Sacred Lineage

She looked down. The height made her dizzy, and the surf crashed beneath the cliffs with the violence of any army. The wind screamed in her ears, and her hair whipped her like a carter whips a horse. She was sure that there were welts on her buttocks, back, and legs. The wind grew more chill, and she shivered. She looked at herself and realized that she was naked. For a moment, she thought herself at Dover, and then realized that she\'d never been the place she was now.

She turned around, as far as she could see there was a desolate plain. Nothing was growing, nothing was green at all that she could see. She\'d have thought it was the Blight, but it was cold, deathly cold, and the wind blasted her with its icy chill.

She had to find shelter. She set out fighting the wind. It was difficult, she had to fight every step of the way. There was no one there at all. She could hardly see when the wind gusted, it blew dust into her face. Her eyes teared up, and she blinked trying to get the dust out.

Bleak, that\'s what it was. There was nothing here but wind and dust. No one here at all except for her. The loneliness came crashing down on her, and the tears continued to fall. Not because of the wind and the dirt, but because of the loneliness that she saw no end to.

Still, she struggled on. Finally, she came to the farthest point that she could go, and she looked off the cliff to see the sea crashing against the rocks below. How had she gotten back to the same place that she had come from? She had gone far over rocks, and not even in sight of the shore from whence she had come. She turned and looked back, and she could recognize the scrubby trees that she had passed a bit ago. Was she at the other end? Was that all there was here was rock and cliff and ocean?

The wind was so strong that she couldn\'t even hear the screaming of the gulls above her. She could see them there, and they looked oddly different than the ones she had seen before. She seemed to be able to see both less and more of them than she should. Their skin seemed stretched over their bones.

One swooped down close, and she noticed that it was beyond stretched skin, the gull was skeletal. It\'s eyes were missing, and it screamed at her, and hopped closer. She stepped back, taken by surprise. It followed up it\'s advantage, and hopped toward her, creeling loudly. She screamed, and started to run away, far away from the ghostly gull and the rocky coast.

She stumbled and fell. Her hands and knees were bruised and cut open on the sharp rocks. She hissed in pain, and rose. The gull dived down and licked her blood off the rocks. It somehow became more substantial as it took from her. Horrified, she started to run again.

The gull cried out, and it\'s brothers and sisters called back to it. The whole flock followed her, crying out in it\'s need for her flesh to make them real again. She screamed, but the wind carried the sound away faster than she could hear it. One of the birds grasped some of her hair in it\'s beak, and she batted it away. She reached the opposite coast again, and looked down at the waves. The skeletal gulls came for her, and she made the only choice that she could. She backed up a few paces, then ran for the edge of the cliff, stretched out her arms and fell.

She screamed as she regained consciousness, the piercing sound echoed throughout the mansion. Before she was all the way awake, a familiar blond head was materializing through her wall. She almost screamed again from the shock, but the wink and grin stopped her.

\"Seras?\"

\"Deirdre. What\'s wrong? I heard you all the way in the basement.\"

\"I had a nightmare.\" She swallowed hard, and tried to remind herself that it was only a dream.

\"I can fix that you know.\"

Deirdre was immediately Hellsing. \"I didn\'t think these offers would start so soon,\" she said in a quelling voice.

\"You know who trained me.\" Seras said, smiling. \"He offers it to your mother all the time. I am surprised no one\'s offered it to you before.\"

Deirdre had a moment of thinking that her friend had momentarily taken leave of her senses, but in another way was completely sure that the other woman was absolutely serious in her offer.

\"There\'s no way I can do that, Seras. I have to have the obligatory heir. And hopefully a spare.\" She referenced the Royals preference for two children.

\"Well, alternative to that, I can trance you back to sleep.\"

Deirdre considered that. \"Actually, that may have caused what happened earlier.\"

Seras thought for a moment, and it was clear that she realized that tonight had been the night the seals needed to be renewed as well. The female had never been subject to them, and once she had freed herself from Alucard, she could have done whatever she liked. She\'d stayed partially because she liked the family, and partially because she didn\'t really have anyplace better to go. In addition to that, and a larger reason than she would have liked to admit to, she had a lot of respect for Alucard, and she knew that she still had much to learn from him.

\"He took from you for the seals?\" She didn\'t really want to ask the question, especially since she already knew the answer.

\"He did.\" Deirdre sighed. \"I guess I freaked out a little.\"

\"Most people would freak out more than \'a little.\' I think you probably did very well.\" Seras responded.

\"I don\'t feel like I did very well right now, when I woke up everyone in the house.\" sighed Deirdre.

\"You didn\'t wake up anyone. Alucard and I were still awake, and no one else woke up.\" Seras said in a comforting voice.

Deirdre thought about it. Being tranced to sleep was much better than being drunk to sleep, or bashed on the head to sleep, or medicated to sleep. She supposed that it wouldn\'t hurt this once.

\"All right. Do your worst.\" Deirdre tried to make a joke.

Seras caught her eyes in an age-old mesmerising trick that was one of the hallmarks of Vampiric talent. It took less than a minute to focus Deirdre\'s attention.

\"Sleep.\" Was the only thing she said.

Obediently, Deirdre\'s eyes closed and she slept.

Seras had one more task before her. She quietly opened the door and went down the stairs. Picking up an assortment of about a dozen boxes, she carried them up and placed them in Deirdre\'s room on her desk. Today was Deirdre\'s eighteenth birthday, and Seras wanted to make sure that she got the opportunity to open her gifts in private. She noticed another box had been added on, and an envelope with the distinctive lettering Alucard used. She wondered what her Master had given the younger Hellsing. It would have been impolite to open it, so she left it with curiosity eating her alive.

With one backward glance at the slim box, Seras Victoria left the room, and shut the door behind her. Hopefully, everything would be better for Deirdre in the morning. She deserved more happy days than she was going to get again. Seras, like Alucard, sensed that the situation with Sir Integral was grave indeed. They had discussed it earlier, and Seras now believed that it would be less than five years before Deirdre was Sir Hellsing.

Going down the stairs, she sighed. Taking the long view wasn\'t always easy.

She trotted out to the tarmac and got into the Heliocopter. She had an appointment at RAF Wittering. There was enough activity to warrant something that no one had thought would actually happen. Sir Integral had contacted a man from the Colonies to come over and help with some of the supernatural problems. He was apparantly not only talented psychically, but had good references from the Marine Corps and the CIA. The CIA hadn\'t wanted to let him go, but Sir Integral had managed to talk them into a limited time contract.

She turned the Bird into the wind, and flew steadily. It was going to be a long night.