Hunting the Hunter

“There?”

A gasp, a moan, the sound of tearing cloth.

A chuckle.

“There.”

∙∙∙

Black hair spread out over Walter’s bare thighs, sliding across his skin like skeins of fine midnight silk with every slow movement of Doru’s head. The man’s tongue slid from the base of Walter’s cock, tracing the veins that ran up his length, slipping over foreskin and frenum, teasing along the head until he arched off the bed with wordless pleas for the teasing to stop.

How could it, though? There were fangs to get in the way. Sharp teeth grazing such delicate flesh. Doru could not take Walter’s erection into his mouth without drawing blood.

The vampire’s tongue wrapped fully around his shaft just under the head, squeezing and releasing, and Walter cried out, scrabbling at the sheets to find something to cling to as the sensation made him forget everything except skin and all the nerves that went with it.

Yes, yes, please more, yes. A stream of consciousness consisting of nothing but the words that might urge the man in his bed to bring him out of this delicious agony and into–

∙

Walter’s eyes opened, and for a moment, so real had the dream been, he had to lift his head and look down the line of his body in his empty bed. There was no vampire. He was still covered under the heavy eiderdown the season demanded. The only thing real about it was the ache of his erection, trapped inside his pajama bottoms.

“Shit.” He dropped his head back on his pillow and squeezed his eyes closed, one hand going to cup his groin as though against an injury. That first touch, though, forced his eyes wide open rather than face the memory of Doru’s mouth and tongue behind his closed lids. God, he wanted that. Even awake, the thought made the ache of blood swelling his cock that much better, harder, more.

“No,” he groaned to himself. Not this way.

Waking up hard wasn’t a strange phenomenon. Walter was a healthy man, after all, but he didn’t want the image of Doru in his mind at a time like this. Doru with that silken black hair he kept finding himself wanting to touch. Doru with his mouth–

“Fuck,” he said then, with greater feeling.

But his thumb had already started to smooth back and forth, sliding down the side of his erect shaft with a thrill of sensation, even through his pajamas.

It wasn’t as though masturbation was something he hadn’t done countless times before, he rationalized. Just taking care of a physical need. Just… touching himself with the dream memory of a vampire’s mouth on him overlaid. His hand, almost without his conscious thought, slipped inside his pajamas, his thumb now rubbing over the slit in his cock head to catch the first traces of fluid and rub them over the taut skin there.

…a cool tongue leaving a trail of saliva in a ring around the head…

His fingers wrapped the shaft to start that familiar rhythm of self-pleasure.

…sucked deep into the vampire’s mouth, that dangerous thrill of teeth tracking lines down blood-swelled flesh…

His eyes fell closed again to make that fantasy image so much more real, thumb teasing, fingers pumping, his free hand tracing under his pajama shirt, nails digging lightly into his skin.

…claws that could rend flesh leaving red tracks up his chest, fingers teasingly circling a nipple, tongue stroking, lips closing tight and sucking, sucking…

His shoulders tensed, his face twisted in pleasure, his hand moved faster under the blanket, under his pajamas.

He came with a gasp, wet heat spilling over his hand, body arching on the bed, then he stilled. He lay quietly and panted for a moment before opening his eyes with a faint grimace of self-disgust.

At least in his dream, he had kept some sense of realism about the vampire’s teeth. He grunted, annoyed by the disparity, and threw the eiderdown aside to get out of bed and go clean up.

Once the bathroom door closed behind him and the sounds of running water started, the shadows around the young man’s bed writhed briefly, then stilled.

∙∙∙

Thoughts of his waking were firmly behind him as Walter left his room and went about his day. There was staff to supervise, contracts to read, incident reports to review. What a man did in his dreams had nothing to do with Hellsing’s day-to-day realities.

After those things were dealt with, though, he was too restless to stay in the manor. He had tried settling in with his latest weapon project, and given up in irritation when the meditative repetition of grinding and shaping had given his mind too much opportunity to wander to black hair, white skin, and red lips. The words in the latest book he had picked up had turned into nothing but ants marching across the page, lacking any meaning. Sleep was out of the question; he knew that as soon as his head touched the pillow, the memory of the dream would return as vivid dreams were wont to do.

Instead, he took one of Hellsing’s cars and, with a brief message to the duty commander, drove into London.

At first he drove randomly, with no particular destination in mind with the exception that he avoided Doru’s neighborhood entirely. He did not want to see the vampire. Not now. Not when he felt certain that the man would read the dream right off his flushed face.

Eventually, he stopped and parked near Hyde Park, getting out to walk in the chill air, travelling from pool of lamplight to pool of lamplight with his hands tucked in his pockets and a cigarette dangling from his lip.

He had no destination in mind, simply following the paths where they led him. In a park of hundreds of acres, there were many paths to follow and much to see, even after dark.

Maybe this was a bad idea, too, Walter began to think as he lit his next cigarette off the stub of the last. What was wrong with him that even thinking of Doru seemed to be driving him to chain smoke?

He walked along paths that were well-lit and others that were shrouded in gloom. He ignored sights people would travel from across the world to see; strolled unseeing past fountains, statues, and memorials.

His thoughts were elsewhere, and the only consolation he had was that he wasn’t under Hellsing’s roof while he thought them.

“Penny for your thoughts, Angel of Death,” chimed a familiar child’s voice from the darkness.

Walter pulled himself from his musings and looked around, heart leaping to a faster pace, adrenaline flooding his system to wake his senses. A pale shape caught his attention, and he realized that he was seeing Mihaela peering out of the small dark arch that led into the sheltered interior of the park’s “Upside-down Tree.”

She emerged from the natural cave created by the branches that drooped to the ground, a tiny, deceptively harmless-looking figure in her fluffy hat and the winter white suit and coat she seemed to favor.

“You must be thinking,” she continued as she glided toward him, “to be out here chain smoking. You’re surely not sightseeing.”

“Looking for someone to eat?” he countered, covering any defensiveness he might have felt with aggression. “Looking for the hunters? This doesn’t seem like your kind of hunting ground.”

The little vampire stopped a few feet away and offered him a winsome smile that looked almost right and mostly wrong – a glint of kitten fang, a flash of red to her eyes. “Perhaps I just like it here.”

Right, Walter thought to himself. And I’m just out to get some air.

“Offer a lady a cigarette,” Mihaela chided. “Do you want to come and sit in the tree with me? There’s no body under there.”

Nobody. No body. No. Body.

She wasn’t pushing the little girl act as much as usual tonight.

“No. Thank you,” he murmured out of polite habit as he held his cigarette case out for her to take one and then lit her cigarette. “Just because I’ll share a fag with you doesn’t mean I’m in the mood to get cozy.”

Mihaela took a drag off her cigarette and shrugged. “And what are you in the mood for, Angel?”

“I wish you and Doru would stop calling me that.” He knew he sounded peevish, but it was worse than disconcerting to have a pair of vampires calling him pet names. “That isn’t my name.”

“But it is what you are called,” Mihaela pointed out. She gestured toward the path he’d been following and began walking as though she expected him to join him for a stroll. She glanced over her shoulder to see if he was following and quirked an eyebrow. “Coming?”

“Who gave you that name?” she asked after he caught up and they walked together. “Don’t tell me you’re so prideful as to give yourself the nom de guerre of Angel of Death.” She smirked sidelong at him. “Although I do remember your telling me that pride was your sin.”

“The commander of Hellsing’s troops, if you must know.” He was accustomed to the sobriquet now, but it was also true that when had been bestowed on him when he had been just eleven years old, it had made him proud indeed.

“I wasn’t born in service to Hellsing, you know. I wasn’t even born in England.” He shoved his hands in his pockets while they walked, remembering his life before the war. “My family is Dutch. From Rotterdam. When….” He stopped. There were things he didn’t want to talk about. Everyone had lost family, friends, or acquaintances in the war. His losses were nothing unique.

“My family had old ties to the van Helsing family. We had our own traditions, our own history, our country to serve. When Queen Wilhelmina came to England during the war, I came with her household. It was a favor of sorts from the royal house to my family.” Or at least to his family’s memory.

“It was decided that I’d do better with Hellsing. I could continue the family traditions that way instead of hanging about fetching tea and trying not to get underfoot with the Dutch government in exile.”

He wasn’t watching Mihaela as he spoke. Much. He couldn’t relax with a vampire so close, no matter how harmless she appeared.

“I’m coming to the point. I promise.” He didn’t think much about those days and he’d never spoken of them to anyone. Everyone at Hellsing either already knew or could hear the story from someone else.

“When I came to Hellsing, the commander of the troops didn’t want to take it on anyone’s word that this Dutch boy had anything useful to contribute.” Walter grimaced, remembering the arguments that had gone on as though he hadn’t been right there to hear them. Maybe they’d just expected that he couldn’t speak English. “I suppose I can’t blame him.” He glanced over at Mihaela. “After all, I didn’t really look any more dangerous than you do.”

“But you weren’t any less harmless than I am, were you?” the girl prompted, eyes glinting red at him as they passed under a light post.

“No. I wasn’t.” Walter thought of the scrawny child he’d been and couldn’t fault the commander for his doubts. “Sir Hellsing… his family had always kept in touch with my family – professional interest – so he’d heard about me. He made Commander Patterson take me out on a search and destroy mission.”

And hadn’t that gone interestingly? With the commander determined to keep the boy out of the fray despite his leader’s orders and a young Walter equally determined to show that his family’s combination of breeding and training had yielded a fearsome fighter.

“I broke away from the blockade that they were setting up around the infected village and ran straight in. By the time they caught up to me, I’d cleaned out the infestation.” He pulled out a fresh cigarette and lit it off the butt of his last one.

“It really wasn’t that impressive, if you ask me. They were just ghouls. We found out later that the vampire that had created them had made a good dozen to keep Hellsing distracted while he made his escape. But you’ve seen my work with a single vampire. Now imagine that kind of mess with so many ghouls, and I was sloppier in those days.”

He shook his head, remembering Patterson’s white-faced appraisal of the aftermath – the blood-sodden boy standing untouched in the middle of the carnage. “He took one look at me and said, ‘You’re not human, you’re the fucking Angel of Death.’” He shrugged. “It stuck.”

He could hear echoes of it in what Doru said to him at the Lyceum Ballroom’s gala. Tell me, Angel of Death, do you really think that behind that human mask you wear, that you're just like them?

Mihaela laughed delightedly. “That’s wonderful. It’s such a treat to see grown men shocked by what can be done by someone they’ve dismissed as small and weak. I wish I could have been there to see it.”

Walter just shook his head. Had it really been so clear to others so long ago? It was one thing to have Doru – a vampire and thus inherently untrustworthy – question his humanity, but Walter had been just a child when Patterson had made the same call.

Was he really just a monster in his own right?

“Come now,” Mihaela persisted, “why so glum? That’s a wonderful story.”

“I’m not glum.” Right, so it was a bit of a lie. “It’s the past anyway. The war ended. I stayed here. I’m an English citizen now. As good a John Bull as any.” He remembered his cigarette and took a drag. Ah, sweet smoke. If he kept chain smoking like this, he’d end up sounding as gravelly as a cinema gangster.

“My turn. You know something new about me; I want to know something about you.” He fixed the little vampire with a hard look. “Who made you? Why are you in England? Or why do I never see you and Doru together? Did you two have a falling out? Or even how old are you really?”

Instead of being bothered by the questions, Mihaela beamed up at him. “How sweet. You want to know more about me? Does that mean we’re going to be friends after all?”

Walter stopped on the path and stared down at her. “Friends? How can we ever be friends? You prey on humans.”

“And you prey on vampires,” Mihaela retorted, hands on her little girl hips. “But neither of us has any reason to prey on each other. We don’t fit each other’s particular prey. What do we care what happens to the trash of either species? Why shouldn’t we be friends?”

She huffed out an exasperated breath. “I am two hundred eight years old. My sire died at the hands of Catholic monster hunters in the last century. I came to England because I wanted to see what changes this new century had made since I was last here, and you don’t see Doru and me together because we lead separate lives. How long can you know someone before they just grow boring? So we see each other when we have new stories to tell instead of the same old ones that will leave us both impatient with the other’s company.”

Her hard expression softened into another of her too-mature smiles in the face of Walter’s mute surprise. “There. I’ve answered your questions. Are you happy now?”

She held up an admonitory finger when Walter opened his mouth. “Any more questions come with a price. Quid pro quo, Angel.”

∙∙∙

Arthur sat in his office and poured himself a measure of whiskey, sitting and staring at the amber liquid while he marshaled his thoughts. Bernadette had reported seeing Walter with a girl who matched the description of the vampire Walter had detailed before. Sharing a cigarette with her had been rather a giveaway that she was no child. It was a pity that the mercenary could give no other details. The situation had demanded that the men observe Walter from a distance, and binoculars did not afford an opportunity for eavesdropping.

To say that it troubled Arthur was an understatement. He worried that Walter was forgetting himself, lulled by her seeming fragility.

Perhaps he had been wrong to ever have a policy that not all vampires should be killed. Perhaps it had just been a reaction to Abraham’s adamancy that they should be wiped from the face of the Earth.

Perhaps he should have found a different way to rebel against his father. Richard had done it by going away to school and then becoming a businessman with little dealings with Hellsing.

Which, of course, was why Arthur was on his own….

A knock at the door broke him from his introspection. “Enter.”

“Sir.” Walter slipped into Arthur’s office and closed the door. “I wanted to see if you needed anything before I retire for the night.”

“Yes.” Arthur tapped a finger on his desk and nodded. “Come here. Tell me about your evening out.”

Was that a flicker of something on the young retainer’s face before he approached Arthur’s desk and took the seat the man indicated?

“I was going to give you a written report in the morning,” Walter said, sitting ramrod straight in the chair. “I thought it would merit it, since I had another encounter with the vampire Mihaela tonight in Hyde Park.”

That admission did more to allay Arthur’s fears than anything else. That Walter would still volunteer such information relieved him more than he could tell the man.

“Tell me everything about it,” he said, leaning forward eagerly.

Later, he would wonder why he worried anyway. Walter had always been completely trustworthy.

But after all, it wasn’t Walter he didn’t trust; it was the vampires that seemed to be drawn to him of late.