NOT ANOTHER GIRL

Chapter 1: The Hunter's Moon

Tonight was the night of the hunter's moon. A moon so full, so large, and so bright, that you could see as if it were day. Alucard loved such nights. Such nights were perfect for sucking blood…and he was hungry.

The mission was to kill a vampire that was terrorizing an orphanage in the northern regions of England. Alucard had promised himself that he would drain her slowly. Yes, her. Male vampires never bothered with children. Not when there was a bounty of young maidens in the cities.

When Alucard arrived, it was a familiar scene of death. All adults killed or drained. There were the dead bodies of some adolescents lying around, but of the 87 children he'd been told were here, they were gone, taken elsewhere.

"Arrraahhh! Arraagghhh!" groaned the ghouls.

"Hm." said Alucard, as he watched the dead return to life.

They surrounded him and hungered for his flesh. They were almost on him when he opened fired on them. He smiled as his jackal spit round after round into each target until only his smoking barrels were left. In seconds, every undead human was dead again. Alucard took a look around. Satisfied that no more ghouls would threaten the night, he began his search for the missing children.

The search didn't take long and they weren't hard to find. Not when he could feel the winds of fear and pain and terror. He followed this unseen wind to its source. Alucard found the vampire's den in a mine just past the forest. He radioed Integra that he'd found the lair. She acknowledged him and told him that he'd have 30 minutes before the human forces arrived to collect the children. He sent his understanding of his orders and then descended into the mine.

As Alucard descended into the depths of the earth, the scent of death and fear met him like a thick cloud of smog. Soon his ears could hear the fearful screams and cries of hundreds of children. Suddenly the mine tunnel ended into a humongous cavern. Alucard frowned. Integra's Intel was flawed. There were hundreds of children down here. Damn Knights never got anything right, let alone informed his master of everything.

"Half of England must be missing their young." mused Alucard.

Alucard continued searching for his prey. He passed by hundreds of steel cages and inside each one was a child. All of them crying, all of them wanting to go home. The older ones cried out to him for help.

"Please, help me!"

"Please, let us out!"

"Please stop! Don't go! Please come back!"

Alucard ignored them all. They were not his concern. His target lay deeper within the cavern. Soon, he heard singing.

"Four and twenty children baked in a pie. And when the pie was opened, the kids began to cry."

Alucard walked up behind her.

"Well, well, if it isn't the wicked stepmother." chuckled Alucard.

The female vampire turned and hissed at him.

"Who the hell are you?" she demanded, as she put the roasting pan down on top of the stove.

Movement within the pan caused Alucard to look inside. The pan had a small baby inside. It was a girl. She kicked and kicked. She wanted the doughy blanket off her. Alucard smirked at her. Of all the things she could worry about. Or maybe it just didn't occur to her just how close to death she was. But unlike the others, she was the only child that wasn't crying. She just looked at him with her bright blue eyes. Alucard returned his gaze to the female vampire.

"I'd invite you to dinner, but as you can see she's only enough for one." said the female vampire, picking up a butcher's knife.

"I wouldn't worry about that. You won't live long enough to enjoy her." said Alucard, pulling out his jackal. "I'm the huntsman and I'm here to put you back in your grave."

The female vampire growled at him in anger and the fight was on. She slashed and hacked at him with the butcher's knife, but for every limb she chopped off Alucard grew another one. The screaming of the children only got louder as the echo of Alucard's gunshots filled the cavern. Once Alucard ran out of bullets, she sent her familiars after him.

"So you want to play, do you?" he smiled.

He too unleashed his familiars. His devil dogs fought with and devoured her hellish cats. She just stood and watched the horror of his monsters eating hers. While she was distracted, Alucard grabbed her by her wrists and pulled her to him. His tentacles rose up from the ground, entangled and ensnared her, binding and restricting her movements.

Alucard smiled as he stood nose to nose with her. He breathed in her scent. Not to young and not too old. Alucard's fangs began dripping in anticipations of the blood that would soon be his. The female vampire screamed as she saw rows upon rows of jagged teeth like the mouth of a shark clamping down upon her neck. Like a boa constrictor, Alucard held her tightly in his arms until she stopped struggling. He held her until all movement stopped. Alucard's tendrils slowly released her and a chair moved of its own accord beneath him.

Alucard sat down and placed his victim in his lap. The child in the roasting pan said nothing. It just watched in curious silence as Alucard slowly drained the life from the female vampire. Alucard was still drinking her dry, when Integra showed up.

"I was wondering where you were." she said, coldly.

Alucard said nothing. Integra watched him for awhile as he continued to drink. She had always found it fascinating and repugnant to watch him feed from a live source. But as that his victim was a vampire, she didn't care.

"Report to me when you're done here." she ordered.

And then she left him to his pleasures.

Hours later, Alucard released the completely drained husk of the female vampire. He stood up and stretched.

"What a night." he chuckled. "Soon to be day. Time to go home."

At the entrance of the mine, he saw the tracks of many five-ton military trucks. The Hellsing organization had cleared out all of the children. Now it would be up to social services to find out where they belonged. Alucard was about to leave, when he heard a baby's cry.

"They must have missed one." he thought.

Alucard followed his ears and ended up right back in the kitchen of the 'wicked witch'. Alucard suddenly remembered the child in the roasting pan. He looked inside. Yep, she was still there. Apparently, she had slept while Alucard ate, and now that it was morning, she was awake and hungry. Alucard looked around the vampire's kitchen, but of course there was no milk down here. Alucard began to walk away. What was one human child anyway? But as he did, her tiny mind pulled at his.

"Food." she demanded, as she cried louder and louder. "FOOD."

"Alright. Enough." ordered Alucard, as he picked her up.

He held her in his arms and prepared to teleport back to the orphanage. Just then Alucard felt her shudder with cold.

"Sorry little one. I'm dead. You'll get no body heat from me." he chuckled.

Alucard just looked at the child as it shivered from cold and cried with hunger. Finally, he took off his hat and wrapped the child in it. Soon the child stopped shivering. Arriving in the orphanage kitchen, Alucard searched the fridge for bottles of milk. He found four bottles ready and untouched. Too bad he couldn't say the same for the rest of the kitchen. There was blood everywhere, and dents in the stove like bodies had been slammed against them. The oven door was falling off its hinges and water still escaped from the broken facets.

Alucard picked up the baby and tried to feed her one of the bottles. She sucked on it once and then just pushed it away. The more he tried to feed it to her, the more she pushed it away.

"Now what? I thought you were hungry." he growled.

Suddenly, he remembered something from a long time ago; when Integra was still a baby herself, something about the bottle being too hot or too cold. Alucard put the bottle into his mouth, sucked on it, and spit it out.

"Your right. It's too cold."

Looking around Alucard spied a microwave. He put the bottle inside and Hit reheat. Minutes later, BLAM. Alucard opened the door of the microwave and saw hot milk smoldering everywhere.

"Hm. Too much."

He pulled another bottle out of the fridge and pressed low this time. Seconds later, DING. Alucard pulled it out. He tasted it first and then gave it to her. This time she took it. She sucked it down like a hungry little pup. Suddenly, the first rays of the sun started shining through the holes in the roof. They bathed Alucard in light.

"I guess I'll have to stay here today." he reasoned.

Alucard went down to the orphanage's basement and sat in a corner next to the boiler. Upstairs had been destroyed, but downstairs was still enacted. The boiler was still on and was providing enough heat to keep the baby warm. The baby wiggled as the warm air chased away the cold from her body. He watched with semi-fascination as the baby finished her breakfast. She had black hair like his and blue eyes like Integra's.

Smiling, his fangs peeked through as wicked thoughts filled his head about siring a child with Integra Hellsing. He started chuckling as he thought about all the things she would say. All the objections she would make and all her objections would melt away as he made love to her. Alucard's grin grew wider. Then he heard a tiny burp. He looked down at the baby. He had completely forgotten about her just that quickly. As he looked down at her, she just looked up at him and smiled.

"Well, let's see who you are?" said Alucard, as he peered into the child's mind.

The minds of children were hard to read. They never thought in straight lines and the lines of fantasy and reality were so blurred that it was hard to tell what was what. The bottles of milk, in white coats with black hair, must have been the orphanage staff, for they were the ones who fed her. The child had been born here and so here was where its memories began.

The pixies and wood elves must have been the other kids, similes of the stories that she had been told at bedtime. Then came the wicked witch and her evil shadow cats devouring all in red. But suddenly out of the red stepped a man in a large red hat. He watched himself kill the female vampire through the baby's eyes. The man in the big red hat.

"So I'm the man in the big red hat, huh." he laughed. "Better red than yellow, At least I don't look like a walking banana."

The baby gave him the image of ketchup…with a large red hat. Alucard chuckled at the imagery.

"Everything is food to you, isn't it? So much like me already; We both see humans as a walking buffet." he laughed. "Well, if I'm the man in the big red hat, then that makes you my little monkey, George."

Suddenly, the baby yawned and closed her little eyes.

"Yes, the sun is up and its time to sleep."

Alucard brought his knees up to his chest, giving her a cradle she couldn't fall out of. Then he went to sleep.