Hunting the Hunter

“Let me....”

A soft sigh.

“Yes. Like that.”

Another sigh, shared.

∙∙∙

As 1950 drew to a close, Walter ventured away from Hellsing manor more and more on personal business. That the personal business was an attempt to find the wolf in sheep’s clothing, Mihaela, was not something he chose to share with Sir Hellsing.

The young hunter wandered London, past the riverside where he had spoken with the vampire girl, the tunnel where he had seen her hunt, the shopping district where the solicitous window dresser had taken Mihaela to shelter her. Somehow he thought that she would find him, but days went by, then weeks, and he did not see her anywhere.

He considered going to Doru’s home to ask him where to find the girl, but something kept him from going. Some feeling that to do so was to invite things he either did not want, or at the very least, was not ready for. He was already indebted enough to the vampire; this he could do himself.

He thought long on whom the girl would hunt - people who would prey upon a seemingly helpless child. Those predators would hunt their prey where children congregated. He tried parks, cinemas, and one early evening just before Christmas, the zoo.

He paid little attention to the animals, caged and bound as they were. Death would be a kinder fate for these creatures than to be locked away from their natures and put on display for humans who could not appreciate them.

His eyes ranged the humans on display instead - harried mothers trying to wear their children out before bedtime, indulgent grandparents spending some precious time with the offspring of their offspring, occasional studious youths with sketchbooks or journals making spurious inferences from the unnatural behavior of natural creatures in artificial circumstances.

It was all so very pointless.

But there was always a chance that she would be there.

He strolled past the bears and meerkats and wildebeest that looked like oxen that just happened to be from the wilds of the Dark Continent. He saw no little girl who was not what she seemed.

Or maybe he saw many and didn’t know it. Regardless, not the one he sought.

Until he came to the cages that held the wolves.

It seemed somehow fitting that he caught a glimpse of her white coat and fuzzy white hat first, taking him back to his earlier thoughts of Mihaela as a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

The vampire girl’s back was to him and she was deep in conversation with a young man who hung on her every word with almost hungry focus. She gestured toward the cages where the wolves watched them both with flat, predatory eyes. When the man asked her a question, she shook her head, said something, and then turned to unerringly point to Walter, giving him a beaming smile.

Walter’s eyes narrowed at the flicker of disappointment across the stranger’s face. It would seem that Mihaela’s hunt would have been successful this evening, but at a guess, she had just told the man that she was with Walter.

Walter approached the two, his attention on the fool who had thought he’d found easy prey. Pudgy, pink, shiny faced, he looked like a man who had never quite gotten the hang of being a grown up. “Mihaela, have you found a new friend?”

“This is David, Uncle,” Mihaela chirped in her child’s voice. “He was telling me how much he likes the zoo and teaching children about the animals. He’s a docent.”

Uncle? But Walter went along with the act. “Does he now?” He quirked an eyebrow at the now uncomfortable David. “How generous to share his time.”

“Ah, yes... well....” David wiped his hands on his trousers and gave Walter a twitchy smile, already backing away from them. “Now that Mihaela’s escort is here and I know that she is safe, I’ll just be moving on. I wanted to go visit with Guy before I went home for the evening.”

Mihaela beamed at him and waved. “Bye bye, David. It was very nice to meet you.”

Walter watched the man make his retreat before looking down at Mihaela. “‘Bye bye?’”

“I make a lovely innocent, don’t you think?”

Her comment drew a frown from Walter. “You look like an innocent, but I know what you are.”

“And you’re looking for me,” she said, turning away to climb up on the fence to better watch the wolves. The largest of them paced back and forth in the cage, its eyes never leaving her and its hackles bristling up. “Despite what you said to me the last time we met. You aren’t here to execute me.”

Walter noted that she was stating, not asking. “No. I’m not.” He watched the wolf’s pacing, glancing back and forth between the wolf that wore its nature for all to see, and the wolf that hid under the white wool of one of the flock. “Did Doru tell you what happened?”

“About the shelter and the other? Yes.” The girl kept her attention on the wolf, which was pacing faster with each circuit. “What does that have to do with me?”

“Doru saved my life,” Walter said, less than delighted to admit that he had needed saving. “After I threatened you and him.”

Mihaela said nothing. The wolf stopped directly across from her. Over the noise of all the people, Walter couldn’t trust his impression that the animal had whined.

“I was wrong,” he forced himself to say because he felt it was the right thing to do. “What you did was not murder, but an execution.” Which was what he always told himself about his own job.

The wolf was definitely whining now, and as Walter watched, it dropped its head and tail. He could see its pelt twitch, shivers running across its flanks. Glancing back to Mihaela, he couldn’t read her expression, and her eyes were fixed on the animal.

“Will you accept my apology?”

“Doru is a kind host,” she said instead of answering his question. “He always shows me such consideration when I spend a day in his home.”

“Yes,” Walter agreed, despite being a bit put off by her change of direction. “He was most considerate. Do you spend the day there often?”

“Often enough. His home is almost like my own.”

The wolf gave a final shudder and lay down, rolling onto its side to show its belly. Mihaela smiled and dropped down from the fence. “I want to see the monkeys.”

∙∙∙

Walter looked around the monkey house, but it was still the people that kept his attention. The animals weren’t dangerous, they were locked away. The humans were roaming free.

And among those roaming humans, he spotted David, who had apparently found a new little girl to share his interest in the animals with. Walter let Mihaela lead him where she wanted, most of his attention on watching the man who had already set off alarms for him.

“Guy was born on Guy Fawkes Night,” she was telling him, reading information about the gorilla off the placard in front of his cage, when Walter saw David unlocking a door marked “Employees Only” and leading the little girl through it. Her eyes were alight with excitement at the promise of something, probably seeing how the zoo worked behind the scenes.

Without a second thought, Walter left the vampire and strode to catch the door before it swung shut.

Bluntly, it smelled like shit back there, but how was that surprising in a zoo? Walter caught sight of another door swinging closed ahead of him and hurried to follow, not wanting to lose his prey.

He had almost entirely forgotten the vampire he’d left behind in the immediacy of his hunt. It wasn’t his mandate to do this sort of thing, but it wasn’t something he could turn a blind eye to, either. Hellsing was above the law. Hellsing made its own law.

And if he was sure he was right, that was good enough.

Opening the next door, he could hear the girl’s voice asking a question and David responding in a tone that sounded much more self-assured than what Walter had heard from the man when they had been face-to-face. Apparently children didn’t make him fidgety the way Walter had.

A corridor lined with doors stretched in front of him. The one he wanted was the one clicking shut as he picked up his pace, not wanting the cut-rate predator to have any more time with his prey.

“... a secret. You can never tell,” Walter heard as he pushed the door open.

They were in a storeroom. There was no way David could try to pass this off as a private tour. Not of a storage closet behind a locked door with the man trying to convince a little girl that they had a secret.

He crossed the room in three long strides and caught David by the throat, pushing him backward against a wall to choke for air and claw impotently at Walter’s arm. “What were you going to teach her about the animals here?”

Glancing over his shoulder for the little girl, Walter saw her looking at him in terrified disbelief, a scream hovering at the edges of her lips.

And behind her, standing in the doorway, Mihaela.

“Shh...” Mihaela came up behind the girl and put a hand on her shoulder. “Sleep.”

The girl barely turned her head before her eyes fluttered closed and the tiny vampire caught her easily to lower her to the floor.

Walter was reminded that he was holding a human by the throat when the man lashed out with a desperate kick that caught him in the shin. In the shin? Walter sneered and slammed David’s head back against the wall, leaving the man dazed and mostly held up by Walter’s grip.

Mihaela appeared at his elbow, looking up at the two men. “What are you going to do to him?”

What was he going to do with this man who had systematically stalked little girls? What was he going to do with this man who didn’t even merit being called human?

“I’m going to give him to you.”

Mihaela’s eyes glinted red, her smile revealing suddenly sharp teeth. “The girl will remember nothing,” she promised.

“Take care of that now,” Walter said, giving David’s head another smack against the wall to keep him docile. “I’ll take her while you...” He was no fainting flower. He was making a choice here, he was damn well going to own it. “...while you have your meal.”

The vampire nodded and returned to the girl. Walter watched her kneel at the girl’s side and brush her fine blonde hair away from her forehead. She leaned down and whispered something in the sleeping girl’s ear, then scooped her up in her arms and stood. The easy way she held the girl brought home her inhuman nature better than the red that had dropped over her gaze or the gleam of sharp teeth.

She held the girl out to him, her attention already turning hungrily to the man Walter still held.

“You may go. He won’t give me any trouble.”

Walter released David to slide down the wall and held out his arms to take the girl from Mihaela. “Don’t leave a mess.”

“Walter.” Mihaela’s voice stopped him before he could leave the room. He turned to look at the tiny vampire where she stood over the man he had just given her as a meal. “I accept your apology.”

∙∙∙

Arthur Hellsing sat with his breakfast and his morning paper and read the latest news that those in power saw fit to allow the general public to read. His mind was on other things than the paper.

Walter got out more, which was good, he hoped. The young man hadn’t been as forthcoming about his activities as he used to be. Arthur rather hoped that his retainer had found a girl. Hell, he would live with it if the young man had found a boy. He just wanted Walter to have human contact and ties. Without that, he would devolve into something conscienceless, a monster like those he hunted with such satisfaction.

If this pattern of behavior continued, Arthur had decided he would have to have Walter shadowed. For his own good.

With his thoughts following this path, he barely skimmed the article filled with excited exclamations of shock and dismay about the zoo docent who had been found in the wolves’ cage, mauled by the animals there.