite some time."
"He killed an archbishop!" the man snarled. "More than that, one he had a hand in raising!"
That made him flinch. Alexander could withstand the weight of his sins, but to have them known, judged, dissected, torn apart so brutally under the cold uncaring eyes of dozens of strangers —enduring that required a much steelier spine than even he possessed.
Thankfully, there appeared to be one already in the room.
"If we're talking of assigning blame," Sir Hellsing replied, slow and pointed, as the faint hint of a smirk played about her lips. "Perhaps we should discuss how the late Father Maxwell screamed that he would quite happily butcher millions. What was the phrase? Ah, yes. 'The only good Protestant is a dead Protestant.' I can't help but imagine the kind of fallout that will occur for your Church if that information is not suppressed."
Alexander was not alone in blanching.
Indeed, that had been a large part of why he had decided the boy had gone too far —it was all very well and good to hate apostates and heretics, but Section XIII was a black ops group for a reason. They worked in the shadows because to publicly acknowledge their work was to open the door for a storm- a hurricane- a veritable Biblical flood of humanitarian complaints. The Catholic Church was meant to be a bastion of charity, mercy, and God's love: Section XIII were meant to be the first defense against anything that threatened that bastion.
All of Iscariot was kept as far from public relations as humanly possible for the exact same reason that one did not set scorpions to guard honeycombs. It was not what they were for.
But in his hubris and his hysteria, Maxwell had bellowed their long-cherished hatred long and loud over a plethora of microphones and speakers, and the survivors of Battle of the London would, indeed, be slow to forget it. They were assassins, not diplomats: Maxwell's feelings —no matter how many within the Church quietly agreed with them— were hardly packaged in language suitable for public consumption.
If Hellsing didn't help suppress them…
Alexander was even less of a politician than Maxwell, but he didn't have to be in order to read the obvious conclusions. Every involved government was working to clamp down on the knowledge of vampires, but even so, the rest of the world could hardly fail to note a simultaneous attack that had blown up a major city and decapitated damn near the entirety of the American government, the last Alexander had heard. People were looking for someone to blame.
The various governments and monster-hunting organizations had been too busy frantically suppressing evidence of the supernatural to announce a public cover story yet, but if Sir Hellsing withdrew that angle of her suppression… if it became widely-known that the Catholic Church had been involved on the London attack…
"Y-you can't just threaten us into acceding your every demand!" blustered that same man, but he was sweating along with everyone else.
Sir Hellsing raised an eyebrow at him, then lifted her cigar to her lips, never breaking eye contact. The whole room hung on her motions as she drew in a slow breath, holding it in her lungs for a moment as she lowered her cigar. She exhaled a long fragrant curl of smoke, and only then, finally, did she speak.
"Can't I?" she asked simply.
Protestant or not, Alexander had to admit that the woman had style.
The scientist she was facing down choked at the sheer brutality of that matter-of-fact statement, and to make matters worse, Alucard gave a low, ominous chuckle. Many of the researchers, unused to the vampire's dreadful proximity, shuffled discretely away from him.
"I'm willing to …publicly overlook… Maxwell's actions in London if the remaining Vatican personnel cooperate with us on the matter of Helena's Nail, and if you overlook Anderson's indiscretions in turn," Sir Hellsing continued, tapping out her ash. "We can sweep this entire matter under the rug by declaring it the result of placing an unstable Iscariot too far up the Vatican hierarchy, and everything that followed afterwards being a result from that mistake, which was corrected with Maxwell's death. We can then move on to dealing with the real issues currently plaguing us, namely the reconstruction of our respective organizations and fending off any monstrous threats that arise in the meantime."
Bent over a barrel as they may be, they would not be scientists if they did not argue. They tried insults first, but that only made Seras Victoria step closer to her mistress, her bloody arm uncoiling as its shimmering tendrils snaked outwards. That convinced them to shut up for all of ten seconds before a new argument about how they were going to concede to her started up.
Attention had drifted away from him again, but Alexander could not bring himself to be grateful. Maxwell had made a mistake: a pricey one, yes, one that might cost him his soul, but it was not…
To be Iscariot was to damn yourself to Purgatory at best — more likely, to cast yourself into Limbo. Alexander knew this. He accepted it. He had accepted it, every day, for every mission, for years. But all of those sins that weighed on his soul were things he had done, or left undone, or failed to do. They were actions he had chosen to take, or chosen not to take. They were his.
But here the stubborn threads of politics were at work, weaving together a narrative where this was all Maxwell's fault, where he was a rotten branch everyone had seen but somehow never gotten around to pruning, where their hands were clean as freshly-fallen snow but his were foul to the bone from the beginning.
It was lies. Alexander would expect nothing less of Protestants, but these were fellow Catholics, men and women who espoused the same ideals —just never as loudly or as foolishly. Heaping excretions upon a dead man so that they would not be questioned themselves, so that by giving him their sins they would remain pure, so they could smooth the whole incident over by pinning all the blame on someone unable to defend himself-
Alexander turned and left with minutes. He seethed as he strode through the darkened corridors, lit only by the occasional camping lantern or battery flashlight. Maxwell had committed his sins and would answer to the Almighty for them, as would Alexander, as would every man: but to condemn a man for something they shared- to know that he was still answerable to these-
The fire in his chest surged. He welcomed the heat burning through his veins, closing his eyes for a moment and wishing it had worked —that he felt nothing but this searing hostility for all that was impure, all that had sinned, all that was wrong with the world. He could sweep it all away if only he had the power-
No. That was wrong. Coveting power for its own sake was a sin in and of itself. Maxwell had-
Alexander sagged against the wall, covering his eyes with his free hand. God, he wished the Nail had worked: his grief was an untold agony thrashing in his chest, quite unlike the holy fire that cooked his veins to ash. It clawed barbs into his lungs, hooked thorns into his heart, bloomed brambles up his throat. Every breath was a stab of new pain, dripping with guilt and defiance mixed.
I did my job. I did the right thing.
"Teacher, save me-!"
"You seem distraught, at such an easy solution," came the vampire's sudden voice, and Alexander's head jerked up. As he snapped around to glare, for one moment, he wished the vampire dead with more intensity than he had ever felt in his entire life.
"Go away," he snarled, driven beyond any worse insult. "Let me get rid of you for at least five damn minutes."
Clinging and needling and mocking and whining about being entertained —he had no obligation to this thing, and it had no obligation to him. It deserved to die, to roast in the nethermost pit, because he wouldn't have to be suffering any of this if not for the vampire. He could be dead, or a maelstrom of God's own holy wrath: instead, he burned and sweated under the weight of his all-too-human limitations.
Rather than retreating, Alucard shrugged.
"You're going to get a guard either way, and they seem to be reassured when it's one that you can't kill," he replied with his usual easy smirk. "After all, who knows what such a disloyal priest might be capable of."
God, could he go one second without something or someone reminding him-
Alexander drew in a deep breath.
"Is this some kind of sick game to you, vampire?" he hissed, his fingers digging into the stone. "Do you enjoy this?"
Alucard didn't care about Maxwell. He had swallowed thousands of priests and pious men with that blackened bloody ocean of his. It was even odds whether or not he even remembered the boy's name, so this —all this— was a transparent effort to twist the knife in Alexander's gut. Sadistic fucking bastard.
"Do I enjoy what, Judas Priest? Mocking you for your failure? Reminding you of your mistakes?" Alucard stepped closer with a toothy grin, his eyes gleaming. "Because I do enjoy that. Very much so."
God, Alexander wanted to kill him. But all those nights of no sleep and poor sleep had taken their toll, and his body had hardly been at its best even before that. The miracle he'd been forcibly party to had stitched together his arm and healed his wounds, but it had also infected him with a spreading contagion of purification that was attempting to burn him alive from the inside-out. As much as he would love to rip the vampire to bloody shreds, he was currently physically incapable of it.
"You're angry," he growled, because even Alucard was not petty enough to do this for no reason. "Why in God's name are you angry at me?"
"Another incredibly foolish question," the vampire said, stepping closer as Alexander pulled himself up with the arm braced against the wall. "I told you not to use the Nail. I begged. Is my example not enough of a deterrent, Judas Priest? Is what I am not enough to make you fear losing your humanity?"
Damn him, but Alexander had almost forgotten the begging, or at least written it off as a hallucination born from the tangled mishmash of memories.
Because this proud, awful creature had, in fact, begged. Alucard had pleaded with him not to do it, eyes unspeakably soft as he stared at Alexander across the carnage of their battlefield, and that had been the worst thing of all.
"No, of course it wasn't," Alucard went on ruthlessly, and there was no softness in his gaze now, no pleading. "You were selfish. You weren't thinking about anything but yourself, were you, Anderson? You thought that anything, anything, would be better than the pain you felt then, and you abandoned every responsibility you ever had, every duty you said you would perform, to escape it."
"Like you give a damn about my duties," Alexander scoffed under his breath, glaring.
Alucard's expression went eerily blank as his hands balled into fists, and Alexander barely repressed the lurch born from a sudden sharp tug in his chest. A cauldron of frustration seethed and bubbled inside him, frothing with indignation and churning with discontent —but it wasn't his emotions, he realized abruptly.
"Your duty was to kill me," Alucard replied, his sudden tonelessness more terrifying than any shouting could ever be. "That was your purpose as a human. That was who you were. You would've charged though hellfire itself if it meant destroying me, because your conviction and your spirit was that strong. That was what made you precious, Anderson."
The hand that had prevented the Nail from impaling his heart shot out, slamming him against the wall as Alucard's eyes burned and his voice abruptly rose.
"And you threw it away," he snarled. "You threw all of that away! And for what? A gambit for power? Desire to wipe away the mistakes of your past? What could possibly be worth what you've done, Anderson?"
"The Nail didn't do much," Alexander argued, trying to ignore the frenzy of feelings building inside him, trying to separate his own feelings out of the morass. There was so much rage, and only some of it his. "I'm still human."
Alucard's lip curled in a brief sneer.
"You know we both don't believe it will stay that way. God's relics are not used lightly."
"So fucking kill me then, monster, and get it over with," Alexander growled, losing patience as he bared his own teeth. If Alucard wanted to knead claws into his mind, to shred Alexander's emotions over the loss of his so-called perfect enemy, then he should just hurry up and finish it. No matter the torture, Alexander would not give in to him, of all people and creatures.
Alucard let go of his shirt just as abruptly as he had grabbed it, the vampire's hand jerking away as though burned.
"You think that will make this any better?" he asked tiredly. "No matter what actions you take now, priest, you can't erase what you've done. You used the Nail. You intended to fall from humanity. Whether or not you succeeded is immaterial. After disappointing me so greatly and betraying your ideals, you think I'll give you the mercy of a quick death?"
"It's not mercy."
Alucard snorted.
"That's a lie and you know it," he sneered. "You're begging to die, priest. They were practically slavering for your execution back there, and not a word of protest or defense out of you. Once again, it seems you've chosen the coward's route, deciding to die rather than face the consequences of your actions, and damn yourself out of some perverse sense of Catholic guilt."
That was not the point. He had done what had needed to be done, no matter how dirty or despicable the work was. He didn't seek fucking accolades for his job, and if the apparatus of the Church decided that what he had done was wrong, if the bench of Cardinals judged his actions of a few nights ago an error, then God's justice would be done. Alexander would not be who he was if he fought that.
"You won't be happy unless you're punished for this, will you?" Alucard continued mercilessly. "You've violated your whole sense of world order, and you won't be content until they discipline you the only way you can understand. It doesn't matter that you followed the philosophy they instilled in you in a way that they taught you, and in a manner they would ordinarily approve of: they deem it a sin, and so you must atone for it, even if deep down, you don't think you've done anything wrong."
"Killing Maxwell was wrong," Alexander said, because that was the shape of justice taking place in the room just down the hall.
"Why?" Alucard asked, standing within arm's reach of him without looking away. "If it was wrong, Anderson, then why did you do it? Why did you quote your dogma as you did?"
"I-"
"Mouth whatever denials you please," Alucard said, not giving him a chance to do so. "We both know you don't mean them. You killed Maxwell because he had deemed himself an enemy of everything he should stand for, and you were taught only one way to deal with enemies of God. Execution."
Alexander closed his eyes. He wished he could close his ears the same, that he would not have to hear this, but he couldn't. Every word dripped acid into his heart. He wished, oh, how he wished he could say Alucard was wrong, that these were nothing but spiteful efforts to break his spirit, but he knew the truth. The vampire just wanted to drag him down, press his face against the mud, and make him see.
"Does the Hellsing woman think she's going to gain a new follower by defending me?" he finally muttered, not opening his eyes.
"You protected her against the scum in London, as I understand," Alucard replied, the heat of anger fading slightly from his voice. "My Master does not let her debts go unpaid."
"Nor her grudges, either." Even after everything she had done for him, Alexander couldn't help his sneer. "Maxwell will be blamed for everything."
"He brought it on himself," Alucard answered. "Do you grieve for him, Anderson? Do you regret what you had to do? Do you regret how he screamed for his teacher to save him-"
Alexander's eyes snapped open as his hand shot out, and the only reason his nails did not tear open the godless flesh of the vampire's neck was that his glove blunted the damage.
"Shut the fuck up, vampire," he hissed, grip tightening until he could feel the creak and bend of an esophagus under his palm. "Don't pretend that this is anything but a petty desire to make me feel worse."
Alucard grinned, baring his inhumanly sharp teeth.
"Petty, Judas Priest?" he drawled, unaffected by the lack of air or the way Alexander's grip was compressing his throat solid. "Our rivalry was cataclysmic. You were the closest a human had come in a hundred years to killing me —if anything, this is quite a measured response."
"You talk like it was something we lost," Alexander muttered, narrowing his eyes.
"Isn't it?" Alucard sneered at him as something that felt very similar to despair tore and buckled in Alexander's chest. "You are no longer the man I fought in Badrick —not even the one who crossed blades with me on the battlefield of London. Whether or not you have remained human is immaterial: you deliberately fell from grace, Alexander Anderson, and that is something I can never forgive."
His jaw tightened. Forgiveness from a vampire —what an absurd concept. Alexander would never seek or need any such thing.
Alucard's flesh rippled, blackened, and Alexander loosened his grip with a grimace as tarry sludge slid through his fingers. The vampire stepped back, out of reach, and Alexander lowered his arm as the flesh of his neck reformed.
"Enjoy your respite," Alucard continued, sweeping himself out in a mocking half-bow without breaking eye contact. "Perhaps you'll be able to recover from even this —and if not, you can die in disgrace like the fool you are."
He stepped back, fading into the darkness around them. Alexander watched him go, and tried to block off the strange, violent emotions radiating into him from the shadows.