Hellsing Fan Fiction ❯ Angel of Mercy ❯ Heading Home ( Chapter 8 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Alucard’s duel with Vashnicalf was resulting in serous damage to the room. The cloth tapestries where in shreds. The stone walls where riddled with bullet holes, the carpet ripped, and still the two immortals battled on.

They had both lost the need for insults, or words of bravado long ago, as they clashed. Vashnicalf stabbed his sword through Alucard’s shoulder, only to be shot in the stomach. Each vampire fell back, healed, and then leapt at the other again.

“Enough of this, lets throw away theses human toys and fight like true vampires!” cried Alucard mockingly. He changed his form to a writhing snarling blackness of hounds heads and eyes. Vashnicalf became much the same but his shadows where full of snakes and wolves.

The twin darkness’s clashed, two great forced challenging each other. They lashed across the room going one way and then the other, like two different tides meeting with violent force. Slowly Alucard began to gain ground, forcing Vashnicalf back. With each clash Vashnicalf dwindled until he was forced to take his human form once more.

Laughing manically, Alucard took his human form as well, drawing his gun. To his credit Vashnicalf faced his death well, with not a hint of fear in his eyes. He stumbled weakly to his feet and faced Alucard with a strange calm. He understood that he had lost and accepted his defeat.

“It is a honor to die at the hands of one as powerful as you,” he said, and Alucard pulled the trigger.

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Julia, Seres and Tobias hurried through the hall, even Seres sensing the need for urgency. Apparently what Julia had done to Anderson hadn’t kept him down for long, he was wrecking havoc through the castle. Julia, now much calmer that Tobias was safe, considered helping the two frightened human girls she had seen earlier.

However, when she searched for them with her mind she discovered Anderson had found them already. The paladin had enough sense not to hurt the two innocents. For all the monster Anderson was to vampires, he would be the rescuer of those two humans. The three vampires reached the front door of the castle and raced out into the snow past the gate.

They ran through the night, daylight nipping at their heals. Though it would not kill them, it would further weaken Julia and Tobias in their already weakened state. They reached the helicopter as the first light of dawn graced the horizon. Alucard was already waiting for them, looking like the hound that had caught the fox.

Julia wearily pulled the door of the helicopter closed behind them and told the pilot to take off. Within moments they where far above the castle and the turmoil of the previous night. “You destroyed Vashnicalf?” Julia asked Alucard as she opened a small cooler and pulled out two bags of medical blood. She threw one to Tobias and kept the other for herself. She was too hungry to eat it with any pretense of civility. She bit her teeth into the side of the bag drinking it in desperate gulps not caring about the blood dripping down her face.

“What do you think?” asked Alucard playfully.

“I think your grinning like the Cheshire Cat,” replied Julia finishing the bag of blood and taking out another. This time she showed more control opening the straw and drinking through it.

“You gave your blood to that weakling didn’t you?” said Alucard critically watching Julia feed.

“It was the only way to get him on his feet.”

“You’ve lost a great deal of your power, you should take it back.”

“Alucard, I’m not taking blood back from my own fledgling. It’s my fault I let him fall into danger in the first place. He can have the blood with my blessing.”

“You are far too soft hearted as always.” said Alucard shaking his head in disapproval. He turned and walked to the back of the helicopter and slouched in a seat to doze. Julia fed on one more bag of blood, then cleaned her face and neck with a white handkerchief and went to see to Tobias.

He had fed from the blood she gave him, with similar results. Julia cleaned the blood from his face and neck, then took a military blanket from one of the cabin compartments and wrapped it around him. The brief reason that he had possessed during their escape was begging to fade, and he was trembling terribly with madness in his eyes.

Julia cradled him against herself, letting him rest his head in her lap. She stroked his hair as she sang very softly to him. At last his tremors ceased and her slept. “Will he be alright?” asked Seres timidly. She had watched all that had happened. Julia looked down at her fledgling with sad eyes.

“Physically he’s almost healed it’s his sanity I’m worried about. He’s in so much pain right now his mind is all tangled. I’m afraid to try and help him, he’s too unstable.”

“Is that all just from what Vashnicalf did to him?”

“No, I’m sure Vashnicalf tortured him and worse but this is deeper than that. Vashnicalf intentionally or accidentally reopened all of Tobias’s painful memories that I sealed away.”
“You sealed his memories?” asked Seres accusingly. The idea of some one forgetting who they where horrified her. She would never want anyone to destroy her past.
Julia gave her a thoughtful look,” I had too, other wise he would have gone mad not long after I turned him. It was he who asked me to do it.” explained Julia. More uncertainly Seres asked.

“Who was he as a human?”

“I found him at the end of World War II in a refuge camp. He had survived imprisonment in one of the Nazi concentration camps, only to be dying of his own weakness from starvation, when he was finally free. He had a strong will to live, so I gave him the choice to continue as a vampire and he accepted.

“However, after he became a vampire he didn’t have to worrying about surviving anymore and had to face everything that had happened to him. It was just to much for a thirteen year old boy, with a kind heart like his to handle. He had watched his own people be rounded up and methodically killed. He lost his entire family, and every friend her ever had. He saw hell on earth by the hands of man.

“He begged me to make the pain stop so I sealed away all his memories of the holocaust. He could remember in a few words everything that happened, he knew he had lost his whole family, but he couldn’t see the actual memory so it couldn’t hurt him. Originally I planned to help him unseal his memories and face them one by one, but he refused and I didn’t push the issue. Now I wish I had. When his mind settles down I’ll try to seal the memories again. I just hope he’ll be willing to face them this time.”

Seres was speechless or a moment, “Humans did that to him?”

“Yes Seres, only humans could have done what was done in that war. We vampires over time lose a bit of our humanity and with it the ability to be truly evil. When one loses their sense of right and wrong their actions are only that of a beast. A beast may do a terrible thing, but it does not do it to be cruel, but because it is what its instincts tell it to do. A Vampire like Alucard may be a monster, but he can never be truly evil, because he’d have to be human to do that.”

Seres glanced at Alucard sleeping peacefully like a cat after feeding, and then at Tobias in his restless slumber, whimpering occasionally like a frightened animal.

“I think your right. But if a vampires can’t be evil, can they be good?”

“That Seres, is a question only you can decide for yourself. Now we both must rest it has been a long night.” With that said Julia closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep still sitting up. She was so tired, even keeping her eyes open to speak had clearly been taxing her. Seres fairly befuddled, followed her advice and crept back to her coffin and slept. The three generations of vampires faced their own dreams and nightmares as the helicopter flew onward back to London, Hellsing, and Alucard‘s master.

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Authors note: I hope you liked the chapter. It was more or less the conclusion of this phase of the story, but don‘t worry there is still a lot to come. Please review with your feedback, it encourages me to write quicker.
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