Hunting the Hunter

“Forgive me.”

“For?”

“I should never have looked elsewhere.”

•••

“Would it affect my position here if I were to have a liaison with Christian Wallace?”

Of the many problems Arthur had anticipated ever having with his butler, he could honestly say that he had never considered that Walter would come to him for permission to have relations with his brother’s assistant. He had considered that perhaps Walter would never settle down with a nice young lady to have little Dornezes, but he had assumed that he would never have to know any of the actual details of who Walter passed his time with as long as it wasn’t a security risk.

Arthur leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers while he considered how to answer the question. How would Richard take it? And would he prefer it if Richard were pleased or displeased? Did Richard even have to know?

He contemplated those and other questions – security issues and propriety and how many lectures from Islands he would have to listen to while he watched Walter. It would be fair at this point to admit that he was also wondering how long he could make his butler wait before he fidgeted even a little.

“Walter,” he said at last when it seemed that he was not going to get a fidget out of him no matter how long they waited, “are you certain this is what you want?”

“Sir,” and Arthur was oddly pleased to hear at least of touch of asperity in Walter’s response, “if I had any doubts, do you think I would have come to you with this?”

“No, I suppose you would have kept it to yourself,” Arthur admitted.

He opened the humidor on his desk and let Walter lean in to light his cigar before going on. “I trust your judgment or you would not have the position of responsibility that you do. As head of this organization I must caution you not to let your personal decisions interfere with your professional decisions or Hellsing’s mission.” He held up his hand before Walter could provide the expected assurances that he would never do that. “But if this is the difficult path you choose, I will only expect your discretion and good sense.”

He drew smoke from the cigar and considered his next words carefully. He was giving permission to his servant – a man for whom he held considerable respect – to violate social norms and he wanted Walter to understand why. “We already live beyond the pale, my boy; I don’t think that I can, in good conscience, demand that you live a more conventional private life than your professional life.”

•••

“...one more house; the broker left a message at my hotel with this address and I do want to see it today.” Christian leaned forward in his seat to try to catch Walter’s attention, but he seemed both intently focused on the road and a million miles away. “Walter?”

We already live beyond the pale, my boy.

“Walter, are you listening to me? It’s just one more house, and I know it’s getting dark, but—”

“No, we can go,” Walter said hurriedly, pulling himself back from replaying the prior night’s conversation with Arthur for the hundredth time. He had done his duty to Hellsing by speaking with Arthur; now he would have to tell Christian of his intentions and hope they were reciprocated. He had to believe they would be.

He flashed Christian a smile before turning his attention back to driving. “Just give me the address.”

The last-minute addition to their itinerary was well outside of London, which surprised Walter since Christian had dismissed most homes outside the city proper as being inconvenient for Richard’s needs. It was larger than other homes they had looked at, as well as being more isolated than any of the others, with no neighbors in sight when Walter navigated the Bentley up the long, cobbled drive to the front portico.

“The broker said he would leave it unlocked for us and send the groundskeeper by later,” Christian explained as he got out of the car and looked around. They had made it just as the sun was sinking below the horizon, and Walter assumed they would leave inspecting the grounds for another time if the house passed muster. “He lives somewhere on the property. I don’t know where.”

Christian looked tired and perhaps a bit anxious, and Walter couldn’t help but wonder if he were somehow picking up on Walter’s own feelings. Walter had hardly slept the night before, thinking about the day to come, how he would advance his case to Christian, whether the day would end in ways he might enjoy, or if he would go home to his quiet room in Hellsing Manor feeling a fool.

“What’s supposed to be so special about this one?” he asked, following Christian up the steps to the front door. “I thought Richard didn’t want to live so far from the city.”

“He doesn’t,” Christian agreed. He tried the door and found it unlocked. “But this house happens to share a boundary line with property owned by Samuel Masterman, and Richard has been trying to form a business alliance with him for years and hasn’t been able to find a way to make inroads with him personally. This might be the way.”

“Clever,” Walter said as they entered the spacious foyer. It took a moment’s fumbling to find a light switch, but then lights came on to illuminate the room. It was dominated by a pair of staircases that curved up the left and right walls to either side of the door, leaving an expanse of black and white tile under an enormous chandelier in front of them. “You’ll need a full staff here. I can give you some names.”

He pushed the door closed and put a hand on the small of Christian’s back, hoping the gesture seemed natural and didn’t convey how foreign this was to him. He was going to do this. He was going to take this step and he wasn’t going to look back. He was going to—

—feel a lump of metal there?

“Is that a gun?”

Christian startled and spun around gracelessly, moving away from Walter’s hand and bumping against the wall at the foot of the left staircase. His face was pale except for two hectic patches of color on his cheeks and his answer came out in a rush. “N— I mean yes. Richard thought I should carry it because getting too close to Hellsing is dangerous. I didn’t believe him and left it in its box, but after I saw what you can do, I started to believe, so I....” He took a deep breath and visibly sought for calm, continuing at a more normal pace after a moment. “I thought I’d start carrying it like he wanted.”

“Do you have a license?” Walter asked, after sorting through Christian’s torrent of words. “Hellsing can arrange one for you if you don’t. There’s no need for concern. Richard was right.” He was cursing himself for having chosen exactly the wrong place to touch the other man to ease into more intimacy, but it wasn’t as though he’d been anticipating finding a gun in what he’d thought would be a good, not quite neutral place to initiate contact.

Christian shook his head, followed by a nod and Walter took some comfort from the fact that he wasn’t the only one discomfited in this scenario. “I have a license. I just... I didn’t think... I’m not used to carrying guns. I don’t even know if I’d know what to do with it.”

Oh brilliant. What was he even doing with a weapon if he wasn’t sure he could use it? Rather than lecture Christian on the dangers of carrying an unfamiliar weapon, Walter took a deep breath and put a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll teach you starting tomorrow. You’ll come with me to Hellsing’s gun range and you’ll be an expert before you know it.”

Now, he told himself. You’re a man of action, prove it now. Walter steeled himself and put his other hand on the wall beside Christian. “But tonight....”

Christian’s eyes widened and he put a hand up on Walter’s chest. Before Walter could determine if it was a warding gesture or an inviting one, a cry of pain rang out from upstairs, banishing all thought of romance in an instant.

“Stay here,” he ordered, already skipping stairs on his way up to find the source of the cry. “Or go to the car and lock the doors.”

At the top of the stairs, Walter swiveled his head and holding his breath to try to hear any repetition of the cry. A faint sound of sobbing led him to the right until he stopped at a T-intersection. The sound was fading as though the source was weakening. He glanced left and right but the sound was no stronger from either direction.

He looked up and spotted the outline of the drop down attic stairs. What was it about attics and basements? Didn’t anyone just use a bedroom? Maybe the kitchen for easier cleanup? He hooked a filament of wire through the handle and pulled, stepping back as the stairs unfolded to reveal a rectangle of blackness broken by shining points of red.

Shit.

He tensed to send a whirl of wire up through the opening when something hard pressed into the small of his back over his spine.

“Don’t, Walter. I don’t have to be any good with a gun to hit you like this.”

Later, Walter would feel. He would feel betrayed and angry and hurt and like a blind fool.

Later. When he had survived.

Christian had just moved his place on the board from ally to enemy. Walter acted with the remorseless efficiency that had kept him alive in his chosen specialty. The only thing that moved was his fingers, but that was all that was needed. Wire spun out to create an ethereal-seeming halo around him, but nothing ethereal could wreak the damage that those glinting strands could.

Christian had no time to pull the trigger, no time to react, no time to even make a sound. Wire cut through flesh and bone and steel alike, sending Christian’s body tumbling to the floor in neatly severed chunks. A deliberate jerk on the wire sent pieces of his gun and gun hand hurtling away from Walter’s back and into the wall.

No time to look back, not with a red-eyed enemy crouched right over his head. Not even a full second had passed from Christian’s threat to Walter’s reaction, and now he leapt directly upward, one hand sweeping up from his side to cast a web before himself. If the vampire had met his leap, it would have been destroyed as easily as Christian had been.

But even as his foot touched the stair, the vampire leapt past him with a bestial snarl and a swirl of white hair, through the eye of the hurricane of wire that spread around Walter, to land on the floor where the remains of Christian Wallace lay in a spreading pool of blood.

At the top of the stairs, Walter whirled in time to see the glaring red eyes of the creature that had assaulted him in the deep shelter. They glared up at him even as the vampire dipped its head to lap its inhumanly long tongue down into Christian’s blood. It shot out a commanding hand and the stairs snapped upward, shutting Walter in claustrophobic darkness.

“Who’s there?”

A man’s call cut through Walter’s anger before he could tear a hole in the attic floor with his wire. It was weak, hoarse, but he didn’t see how it could be the creature downstairs. He spun the wires once again, cautiously, letting them describe the space without affecting it, dancing over the support beams and walls with a spider-light touch and finding a space in the middle of a wall that signaled an open door.

He drew the wires back to shield him again and carefully crossed the floor, wondering when he would hear the drop down door pulled down again, or hear the vampire tear through the floor itself to get to him.

“I said, who’s there?” The man’s voice was strained, but growing stronger.

“Shh,” Walter hissed. “Is there anyone with you?” He made it to the door and slid his hand up along the wall, feeling for a switch.

“Walter.” Walter recognized the voice with a start.

“Doru?”

“There’s a cord for a light about three feet in front of you, hanging from the ceiling,” Doru said urgently. “No, to your right. A little more... There.”

Walter pulled the cord, and later, when he allowed himself to feel, he might wish he hadn’t found it.

The attic flooded with harsh, flat white light, turning everything black, white, and red.

Doru lay nude, strapped to a metal slab so solid Walter wondered how it didn’t fall through the floor. He had open, bloodless wounds on his body that gaped obscenely, but he still managed to twist his lips into something that Walter thought might be a smile or relief. There was nothing erotic about the scene and Doru’s nudity barely registered in the midst of the rest of the horror.

To either side of him, near enough that the scent of their blood must have been a torment, were two heavy gurneys. On one lay Philip, his smile lost forever to be replaced with a rictus of pain frozen there in death, his body a horror of cuts that revealed more of him than nature had ever intended. On the other lay a young man Walter did not immediately recognize. His head lay turned to the side, his face covered by shaggy brown hair. He had been treated no better than Philip, but the angry red of partially-healed wounds said that he had suffered much longer.

“Doru,” Walter breathed, glancing back to reassure himself that there were no red eyes sneaking up on him from the dark. He crossed to the slab where Doru was bound, but hesitated before opening the bindings. “Can you control yourself? I want to help, but I won’t be your victim.”

“I would rather die.” Doru twisted his hands in the heavy cuffs and grimaced when wounds pulled. “Please, Walter.”

It wasn’t an easy choice to make, taking a wounded vampire’s word, but Walter made it. “Warn me if you hear him.”

In just a moment, he had sliced through the cuffs and leg shackles and slid an arm under Doru’s shoulders to help him rise. “He has to still be here. Do you know where else he might be?”

“N—” Doru cut off the groan that interrupted his answer and pressed his lips tightly together.

Walter had never seen Doru so pale and inhuman. His skin was stretched so tightly over the bones of his face – and the rest of his body for that matter – it almost looked as though the bone would slice right through skin. His fangs were fully extended and he turned his face away, shuddering with tension and agony when Walter helped him slide off the slab.

“High silver content,” he whispered when his body no longer touched any part of the slab. “Kept me weak.

“Please get me out of here.”

Right. Easy enough. Just get the gravely wounded vampire out of the isolated house, past the lunatic vampire who had apparently set up some personalized house of horrors here. And not get eaten by your friend.

“Do you know any other way out?”

“No.”

“To Hell with this,” Walter muttered and lashed a hand out toward the wall, turning his wrist to drive wire forward and through brick and mortar, out into the chilly evening air. “I’m getting you out of here and then I’m finishing this bastard off for good.”

He helped Doru to the hole in the wall and braced himself to kick the hole open wide enough for them to pass through.

“Remember, you gave your word,” he reminded Doru before he threw himself out of the hole with the vampire clasped tightly against his chest.

For just a second, there was just the thrill of adrenaline and free fall, then an anchor wire wrapped around the attic support beam slowed their plummet to the ground, letting Walter unwind wire and rappel down the side of the building.

At the bottom, he spared time to look around, still clutching Doru against him. There was no sign of the white-haired vampire. He could get Doru to the car and leave him there, but that was no protection against a determined vampire. He could try to find the caretaker, but there was no guarantee that there was a caretaker, and if there was, there was no guarantee the man was still alive.

He couldn’t leave without trying to find that vampire.

“Doru.” He shook the vampire lightly and was rewarded with the limp swing of his head toward Walter’s. “Doru, I have to go find him. I’m taking you to the car. Wait there for me and I’ll get you home.”

It wasn’t as though Doru were in any condition to argue. Walter helped him stagger-walk to the front of the house and slid him into the back of the Bentley. He leaned in to the back of the car to cover Doru with his coat, and on an impulse he’d spend the rest of the night wondering at, brushed their lips lightly together. “I’ll be back. I promise.”

•••

The vampire was gone, of course.

Walter searched the house from top to bottom, pausing frequently to check out the window to assure himself that he could still see Doru lying in the back of the Bentley.

Christian’s body remained, but not a drop of his blood. There was a telephone, but no response when he picked it up. The bodies in the attic stayed just bodies, instead of rising as ghouls, for which Walter gave some small thanks.

Walter found nothing that would answer the mystery of why any of this had happened. Why had the vampire not attacked him? Was he that easily led by his blood lust? It was something to remember for when they inevitably faced each other again.

“Take me home,” Doru mumbled when Walter slid into the front seat of the car and started the engine. “Take me home, Walter. Don’t take me to Hellsing.”

Walter pulled out, grimacing when Doru hissed in pain from being jounced on the cobbled drive. “Where will you get blood?”

“Mihaela.” His voice was barely audible over the engine. “She’ll help me.”

“Alright.” Walter reached back over the seat and felt Doru’s cold hand close over his. “I’ll take you home and call Hellsing from there to come clean this up.

“Just one more thing.”

“Yes, Angel?”

“Do you know who the other man was?” He winced when Doru’s hand closed suddenly tightly on his before releasing; the vampire still had reserves of inhuman strength.

“Didn’t you recognize him?” Doru sounded reluctant to go on, but finally did. “He looked just like you.”