Hunting the Hunter

"This is wrong..."

"Why?"

A pause, a gasped panting breath.

"Why?"

"Because nothing that feels like this can be right..."

A laugh, soft and mocking, to barely cover the first moan.

∙∙∙

A month passed after the Christchurch incident and Walter brooded over where he'd gone wrong. Sir Arthur had even rubbed salt in the wound by complimenting Walter on his work there.

Walter dragged on his cigarette and leaned over the gun barrel he was polishing on the grinder, grunting to himself in disgust at the thought of the compliment. Blind luck shouldn't be complimented any more than having completely misread the situation should be. Some vampire expert he was, if he could mistake man's inhumanity to man for the attack of a vampire.

The young butler was angry with himself for the fact that he had spent the past month brooding, but he couldn't seem to help it. He loathed failure, and to his mind, the last two girls' deaths in Christchurch had been his failure.

In his annoyance, he pressed a little too hard and sparks spat up from the grinder.

"Shit." That was probably enough of that for the night.

"You shouldn't work all the time."

Walter's head snapped up, back straightening reflexively in response to Arthur Hellsing's voice. He took the cigarette from his mouth and turned around to face his master. "I was just thinking the same thing."

Arthur lounged in the door to Walter's workshop, unlit cigarillo in one hand and an envelope in the other. "You couldn't have proved it to me. You haven't taken any kind of time for yourself in weeks."

Time for himself? Walter shook his head at Arthur. "I am taking time for myself right now. This is a hobby." He knew he sounded defensive and he hated it.

"This?" Arthur's brow arched with affected incredulity as he took in the workshop. Walter had set it up for himself when the lull after the war had left the young man with more time than he was accustomed to having on his hands. The walls were lined with tools, example weapons, and bookshelves with metallurgical, historical, and weapons references. "When you work for Hellsing, weapons work is anything but a hobby."

Walter didn't sigh. He didn't make faces. He didn't protest further. He stubbed out his cigarette in a nearby ashtray and stood at something that at least looked like calm attention while he waited for Arthur to make his point.

Hellsing's leader knew better than to try to outwait his young servant. Walter was hardly out of his teens, but he had the patience of a much older man.

He held the envelope out. "Go out. That's an order."

The envelope contained an invitation.

Matthews and Sons welcome you to the grand opening of the Lyceum Ballroom. Join us for an evening of music, dance, and for the gala ballroom opening, fine dining. Black tie.

Walter looked up from the calligraphed card to meet Arthur's amused gaze. "Sir, that's tonight. I don't have time to find an escort."

The older man waved a hand negligently. "I can hire you one, or you can go on your own. I'm certain that you'll have no trouble finding dance partners."

Dancing. Arthur wanted him to go out dancing. Walter was a hair's breadth away from rolling his eyes at his employer's complete lack of subtlety.

"Right. Right. I'll go on my own then. There's no need to waste money on an escort." Black tie. Brilliant. Many men might be bothered by that formality, but it was practically second nature for Hellsing's butler.

"I'll just go get ready."

∙∙∙

The Lyceum ballroom, formerly the Lyceum Theater, was ready for its reintroduction to the world in its new form. Men in tuxedos provided a sea of black to highlight women in jewel-colored gowns in the grand ballroom. Lights shone, the dance floor was the center of attention, the band played "Don't Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes" as Walter threaded his way through the press, taking a glass of champagne from a waiter circulating among the guests.

This was not where the young man wished to be, but arguing it with Arthur had not been an option.

He found a quiet nook away from the worst of the crowd and pulled his cigarette case out of his waistcoat pocket, juggling champagne glass, case, and cigarette to put the cigarette between his lips and tuck the case away.

A pale hand held a lighter out for him, and Walter's eyes followed the long line of the arm attached to that hand up to a familiar face partly hidden behind red lenses.

"Doru." He drew on his cigarette until the tobacco caught, buying himself a second in which to adjust to the vampire's presence and hide the inevitable tension his company brought. "Hunting?"

The tall man shook his head, the lighter disappearing almost magically from his hand as he swept it back toward the gathering. "I am here for the gala. Are you? Hunting that is."

Walter tried not to stare at the striking figure Doru cut in his crisp black and white, contrasted by his usual red glasses. "No. Sir Hellsing thought I was working too much. It was his idea."

Doru smiled almost as though he was aware of Walter's effort. "Do you dance?"

"I had teachers in almost everything proper to the gentry, or in my case, proper for one who must tend to the gentry. I can dance, I just have no real cause to." Nor any interest in a "proper" dance partner.

"How does the Angel of Death come to tend to the gentry when he isn't bringing terror to the undead world?" Doru asked, leaning against the wall near Walter. It looked casual, but Walter could see that it gave the vampire a good view of the majority of the ballroom.

"That's a story for another time," the young man said with a dismissive shake of his head even as part of his mind shouted, Another time? Are you an idiot?

Another smile that made Walter feel as transparent as glass. "Another time, then. Perhaps over lamb."

Walter didn't cough on the smoke already in his lungs, but he did freeze for just a moment before exhaling, hoping against hope that the sudden jump in his pulse would go unnoticed in by the vampire in the midst of the party's noise.

"Perhaps." His mind continued its directions: Stop being the target. Stop letting him keep you off guard. Stop staring!

Right. He could do that. He turned his gaze out to the crowd that had gathered. "Did you come here to dance, then?"

Doru spread his hands in a graceful gesture that made a lie of Walter's resolution and drew the young man's attention down to the man's long, bare fingers. His fingernails gleamed in the lights, trimmed and perfectly tended, and were hardly what Walter would think of as "rending claws." He tried to let that thought serve as a reminder that vampires could hide their natures; just because Doru had done him no harm before was no guarantee about tonight or the future.

"I came for the same reason I was at the gallery where we first met. Humans can be very interesting to watch from the outside. Don't you think so?" Doru tipped his head down to Walter, smiling as though they shared a secret.

"I wouldn't know." Walter felt the need to point this out. "I'm human."

Doru hmmed. With those tinted lenses, it was difficult to tell where exactly the vampire's attention was at any given time. Unless, Walter noted to himself, it was focused strongly on him. At those moments, Walter could almost feel the touch of his gaze.

Was the vampire bewitching him? Entrancing him? He would notice, wouldn't he? Like he had noticed when he met Mihaela? Neither of them had tried to make him do or think anything after Mihaela's first attempt and his warning to her.

Wait... hadn't he just resolved not to let Doru put him off his guard?

Damn.

He dragged on his cigarette to cover his discomfiture and breathed out a blue-white cloud of smoke. "What do you see here? You had such an interesting story to tell about that man at the gallery. Tell me about the people here."

The vampire looked away from the gathering to smile at Walter. "As you wish." He tipped his head toward a cluster of people gathered around one portly gentleman who was holding court among his friends, telling some story that had the group laughing with the sort of titillation that is the hallmark of an off-color story. Even a bespoke suit couldn't hide the bulge of too much indulgence that rendered the fifty-something year old man the figure of a woman about to deliver twins. Neither that or his shining bald head did anything to reduce the man's joviality.

"That man," Doru commented, "has been carrying on a long-term affair with his wife's personal maid. They have a son, who is old enough to be employed as his father's gardener, never knowing that he is a bastard, nor that his father will never recognize his existence."

He barely paused, possibly scanning the crowd behind his lenses. "Countess Moura Budberg," he nodded toward the straight-backed, gray-haired woman in a gleaming emerald gown who was deep in a more somber conversation with another, frumpier woman, "is under suspicion for her possible communist connections. Her connections being a few friends she has who are communists and ties to Russia." The vampire's expression gave nothing away. "She is not a communist, quite enjoying both capitalism and nobility, but guilt by association makes no distinctions in such things.

"See over there," he lifted his chin to almost point toward a humorless-looking man in a civil servant's suit who was not quite glowering at the countess. "That man is Howard Koch. He's been determined to see her wear the communist label ever since she declined his advances."

"How do you know these things?" Walter asked, interested despite himself. "You can't know all that just from looking at them. Or are you just making up stories like the doll man again?"

"You of all people should be in a position to know how the nobility and gentry gossip," Doru said in a tone that had Walter half expecting the vampire to "tsk" at him. "All it takes is good hearing."

Walter didn't think that Doru had spent a day in his life as a servant and found that the reproof made him bristle.

Before he could say something, the vampire went on. "But I will tell you one more story about someone here and then you can tell me which of the three is false and by default, which two are true."

He made a show of scanning the crowd. "No. Not that one. Not her. How about..." His gaze fell on Walter. "...you?" He smiled, and for the first time, Walter thought he caught an unnaturally sharp gleam to the vampire's teeth.

"You wear that tuxedo as comfortably as though born to it. You look completely at home among all these people, except for your hair."

Walter stopped himself from straightening his ponytail and wondered how it was that the man could seem to loom without having moved an inch.

"But your hair says that you aren't at home among them. No more than the shepherd is truly at home among the sheep. You hold yourself apart from the flock. You almost blend in, but you make yourself different without thinking about it. You watch over them. But you aren't one of them."

Doru had that gleaming smile as he spoke, sharp white teeth flashing as he leaned closer to Walter and murmured, "Tell me, Angel of Death, do you really think that behind that human mask you wear, that you're just like them? With all you've seen and done? With all you keep hidden from everyone?"

∙∙∙

"Tell me again." Arthur tapped his fingers on his desk and frowned, at the oblivious mercenary on the other end of the telephone line, at Walter, at himself for setting people to follow his most trusted servant.

"He went to the ballroom," Gérard repeated with forced patience. "He went. He smoked. He drank champagne. He talked to one man and then he left. Alone. He walked along the river for a few hours. Smoked all of a pack of cigarettes."

He added as an almost proud aside, "He smokes like a Frenchman. He walked. He smoked. He came back to the ballroom and picked up the car from the valet, and he went back to Hellsing. We did not lose him the entire time."

"Did you overhear any of his conversation with the man?"

"Non," Gérard said almost regretfully. "They stood apart from the crowd. There was no way to get close without being obvious, but it seemed as though they knew each other and whatever they talked about looked to be the reason why your Walter left."

Arthur sighed and used his thumb and index finger to rub his temples. "Did they seem... close?"

"Non, not close close." Bernadette said. "But from the way they were looking at each other, they seemed like they could be."

Hellsing's leader closed his eyes and nodded even though other man couldn't see the gesture. "Right. Just continue with your current orders. Observe but don't interfere. I'll inform you if he has any other trips away from the manor scheduled. If you see the man again, follow him and find out whatever you can."

He hung up without waiting to hear Bernadette's agreement and slouched back in his chair. Well, he'd told himself he could tolerate Walter finding a male companion, if that was how it worked out. Despite that, he couldn't help feeling that something was wrong with it.