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Hunting the Hunter	By : DreadfulPenny Category: Hellsing > General Views: 6588 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Hellsing, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 20
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Walter left Father Wright alone to read and wrestle with the contents of the Liber Ivonis. He didn�t envy the priest the work; the contents of the book were not meant for a man of God. While the priest worked, Walter took time to explore the priory from top to bottom, inside and out.

He started inside, having driven directly from his meeting with Arthur to Burford, barely two hours away from London. He would have to wait until the next day to explore the outside of the priory; the days were still short in February and it was only early evening.

There was plenty to explore before daylight, and Walter had no intention of sleeping yet. He would be no use to Father Wright if he fell into an unwaking sleep along with the nuns and the men the exorcist had brought as his assistants.

The manor that housed the Burford Priory had once been luxurious, but the sisters who lived there now had stripped away most of the luxuries in favor of utilitarianism. Starting with the first floor he searched under furniture, in drawers, in every cabinet and on and under every shelf. He flipped through books, half-amused that not all of them were religious texts or books pertaining to running the priory�s house and gardens, but also included popular novels. It seemed the sisters had a fondness for Raymond Chandler. He tried to picture women sitting around in wimples and long habits reading about hard-boiled detectives and just couldn�t quite get there without grinning.

He opened a pair of double doors and found that they led into the chapel, and that the chapel had been turned into an infirmary to accommodate all of the sleeping sisters and Father Wright�s two assistants. Sister Emiliana was spooning something into the mouth of a sleeping sister who she held upright with expert care. Walter silently closed the doors and resolved to save the chapel for last. Vampires didn�t frighten him, but he wasn�t over-fond of irritable nuns.

The second floor contained living quarters. They were spartan, but not as austere as he had expected. His own quarters back at Hellsing were more ascetic than some of the rooms at the priory. Most of the sisters had some personal touches, whether they were pictures of family members, knitting that had been set aside and not picked up while its owner slept on, or even diaries that Walter felt voyeuristic reading, but which he still skimmed in the interest of thoroughness.

All he learned from the diaries was which sisters had ever had doubts about their calling, which were prone to private complaints about some of their fellow nuns, and in one case, that one wrote some surprisingly elegant poetry about devoting one�s life to a higher purpose.

None of them described consorting with anything supernatural unless one wanted to include God, and Walter did not think the Almighty was behind the problems at the priory.

He was on his hands and knees looking under another bed when he heard someone ascending the stairs. He stood up, dusting off his trousers before stepping out in the hallway in time to frighten Sister Emiliana.

�Heavens!� She jumped back with a hand to her breast and her ruddy cheeks turning pinker. �What are you doing up here, Mr. Dornez?� As she collected herself, she seemed to remember that she was annoyed with him and gave him a quite professional glower.

�I�m searching the entire property for anything out of place,� Walter said. He felt a twinge of guilt at intruding in these women�s private lives, but reminded himself that this was all business.

�Father Wright�s men already did that,� Emiliana said accusingly. �So you don�t need to be up here rummaging through our things again.�

Walter shook his head. �Sister, I don�t take pleasure in this, but Father Wright�s men may have missed something. My specialty is somewhat different from theirs, so perhaps I will find something they overlooked.�

�What is your specialty?�

Walter considered how best to answer that. �My specialty is killing anything supernatural that threatens British subjects.� The problem being that so far here they hadn�t found anything to kill. His specialty did not include things requiring exorcism, since typically they lacked a body to destroy.

�What use are you here then?� Sister Emiliana snapped.

Walter realized she was trembling and her cheeks had gone from pink to scarlet. She wasn�t just startled or put out with him for snatching the book away earlier, she was furious.

He boggled at that realization for a moment while she stared at him waiting for a response.

�I�� he began and then stopped because he didn�t have a glib answer for her question.

He shrugged and started over. �I don�t know, but your people called for the Angel of Death, so I�m here.�

He watched puzzlement cloud her expression, but it was better than anger.

�Are you really that angry with me about the book?� he asked and saw her puzzlement melt into embarrassment. It didn�t make any difference in her blush, but her expression shifted and it was her turn to stammer.

�I�� She smoothed her hands down the front of her habit and looked away from his face. �I� don�t know Mr. Dornez. I�m sorry. It�s not you I�m angry at, it�s all of this. I haven�t slept for more than two or three minutes at a time in days� weeks? And when I do drift off I wake up in a panic that I... that I�m not going to wake up! There�s no one who will stay here at night for fear of falling asleep and not waking like the others, and I�m the last one left now. Do you know what that�s like? Am I next? I pray all the time and nothing has changed. There shouldn�t be anywhere in all of England that�s safer than here at the abbey, but it�s not safe at all. What�s the use?�

Walter was nonplussed, and had a brief, uncharitable thought that maybe this was why he was attracted to blokes. Doru was never going to pour out his feelings to him in some gushing torrent like this and so Walter would never have to try to work out how to respond to it without sounding like a dolt or a boor.

�No one is dead,� he said, trying to reassure her. �If anyone needs to be worried, it�s probably me, since they asked for me by name � sort of � and I�m not worried. Father Wright thinks there is something in the book I brought that will help.�

He didn�t name the Liber Ivonis, out of discretion. She would never have to know how close she had come to a book that was never really meant for good men. Father Wright was taking chances, but sometimes the ends had to justify the means.

�What were you doing up here?� he asked to get things back on track.

�I live here,� she said acerbically and Walter thought once again that she really wasn�t what he expected in a nun. Weren�t they supposed to be serene wielders of rulers, alternately praying and beating young people�s knuckles?

He resolved to keep the testy woman well away from rulers.

�I needed to change clothes. After I get everyone fed I always have porridge in the worst places,� she said, looking down at her habit and the flecks of porridge on her sleeves, chest, shoulder, and even a streak of it on her wimple. �And I shouldn�t waste time. I don�t like leaving them alone for too long.�

�I meant to look around the chapel,� Walter said. �I can go down now just in case someone starts choking or the like. I�ll finish up here later.�

Sister Emiliana�s face lit up. �I�ll have time for a real bath if you do that. Would you mind, terribly? Only it�s been so long since I had time to really get clean instead of rushing.�

Aha, Walter thought to himself, the way to her heart. So to speak.

�Of course,� he assured her. �Take your time. I�ll be in the chapel when you finish.�

He left her while she thanked him, glad to see her mood finally shift from the apparent disliking she�d taken to him downstairs.

The chapel was much as he�d seen it when he had glanced in earlier � the pews were pushed against the walls to make room for two rows of beds that ran down the center of the chapel. The first four beds at the front of the chapel were hospital-style. After that they had apparently run out of hospital beds and settled the sleepers on folding cots. With the cots, twelve on each side of a center aisle, there were places for twenty-eight �patients.� Twenty-five of the cots and beds were occupied, with the two cots closest to the chapel entrance holding two men Walter assumed were Father Wright�s assistants.

At least he, Father Wright, and Sister Emiliana would each have a bed of their own if they succumbed, he thought wryly.

He walked down the center aisle toward the front of the large room and the two men turned their heads toward Walter, opening their eyes to stare vacantly at him.

�Walter,� one murmured.

�Walter,� said the other, sounding drugged with sleep.

Walter stopped in his tracks and frowned, fingers opening and closing while his gaze darted around the room, looking for something, someone � the puppet master for these two sleeping puppets. He shot a glance over his shoulder toward the double doors, but there was nothing behind him and the doors were still firmly closed.

They were alone � just Walter and twenty-five sleepers.

Because those two men were asleep, even with their eyes open and staring. He didn�t see any light of awareness in their faces.

He approached the cots and knelt at the side of a blonde man in his mid- to late thirties. �Can you hear me?� he asked, while the man seemed to stare through him.

No response.

He snapped his fingers, shook the man, even pinched his earlobe, but he said nothing more. He repeated his attempts with the other, a man with a black hair and a lean, ascetic face, but got no more response from him than from the first.

Standing up, he brushed the wrinkles out of his trousers, sighed, and moved on to look at the rest of the sleepers.

The nearest of the sleeping nuns opened her eyes when he drew near and whispered, �Walter.�

Looking back, he saw that the two priests had closed their eyes. He tried once more to communicate with the nun, kneeling by her side, talking to her, shaking her shoulder, pinching her earlobe, but the result was just as empty as with the two priests. He shook his head in disgust and irritation and rose to move on.

There was no one in the bed across the aisle from the first nun, but when he walked down the centre aisle toward the next two women, they both opened their eyes and repeated his name.

�Walter.�

�Walter.�

He continued down the centre aisle and for each of the next ten rows, the cots� and beds� occupants opened their eyes and spoke his name, closing their eyes and returning to sleep when he moved on to the next row.

When he reached the head of the chapel and turned to look back, all of the men and women were sleeping as though the strange scene had never played out. Each face was peaceful, some even had half-smiles, and all appeared to be dreaming, eyes tracking something behind their closed lids.

�Bollocks.�

�Maybe,� said a voice behind him that made him whirl to see Father Wright standing in the open door that must have led to the vestry. He looked as though he had aged twenty years in the hours since Walter had left him to read the Liber Ivonis. �But it�s usually impolite to draw attention to it in a chapel.�

He held the grimoire in his arms and seemed almost to be hugging it.

�Father Wright.� Walter glanced back at the stubbornly sleeping nuns and priests before crossing to get a better look at the man�s face. He looked gray and exhausted. �Did you find something?�

�I think so. Here, let me show you.� He looked ready to set the book down on the lectern at the front of the chapel, but stopped short of setting a dark grimoire down in a spot usually reserved for the Bible.

He moved over to one of the displaced pews and settled down with a grunt of fatigue before opening the book to a page he had marked with an empty envelope. Phil of Phil�s Plumbing could never have guessed what use his billing envelope would be put to.

�This is really only just a start,� Father Wright said, putting his finger on a circle ringed with complicated sigils on the left hand page. �It�s just to give us a little respite.�

While Walter watched, the sigils seemed to writhe and his stomach started to twist. He looked away from the page to Father Wright�s face and saw the man nod as though acknowledging that he felt the same way when looking at it.

�According to this,� he tapped the right-hand page, �it�s supposed to keep all evil beings out. All of them. Not just vampires or demons or whatever other supernatural entity might be haunting this place, but all. If the creature�s intent is to harm, it cannot enter.�

He rubbed his red-rimmed eyes and sighed. �I don�t know if it will help them, but if it means that those of us who are here to help them could sleep without being the next victims, then it�s a good start.�

�If,� Walter said dubiously. �What if whatever is doing this isn�t intending harm? And if it doesn�t, then they�ve lost the last people who could help them.�

Father Wright closed the book with a hard thump. �If you�ve got something better, I�d love to hear it, but Sister Emiliana and I are both ready to drop. I can�t afford to test this and I need you, so I am going to ask her to be our test subject. If she is lost, you and I can keep working, and if she wakes, I will go next and be more useful after I get some real rest.�

He set the Liber Ivonis on his lap and gave Walter a challenging glare. �Unless you think you�re going to find whatever our enemy is and kill it for me.�

Walter held up his hands and shook his head. �This is your mission, Father. I�m here to support you.�

He only wished he knew he could find whatever it was and kill it and then go home. He had personal business in London that he�d left for this.

�Then get me Emiliana.�
��

Emiliana agreed to the plan without argument. Walter thought that she looked so relieved at the thought of sleep that the risk of the plan simply wasn�t important to her.

Together the three of them cleared tables in the dining hall to make enough space to draw a circle large enough for one of the empty cots. A smaller circle might have worked, Father Wright argued, but he didn�t want to risk Emiliana stretching out in her sleep and breaking the circle�s protection.

Father Wright didn�t offer Emiliana a choice to back out. They all understood the reasoning, and if it was a bit cold, it was no less valid for that coldness.

Walter watched in silence as Father Wright used a mixture of salt from the kitchen and ash from the fireplace to draw the circle, leaving it unclosed while he drew its surrounding sigils. When it was complete except for the last couple of inches of broken circle, Father Wright handed Emiliana a knife and told her to get inside.

While he added enough salt and ash to close the circle, he repeated what he had told her and Walter when he outlined the plan. �The circle has to be closed with the blood of the person inside. That�s why it can only protect one person at a time. Just a small cut will do, Emiliana.�

He indicated four points around the circle corresponding to the points on a compass. �Put drops here, here, here, and here.�

He essayed a tired smile that looked almost ghastly for the amount of effort it took. �Then get a good rest. I�ll wake you in six hours.�

Maybe, thought Walter.
��

�Arthur, we�ve been around and around about this; your man can�t be as important as you make him out to be.�

�Hugh,� Arthur sounded tired and more than a little angry. �Will it get through to you if I tell you a another time? Perhaps draw pictures? Walter Dornez is vital to the success of the Hellsing Organization�s mission.�

�Gentlemen, can�t we find a way to agree about this without fighting?�

�Shut up, Shelby,� both Hugh Islands and Arthur Hellsing snapped in unison.

Shelby Penwood�s round face turned bright red, but the angry tension in the room let up.

�Listen,� Arthur took a deep breath before opening his humidor to take out a cigar and turn it in fingers. �Even if we don�t agree about Walter, we have to agree that Richard is trying to pull a coup here using what Walter did as leverage, and that it won�t be good for Hellsing or for England if he succeeds.�

He clipped the end off the cigar with a vicious click of the cigar cutter on his desk. �If we can�t agree on that, there�s no reason for any of us to be here.�

�No, no.� Hugh shook his head and took a cigarette case from his pocket. �You�re right about that. I thought your brother was a snake back at Eton and that hasn�t changed. If anything, I think he�s gotten worse.�

Shelby spoke up hesitantly. �I knew things weren�t right when he rang me up to try to get me to agree to take his side the meeting tomorrow.�

�And I thank you for warning me,� Arthur said with a reassuring smile for the timid man. Sir Shelby Penwood might be a bit short on backbone, but he was a trustworthy friend, and those were apparently in short supply since his brother�s homecoming.

�He didn�t even bother ringing me,� Hugh noted.

�I think he remembers you from Eton just as much as you remember him,� Arthur said and actually grinned at his friend. �You didn�t go easy on him.�

�Why should I?� Hugh had been straitlaced and humorless even before he became Sir Hugh Islands. At times like this Arthur was actually grateful. �He was a liar and a cheat. Your father made the right decision when he chose you over him.�

He lit his cigarette and blew out a blue stream of smoke before getting to the crux of their argument and the reason they were meeting in Arthur�s study in the middle of the night. �The problem is ensuring that the rest of the Round Table does not doubt that. You have had to make some hard decisions in the course of doing your duty over the years and not all of them have been popular.�
��

She woke up.

After eight hours of uninterrupted sleep, Sister Emiliana woke, looked around the dining hall, blinking in the late morning light that streamed through the windows, and smiled like a child being presented with her favorite kind of candy.

Father Wright had tried to continue studying the Liber Ivonis while she slept, but Walter had had to shake the man out of a light doze after a few hours and he had set the grimoire aside to walk around the priory to keep from falling asleep.

Walter had kept watch until the clock said it had been eight hours and then called Father Wright back to the dining hall to watch Sister Emiliana wake.

As soon as they were certain that she was awake and none the worse for wear, Father Wright broke the circle and hurried her out of its confines to take her place.

�Wake me in six - no, wake me in eight hours, then you can have a turn.� He handed the grimoire to Walter and picked up the knife. �And don�t break the circle if you think I�m having nightmares. After reading that, be more worried if I don�t have nightmares.�
_______________

A/N: At best guess the next sex scene will come in chapter 24. This is not a porn-heavy fic, despite its original intent of being PWP. Oh well.

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Hunting the Hunter