Seras Victoria kicked down the front door with such force the door separated from the hinges and flew across the foyer. Instead of her bright yellow uniform, she was dressed in somber black Hellsing fatigues; the colors of an assassin. Automatic pistol in one hand, garbage bag in the other, she scanned the small, dark flat.

A man leapt up from his sofa with his hands up, bag of crisps spilling from his lap. His face was lit up by the television light. "Woah! Woah! Seras Victoria, right? There's been some mistake…!"

He was hammered by a barrage of bullets, the wall behind him spattered with holes and blood. He quickly dropped to the floor, in a pile of his own oozing organs. He twitched once. Just once.

Seras approached the dead man and nudged his limp head with her foot. Finding no response, she turned around and methodically searched every room. Sensing movement, she moved towards the kitchen. Nothing.

Wait, movement again. Seras moved forward immediately, her vampire senses honing on the kitchen counter.

There, she found a calico cat hiding behind a toaster. The thing hissed furiously at her.

Seras relaxed. "Your master won't be feeding you anymore," she told the animal. She looked at a window over the sink and nudged it open to allow it an escape.

She then continued on with her search. Climbing up to the second floor, Seras searched the bedrooms, the closets. In the master closet, she found several Hellsing uniforms, identifying the dead man downstairs as a member of the surveillance crew. Scowling, Seras yanked the uniforms from the racks and shoved them into the garbage bag. She hunted around the bedroom and found a Hellsing pin next to the night stand. She took that also, tossing it into the bag.

Finally, she found a wallet near the sink in the bathroom. She opened it and took the Hellsing membership ID card. As she moved it, she saw a worn photograph tucked into the sleeve-a young woman with glasses and crooked teeth, but a gentle smile. There was a heart doodled around her face. Seras took out the photo a moment and looked at it glumly. Then she thought of her masters and how this man had betrayed the organization for money and Seras gritted her teeth and crumpled the photo. She dropped the wallet on the floor and walked out.

Before she exited the flat, Seras casually stepped over the man and his brains seeping into the carpet and scooped up the open laptop on the coffee table. Closing the laptop and hefting her garbage bag over her shoulder, she stepped out the front door, walked down the stairs calmly and met the Rolls Royce at the curb where Integra Hellsing was waiting. The trunk popped open softly at her approach, and Seras deposited her weapons, the bag and the computer inside…along with four other confiscated computers and other no longer needed uniforms and ID cards. She shut the trunk emotionlessly and went to the front of the car and slid into the passenger seat next to Integra.

"That didn't take long," Integra mused, puffing on a cigar, looking very relaxed. She reached under her seat and withdrew a vinyl wrap and handed it to Seras.

"He lived alone," Seras said quietly, taking the vinyl. "Just like the others."

Integra started the engine, noting that neighbors had started opening their doors and curiously peering out in response to the gunfire. "I suppose we're lucky there weren't any families. No wives, no children."

Seras said, "Men with families wouldn't have risked trying to blackmail a vampire. They thought they were going to buy a private island, drive nice cars."

Integra said, "Hurry along, Seras."

"Yes, ma'am." Seras turned around and went back into the house. A few minutes later, she emerged with the body in her arms, wrapped in the vinyl. She went to the car and opened the back door and dumped the body on top of the other four bodies. She closed the door and slid into the passenger seat next to Integra and they drove away without looking back.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

As a young boy, he'd tied five Kraut soldiers together by their wrists and decapitated them one at a time with his filament wires.

Walter was leaning against the cool stone sub-level walls, sucking down a cigarette. Across from him was the laboratory door, locked tightly. Inside, the old butler could hear the vampire groaning helplessly, still chained.

Walter thought back on those five nazis he'd killed. He wasn't sure why he was thinking of them. He thought possibly, for a moment, it was because Alucard had been with him that night, snickering and jeering Walter on, urging him to greater depths of depravity. He'd skulked around the wailing soldiers as they watched their comrades fall one at a time. It had driven Alucard mad with lust. It had driven Walter mad as well. So much so that when Alucard's shadowy form returned to his side and his black tendrils slithered around his ankles, up his legs and between thighs, he never questioned it. And after all the soldiers lay dead, Alucard and he threw each other down into the soldiers' growing pools of blood and rutted, fully clothed, each fighting to be on top in a testosterone-fueled hate-fuck.

Smiling, Walter decided no. That wasn't the reason he was thinking of the soldiers. He was thinking of them because Alucard's pitiful whimpering sounded just like theirs as they waited for their deaths. He never expected to hear such a sound from the King of Vampires. Such a stark contrast with the monster he knew.

He heard the sublevel doors open at the top of the stairs.

Walter stood up straight, at attention. He tossed down his cigarette and crushed it under his foot.

Integra Hellsing marched down the stairs, Seras Victoria following behind, carrying a body bag over each of her shoulders, straining at little under the weight.

"Trust you had a bountiful hunt, ma'am," Walter greeted.

Integra Hellsing was covered in a warm sheen of sweat and blood spatters, cigar in her teeth. "Indeed. I have four more of these upstairs."

Walter stepped forward. "Miss Victoria. Let me help you with those."

Seras gingerly followed Integra, carefully balancing the two bodies. "Ah…no, no, I've got them."

Integra pointed at the lab door. "Police Girl, you may deposit those there."

"Yes, ma'am, thank you." Seras shuffled over and dumped the bodies with a sickening "crunch" at the foot of the door. "Whew! That's better." Seras straightened her back and stretched her arms with a smile. "Ahh."

"And now," Integra said, "you are both dismissed."

Seras and Walter both looked at Intgera.

"Is that a problem?" Integra asked, folding her arms.

"Madam," Walter ventured, "We need to make arrangements to have soil and a replacement coffin imported from his homeland as soon as possible."

"Why?" Integra asked, walking towards the lab. "I have no intention of allowing him to regenerate. He can nurse his wounds like a human and sleep on the floor like a dog."

Walter looked at Seras. "Miss Victoria, would you please excuse Sir Integra and I?"

Seras looked miserable. "Yes, sir." She lowered her head at Integra. "Ma'am." With that she turned around and went back up the stairs, closing the door behind her.

"She's a good little soldier," Integra complimented wistfully. "She followed my orders without question all night, knowing what I did to her master."

"You're her master, too," Walter pointed out, unlocking the lab door. "You're the master of her master. Your authority supersedes all."

"But that's an artificial relationship," Integra countered, following the butler. "It's in defiance of her vampire nature. Her biology dictates she should be loyal to her vampire master before any other. Obeying a human authority is a left-over conditioned response from her human life."

"Miss Victoria is an expert at defying her vampire biology," Walter said with a smile, opening the door and going inside.

Integra chuckled, going inside behind him.

They both stood before Alucard, chained, bolted, blind-folded, gagged, nearly unconscious.

Walter sighed. "Alucard could learn a thing or two from Miss Victoria."

Integra folded her arms. "What am I going to do with him?"

Walter shrugged. "You could….let him down. He's been up there for hours."

Integra shook her head. "Oh, he's not coming down for a while."

"Yes, ma'am."

They continued to look at Alucard for a while.

Walter said, "Your grandfather had a master plan for Alucard. In addition to his psychic and supernatural enhancements, there were other experiments VanHelsing planned that he didn't live long enough to execute. Your father continued his work, but all research came abruptly to a halt when Alucard and I were sent to the front in the war." The old butler rocked back and forth on his heels. "Alucard had been so effective in combat your father kept sending him out into the field, just as you do now. He didn't want to risk having Alucard incapacitated by an experiment in the event he was needed for a mission, so he suspended all new research."

Integra looked carefully at Walter. "You think I should revive Hellsing's research and development arm, using Alucard as the guinea pig again?"

"It was Hellsing's original function," Walter said. "Long before we were her majesty's sword. And you've pointed out yourself; Seras Victoria makes a much better soldier."

Integra circled the chained vampire, looking him over carefully. She stopped in front of him. "No," she said. "Those experiments were excessively cruel. Punishment and torture under the guise of medical research."

Walter said, "Excuse me, ma'am, but…isn't it what he deserves? You told me what he's done. Your vengeance is well deserved."

Integra said nothing. She stepped close to the vampire and put her hand gently on his cheek.

Alucard stirred. He grunted once. His head lifted, shaking. A strand of drool hung from the gag. He tried to lean away from the foreign touch, but the halter around his head only let him move a few centimeters. He whimpered in confusion.

"He deserves to be killed," Integra said=. "He deserves to be put on his knees and shot. Or stung up in a tree. Or have his head cut off. Or be electrocuted. Or gutted. But it needs to be over and done with. He's a murderer and a tyrant and what he deserves is to be, finally and forever, cleanly executed."

Alucard was silent.

Integra withdrew a hankie from her pocket and smoothed it over Alucard's dry, cracked lips, sopping up the unseemly drool that had collected from the gag. "Except that's impossible," she resigned. "I could shoot him, hang him, cut off his head and burn his remains. He'll just come back. So instead, we have a prison. An imperfect, miserable prison where he'll linger forever and ever."

Walter balked. "So we do nothing?"

Integra shrugged. "What can I do?"

"But he's already demonstrated that being compassionate doesn't make him loyal," Walter reasoned. "Even now, he day dreams of murdering you." He stepped forward, lowering his voice. "He masturbates and thinks about it. It gets him off."

Integra looked wistfully back at Alucard, a strange smile on her face. "I know."

"Doesn't it sicken you?"

Integra patted her breast pocket. "There's a flask of Jack Daniels right here. I'm going to drink it until it kills all my feelings."

"Ma'am, you can't allow him to have free reign of the house when you know he harbors hatred for you so deep in his heart," Walter said. "At least, allow me to lock him up. Seal him away, as your father did."

"And how permanent was that solution?" Integra said. "As long as he's alive, he will be my trump card. Bricking him up behind a door just robs me of a valuable resource."

Walter shook his head. "So…life resumes as normal? We pretend he did nothing?"

"No." Integra smiled. "The Round Table will make sure of that. My inbox is already full of messages from the other knights demanding an explanation for the video they've seen. I'm sure they're on their way right now." She nodded at the bodies on the floor. "And when their investigation leads them to those corpses, there will be little doubt how they got that way. If state-sponsored murder doesn't get me life in prison, it will surely cost me Hellsing."

Walter stepped forward. "We could blame him." He nodded at Alucard. "They'll never know."

Integra said nothing.

Walter said, "He's the scum of the earth. He doesn't deserve your protection."

Integra turned around and started to walk away.

"Ma'am!" Walter called.

"I'm going upstairs to polish off this flask, then I'm going to bed. I imagine I have a quite a day ahead of me tomorrow." As she passed through the threshold of the door, Integra paused, looking back at Walter. "You have any tool in this dungeon at your disposal. Before you let Alucard off that table, you make sure he understands he's been very bad. And I expect him to behave himself tomorrow, or he'll get more of the same." With that, she disappeared into the darkness.

Walter turned slowly to face Alucard.

The vampire hung limply, helplessly.

"Your master has turned her back on you. And I, as your friend, no longer have any respect for you." Walter took his black filament gloves from his pocket and put them on slowly. "Even your fledging has abandoned you," the old butler said to the vampire. "What does that tell you?"

Alucard said and did nothing. There was no indication if he was conscious or not.

Walter approached the vampire. He reached up and undid Alucard's trousers, shoving them down to his knees, leaving him naked. "I've been given an unpleasant task. Believe me, you will pay." Walter said, testing his filament wires against his gloves and finding them as reliable and response as ever.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

To be continued…