Hunting the Hunter

“There.”

A shaky sigh.

“Is that better?”

“Yes….”

∙∙∙

London is a temperate city, but even it sees ice at times. In those times, much of the population wisely chooses to stay indoors, huddled for warmth with others of their kind. With ice slicking the streets and sidewalks and reflecting the moon on a bitingly cold, clear night, it looked like some view of a frigid future in which man had no part.

Into that brittle silence came sound – fast enough to call to mind playing cards clicking in bicycle spokes, because footsteps, even running, could not come so fast.

Or at least, they should not.

The stillness of the quiet grey-blue scene broke when a stick figure of a person, long black hair streaming behind, hurtled by, seeking some hidey hole – the rabbit going to ground to wait out the fox's departure.

Close on its heels came the fox – less exaggerated a figure than the first, but no slower.

Light glittered between the fox and his prey, a trick of moon on ice? If moonlight cut, perhaps. But moonlight, even on a night where the air was as crisply sharp as this one, could not sever the unlikely curl that bounced above the front-runner's forehead, leaving it to fall unheeded to the ground.

Closer now, the runner in front came clear as a gaunt woman, although gender was more a guess based on her hair than any other feminine attributes. Her pursuer dodged out of the shadows, and the moonlight highlighted his distinctive attire, giving him away as Walter Dornez.

Walter slipped on the ice and scrambled back up to follow her, but his moment of lost time was enough for her to tear a door off its hinges with a shrieking complaint of tortured metal. She threw the door back at the man chasing her and disappeared into a distinctively rounded building that heralded an entrance to a deep level shelter.

Built in response to the Germans’ bombing during the war, most were repurposed or closed. This one had been locked up tight – safe against humans, but not against the vampire who tore her way through the door and ran down the steep spiral staircase into the pitch black lower level.

Her pursuer dodged the flying door and stopped at the head of the stairs. He cursed under his breath and pulled a small torch out of a pocket to flick it on and shine it down the stairs.

He could let her get away, or he could follow a vampire down into the dark with only a hand-held torch to light his way.

As though there was any question.

He started down the stairs, torch held in his left hand, nerves wound tight. He was doing something nigh on suicidal and he lived for this adrenaline rush. Maybe jumping out of a plane without a parachute was more fun, but this would have to do.

Walter had never sheltered in one, but he remembered that these shelters were set up to house thousands. The vampire could be hiding anywhere in the corridors.

Or, as was the case, she could be lurking at the bottom of the stairs, her back pressed into the slight indentation of the lift door next to the stairwell entrance. Her first blow knocked the torch out of his hand and tossed him against the wall in the small anteroom before the shelter proper.

The torch skittered across the floor and into the wall, casting crazily swinging shadows as it rolled. The back of Walter’s head struck the wall and his vision flashed white, but a strong sense of self-preservation had his hands up and casting a net of wire before his sight had even cleared.

He could feel through his fingers that she had contacted the wires and changed direction almost as fast as a ricochet. As his vision returned, he could see that his torch was still on, and that the antechamber was empty save for him.

Dammit!

Leaning over to pick up the torch brought on a wave of nausea that Walter had to force down before he could straighten and look around. If he were wise, he’d probably turn around and leave now, call for the troops to come down and cordon off this area until a proper search and destroy could be conducted.

But where would the challenge be in that?

He shook his head to try to clear it, which only provoked a fresh wave of nausea and reminded him that he’d probably just bruised his brain. Not the best time to be shaking it around more.

Right, then. He drew a deep breath, pushed the pain aside while he returned to the hunter’s mind, and opened the door that had swung shut behind the vampire.

A cry echoed up at him from one pitch black end of the tunnel. It sounded terrified, and Walter ran toward it. She might have found a human caretaker down here. In the dark? Regardless, she’d found someone.

Or something.

At first he thought his eyes were deceiving him. The shadows were shifting crazily while he ran, the light was dim far in front of him as the torch could only do so much, and the flash of red on white on black must have been her.

Only her hair was black.

And the white had definitely been hair. Hair that moved almost of its own accord, a kelp forest in the tide floating around a tall figure. It wore something black and tight-fitting that merged in and out of the shadows that swarmed it and its prey.

And its prey was his prey. Shoved against the wall with the thing’s face buried against her throat, the vampire Walter had been chasing, whimpered and pushed helplessly at her attacker while he… Walter wanted that to be a trick of shadow, that obscene thrust of hip and body against hers.

Without thought, he lashed out with wires to destroy both. He might taunt his targets, but this? He was not that sort of monster.

One handed, he was handicapped. The creature that was attacking the vampire turned and threw her body into the slicing wave coming at him with such force that even though she was turned into only so many pieces of meat, those pieces hit Walter with enough power behind them to knock him back and knock the torch from his hand.

There was only so much abuse the torch could take. With a tiny, unheard pop of breaking bulb, the tunnel went black as a tomb.


Which way was out? Which way was the creature? He was going to die down there. He’d always known he was going to die young. What would Arthur do without him? Thoughts, there and gone in an instant while Walter caught his balance and tried to get his bearings.

And then it came, as fast as a shark striking in the water, a blow that bore him back onto the ground, cracking his head again and lighting his vision with a sheet of white light and pain. The thing sat on his chest and pinned his hands to the ground and finally Walter felt a surge of terror that cleared his eyes enough to see two glowing red points floating above his face.

Struggling did nothing but make his gorge rise, but lying still was hardly an option. He tried kicking, which only made the creature shift back off his chest and across the top of his thighs to pin them.

Finally, he lay still, breathing in sharp pants while he fought his stomach’s rebellion.

A voice slithered out of the darkness under those scarlet motes. “Only human after all, Angel of Death?”

It knew who he was. The thought and the voice made his pulse jump, making his head throb so badly it was an effort of will not to cry out.

“I know you, Walter Dornez, agent of Hellsing, and Angel of Death. All vampires know you if they are wise.” The eyes, those were what the red points had to be, came closer and Walter found himself unable to look away. He had a choice of the darkness behind his eyelids or watching the only thing he could see.

The eyes stared unblinkingly into his from inches away. “You are a puppet whose pride outstrips your intellect. The Angel of Death is just another piece of human meat that cowers helpless and blind in the dark.” Cold breath brushed against his cheek followed by something colder and moist that traced his jaw, moving toward his mouth.

Walter’s lips drew back in a grimace of disgust and he snapped his head forward, into the face of the thing holding him down. He had a moment’s satisfaction before the vampire’s eyes expanded to fill his vision with red and terror crashed down on him like a tidal wave to bear him under into an unknowing, unthinking blackness.

∙∙∙

A crash and snarl snapped his eyes open and a moment of panic washed over him in which he thought he was blind, then memory returned. The chase, the shelter, the vampiric rape, the attack and the eyes.

Another sound of smashing. Shelter bunks? Storage boxes? He couldn’t tell. Either the vampire was on a sudden inexplicable rampage that didn’t include him, or something else was going on.

All he had to refer to was the sound. Walter scrabbled until he found a wall and pushed himself up, backing away from the sounds of destruction and hopefully toward an exit.

He caught his breath in a sudden silence and strained his ears for some sign of what was happening. Footsteps suddenly rattled toward him and he was swept off his feet and up in someone’s arms to be borne away from where he was standing.

In moments there was a dizzying ascension around and around what had to be the spiral staircase and out into the freezing night, where the cold blue moonlight was the most welcome sight Walter had ever seen.

It limned his rescuer’s face in silver. Doru.

The vampire carried him effortlessly away from the shelter entrance and down the street barely a city block before turning up the steps into a row home.

Walter had not had time to adjust to the fact that he was not going to die in the dark. Now, in less than a minute, he had gone from echoing darkness where his death awaited and into a warm and well-lit home where Doru gently set him in front of a crackling fire and knelt at his side.

He could always blame the concussion for his slow reaction time. It was preferable to remembering how easily the vampire in the shelter had rolled him into a red haze of terror.

The thought brought a wave of nausea he wasn’t strong enough to fight down and he started to retch. Reaching for the nearest receptacle, Doru emptied a small canister that held kindling out on the floor and helped Walter lean over it.

The vampire supported Walter with an arm around him and held the loose hair away from the other man’s face with his free hand. If he hadn’t been preoccupied, Walter might have appreciated the generosity.

When he finally sat back on his heels and wiped his mouth, Doru left him for a moment and returned to kneel beside him with a glass of cold water.

“I heard the pursuit,” he explained quietly before Walter could ask. “I am right on the path you two took and saw you out my window. I went outside and saw you two go down into the shelter. I waited and you did not return, but neither did she. After an hour, I went to see and found you and the other. We fought. I hurt him, and took the advantage to take you out of there.”

Walter’s hand went to his throat at the thought of nearly an hour spent in that creature’s clutches. He was surprised and relieved to find the skin unbroken. “You rescued me. Why hadn’t he killed me?”

“If I had to guess, it would be because there is no purpose in torturing an unconscious man,” the vampire answered bluntly. “He appeared to be gathering supplies to that end.”

“Why did you help me? After what I said to Mihaela.”

The vampire regarded him seriously before gently touching his fingertips to Walter’s cheek. “Because I thought that in time you would see that you were wrong about us.”

Those tiny points of contact burned under Doru’s cool fingertips. Walter drew back from the touch and attempted to stand, swaying unsteadily on his feet when he reached them while the world narrowed to a tunnel and the nausea returned.

“I have to get back to Hellsing. Arthur will worry.”

Doru put an arm around Walter to steady him. “You cannot get back on your own in this condition, and I cannot have Hellsing know where I live. You may call your leader to tell him that you have found safe shelter for the night and I will see that you get home tomorrow.”

Walter considered protesting, but the vampire had rescued him from torture and death, or worse. He already owed him his life and the thought of trying to get back to Hellsing on a night like this in his condition was anything but appealing.

“Show me to the telephone.”

∙∙∙

Arthur hung up the phone troubled by the way Walter’s speech had slurred a little at the edges. If his retainer was going to start drinking to excess, he was going to get himself killed some night.

But he had reported that his quarry had been silenced and that he had a safe bed for the night, so perhaps it was for the best if the young man blew off some steam. And it was about damned time he did it in company, too. Feeling connected to humans rather than isolated from them would keep him from becoming a monster.

Perhaps his insistence that Walter get away from work now and then was paying off.