Alucard was quiet. Seras was unnerved by this. Sure, Master was often quiet; spookily silent, brooding, radiating a quiet malevolence or urge to kill and rend. She had asked what he was thinking about only once, and he'd been absolutely honest. She'd had nightmares for days.

This was a different silence. Thoughtful, contemplative, calm, and not at all murderous. That was almost even more unnerving! With Sir Hellsing still locked into the Tower and Alucard forbidden from taking her out, they'd been...bored. Alucard had fretted and paced and stalked, half-mad from sheer inactivity, then lounged in his chair, glaring his hate into the darkness of his room. The last few weeks had been very tense, and the silence from her Master had been almost overwhelmingly loud.

She'd convinced him to go out with her to clean up a few pockets of ghouls. To her, it was helping protect the citizens of London. Regular police just weren't up to the task and more than a few of the freak vampires were still out and biting, just more cunning about it. Taking out a dozen ghouls had given her a sense of purpose again, of being needed. To Alucard, it had been a chance to blow things into little bits.

A raid on a local hospital (well, its remains) had netted them dozens of blood bags. They were meant for humans, but what was left of the humans had been evacuated, the last of them leaving a day earlier when the generators had run out of fuel. The blood wouldn't have been good for more than a couple days. Maybe someone would have come and gotten it, but maybe not...and she had stolen it (and her a cop!) and dined well.

Master had been distracted then, leaving her to find the cooler, find a container to move the bags, and fill it with the chill red plasma. She'd snacked on one while working, but Master...he simply stared about, looking almost stunned, inhaling the air in unnecessary breaths, almost sniffing.

He'd been distracted the entire trip back, and now...this entirely unnatural quiet. Seras shivered and went back to her own room. She'd found a small pile of outdated magazines in a room off the lobby, probably put there for guests to read through. The fashions were years out of style, the celebrities of the time now in rehab (well, not all, it just seemed that way), but it was still SOMETHING to read. And it wasn't Master!

x x xx x x

He'd been in London only a handful of days and had already destroyed more Midians than in the decade previously. Just a few freaks, the rest ghouls, not a single real vampire much less anything with any actual power. Still, it was a chance to destroy monsters and shed blood and better by far than being stuck at the Vatican for another moment. If only it wasn't in England. But...there were Catholics here among the heathen, and with Hellsing taken down, there was no one to protect them.

And so he'd come to protect them. An internal honesty made him admit that was only the excuse. He'd come here for the bloodshed and the fighting and the chance, however slight, that Alucard would reappear and he'd have a chance to send that monster to Hell. If his little blonde demon had made it through the battle she'd be following right behind him.

He'd found all the ridiculously-easy-to-locate ghouls already. Places where people were unable to run and hide easily. Nursing homes, hospitals, and (this made his blood boil!) nurseries and preschools. The elderly, made into ghouls in the years when peaceful retirement was their lot, were tragic but the tiny ghouls swarming about the schoolyard were heartbreaking.

He'd started the evening off well enough, with a good solid lead on another enclave of left-over ghouls. And now he was standing in the midst of a dust-strewn yard, ankle-deep in the grey powder, eyeing a suspiciously large set of holes blown into the brick wall in front of him. Someone had already destroyed the ghouls, not long before he arrived on the scene himself. With those enormous bullet holes, he had a very good idea of just who had done this.

The bloodthirsty grin spreading across his face would have sent any remaining Midians scurrying.

x x xx x x

He'd smelled Abraham. Impossible, the first human to best him had been dead for a century. But Abraham's scent, uniquely the man's own, had been at the hospital. Weak, diluted by time and weather... but THERE. It wasn't Integra; she carried traces of what he'd mentally labeled the "Hellsing Scent", but hers was different, feminine...and currently restricted to that blasted cell. Arthur's scent had been much closer to Abraham's...and also reeked of alcohol, tobacco, and the various perfumes of his chosen lady-of-the-hour. This...this was Abraham.

Unsettling. He had many memories, complex ones, and had never come to terms with how he viewed Van Helsing. He'd been relieved to have someone to follow, to no longer be trapped in the role of leader (to his country, his family, his servants). Abraham had been a strong leader that he could respect. But the man had also been staunchly, deeply religious in a dedicated and fervent way. It made him generous to children, supportive of the poverty-stricken, gentle with his human servants, and full of hatred to his vampiric slave. The man was too Christian to ever *act* on that hatred and scorn, but at the same time...it had not been a comfortable experience. There was always the knowledge that the human that had earned his respect considered him nothing more than unholy filth, good only for slaughtering other filth, a necessary evil that was only grudgingly accepted.

And now, a century later, that cold, wrinkled, age-spotted, withered corpse he'd seen lowered into the ground had been at the hospital. He'd left Seras asleep in the afternoon, returning to the site, wandering about the crumbling cement-and-iron building in search of information, clues, anything,and found a few stronger pockets of scent in sheltered areas. Abraham's scent.

Entirely unnerving. He was content as a servant, Integra knew he was a monster and treated him as such but, also, as more than a monster. He was valued for his experience and insight and hard-won wisdom...and for his wit and companionship. Serving the Hellsings was a gift, not a curse, granting both freedom and restraint, excitement and safety.

If Abraham was somehow back (and he himself knew how fleeting the hold of a grave could be) then his very comfortable existence could be altered. Would he be glad to see the man that had honestly and fairly dealt with him, given him a broader existence, provided him with this pleasant interlude? Would he be angry? Even frightened, wary of the man's scorn?

At least Seras had the wit to stay well away while he, admittedly, brooded. He was unsettled enough to be unfair to his child, snappish and touchy, and her bouncing personality and insatiable curiosity could go over very badly...

(the following is a future chapter. It'll fit in somewhere but I haven't nearly gotten to that point yet! Enjoy the "sneak preview"!)

It had been bound to happen. He'd reported to Master, as he was expected to, that Paladin Anderson was back in Britain. She'd been enraged, and while it had been delightful to see her so worked up and agitated, she still was not well. What would have triggered nothing but glee a mere month ago now caused him to calm her, soothe her, reassure her that he would be careful, would keep Seras away from the man, would restrain his own impulse to go find his foe and have one glorious battle. She was still replacing lost blood, her neck was healing but a spike in blood pressure would put unacceptable force on weak, barely-healed vessels. She was physically frail, whether she would admit it or not, and he left from his nightly visit roiled internally.

She'd said No. Not unexpected, but still. Forbidden him from fighting the Paladin, though at least she didn't grudge him the right to protect himself. But he was expected to FLEE...and that rankled.

Before he went back to Police Girl and her incessant questions about Integra and her worries and fussing, he'd take the time to do some solitary hunting of his own. Perhaps blowing a few ghouls away would help calm him down. He'd rather rip apart the guards at the Tower, eat the Round Table, massacre a few fools...but Master said no. So he'd hunt instead and settle his emotions with some good old-fashioned carnage.