Adult-FanFiction.org : Anime

Hunting the Hunter	By : DreadfulPenny Category: Hellsing > General Views: 6416 -:- 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
- 26
- 27
- 28
A week passed in Aberdeen just as it did in London and Rio and the rest of the world - one night at a time, with the moon waxing toward full in the night sky.. Walter used his working holiday to grow closer to Doru, to consider his place in the world as a homosexual, monster hunting, monster bedding, not-quite-human, not quite John Bull, and of course, to oversee the renovations on a building he didn’t see Arthur Hellsing ever actually having use for.

Rolf Lieber turned out to be a short, broad, olive-skinned, black-haired, very hairy man with hands shaped like shovels and enough residual German accent to raise eyebrows. He told Walter that he and his family had left Germany even before war broke out.

“My father didn’t trust that man,” he said, meaning Hitler, “and we had family in Edinborough. I’m just here in Aberdeen as a favor.”

Walter had no complaints about Rolf or the cousins he brought in to replace Mickey Andrews’ men. To his eye, the Lieber extended family looked as though they had all been turned out of the same mold - sturdy, hairy men who spoke German among themselves and clammed up whenever an outsider approached. Rolf was clearly their spokesman. What mattered was that they picked up the work with all the attention to detail a meticulous butler could ask for.

Every morning after Doru had gone to sleep, Walter walked up to the manor to see the results of the prior day’s work. Rolf was always there waiting to show him the progress his cousins had made since Walter’s last inspection. He was always polite, but not warm, and Walter assumed that the man would be pleased when Walter returned to London.

After the morning inspection, and whatever errands needed to be conducted in daylight, Walter returned to the cottage, tidied any mess from the night before, and slipped into bed with Doru to sleep until sundown. Perhaps it wasn’t the idyllic holiday others might wish for, but would they go to Aberdeen for one of those anyway?

On the afternoon of his seventh day at the cottage, Arthur Hellsing rang for Walter.

Walter stumbled out of bed, pulling one of the blankets with him to wrap himself, and answered the phone. Upon hearing Arthur’s voice, he straightened and glanced guiltily back into the bedroom at the sleeping vampire.

The pleasantries were awkward and it was a relief when Arthur gave up on them and got the meat of the matter.

“The Round Table is meeting tonight,” he informed Walter. “Richard has rabble roused enough that there’s to be a vote to determine whether my father chose the wrong son to lead Hellsing.. Richard hasn’t wasted time making his case.”

Walter listened in silence. Surely the members of the Round Table were not such fools that they would throw away Arthur’s successes for an unknown quantity in Richard.

Arthur popped that balloon of hope. “He somehow obtained a report of your activities with that vampire, Walter. It has reflected poorly on me and the tide of opinion was shifting in his favor. I have had to make promises to sway key votes back to me and you need to know about them.”

Walter slowly sank into a chair and waited for the other shoe to drop.

“If you had just had a homosexual affair, I think they would have turned a blind eye. If you had an affair with a beautiful woman who was also a vampire, they might have overlooked it, but you don’t do things by half measures, do you?”

Arthur sighed and Walter could hear the flick of a lighter before his master continued. “Your affair has to end. It has to end and Doru has to leave Great Britain altogether. If you care about that child vampire, tell her to leave as well. To counterbalance Richard’s assertions that he would continue our father’s work in ways I have not, I have had to promise that I will go back to old Abraham’s ways - all vampires must be slain. My experiment with tolerance is seen as a failure, and you and your affair with a vampire are given as the proof of that.”

Walter held himself utterly motionless, not even breathing. It felt as though even his heart had stopped beating while Arthur’s words reverberated in his ears.

“Do you understand what I’m telling you, Walter?”

Walter found he was holding the telephone receiver so tightly his hand was starting to hurt. He loosened his grip and nodded, then realized Arthur couldn’t see the gesture. He was going to say he understood what Arthur had said, but what came out of his mouth was, “I”m not human.”

He had not thought he had decided whether he was going to tell Arthur that secret, but realized when he said it that it was meant as a plea that his relationship with Doru was not as outrageous as if he had been fully human. Surely it was more acceptable when he himself was partly inhuman.

Arthur could not make that mental leap and said, “I beg your pardon?”

Walter cleared his throat and said, “I’m not human, sir. Not fully. I found out in Burford.” He gave Arthur a condensed version of the story of the incubus and felt at small stab of satisfaction at taking Arthur off guard as fully as Arthur had taken him.

Arthur was silent while he digested that information, then said sadly, “I’d almost rather you hadn’t told me that.” He did not elaborate, but went on. “Doru and Mihaela may have until the end of the month to settle any affairs they have here. That’s the most I can offer. I expect you to return to Hellsing in one week.”

Walter clenched his jaw, then said, “I understand.”

“I’m--”

Walter cut Arthur off before he could offer an apology, if that was what he had intended to say. “Good-bye, sir.”

He hung up before Arthur could say anything else and stared blankly at the telephone for several minutes before he got up to return to the bedroom. He stood by the bedside wrapped in a blanket watching Doru sleep. It wasn’t the sleep of a living man - his eyelids did not flicker with dreams, he did not shift and twitch or kick the way a human sleeper might, he did not even breathe, but still Walter did not see a corpse sharing his bed.

Perhaps Arthur was right to make this decision. What kind of monster hunter could he be if he sympathized too much with the monsters?

Doru opened his eyes. “Am I that irresistible to look upon?”

Walter couldn’t match his smile. He didn’t feel like smiling, he felt like killing someone; he was not sure whom, perhaps Richard.

“Yes,” he answered, pulling the blanket tighter around himself. “From the first time I saw you.”

“Then come back to bed where you can see me up close,” Doru suggested. “I can’t sleep when I feel someone over me as you are. Call it a survival instinct that doesn’t discriminate just because you are my lover.”

Walter sat on the edge of the bed. “I need you awake, I have news.”

Doru dropped his smile and sat up, letting the blanket slide away to leave his upper body bare. Even that sight wasn’t enough to distract Walter.

“That was Arthur on the phone.” He pressed his lips together in a thin line while he tried to work out how to tell Doru what he had just learned. “Hellsing is changing its policy of tolerance for vampires like you and Mihaela. You have to leave the country by the end of the month.”

Doru’s expression flashed with anger before settling into grim lines. “Why now?”

Walter shrugged. “His brother, us, the Round Table. If he’s to keep control of Hellsing, he has to make this change. If he loses control of Hellsing, Richard will make the change and perhaps other, worse changes.”

“Come with me.”

Walter’s face showed his shock at the suggestion, but Doru pressed on. “Come with me, Angel. First it’s us, but what of you? If you tell him that you aren’t fully human, will he expel you next?”

“I told him already.” Walter drew his fingertips over his forehead and frowned deeply. “He said he would rather I hadn’t.”

“See.” Doru leaned forward and grasped Walter’s bicep. “He has already proved he doesn’t trust you. And for what? Do you lie to him? Do you conceal? Has your service ever been anything but impeccable? You even keep working for him while you’re here as a punishment for saving your own life as well as mine.”

Walter opened his mouth to protest that this wasn’t a punishment, but Doru squeezed his arm and cut him off. “This is a punishment for killing his brother’s man, otherwise you would still be at Hellsing and in his good graces. You are more loyal than your master, Angel.”

Walter pulled his arm out of Doru’s grasp. “It’s what I have. It’s what I’ve always had.”

Doru’s disappointment was obvious as he dropped his hand back to the blanket. “What of me?”

Walter shook his head, keeping his eyes on Doru instead of letting his gaze slide away to find his cigarettes. In this, Doru deserved his full attention. “Which do I give up? You? Or my life’s work and my family’s legacy?”

He sighed and took Doru’s hand between both of his. “Forgive me ‘this inconstancy’ and let me speak with Arthur when I return to Hellsing. I can’t toss aside my service to Hellsing, but I can’t throw aside what we have been building either.”

His smile was wan, but at least he was smiling.”I think you have ruined me for any other man.”

Doru’s answering smile was bleak. “I could say the same of you, Angel. You and your ‘inconstancy’. You could not love me so much, loved you not honour more.”

Walter nodded, but he was pleased Doru had understood his reference to Richard Lovelace’s poem, To Lucasta, On Going to the Wars. Perhaps he should not have been so pleased.

“Do you love me, then?”

That would teach him to flaunt his literacy.

He dropped his eyes to their hands, his pink with blood and warmth, Doru’s hand pale and white clasped between them.

“That depends,” he said slowly, “on whether you believe that love comes so quickly. It might be that this is love; you challenge all my notions of love and whether I could have it with a man.”

Doru made a dry sound that might have been an attempt at a laugh and pulled on Walter’s hand, encouraging him to join him fully on the bed.

“If you knew how much you have challenged my notions, you would be rendered speechless. You offer Lovelace to me; let me counter with Shakespeare. ‘What we do determine oft we break. Purpose is but the slave to memory. Of violent birth but poor validity.’”

He put his arm over Walter’s shoulders and drew him in close. “Do what you must, Angel. I will forgive you anything, only do the same for me.”

Much later Walter would find the Player King’s speech from Hamlet and, after reading and digesting the text, would drop the book in the fire and walk away.

•••

While Walter and Doru slept the rest of the day away, leaving questions of honour, loyalty, and love for later, Arthur prepared himself for the Round Table’s convocation. Whether he had promises of votes in his favor or not, he could not help his nerves. Politics came with no guarantees other than the promise of human duplicity.

Hugh and Aubrey helped him in Walter’s absence. Arthur suspected the staff would rather have Walter back, bloody habits and all, rather than have to deal with Hugh Islands’ icy oversight, but, by the time the other members of the Round Table began arriving, the meeting room was spotless, refreshments were waiting, and Arthur had nothing more to do than sit in his seat at the head of the table and wait.

Richard arrived with Donald Sykes and took a seat at the far end of the table from his brother. Richard looked so relaxed Arthur wanted to hit him in the face with a cricket bat the way he had when he had been twelve and Richard fourteen. The memory brought a smile to his lips that made Richard frown, which only made Arthur smile more. Some things never change.

When the twelve members were assembled, Hugh stood to call the meeting to order before Sir Sykes could take charge. Richard and Sykes exchanged murmured complaints, but, as Arthur and Hugh had surmised when they formulated their strategy, they did not want to draw negative attention by protesting the point of order.

Arthur leaned his elbows on the table and steepled his fingers while he watched and waited, still smiling even thought he was silently exhorting Hugh to hurry, hurry! The waiting made him want to pull his pistol and simply shoot Richard to put an end to this spectacle.

From his brother’s expression, he rather thought Richard shared his thoughts.

“We are assembled at the strenuous request of Mr. Richard Hellsing,” Hugh began, putting disapproving weight on strenuous, “who contends that his father erred in selecting his younger brother, Sir Arthur Hellsing as his heir. We have agreed, as a body, to address Mr. Hellsing’s concerns and either reaffirm his father’s decision, or overturn Abraham van Helsing’s choice of Arthur Hellsing as his successor.

“I request a show of hands as to whether we should allow Mr. Hellsing and Sir Hellsing to address us with their arguments--”

“Again,” murmured Aubrey on cue, loudly enough for many of the assembled knights to hear him and nod. All of the knights had had to listen to the arguments for and against the status quo from the warring brothers. Arthur and Hugh had judged that they would be in favor of just getting the vote over with if they were nudged properly.

“--or whether we should move on to the vote immediately,” Hugh went on as though Aubrey’s scripted interruption had not happened. “Those in favor of an immediate vote, raise your hands.”

Hugh waited until Sir Collins raised his hand, slowly followed by Pike and Davidson before he raised his hand, which was the signal to Aubrey to raise his hand, followed by the former fence-sitter Sir Collins. With six knights in favor of an immediate vote, Arthur raised his hand to push it over to a simple majority. He gave his brother a smile that was meant to be mild but was still razor-sharp around the edges.

Hugh was as bland as ever. “Seven in favor of an immediate vote. So noted and we will move forward immediately. By a show of hands, those in favor of Sir Arthur Hellsing maintaining leadership of the Hellsing Organization as selected by its founder, Abraham van Helsing?”

Arthur made a point of folding his hands in his lap while Hugh, Aubrey, Sir Collins, Pike, Davidson, Hall, and Ash raised their hands. Despite his earlier concerns regarding some of the knights who had agreed to vote for him after he made his concessions about all vampires in Great Britain, he didn’t survey the table to see who had voted in his favor; he watched Richard’s expression like a hawk while his brother saw some of his supporters jump ship.

He was so gratified at the slowly mounting fury in Richard’s expression that it surely qualified as a sin of some sort, a moral lapse at the very least.

Hugh ignored Richard while he surveyed the table. “Seven votes in favor of Sir Hellsing. Those in favor of Richard Hellsing taking leadership of the Hellsing organization?”

Sir Sykes raised his hand straight away, followed by Wilkinson and Lindsay and a surprise defection from Edmund Gunn.

Hugh noted that just as blandly and said, “Four votes in favor of Richard Hellsing. Sir Hellsing will retain control of the Hellsing Organization.”

Arthur rose to his feet, ready to offer a few words of conciliation, not for Richard, but for the men he had to work with, but Richard interrupted him by standing abruptly and leaving the room.

Arthur watched him go, then turned a charming smile on the assembled knights. “You should see him lose at poker,” he joked, earning chuckles from around the table.

“Now that we have that settled,” he began, “I want to assure you all that I have taken your concerns very seriously and will--”

A howl broke through his words followed by the chatter of automatic weapon fire. .

•••

Walter surveyed the chess board before moving a pawn. So far he had beaten Doru at chess once out of the seven or eight times they had played, and he wasn’t entirely certain Doru hadn’t let him win that game. He just wasn’t as good at taking the long view as the vampire.

Doru tsked and reached for a knight when the telephone broke the quiet with a harsh ring.

Walter muttered a curse and stood up. “No cheating while I’m up,” he admonished on his way to the phone.

Doru smiled and completed his move. “Perish the thought,” he murmured before he tilted his head to look out the window at the rising full moon. “Would I cheat you?”

Walter snorted and picked up the phone. “Hello?”

“Walter, just listen.” It was Arthur, and his tone broke Walter’s mood in an instant. “We’re under attack here. I need you here now. Commandeer a helicopter or a plane and get here. We’re in the Round Table chamber and locked down, but the men are dying and I don’t know how long they’ll last.”

“Who’s attacking?” Walter asked, seeing Doru’s attention snap back from his moongazing to Walter.

“I don’t know,” Arthur admitted. “But they aren’t human. We heard howls before we locked things down in here. Just get here, and get here now!”

“I’m coming.”

Walter dropped the phone in the receiver and snatched up his car keys. “I have to go. Hellsing’s under attack.”

Doru rose and strode for the door. “I’m coming with you.”

Rather than argue, Walter pulled the door open; they could talk about it on the way to the airport.

Outside, a chorus of howls cut through the night.
- 26
- 27
- 28
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Hunting the Hunter