Exigencies

Alucard watched the door swing closed behind Arthur before looking back at the young man in his bed.

“You heard his orders, Angel. His word will be law for you as mine is.”

“Going to have fun with that, I bet,” Walter muttered with resigned sulkiness. “Being able to just tell me what to do.”

“Eventually,” Alucard admitted without clarifying that at the moment he was simply too relieved not to have to attend the funeral of yet another loved one.

Life as a No Life King meant either far too many of those or none at all, and the latter only due to of a lack of loved ones, not a lack of deaths.

Not because Alucard was pleased to be playing the servant for his servant, but because Arthur had told him to, Alucard turned away from the newborn vampire and took one of the bags of blood from the ice bucket he had brought down. Now was a good time to see just how much of his new circumstance Walter was truly going to accept.

He filled only one of the two goblets and returned to the bedside, holding Walter’s eyes as he wordlessly held out what would be the young man’s first meal in this new life of his.

Unless he turned it away, and Alucard would be more than mildly disappointed in him if he did.

Calm grey eyes met the elder vampire’s glowing red, and as the moment drew out, Alucard thought he was indeed going to be disappointed. Then a red flare flickered across the grey – there and gone again like a flash of lightning – and Walter took the proffered glass to raise to his lips.

Still the moment held, and Alucard wished that he knew what was going on behind that calm facade. He knew the practice that went into Walter’s calm, the discipline that held most of the time, barring moments of passion, which meant both the bloody and the loving kinds. Although he supposed that he could make the argument that the bloody kinds were loving kinds for the Angel of Death.

The red flared again and stayed, eating the grey until Walter looked up at him with a vampire’s eyes. Then the last veil was cast aside and he drank, eyelids falling closed as though to savor every last sense of the experience – blood filling his mouth, screaming parched tissue sucking the fluid away before he’d even swallowed. Alucard knew that Walter could feel his body absorbing the vitality long before it even reached his stomach.

Oh yes, Alucard knew well that sensation of a desert finally watered and brought to life. Decades later, he would see fast-forward footage of a desert brought to life by its brief rainy season and be moved almost to aching by the visual representation of his own experience of respite after parched nothing.

He watched his fledgling drink with a parent’s pride and a lover’s enjoyment of his partner’s pleasure. The two aspects were linked inextricably in the experience – he had brought Walter into this life as a parent would their child, but loved each child as a mate. Vampires were not humans to coddle their offspring or worry of genetics; human mores did not apply.

Watching Walter wasn’t the same as some of his past fledglings. In fact, Walter was the first male he’d brought over. He’d always preferred women; there was no secret in his history about that.

But Walter was an exception for a myriad of reasons. The propinquity effect was but one of them. Close proximity with no realistic hope for either of them of any appropriate other lover had certainly helped bring them together, but there was also the matter of their partnership in battle – the heat of adrenaline and shared bloodlust. And Walter was beautiful to look upon; there was no doubt of that, either.

There were many reasons why he found this man to be worthy of traveling the night as a No Life King and as his companion.

Not the least of which was watching Walter’s throat move as he unhesitatingly swallowed the blood until the last dregs were gone. The elder vampire grinned toothily when the first thing Walter did after draining the glass was to open those red eyes and look expectantly toward the ice bucket.

He smiled almost indulgently down at Walter and took the empty goblet from him, speaking as he turned away to refill the glass and fill his own now that the test had been passed.

“It’s a poor substitute for the hot essence that pours from a living human, but good enough if it’s all you know.” His lip curled in distaste at the smell of the preservatives in the blood. “Poor substitute” hardly did justice to the difference between bagged and fresh blood.

It rankled him that Arthur had commanded Walter to stay with these meager rations when he could only come into his full power when allowed live prey, but Alucard understood the Hellsing master’s reasons.

Walter was already more dangerous than most newborn vampires – bringing over experience and deadly skill from his human life. When he learned to add the power of a No Life King to what he could already do, he would be more than formidable. Now Alucard’s lips curled in a smile as he turned back to Walter, two full goblets in hand – when that day came to pass, he would be a fitting partner for Alucard, and a fitting opponent.

Walter watched him approach, those vampire-red eyes flicking from his master’s face to the goblet in his hand and back again as though unsure which held a greater fascination. The goblet won when Alucard held it out to him and he took it, looking momentarily like the famished war orphan that the vampire had first brought to Hellsing almost a decade ago. Walter had looked at the shepherd’s pie the cook had put in front of him with that same expression of greedy avidity.

Alucard had believed even then that the boy had potential, and as the boy grew into a man, he was pleased to see the potential realize itself in a man who killed with all the glee the vampire could ask for.

The Angel of Death had been a thing of beauty during the war.

He pulled himself from his thoughts when Walter shifted impatiently and brought him back to the present. The vampire supposed he had earned a few minutes of introspective musing, but he had a fledgling to attend to.

“I could offer you some melodramatic toast welcoming you to the fold of nightwalkers,” he said, handing Walter a goblet and holding up his own. “But I am no Bela Lugosi.”

Who had quite amused him, it should be said. The vampire could be seen wandered the manor halls sweeping a cape before his eyes and laughing for months after first seeing the man’s interpretation of Dracula. It was a pity that had been before Walter’s time.

He raised his goblet slightly in a wordless toast and drank, watching Walter do the same. Alucard observed that he controlling himself better now that the first rush of hunger had been dealt with.

Still, it was Walter who finished first and leaned over the edge of the bed to set his goblet out of the way. He looked better now, less like he had just died. His eyes faded back to grey and he favored Alucard with a fair replica of his old cocky smile.

One might think everything was perfectly fine with Walter, were it not for the way his hand rose seemingly without his awareness, to rub at the imprint of teeth that remained on his throat.

She would pay, Alucard promised himself. Whoever that vampire was who had thought to touch what was his, she would pay.

Now, though, they could take this night to let Walter recover. It was a luxury, yes, but it was also a necessity, since Walter would need to be stronger to face this vampire who thought to be his master.

Alucard finished his own drink and set his goblet on the floor next to Walter’s. Had he a pulse, it would have been quickening then in anticipation of something he had not experienced in well over half a century.

No matter how he had enjoyed the luxury of Walter’s body heat and the pleasure of someone to hold in his arms, Alucard had always had to hold back. He had not had true release in another’s arms since Lucy had been taken from him. Always he had to be aware of the limitations of the human body, always he had to remember not to allow himself the sublime luxury of penetration with fangs as well as flesh.

But for now…. He smiled and reached out, a finger under Walter’s chin bringing up his fledgling’s face as he leaned in. For now he could have the sort of joining possible only between two of their kind.

A kiss first. And even this was new between them, the newborn sharpness of Walter’s fangs pressing into Alucard’s lips until he had to draw back. Damn Arthur for his order. Damn that woman for making the order reasonable and necessary. Even now there would have to be restraint.

“You must not draw my blood,” he warned Walter, lips close enough to the other man’s for the breath of his words to pass over his skin. “No matter how the urge will come upon you.”

“I will not draw your blood,” Walter whispered and closed that bare distance to brush his lips against Alucard’s. “No matter how I want to.”

Let Walter suffer the restraint, Alucard told himself as he slid his tongue between Walter’s lips. Let him be the one who must hold back. I have earned this time and earned it well.

He drew Walter into his arms and lavished kisses on his lover’s mouth, tasting and claiming the new vampire’s sighs before shifting his attentions to Walter’s throat.

The scars there inflamed him with rage and a lust to lay his claim on what should be his and his alone. Walter shifted under him then, gasping and raising his hips to rub himself against Alucard’s leg, to let his lover feel the increasingly hard line under the layers of cloth that separated them.

Alucard could almost taste Walter’s lust on his skin. He wasn’t dead and he was still human enough in his thinking to need to reaffirm his life through sensation.

The vampire growled and gave Walter all the sensation he would need to know without doubt that he was not dead. Alucard’s teeth sank in over the intruder’s imprint to leave marks of his own.

Mine. Not yours. Mine. Those bloody wounds proclaimed.

Walter cried out under him and his body sent mixed messages in reaction to the unexpected penetration. His hands pushed up at Alucard’s shoulders. Though the struggle was halfhearted, more an atavistic holdover from the life he’d just left behind than true intent to escape. His pelvis also pushed upward, and there was nothing halfhearted about how hard he was through his clothes or how his hips rolled into a rhythm almost immediately – thrust upward, draw back, thrust again harder.

The sounds he made grew softer, weaker, although Alucard took litttle blood from the bite. After all, the intent was not feeding, but possession. Walter was not weakening in that sense, but the pleasure was finally taking him. This was what they had not had time for the first time Alucard had bitten him. This was why the bite for a vampire was more than mere metaphorical sex, but unarguable penetrative sex.

Alucard growled and shifted himself between Walter’s legs to bring himself down, to let the hard length of his erection press down against Walter as his lover’s hips rose again.

He drew his teeth from Walter’s flesh then and crushed his bloody lips over the other man’s. Blood and the taste of Walter and the hard thrust between them were better than anything he had had in years.

“Clothes.” His voice was harsh, barely human and barely controlled. “Get them off. Now.”

His own clothes dissolved into streamers of shadow that slid off his skin and disappeared like dawn mist.

“Cloth, Alucard,” Walter said, half-laughing, half-annoyed. “What’s left of it. I can’t do this.” He slid his hands over Alucard’s bare skin to demonstrate “this.”

With a ragged sound, Alucard grasped Walter’s bloodied shirt to tear it open and turned his attention on Walter’s trousers only to have the younger man catch his wrists and shake his head.

“There are bits under there I value. Let me unzip and you can pull them off.”

Impatiently, Alucard nodded and rose up off of Walter enough to let him unzip – which the young man did very carefully thanks to the erection that forced cloth and zipper tight over skin he would not want to catch in a zipper’s teeth, even if he would regenerate.

Once Walter had unzipped, Alucard roughly grabbed the waistband of his trousers and pulled hard enough to force Walter to grab the headboard or be pulled along with his clothing.

Later, Alucard promised himself, he would stop to admire Walter’s body, vampire pale and beautiful. At that moment, though, he had no patience for such delays. He fell upon his lover with a hunger that might abate, but would take years to be fully satisfied, just as it had taken years to grow.

It was so simple for something that held such burning need and importance. Alucard knelt above Walter, kissing him while a hand on his lover’s thigh lifted one, clearly urging him to raise both and open himself.

Years of restraint and Walter’s repeated reminders of the necessity of lubricant could be pushed aside in one hard thrust.

Walter cried out again, this time in pain. Or expectation of pain. Had he not already been so lost in the slide of flesh inside flesh, Alucard might have laughed at the way the cry of pain cut off, sounding almost puzzled.

Walter was a vampire. Bullets would pass through his body without causing so much as a blink on his part, but he had expected a bit of fucking to hurt?

And this was truly fucking. Not sex, certainly not lovemaking, just the hard slap of Alucard’s body meeting Walter’s, hips and thighs pounding thighs and ass. No holding back. No need to be gentle for the fragile human body.

The bed groaned from the punishment, but the sounds that the two vampires made, while sometimes also groans, were those of lovers who were satisfying themselves well.

Somewhere in the midst of that, with Walter writhing against his lover now that the human fear of being harmed was quieted, Alucard bit again and again, leaving marks all over the man’s throat and shoulders and chest only to see them heal again in a blink.

Every bite made Walter thrash harder, moaning loudly with his head thrown back and his eyes closed almost in pain while he clung to Alucard like the anchor in a storm.

In an ideal world, Walter would have been able to bite back, and that would have been the proper end to Alucard’s fast, but this was still good. So damnably good.

He closed his eyes to focus on the feel of Walter wrapped around him and the ways his muscles contracted with every jerk of his hips. He could taste his lover on his lips, smell him, hear him making small sounds that were almost pleas, and always, that delicious constriction, holding him, massaging him, drawing him in.

When Walter’s clinging changed to raking scratches, Alucard growled against his skin and thrust harder. It wasn’t a bite, but that frisson of there-and-gone pain was good.

He drew back from his lover’s throat and kissed him roughly, thrusting harder and seeing nothing behind his closed lids but the two of them entwined on a bed with blood-stained sheets.

Then despite his closed eyes, Alucard saw a flare of yellow. Snapping them open, he saw Walter, his eyes luminous, but not the red the new vampire’s had been before. Alucard had time to register that incongruity before Walter lunged, lips drawn back to bite.

The older vampire caught Walter by his ponytail, jerking his head back before he could complete his lunge and bite.

He looked down into those foreign eyes and knew who was there with them.

“You want to play with us, do you?” he growled, and shadows massed around the bed, myriad red eyes winking open in the tangible darkness.

Walter’s body struggled, but the light in those eyes was not Walter.

He drew out of his lover and the raging shadows rushed in, wrapping his thrashing limbs.

“Then by all means,” Alucard’s voice dropped to a dangerous whisper, “stay and play.”

The shadows pulled, criss-crossing Walter’s body and flipping him onto his stomach.

“Angel.” He leaned in against his lover’s back while the possessor fought the shadows’ hold. “I’m not letting her have you.” His hands clasped Walter’s hips, raising them and holding them steady despite his struggles. His words punctuated the hard thrust that brought them together again.

“You. Are. Mine.”