Hellsing Fan Fiction ❯ Fare ❯ Dream ( Chapter 10 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]
His eyes flicked around behind his eyelids as he slept. He was dreaming.

--Oh, oh, agony, agony make it stop cold steel everywhere it's dark where am I where am I I'm scared, someone help me, please, PLEASE SOMEONE HELP ME!--

Circles of blood

Circles of blood

Hung from the ceiling in chains

Taste of blood in my mouth

Blood on the floor

It's on the walls.

Circles of blood

Spiraling down.

Death is everywhere.

The shadows move here. I'm afraid. I want to go home.

--Cold hatred. I hate you, I hate the world, I hate myself. The smell of blood is driving me mad.--

Circles of blood

Strapped to a cold metal table

Human blood raining down from the ceiling, landing next to my head on the table top. I stick out my tongue as far as I can but I can't reach it. It makes a sound when it lands. “Ping, ping, ping”.

Circles of blood.

Blood burning into my body.

Her blood.

I know what's happening to me. I asked for this.

I hate myself.

Circles of blood.

I need blood.

It burns into my body, changing me.

The smell of blood on the tools they use.

The tools lying on a tray.

Circles of blood.

Malakai saw a pair of eyes coming at him from the darkness as he stared through the eyes of the captive. Somehow the eyes knew he was watching. They came closer. Frightening eyes, though he couldn't exactly say why. A pale hand reaches out from the darkness and touches the abdomen of the captive. It burned.

Malakai awoke from his dream screaming.

Frantic, panicking, he ripped open his shirt, saw the red, raw, exposed flesh.

A burn in the shape of a hand.

In an instant, Alucard was there. The dark-haired vampire's eyes grew wide.

Something pushed at Malakai's mind with incredible force. He pushed back, denying it entrance. It gave him pain, punishing him. It wanted in. It was a warning. It pushed again, demanding entrance into his mind. He fought back again. Unbelievable agony.

Malakai screamed again.

Alucard saw the source of the problem. Malakai was still connected to whoever's mind he had been in in his dream, and the thing sensed him.

“Break the connection,” Alucard commanded.

Malakai tried. He couldn't even sense it anymore. He searched for the thin “thread” that brought the two minds together. He couldn't find it. He clenched his teeth, fighting wave after wave of pure pain as he desperately tried to sense the connection between his own mind and the mind of who he had “been” in the dream.

It was useless.

Alucard was furious.

He pushed into Malakai's mind, searching for what his friend could not see. He looked in the direction the pain was coming from, and sensed it, found it in the spiderweb-fine thread that bound Malakai's mind to the thing's. He destroyed it.

Alucard withdrew from Malakai's mind, drawing in power from every living and un-living thing in the mansion. Red light radiated outward across the floor in the pattern of the Hellsing seal. He wove an intricate web of protection around the house, and the grounds. He turned his attention to the living residents of Hellsing.

They were his property too.

He drew his power around Malakai, Victoria, Integral, Abigail, the soldiers, the maids, everyone, carefully constructing his cobweb-like barrier of protection around each individual person.

No one would intrude upon his territory, threaten his possessions, his friends, his mate, again.

He drew the excess power back into himself, and the red light disappeared. But the fury, the incredible mix of fear and rage and hatred did not dissipate. It radiated off of him more strongly than the light, surrounded him in a terrible aura, sent fear and visions of monsters into the minds and the dreams of everyone in London.

Someone had tried to take control of Malakai. Had brought him pain, to force him to submit. Malakai, who was Alucard's oldest friend. The person to whom he had sworn his soul, centuries ago, and who had sworn his own in return.

Their pact.

The oath which bound them together even after such time that other vampires had long forgotten their past, their friends, their family.

The rage blinded him, confused him, consumed him.

A hand touched his shoulder.

A familiar scent filled his lungs.

Victoria.

“Alucard,” she murmured.

She sounded tired.

She was probably scared out of her mind, with what she sensed from him.

All the emotion that had accumulated in him over the last few moments was suddenly, abruptly gone.

The dark-haired vampire sank into a chair. How many centuries had it been since he was this exhausted?

Victoria glanced over at her friend. The burn on Malakai's chest was healing very, very slowly, but visibly.

“What is going on?” she asked them softly.

Malakai sighed and took a deep breath. It was difficult to breathe.

“I was dreaming.”

“And? I refuse to believe that this was all just because you had a dream,” Victoria said dryly.

There was a soft knock on the door.

“Who is it?” Victoria called.

“Abigail.”

“Come in, then.”

The female vampire obeyed, closing the door behind her and sitting down at the table across from Alucard. Victoria was stroking his hair, and his eyes were closed. The look on his face told her that he's just endured a terrible ordeal. Though, she admitted, Malakai looked like he'd been though worse. What with the raw, bleeding wound on his chest and all that.

“So you were saying, Malakai?” Victoria said absently.

“I was dreaming. Mostly, when I dream, I see things that are going to happen before they happen. But sometimes, like tonight, I visit the minds of those who are involved with the problems of the present.”

“And what did you see, tonight?”

Malakai closed his eyes as he spoke, trying to recall each minute detail, exactly as it had happened.

“I was in the mind of a human, first. He was hanging from the ceiling by his wrists, naked from the waist up. He was going mad even as I listened. He said, 'Oh, oh, agony, agony make it stop cold steel everywhere it's dark where am I where am I I'm scared, someone help me, please, PLEASE SOMEONE HELP ME!' He was terrified and in pain. His mind was forming the same images over and over. 'Circles of blood', moving shadows, blood everywhere, on the walls, the floor, everywhere. Next I was in the mind of a vampire. A willing victim, or so I was led to believe. This one was male also. Mostly, what I felt from him was absolute hatred. He was in constant pain, more than the human had been. There was a mark burned on his abdomen. He kept saying it was blood, 'her blood', burning into his body, changing him. The bloodlust was driving him insane,” Malakai frowned, “He also had those same images in his mind. Repeating them over and over. 'Circles of blood'. I don't understand it, really. Then . . .”

He stopped, grimacing in remembered pain.

“Then what?” Abigail asked.

He opened his eyes and looked at her.

I saw eyes coming at me in the dark. Shining eyes. In a world of darkness, that's all I could see. Coming closer, and closer. They knew I was there, in the vampire's mind. A hand reached out and touched the stomach of the vampire. It burned me,” Malakai's voice broke. He was ashamed at himself for his weakness, his fear, but he couldn't help it. “I woke up screaming.”

Malakai stared down at the wound and shuddered. He was silent for a long time.

“And what happened after that?” Victoria asked quietly.

Alucard seemed to be asleep in his seat, but Victoria continued to comb her fingers through his hair, cradling his head in the crook of her arm.

“Alucard came here. I tried to break the connection to the vampire from my dream but I could not find it. The thing . . . whatever it was that touched me, was trying to get into my mind. It used pain when I would not allow it. I tried to find the bond between our mind but I couldn't sense it through the pain. Alucard found it and severed the connection. Then he wove a barrier around the mansion. And us, too,” Malakai said.

“Hmph. You make me sound like a hero, old friend. I was merely protecting my property,” Alucard mumbled.

Okay, so he wasn't asleep.

“I know,” Malakai smiled bitterly, “I know that.”

Alucard opened one eye.

He knew that Malakai was furious with himself. That was something he'd have to work out on his own.

“I think we should all get some rest,” Victoria said.

She turned to Malakai.

“Will you be all right?”

“Yes. There is no danger, now. Thanks to Alucard.”

She nodded. Victoria wrapped her arms around one of Alucard's and they left. He was almost leaning on her.

Abigail sat in the chair, picking at her shirt awkwardly.

“I'll go too, then, I guess,” she mumbled, standing.

“You don't have to,” Malakai said suddenly, taking hold of her sleeve.

“I thought you told Victoria you'd be fine,” she replied slowly, suspiciously.

“I know what I said.”

“So you lied.”

“Not really. I just don't feel like being alone right now, and since Integral is probably busy, and since she'll be angry anyway because of what Alucard did when she figures it out, I can't go bother her. She'll ask too many questions that I don't want to think about,” Malakai said.

Abigail considered that for a moment.

“All right. I'll stay. For a while.”

Malakai seemed relieved. He released her sleeve and sat down on the edge of his bed. Abigail sat down in a chair at the table.

Where Malakai wasn't entirely sure what he planned on doing for the rest of the day, he was absolutely certain that he didn't want to be alone at that time. Nothing else really mattered.

Pain consumes . . .