Exigencies

Walter opened his eyes and rolled over, clasping a spare pillow to himself while he shook off his dream.

“You’re awake.”

The deep voice drew his attention to Alucard and he knew that he was neither still dreaming, nor had it been strictly a dream.

Alucard’s hands and clothes were stained with blood. His mouth still smudged with red, and Walter could smell it. Smell it, and his stomach turned over, not with nausea - blood had never nauseated him - but with hunger.

His first waking word was quiet but heartfelt. “Shit.”

“Quite,” Alucard agreed, rising from the chair and coming to sit on the edge of the bed. “Stupid boy. So stupid.”

“Save it, Alucard,” Walter muttered, sitting up and putting a hand to his throat. He remembered her jaws in his flesh, remembered the tearing that had signaled the end of his life as he knew it.

He remembered that in between place, and the struggle for who would be his master, and he remembered the word please from a man too proud to beg.

“Thank you,” he said quietly, reaching to touch Alucard’s shoulder. “That bitch duped me.”

“How?” Walter met Alucard’s eyes and almost flinched from the fury directed at him and the way the volume of the vampire’s voice rose until Alucard was nearly shouting. “How could you be so stupid? You know better!”

“I know I know better!” Walter snapped back. “I know and I don’t have an excuse, so keep the shouting down.”

“Then tell me how some piece of trash could take the Angel of Death,” Alucard growled at him, and while they both knew his rage was because he had nearly lost his lover, the anger was still hot and still directed at Walter.

“She suckered me,” Walter said, leaning back against the pillows and looking tired and oh so very pale. One could be remedied easily enough. The other was to be the story of his life from there on.

“It was supposed to be simple enough. Clean out a bit of trash that had collected in the east end. There were some missing people, and reports of ghouls. It wasn’t even worth waking you up when the source had already been identified.”

Alucard watched Walter speak, his eyes drifting back to the scars on his throat despite himself. He couldn’t forget that this wasn’t over just because Walter was there with him.

“Go on.”

“We had the area cordoned. Civilians mostly evacuated and the vampire’s location was known. All I had to do was go in and clean up,” Walter repeated as though he was also wondering how things had gone so damnably wrong.

He closed his eyes and watched it all play out behind his eyelids.


East End London at night: fog shrouding everything, the heavy mist softening man-made right angles into things more organic, street lamps casting jaundiced yellow glows at intervals, and the streets and sidewalks silent this night, human residents evacuated under the pretense of a gas leak.

Walter looked relaxed as he strolled up the quiet street, but there was a tension in his shoulders as he listened for anything out of place. There were ghouls here - effective enough shock troops and guards against the stupid, but no real challenge to one trained and experienced in their elimination.

The vampire was holed up in a dance studio, of all places. Most of the ghouls were girls from the school - young, credulous, and now dead no matter whether their bodies still walked or not.

Apparently the vampire had taken up a place as the new dance teacher - Madame Noverre, and had started her predation relatively slowly and subtly. But, as happened with vampires, one slip-up led to a slippery slope of the dead and damned, and Walter was there to clean things up.

Everything remained quiet as Walterr made his way to the studio. Standing outside, one could hardly guess that inside were at least four dead girls and a vampire who would be desperate to get away if she knew that she had been identified.

Why would she worry about one young man on the late end of his teen years coming to the door of the studio? Walter hardly looked the part of a fearsome vampire hunter come to singlehandedly eliminate a threat to London's citizens. Not this lanky young man in his crisp trousers, crisper shirt, tidy waistcoat and neatly knotted tie. With the sleeve garters holding his cuffs away from his hands, perhaps he was just some bartender on his break to visit his sister or girlfriend.

He walked up the steps and through the studio door as though he belonged there. Maybe he was actually a rare male student. On further regard, didn't he move with a sort of unlikely grace for his height and age? A dancer, then.

The studio was silent. No syncopated steps from a dozen feet moving in unison, no music, no teacher counting the beat and correcting her charges.

Nothing.

Walter walked deeper into the building, past the front office, past the practice room with its barre and its mirrors. How unfortunate that the myth of vampires being invisible in mirrors was untrue. It would likely have spared the girls Walter still expected to find somewhere in the building.

A shuffling sound. Brief enough to be imagination, or wind, or even a rat with a prize to be dragged back to its nest.

Walter was veteran of too many hunts to believe those peaceable lies in this context. He slowed and stopped, head tilted toward the direction the sound had come from, but heard nothing more.

His footsteps resounded loudly on the polished wood floors that were meant to amplify such sounds for the performers that usually traveled them.

Another shuffle.

Walter stopped at a closed door and shook out his fingers before reaching out to turn the knob and kick the door open, letting it slam against the wall to confirm that no one was lurking there to try to surprise him.

No surprises behind the door, but in front of it, the bloodied ghoul of a dancer. She had probably once been lovely, but the sickly gray flesh, bloodied dance costume, and hellish yellow glow in her eyes made her nothing but a horror for Walter to dispatch before she could make the first step in his direction.

A second and a third ghoul shuffled toward him even as a scream echoed through an open doorway on the other side of the room.

No time to think. The ghouls were so much meat and Walter was across the room, wires already disappearing back inside his rings before the scream had died away.

On the other side of the open door was the sort of scene Walter had dedicated his life to preventing or at least avenging.

The girl shrank back from the ghoul of one of her classmates, shaking her head over and over again until her hair covered her face. To Walter, the detail that stood out most was her long-fingered white hands thrown up in front of her as though she would hold the ghoul off by force of will.

Her terrified screams rang in Walter's ears, and for a change it seemed he wouldn't be too late to save someone.

The ghoul fell as the others had and Walter glanced around for its creator before turning his attention to the girl he had rescued. "Stay behind me. Do exactly as I say."

She nodded and stood up, eyes downcast and hugging herself, clearly too shaken for conversation. At first glance, Walter saw no obvious sign of injury. Her pale pink dance costume was unmarred and she moved without any sign of pain. He'd have to take a chance on her.

He turned away to look for any sign of the vampire, and as easy as that, it was over.

The girl’s hands were on him, but more importantly, and worst, her fangs tore into his throat without preamble, without warning, without time for him to do anything.

Even as he fought, it was already too late, but that didn't stop Walter from bringing up his his hands to break her hold, wires lashing, cutting into his shoulders as much as they cut into the vampire that was killing him.

He didn't remember how he'd gotten away. It was a jumble of blood and pain, his gasps for air, her snarls, whirling scenes of wood paneling, mirrored walls, and grey-shrouded streets, shouts of dismay and disbelief from the troops that had found him writhing in the street, fighting the taint spreading in his veins.

Walter looked into Alucard's eyes, not flinching from the burning anger there.

"I was stupid and we're paying for it." He pressed his lips together tightly and felt his fledgling fangs bite into his flesh. "You could kill me now and reduce the risk."

Alucard's eyes flared redder, and for a moment, Walter thought his master might just take him up on that. Instead, the elder vampire snarled and leaned in until their noses were inches apart. "Do not ever say that again. You are mine! You chose and I don't care how stupid you've been, you will stand by that choice and you will not dishonor me. Do you hear me?"

Walter's lips twitched between shock and a snarl before settling instead on a smirk as a more habitual expression.

He leaned closer until their lips brushed and murmured, "Yes, Master."

"I'm sure I'll regret breaking up this touching moment," came Arthur Hellsing's dry interjection from the doorway, "but would one of you tell me just what the Hell is going on here?"