Loki and Alucard gift fic
I have written a Hellsing cross-over fic. It's a gift for a friend who requested it as part of a secret Santa. We've interested with the idea of MCU Loki and Alucard being friends before. I've decided to insert Loki into Episode 4 of the OVA, with him on the aircraft carrier with Rip Van Winkle when Alucard attacks.
This fic is violent, and bloody, and it ended up being over 3000 words long because I did that thing I sometimes do when I just keep writing and writing, describing everything happening on the screen.
I hope the recipient of this gift enjoys my writing efforts. Merry Christmas!
Loki had been under cover for a long time now. They never suspected him. He blended in so well with the other Germans. Just one more goon foolishly assuming he would be granted immortality as a reward for carrying out the Major’s plans. It wasn’t as if this was his first time posing as a Nazi. He had dabbled on Midgard back in 1940 for a few months. It all came back to him, like riding a bicycle. His accent was flawless, his uniform crisp. The fact that these particular Nazis had been made into artificial vampires was an interesting added feature. Loki liked having fangs.
He was assigned on the mission to hijack the aircraft carrier “The Eagle.” He waited in his coffin for the British fools Van Winkle had recruited to perform their bloody mutiny. He could hear her helicopter land, and heard the sound of her magical musket rifle fire as she killed them. That was their cue, and Loki and the other Millennium soldiers he had been hiding with came out and onto the deck.
Loki had been careful. He didn’t want to be front and centre in this venture. He didn’t want to risk the Major or one of his officers finding him out for who and what he really was. That would make the game end too quickly.
Although Loki had no love or loyalty for the First Lieutenant, she amused him. Her grin was too-wide and sharp, her suit told of expelling gender norms, her round glasses and long, long hair made her seem almost adorable. She came across like a child who was delighting in causing chaos without consequences. She carried a cutesy pink alarm clock with her, though for what purpose Loki didn’t know. What he did know was not to underestimate Rip Van Winkle. She had named herself “the huntress” and she was skilled with her rifle. It was an overly long musket with very unusual ammunition. Loki didn’t know where she got the magical bullets from. One shot was capable of zig-zagging and ricocheting so that it could hit multiple targets, or one large target several times from different angles. She had invented a little rhyme to chant - a battle cry about her bullet punishing all “without distinction.” Also, she loved to sing. German opera and Nazi drinking songs were her favourites.
She had been singing, celebrating shooting down some jets and missiles, when she felt the monster’s approach. Rip Van Winkle dropped to her knees on the deck, on the centre of the swastika she had painted in blood. Her eyes were trained on the skies, her mouth agape in horror. Loki could see her trembling.
“What is happening?!” she cried out. “It’s him! Oh, no… oh, God!”
‘The Eagle’s’ radar picked up an aircraft travelling at incredible speed towards them from an above-average altitude. The other officers in the control room were willing to discount the aircraft as just another trying to get surveillance of the aircraft carrier, but Rip Van Winkle’s reaction suggested otherwise.
“IT’S HIM!,” she cried again. She was frantically trying to re-load her weapon. The musket used the old-fashioned method of reloading with powder and ramming, one bullet at a time. “It’s him! It’s the madness! I hear him. He has come for me!”
Loki could feel him now as well. A faint tingle on his magical senses, but rapidly growing stronger and stronger. This was a monster of blood and darkness, of death and ruin, and he was, indeed, targeting Rip Van Winkle. Loki felt himself smiling faintly. This night was going to get a lot more interesting.
Rip Van Winkle was rightly terrified. She started to babble about the devil coming on a steed of black iron, the stench of death in his wake. She lay down on her back and raised her legs to aim the rifle straight up in the air, towards where the SR-71 Blackbird that was streaming down towards the ship like a falling meteor. It had the same feeling of Armageddon that falling meteors have. She braced the overly long weapon against her feet.
Meanwhile, the officers in the control room aimed the aircraft carrier’s guns while at the same time tried to manoeuvre the massive ship out of the way of the falling Blackbird. Loki knew this action would be futile. They were already doomed.
On deck, Van Winkle grinned. Her teeth were bright in the dim light. She fired at the jet, her magic bullet joining the thousands fired by the aircraft carrier itself. The magic bullet zipped and slashed through the air, big and bright. Her aim was, as always, true and the bullet struck the aircraft several times. The plane never tried to dodge. Bright fire erupted in the skies. The Nazis cheered, thinking they had succeeded in preventing the jet’s attack.
They were wrong.
The dark tingle of energy in Loki’s brain suddenly grew, like a fire that someone has squirted gasoline into. The jet was still falling, but it was being held together by a large black shape that had enveloped it. The blackness was tinged with blood red and it squirmed and moved like a living, jagged, tentacled thing. Its origin was the monster inside the Blackbird itself. Arms struck out, fingers pointing towards ‘The Eagle’ and Rip Van Winkle in particular. Bright red eyes opened all along the blackness, peppered along the evil length of it all.
Then the Blackbird crashed into the aircraft carrier.
The collision made ‘The Eagle’ rock violently back and forth in the water. Many of the vampire Nazis died in that first blast. They burned, screaming. Some were destroyed by falling pieces of the destroyed jet, breaking apart from the impact and from the damage caused by Rip Van Winkle’s bullet. The heat from the fire was oppressive and oven-like. The helicopter the First Lieutenant had arrived in simply combusted. The burning jet fuel produced a thick, black smoke. On top of all that, there was a deep wave of demonic energy, a dark vampiric power with a very unique signature. It was invisible, this energy, but Loki could feel it. It was the same power that he and Van Winkle had felt during the jet’s approach. A monster was here now, on the deck of ‘The Eagle’. It was a demon, and it was hungry. The Nazis on board were dangerous and armed, but against this monster they were as defenceless as chickens locked in a hen house with a rabid fox.
Loki made a quick decision to play dead. He threw up a quick but effective magical illusion of a fire over-taking him and burning his body down to nothing but a bloodied, blackened mess. He closed his eyes and lay low, waiting and listening. He was familiar with this monster who had come to ruin Rip Van Winkle’s night, and he knew that when he let loose his powers got caught up in his feeding frenzies, it could be a little difficult to discriminate friend from foe. Not that this vampiric monster has many “friends,” but still. It was best to keep low for now until he was done.
Keep low Loki did, and he listened to everything.
“Those who dare to impersonate the dead, are judged to join their ranks,” a voice growled. It sounded barely restrained, like a giant, hungry wolf on the end of a thin chain. He could hear the Nazi vampires who survived the crash and the inferno open fire on the monster, saving the First Lieutenant from being devoured right then and there. Rip van Winkle fled to temporary safety as her soldiers screamed in horror. The monster was ripping them apart with a sound like a thousand demonic hounds from the darkest void. It was also laughing - a deep chuckle of someone enjoying himself beyond measure.
The slaughter of those Nazis seemed to take a long time. Long enough for some of the fire to die down. When their screams went silent, Loki could faintly hear Van Winkle’s frightened whimpers and hyper-ventilating over the roar of the background fire. The jet was still blazing and would be for some time. It had landed nose-down on the deck of the aircraft carrier and stuck there, its broken tail fins out-stretched like the arms of a giant, burning cross. The First Lieutenant’s pink alarm clock was ringing somewhere on the deck. Somehow, it had survived the explosions.
The alarm clock suddenly went dead with a crunch. Someone with heavy boots had stomped on it. Other than Loki and Van Winkle, there was only one other person on board who could have done that. The monster was done with the mooks - time for the main attraction.
“What will you do, Rip Van Winkle?” he asked. Would she hide, or would she fight?
For a moment, it looked like she would not stand up against him, but then her whimpers and sniffling eased and she forced herself back under control.
“Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor; my bullet punishes all without distinction!” Rip Van Winkle yelled in challenge, her voice only shaking a little. So, the frauline was going to put up a fight. Loki was pleased. He knew that the vampire king here to end her would be pleased as well - he loved a good fight.
Rip Van Winkle fired her shot, and Loki heard it strike the monster. The impact didn’t knock him over, but sent him sliding a little across the deck. Without stopping, the same bullet zipped around and struck him again, then again, and again.
“Again!” Rip Van Winkle cried out, angrily urging the bullet on, to destroy the monster. If she could knock him into the ocean, maybe she would stand a slim chance. Monsters of his kind didn’t fare very well in open water. “Again! Again! Again! Again! DIE UND GO TO HELL!”
The sound of the zipping bullet died suddenly with a crunch. Loki heard Van Winkle gasp in horror.
“Guess what I just caught?” the monster sneered. It sounded like his mouth was full. Loki heard a sound like a wild beast breaking a thick, metal bone in its jaws and realized what had happened; the monster had caught the magic bullet in his teeth and munched it.
There was no hope for Rip Van Winkle now.
“I just caught you,” the monster gloated. He drew her name out slowly. “Rip… Van… Winkle.”
Loki heard heavy footfalls and Van Winkle’s renewed whimpers of child-like terror. There was a sound of impact, like a brutal punch to the face. Rip Van Winkle fell, her gun clattering. Loki then heard someone else pick up the gun. He knew when the monster caught her in his hands. He could hear her struggling, trying to cry out but being strangled. The vampire demon chuckled again. There was the sound of metal and wood against flesh and bone. Rip Van Winkle started to gag and sputter wetly.
Time to come out.
Loki opened his eyes. He made the illusion of his corpse, charred almost beyond recognition, disappear. He wanted to make sure the monster currently eating the First Lieutenant recognised him and donned his usual green and gold Asgardian clothing. He stood up and looked around.
There was blood everywhere. The scent of it mingled with the thick, noxious smoke. Corpses littered the deck. Together, it overpowered the normally dominant briny smell of the ocean. A hot wind stirred up the smoke and flames and made Loki’s coat flap about his legs. It was hard to see through the smoke, and so Loki stepped through it towards the horrible sounds of some large creature feeding. Loki’s Jotunheim heritage protected him against the hellish heat.
At last he saw it. H.P. Lovecraft couldn’t have come up with a more horrible image. The creature was crouched over a pool of blood flowing down from Rip Van Winkle’s body. She was pinned to a wall, held there by demonic hands wearing white gloves pinning her arms, wrapped around her neck. Those same hands held her own musket rifle, the barrel of which was sticking out through her ribcage. She had been run through with the body of the gun. The monster drinking her blood was black and red, with too many arms arching out of its back. Red eyes blazed with bloodlust. A mouthful of white fangs gleamed. A long, black mane of hair whipped in the winds. Loki knew this monster by name. The name he went by these days was Alucard. Loki could hear him slurping at Rip Van Winkle’s blood while she continued to gasp and gag, not quite dead.
Loki waited silently, unmoving. Alucard rose up to face Van Winkle. He had a pale face with handsome, aristocratic features. He exhaled a breath of pleasure, then bared his many fangs and chomped into her neck. Rip Van Winkle cried out again in pain. This was her swansong after a long, torturous death. The many hands of the monster held her still while he fed, drinking her life’s blood. Her blue eyes were swimming with tears.
She would have realized, then, that the Major had set her up, Loki thought. He knew what the Major had done to his other soldiers - he could cause them to spontaneously combust, preventing their blood from being drunk and secrets revealed. That, however, was not happening in this case. Van Winkle has been nothing but bait.
Loki looked to the side and saw a boy in Hitler Youth uniform. He was blond, but had the red eyes of the Nazi vampiric creations and black cat ears sticking out on his head. He had an old-fashioned portable television set. Loki could hear the Major’s voice crackling over it. The feeding monster ignored the cat boy and the Major’s voice.
“The operation was a success!” the Major proclaimed. “No matter how many stones you cast upon ze waters’ surface, no matter how many times you stomp your boots upon the creeping shadows, they will never submit to your will. Zat in the river of death. Life and death when viewed with the proper perspective is really just one big hoax. Immortal, invincible, undefeated und mighty, it is ludicrous! But we can cast light upon the shadows. We can, and will, find the tide changing. Through your sacrifice, we will bring Alucard to submission.” The Major then proclaimed that Rip Van Winkle, she who had proclaimed herself to be the huntress, would receive a hunter’s death. His Nazi troops sounded a loud chorus of “Auf Wiedersehen. Seig Heil!” in congratulations. The youthful voice of the mysterious cat boy joined in. When Loki looked again, the cat boy had gone.
Above the hellish aircraft carrier, the full moon had turned blood-red.
Loki cleared his throat as Alucard finished consuming Rip Van Winkle, body and soul. Alucard turned towards him, demonic limbs retracting. “Ah, Loki. It is good to see you again.”
Loki inclined his head slightly in the smallest of bows. “Alucard. I see you’ve been having fun?”
The monster grinned. He was looking more like a man now, with a long, billowing red coat and a black suit beneath. His hands still had those white gloves. Loki had never seen Alucard without them. Blood-stained fangs and eyes that shone like red embers betrayed the image as demonic. “Oh, yes,” he said with pleasure.
Knowing that the vampire was satisfied for now, Loki stepped forward. “Did you hear that?” he nodded towards where the cat boy had been sitting with the Major’s massage.
Alucard narrowed his eyes, smile disappearing. “Yes, I did.”
Loki smirked. As he spoke, it turned into a wry grin. “Then you realize, friend, that you’ve been duped! You were lured here and that silly little girl was your bait. With all your amazing powers of destruction, there’s still one thing you cannot do - move over open water under your own steam.” He laughed a little. “It’s ridiculous, really.”
Alucard clutched Rip Van Winkle’s bloody gun. The last of her blood, as well as the blood from the other Nazis on board was beginning to flow across the burning deck and into his body. He wasn’t laughing now. “I can still move this ship. I can control it.”
“But you’re a long, long way from shore, from London and Hellsing headquarters and your beloved Sir Integra. In the time it takes for you to arrive back there, what do you think that insane little Major is going to do with his vampire army?”
Alucard didn’t answer, but Loki knew he knew what was going to happen. Still, the trickster pressed on. “He’s going to attack! Operation Sea Lion. But this time, it’s going to be much worse than the Blitz, oh yes!” Loki laughed, his eyes blazed, reflecting the firelight. “And the Vatican too, do you think they’ll just stand back and watch?”
Alucard, to Loki’s surprise, started to laugh with him. It started low, then quickly rose to loud guffaws. Alucard tossed his head back and laughed to the bloody moon. His laughter was a battle hymn.
“Oh, it’s brilliant!” Alucard declared. “Truly, the Major will have his glorious war! He tricked us. He tricked us better than you ever could, trickster.” He did not sound angry. He sounded, in anything, delighted and impressed.
Loki looked mock wounded for a moment, then he grinned. His smile was as evil and delighted as the vampire’s. He was enjoying his gloat. “Ah, who do you think whispered the plan to the Major in the first place?”
Alucard beamed. “This is a work of art.”
Loki inclined his head again at the compliment.
“Will you stay, Loki, and revel in the battle with me? Will you stay and see what bloody results will follow from you and the Major’s well-laid plans?”
“Alas, no. My work is done here. The boulder has started its path down the hill, as it were.” He spread his hands in a wide gesture. “I plan now to sit back and watch. You’d best hurry this ship along, Alucard. You don’t want to miss all the fighting, now do you?”
“All in good time,” Alucard replied. “This will be a fight to be savoured.”
“Perhaps it may be your last.”
Alucard considered that. “Mmm. Perhaps.”
“But I hope not.”
Alucard flashed him another pointed smile. “It would take a very powerful man to defeat me, not one of the Major’s stupid excuses for vampires.”
“Or… perhaps another trick.”
Loki and Alucard chucked together again.
“In any case, have fun. Give Integra and that Police Girl of yours my best.” Loki turned to go.
“I will see you again, trickster.”
“Of course you will,” Loki said over his shoulder to the trapped vampire. “Oh, and should you chance to sleep before reaching England, say hi to Willis for me.”
“What?” Alucard demanded, but Loki was gone.
This fic is violent, and bloody, and it ended up being over 3000 words long because I did that thing I sometimes do when I just keep writing and writing, describing everything happening on the screen.
I hope the recipient of this gift enjoys my writing efforts. Merry Christmas!
Loki had been under cover for a long time now. They never suspected him. He blended in so well with the other Germans. Just one more goon foolishly assuming he would be granted immortality as a reward for carrying out the Major’s plans. It wasn’t as if this was his first time posing as a Nazi. He had dabbled on Midgard back in 1940 for a few months. It all came back to him, like riding a bicycle. His accent was flawless, his uniform crisp. The fact that these particular Nazis had been made into artificial vampires was an interesting added feature. Loki liked having fangs.
He was assigned on the mission to hijack the aircraft carrier “The Eagle.” He waited in his coffin for the British fools Van Winkle had recruited to perform their bloody mutiny. He could hear her helicopter land, and heard the sound of her magical musket rifle fire as she killed them. That was their cue, and Loki and the other Millennium soldiers he had been hiding with came out and onto the deck.
Loki had been careful. He didn’t want to be front and centre in this venture. He didn’t want to risk the Major or one of his officers finding him out for who and what he really was. That would make the game end too quickly.
Although Loki had no love or loyalty for the First Lieutenant, she amused him. Her grin was too-wide and sharp, her suit told of expelling gender norms, her round glasses and long, long hair made her seem almost adorable. She came across like a child who was delighting in causing chaos without consequences. She carried a cutesy pink alarm clock with her, though for what purpose Loki didn’t know. What he did know was not to underestimate Rip Van Winkle. She had named herself “the huntress” and she was skilled with her rifle. It was an overly long musket with very unusual ammunition. Loki didn’t know where she got the magical bullets from. One shot was capable of zig-zagging and ricocheting so that it could hit multiple targets, or one large target several times from different angles. She had invented a little rhyme to chant - a battle cry about her bullet punishing all “without distinction.” Also, she loved to sing. German opera and Nazi drinking songs were her favourites.
She had been singing, celebrating shooting down some jets and missiles, when she felt the monster’s approach. Rip Van Winkle dropped to her knees on the deck, on the centre of the swastika she had painted in blood. Her eyes were trained on the skies, her mouth agape in horror. Loki could see her trembling.
“What is happening?!” she cried out. “It’s him! Oh, no… oh, God!”
‘The Eagle’s’ radar picked up an aircraft travelling at incredible speed towards them from an above-average altitude. The other officers in the control room were willing to discount the aircraft as just another trying to get surveillance of the aircraft carrier, but Rip Van Winkle’s reaction suggested otherwise.
“IT’S HIM!,” she cried again. She was frantically trying to re-load her weapon. The musket used the old-fashioned method of reloading with powder and ramming, one bullet at a time. “It’s him! It’s the madness! I hear him. He has come for me!”
Loki could feel him now as well. A faint tingle on his magical senses, but rapidly growing stronger and stronger. This was a monster of blood and darkness, of death and ruin, and he was, indeed, targeting Rip Van Winkle. Loki felt himself smiling faintly. This night was going to get a lot more interesting.
Rip Van Winkle was rightly terrified. She started to babble about the devil coming on a steed of black iron, the stench of death in his wake. She lay down on her back and raised her legs to aim the rifle straight up in the air, towards where the SR-71 Blackbird that was streaming down towards the ship like a falling meteor. It had the same feeling of Armageddon that falling meteors have. She braced the overly long weapon against her feet.
Meanwhile, the officers in the control room aimed the aircraft carrier’s guns while at the same time tried to manoeuvre the massive ship out of the way of the falling Blackbird. Loki knew this action would be futile. They were already doomed.
On deck, Van Winkle grinned. Her teeth were bright in the dim light. She fired at the jet, her magic bullet joining the thousands fired by the aircraft carrier itself. The magic bullet zipped and slashed through the air, big and bright. Her aim was, as always, true and the bullet struck the aircraft several times. The plane never tried to dodge. Bright fire erupted in the skies. The Nazis cheered, thinking they had succeeded in preventing the jet’s attack.
They were wrong.
The dark tingle of energy in Loki’s brain suddenly grew, like a fire that someone has squirted gasoline into. The jet was still falling, but it was being held together by a large black shape that had enveloped it. The blackness was tinged with blood red and it squirmed and moved like a living, jagged, tentacled thing. Its origin was the monster inside the Blackbird itself. Arms struck out, fingers pointing towards ‘The Eagle’ and Rip Van Winkle in particular. Bright red eyes opened all along the blackness, peppered along the evil length of it all.
Then the Blackbird crashed into the aircraft carrier.
The collision made ‘The Eagle’ rock violently back and forth in the water. Many of the vampire Nazis died in that first blast. They burned, screaming. Some were destroyed by falling pieces of the destroyed jet, breaking apart from the impact and from the damage caused by Rip Van Winkle’s bullet. The heat from the fire was oppressive and oven-like. The helicopter the First Lieutenant had arrived in simply combusted. The burning jet fuel produced a thick, black smoke. On top of all that, there was a deep wave of demonic energy, a dark vampiric power with a very unique signature. It was invisible, this energy, but Loki could feel it. It was the same power that he and Van Winkle had felt during the jet’s approach. A monster was here now, on the deck of ‘The Eagle’. It was a demon, and it was hungry. The Nazis on board were dangerous and armed, but against this monster they were as defenceless as chickens locked in a hen house with a rabid fox.
Loki made a quick decision to play dead. He threw up a quick but effective magical illusion of a fire over-taking him and burning his body down to nothing but a bloodied, blackened mess. He closed his eyes and lay low, waiting and listening. He was familiar with this monster who had come to ruin Rip Van Winkle’s night, and he knew that when he let loose his powers got caught up in his feeding frenzies, it could be a little difficult to discriminate friend from foe. Not that this vampiric monster has many “friends,” but still. It was best to keep low for now until he was done.
Keep low Loki did, and he listened to everything.
“Those who dare to impersonate the dead, are judged to join their ranks,” a voice growled. It sounded barely restrained, like a giant, hungry wolf on the end of a thin chain. He could hear the Nazi vampires who survived the crash and the inferno open fire on the monster, saving the First Lieutenant from being devoured right then and there. Rip van Winkle fled to temporary safety as her soldiers screamed in horror. The monster was ripping them apart with a sound like a thousand demonic hounds from the darkest void. It was also laughing - a deep chuckle of someone enjoying himself beyond measure.
The slaughter of those Nazis seemed to take a long time. Long enough for some of the fire to die down. When their screams went silent, Loki could faintly hear Van Winkle’s frightened whimpers and hyper-ventilating over the roar of the background fire. The jet was still blazing and would be for some time. It had landed nose-down on the deck of the aircraft carrier and stuck there, its broken tail fins out-stretched like the arms of a giant, burning cross. The First Lieutenant’s pink alarm clock was ringing somewhere on the deck. Somehow, it had survived the explosions.
The alarm clock suddenly went dead with a crunch. Someone with heavy boots had stomped on it. Other than Loki and Van Winkle, there was only one other person on board who could have done that. The monster was done with the mooks - time for the main attraction.
“What will you do, Rip Van Winkle?” he asked. Would she hide, or would she fight?
For a moment, it looked like she would not stand up against him, but then her whimpers and sniffling eased and she forced herself back under control.
“Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor; my bullet punishes all without distinction!” Rip Van Winkle yelled in challenge, her voice only shaking a little. So, the frauline was going to put up a fight. Loki was pleased. He knew that the vampire king here to end her would be pleased as well - he loved a good fight.
Rip Van Winkle fired her shot, and Loki heard it strike the monster. The impact didn’t knock him over, but sent him sliding a little across the deck. Without stopping, the same bullet zipped around and struck him again, then again, and again.
“Again!” Rip Van Winkle cried out, angrily urging the bullet on, to destroy the monster. If she could knock him into the ocean, maybe she would stand a slim chance. Monsters of his kind didn’t fare very well in open water. “Again! Again! Again! Again! DIE UND GO TO HELL!”
The sound of the zipping bullet died suddenly with a crunch. Loki heard Van Winkle gasp in horror.
“Guess what I just caught?” the monster sneered. It sounded like his mouth was full. Loki heard a sound like a wild beast breaking a thick, metal bone in its jaws and realized what had happened; the monster had caught the magic bullet in his teeth and munched it.
There was no hope for Rip Van Winkle now.
“I just caught you,” the monster gloated. He drew her name out slowly. “Rip… Van… Winkle.”
Loki heard heavy footfalls and Van Winkle’s renewed whimpers of child-like terror. There was a sound of impact, like a brutal punch to the face. Rip Van Winkle fell, her gun clattering. Loki then heard someone else pick up the gun. He knew when the monster caught her in his hands. He could hear her struggling, trying to cry out but being strangled. The vampire demon chuckled again. There was the sound of metal and wood against flesh and bone. Rip Van Winkle started to gag and sputter wetly.
Time to come out.
Loki opened his eyes. He made the illusion of his corpse, charred almost beyond recognition, disappear. He wanted to make sure the monster currently eating the First Lieutenant recognised him and donned his usual green and gold Asgardian clothing. He stood up and looked around.
There was blood everywhere. The scent of it mingled with the thick, noxious smoke. Corpses littered the deck. Together, it overpowered the normally dominant briny smell of the ocean. A hot wind stirred up the smoke and flames and made Loki’s coat flap about his legs. It was hard to see through the smoke, and so Loki stepped through it towards the horrible sounds of some large creature feeding. Loki’s Jotunheim heritage protected him against the hellish heat.
At last he saw it. H.P. Lovecraft couldn’t have come up with a more horrible image. The creature was crouched over a pool of blood flowing down from Rip Van Winkle’s body. She was pinned to a wall, held there by demonic hands wearing white gloves pinning her arms, wrapped around her neck. Those same hands held her own musket rifle, the barrel of which was sticking out through her ribcage. She had been run through with the body of the gun. The monster drinking her blood was black and red, with too many arms arching out of its back. Red eyes blazed with bloodlust. A mouthful of white fangs gleamed. A long, black mane of hair whipped in the winds. Loki knew this monster by name. The name he went by these days was Alucard. Loki could hear him slurping at Rip Van Winkle’s blood while she continued to gasp and gag, not quite dead.
Loki waited silently, unmoving. Alucard rose up to face Van Winkle. He had a pale face with handsome, aristocratic features. He exhaled a breath of pleasure, then bared his many fangs and chomped into her neck. Rip Van Winkle cried out again in pain. This was her swansong after a long, torturous death. The many hands of the monster held her still while he fed, drinking her life’s blood. Her blue eyes were swimming with tears.
She would have realized, then, that the Major had set her up, Loki thought. He knew what the Major had done to his other soldiers - he could cause them to spontaneously combust, preventing their blood from being drunk and secrets revealed. That, however, was not happening in this case. Van Winkle has been nothing but bait.
Loki looked to the side and saw a boy in Hitler Youth uniform. He was blond, but had the red eyes of the Nazi vampiric creations and black cat ears sticking out on his head. He had an old-fashioned portable television set. Loki could hear the Major’s voice crackling over it. The feeding monster ignored the cat boy and the Major’s voice.
“The operation was a success!” the Major proclaimed. “No matter how many stones you cast upon ze waters’ surface, no matter how many times you stomp your boots upon the creeping shadows, they will never submit to your will. Zat in the river of death. Life and death when viewed with the proper perspective is really just one big hoax. Immortal, invincible, undefeated und mighty, it is ludicrous! But we can cast light upon the shadows. We can, and will, find the tide changing. Through your sacrifice, we will bring Alucard to submission.” The Major then proclaimed that Rip Van Winkle, she who had proclaimed herself to be the huntress, would receive a hunter’s death. His Nazi troops sounded a loud chorus of “Auf Wiedersehen. Seig Heil!” in congratulations. The youthful voice of the mysterious cat boy joined in. When Loki looked again, the cat boy had gone.
Above the hellish aircraft carrier, the full moon had turned blood-red.
Loki cleared his throat as Alucard finished consuming Rip Van Winkle, body and soul. Alucard turned towards him, demonic limbs retracting. “Ah, Loki. It is good to see you again.”
Loki inclined his head slightly in the smallest of bows. “Alucard. I see you’ve been having fun?”
The monster grinned. He was looking more like a man now, with a long, billowing red coat and a black suit beneath. His hands still had those white gloves. Loki had never seen Alucard without them. Blood-stained fangs and eyes that shone like red embers betrayed the image as demonic. “Oh, yes,” he said with pleasure.
Knowing that the vampire was satisfied for now, Loki stepped forward. “Did you hear that?” he nodded towards where the cat boy had been sitting with the Major’s massage.
Alucard narrowed his eyes, smile disappearing. “Yes, I did.”
Loki smirked. As he spoke, it turned into a wry grin. “Then you realize, friend, that you’ve been duped! You were lured here and that silly little girl was your bait. With all your amazing powers of destruction, there’s still one thing you cannot do - move over open water under your own steam.” He laughed a little. “It’s ridiculous, really.”
Alucard clutched Rip Van Winkle’s bloody gun. The last of her blood, as well as the blood from the other Nazis on board was beginning to flow across the burning deck and into his body. He wasn’t laughing now. “I can still move this ship. I can control it.”
“But you’re a long, long way from shore, from London and Hellsing headquarters and your beloved Sir Integra. In the time it takes for you to arrive back there, what do you think that insane little Major is going to do with his vampire army?”
Alucard didn’t answer, but Loki knew he knew what was going to happen. Still, the trickster pressed on. “He’s going to attack! Operation Sea Lion. But this time, it’s going to be much worse than the Blitz, oh yes!” Loki laughed, his eyes blazed, reflecting the firelight. “And the Vatican too, do you think they’ll just stand back and watch?”
Alucard, to Loki’s surprise, started to laugh with him. It started low, then quickly rose to loud guffaws. Alucard tossed his head back and laughed to the bloody moon. His laughter was a battle hymn.
“Oh, it’s brilliant!” Alucard declared. “Truly, the Major will have his glorious war! He tricked us. He tricked us better than you ever could, trickster.” He did not sound angry. He sounded, in anything, delighted and impressed.
Loki looked mock wounded for a moment, then he grinned. His smile was as evil and delighted as the vampire’s. He was enjoying his gloat. “Ah, who do you think whispered the plan to the Major in the first place?”
Alucard beamed. “This is a work of art.”
Loki inclined his head again at the compliment.
“Will you stay, Loki, and revel in the battle with me? Will you stay and see what bloody results will follow from you and the Major’s well-laid plans?”
“Alas, no. My work is done here. The boulder has started its path down the hill, as it were.” He spread his hands in a wide gesture. “I plan now to sit back and watch. You’d best hurry this ship along, Alucard. You don’t want to miss all the fighting, now do you?”
“All in good time,” Alucard replied. “This will be a fight to be savoured.”
“Perhaps it may be your last.”
Alucard considered that. “Mmm. Perhaps.”
“But I hope not.”
Alucard flashed him another pointed smile. “It would take a very powerful man to defeat me, not one of the Major’s stupid excuses for vampires.”
“Or… perhaps another trick.”
Loki and Alucard chucked together again.
“In any case, have fun. Give Integra and that Police Girl of yours my best.” Loki turned to go.
“I will see you again, trickster.”
“Of course you will,” Loki said over his shoulder to the trapped vampire. “Oh, and should you chance to sleep before reaching England, say hi to Willis for me.”
“What?” Alucard demanded, but Loki was gone.