Sir Integra Wingates Hellsing banged the stack of papers together violently, then dumped them forcefully in her out tray. Finally! The reports of the previous night had been checked over and written up, signed and were ready to be archived.

Just in time for the next round of missions to start.

She stood, stretching herself as she turned to look at the russet sky spread out above the tree-line that dominated her office window. She would go out on the missions tonight, she decided. She needed some fresh air. She had been cooped up all last week while her ghastly husbands ghastly relatives had been over. Gah! The stupidity of the man. Inviting civilians here, to the Hellsing mansion. This wasn't just some place where you could invite aunties and cousins willy-nilly, as she had tried to explain to the fool. It had been a nightmare, trying to somehow create some impression of a normal household fit for visitors out of a building less than three miles from the live in quarters of over a hundred troops, with vast cellars that contained torture facilities, a black magic laboratory and the living quarters of two vampires. Goodness knows what state secrets the moron had babbled away. At least young Arthur had more sense, keeping polite and quiet and saying he didn't know anything of 'Mum and dad's work' even though he had regular lessons on the supernatural and his future duties, in addition to his daily attendance at an exclusive private school fourteen miles away. He would be a credit to the family name, she knew. Quiet, taciturn, resourceful, a proud little warrior, with his mothers blonde hair and steely eyes, and his fathers strong chin, one of the man's few good features. She had scarcely believed her ears when the order came, but it had carried the signatures of both her Majesty and the Prime Minister. She must marry, and she must marry the Earl of Huntingdon, and she must produce an heir. Oh, but why him?

She chided herself. She knew why, it was a perfectly logical choice. The man was of noble birth, young, unmarried, an upstanding protestant, his family was not inbred and he was immensely loyal to the crown. Pity that he was such a pathetic idiot. Not only pathetic, but power hungry as well. He was constantly trying to snatch little titbits of authority. 'Can I help you with your paperwork, Integra dear?', 'Why don't I do that whilst you spend some time with Arthur?', 'You look like you could use a rest, maybe I could finish those reports.' Bah! Callously disguised attempts to become something more approaching Hellsing's deputy leader. How did the dotard think he could take that kind of responsibility? He had only ten years of knowledge in the lore and arcana of the living dead and their disposal, whilst she had a life-time of experience and learning no-one but one raised from birth for the post could hope to have. Their son would lead Hellsing when she retired or died, not him. The pathetic fool couldn't even muster Seras' respect, yet alone Alucard's, and without at least the grudging respect of Hellsing's two vampires you were lost as a leader.

She opened her desk draw and took out a box of cigars, biting the end of one and beginning to chew on it. Damn the royal prerogative. Damn the strictures placed on the selection of her husband. Would it have hurt to marry a commoner, or an atheist? Yes. It would. She told herself, as she hooked her jacket off the back of the chair and donned it. It would put an unstable moral influence on the child. The leader of Hellsing must be the paragon of a noble religious knight. Inheritance is a huge part of that.

She locked the office door behind her, and stalked off down the corridor, the cigar still clenched between her teeth. She wouldn't light it. She couldn't, she had no lighter or matches. She had given up on doctor's orders during her pregnancy, and never started again, but she still had to do something with her hands and her mouth, something to calm her down. Smoking had started as a rebellion, one way she could express herself in her strictured life, that and a book of quite terrible angsty poems that she now kept locked in her desk draw, under a pile of papers where neither Alucard or her husband would find it, since it would become rather embarrassing were either of them ever to read them.

She smiled slightly as she turned down the main stairs to the ops room on the first floor. Walter was waiting for her there, at his desk where he handled incoming information from the Police and the M15. He was well over seventy now, but still showed no signs of slowing down.

"Ah, Sir Integra. Something coming in right now."

She frowned.

"Already Walter? The sun's hardly down yet."

"It's these third generation newtypes, those bitten by the fledglings of the first FREAKS. They have few of the classical abilities of the vampire, apart from strength, speed and immortality, but their weaknesses are also less pronounced. Intelligence we have gathered from incidents in Ireland involving Section 13 indicate that some have even become immune to holy water."

Integra smiled "I'd have liked to have seen the expression on Father Lieberwitz's face when he discovered that. I'd imagine he had a fair bit of regenerating to do."

"Indeed sir Integra. The incident we have at the moment is fairly typical. A bank robbery with supernatural complications. We have at least two FREAKS, an unknown number of ghouls and at least twenty human hostages. They're demanding safe conduct, or they kill one hostage every thirty minutes."

Integra snarled.

"We go as soon as possible."

"We, sir Integra?"

"I can't stand to be cooped up in this mansion one moment longer, Walter. I'll come along only to watch, as normal. We'll take Seras, I think, and the second platoon. Keep Alucard and the first platoon on standby in case anything else comes up. Now, lets move out."

"Shall I get your gun, sir Integra?" he asked her, as he dialled the internal code to the troops waiting area. She no longer carried it at all times, because of Arthur. Were there to be an accident with the now quite aging Beretta, she would never forgive herself.

She pondered for a moment. "No, I won't need it. I'm only going to observe after all." Senseless to carry the thing around with her if she didn't need it. Knowing her she'd probably leave it in her clothes or on her bedside table, and then all these years of not carrying it could be undone in a minute by a nine year-olds deadly curiosity.

"Right you are, sir Integra. I'll phone down for your chauffeur once I call the troops up."

"Alright ladies and gentlemen, listen up. This is going to be a clean sweep mission. We have no way of knowing exact dispositions of the enemy inside, smoked glass and the lights are out, but we know that we are looking at at least two vampires and ten ghouls. As always, expect more. There may be hostages. As always, termination of the FREAKS is a higher priority than saving the hostages, but don't go out of your way to kill them. If you see a bite mark, put a bullet in their skull. No exceptions. Private Blake, you will cover the front entrance from that roof. Privates Gardner and Langdon will cover the back entrance at street level with their machine guns. Fire team A and I will enter from the front, fire team B from the back, fire team C will go in the roof. Room to room with flashbangs, gas and mp5's. You do not have clearance to use fragmentation grenades in this building, it's not built strongly enough to take them. Right, does everyone know what they're doing?"

Seras lowered her thin red-tinted spectacles and looked at the troops with crimson eyes. There were some nervous fidgets. Seras was still quite a sweet natured person, even after sixteen years as a vampire, but she still commanded a good deal of fear and respect. None of the men or women who looked back at her from behind their armoured face-masks had not seen her tear someone limb from limb or something similar.

"Yes? Good. Get into your positions, we move out in two."

She strode around the edge of the APC behind fire team A, withdrawing her weapons from her long brown raincoat. The Jezebel gleamed in the light of the street-lamps, gold and ivory shining back from its obscenely long barrel and slide. She had pestered Walter to give her a weapon suitable for fighting in close quarters for ages, but it had been worth it. The equal of Alucard's jackal, but of a more rounded design, firing slightly smaller 11mm quicksilver bullets from an extended magazine to give her thirteen shots in each reload. She thumbed off the safety, and grasped it in her right hand, reading the words on its side.

Fear is the mindkiller.

She smiled. Yes, fear was her only enemy, it had always been fear. She had hid in the church through fear, accepted Alucard's offer of immortality through fear…well, maybe some things were good. As much as she despised admitting it, she was really starting to enjoy being a vampire. There were places to go, interesting things to kill, blood to drink. She supposed drinking Alucard's blood must have been responsible in part for the change in her attitude…she was a No Life Queen now, no longer cowered under his will or violated by the constant presence of his mind. She was nowhere near equal with him, she couldn't even manifest her beast yet, but she at least now felt that she had earned some respect for the being who looked to be the only stable presence in her unlife for the foreseeable future.

She put her left hand into the coat and brought out her trusty Socom, also filled with silver bullets, and a lot less overkill for putting down those that had been bitten. She grimaced. She hoped there wouldn't be too much of that.

She grabbed a walky-talky "Teams, sound off."

"Private Blake, in position."

"Privates Gardner and Langdon in position"

"Lieutenant Grey, in position"

"Lieutenant Hills, in position"

"Right…GO! GO! GO!"

A few bursts of gunfire took down the front doors, and the first flashbangs sailed through, followed quickly by the Hellsing troops. Suddenly, something skittered back through the broken glass

BANG. Seras shielded her eyes just in time. Bright lights were sheer pain for a vampire, the main reason they hated the sun. Fire team A was not so lucky, they were looking directly at the thing when it went off, and their nightvision goggles were down. She heard more than one scream as they were blinded by the flash.

She felt the presence move by her, and fired with her Socom as she opened her eyes. Turning, she followed up with two bullets from the Jezebel, which slammed into the side door of a parked car that the fleeing vampire had leapt over. She fired off the rest of the rounds from her Socom at it as it ran between two APC's, one hitting it in the arm with little effect.

Dammit, they're even becoming more resilient to silver! Cursed FREAKs.

The FREAK ripped through a pair of Hellsing soldiers, tossing them away like ragdolls as it ran on, and gave chase, legs pounding on concrete before she leapt, inhuman strength propelling her onto the top of the APC, where she saw the horrible sight.

Sir Integra, stood in front of the FREAK, and said the Hellsing prayer, even as she reached for her gun…

That wasn't there. She hadn't brought it.

"Shall be banished…." She faltered.

The FREAK snarled and drew a combat knife. With one quick move he stabbed her in the chest, then back, and in the stomach, and back, as he raised his arm for the killing blow, all in less than half a second.

Seras finally overcame her shock and fired, one of the Jezebels rounds tearing the FREAKs knife arm clean from his body. He turned, his face a mixture of anger, surprise and fear.

"Into eternal damnation" finished Seras, ash she blew the monsters head to pieces. "Amen!" another round smashed through its chest, throwing the corpse away from Integra with the force of the blast, the shattered body becoming dust as it landed. She gave a sick little smile of satisfaction. Then she remembered in a flash.

"SIR INTEGRA!" she screamed as she leapt like a cat from the top of the APC, to a car roof which buckled under the impact and on down beside her fallen master. She grabbed the fallen knight, closing her mind to the sweet smell of noble blood with an iron will. A man in a white coat stood above her.

She looked at him imploringly, and he shook his head.

Seras face was dim and shadowy above her. She turned and saw the doctor, saw the quiet and hopeless shake. Of course. The blade had severed her aorta, even she knew that. She must have lost a pint of blood from her chest already, never mind the gut wound. By the time the paramedics got here and stopped her bleeding, she would already be dead.

No.

She couldn't die. Oh god, she couldn't die. She had never made the formal announcement of Arthur's succession. He was too young, younger even than she had been. A thirteen year-old ruling Hellsing had been bad enough. A nine year-old would be worse…but it wouldn't be him…oh Jesus, it wouldn't be him. It would be Julian, smug, idiotic, over-confident Julian. Even if Arthur were to take over, he would only be a puppet…No. Hellsing would crumble whilst she was forced to watch from the hereafter, powerless, impotent…No! No! No! It couldn't end like this, all this struggle, this toil. Her life and suffering wasted.

There was always…there was always the old escape. The old dream, the introverted teenagers fantasy, the depressed twenty-something's nightmare. But no! Curse her, Alucard was at the mansion. He was fast but not that fast. She could feel herself dying already, her noble blood seeping away…he couldn't come in time, even if she were to call…hah! She probably didn't even have the strength to call.

You idiot Integra, you fool. You forsake your firearm for some paranoid construction about your son accidentally shooting himself with it, and now you're dying, and he's going to have to watch as his father destroys the organisation, and you can't even take that dark path, with all its perils and complications because he's not here!

But… said a small part of her slowly fading mind…. But Seras is.

But you're no longer a virgin Integral…but wait, no that doesn't matter either, Because Seras herself was female. All she had to do was force enough of her own blood back through the wound. Yes, it would work, It had to, it must. If she died here, now , all was lost. Hellsing was lost, and with it would come either the destruction of Britain or the takeover of the Catholics, almost equally doom-laden prospects in Integra's mind. No, she must survive. Not for herself, not for selfish reasons but for her son, for Hellsing, for the crown. Her mind shuddered at the thought of being one of them, of coffins and blood, but she must accept it. It was her duty.

"Seras…bite me"

Seras looked down incredulously at the dying knight.

"What?"

"Bite me…make me a…vampire. I can't…die…here…"

"But…" But what? But everything! For all her civility to Seras, sir Integra hated vampires. It was ingrained into her, part of her upbringing, her heritage. The Hellsings were to be pure, noble, to slay vampires, protect the innocent and meet their just reward in heaven.

"Do…it. I command you."

And that was an end to it. She tried to resist, but the seals etched into the back of her hands, which the gloves merely emulated, burned like fire, forcing her to obey her masters wishes. Fool Integra! Why did you insist on the binding ritual. Now I have to carry out your commands, without question or hesitation. Idiot. You don't know what you're asking, don't know what you will become, can't see the prospect of an eternity of nights stretching before you forever. Can't see what the bloodlust is like. The desire for the blood…the sweet…rich…flowing…blood…

And then, with a last nervous lick of her lips, Seras bit into Integra's throat.