He didn't know how he'd gotten here, or even where 'here' was, but he had a pretty good suspicion WHY he was here. Chaos was surrounding him, vamptrash and other nasty beings running amok on the streets. He grinned, flashing his fangs for a second before he reached into his coat. The Jackal and the Casull in his hands, he walked into the thickest chaos, red eyes grinning madly behind yellow-tinted glasses. Alucard had a job to do. And he was going to have a lot of fun on the way.
Oh yes!
Lt. Andrej Kaljetzny was confused. The last thing he remembered was going to sleep in the barracks, somewhere in Bosnia, and now he was in a small town in California?? And why did the redhead girl called him Xander? She could walk through walls! He felt the need to redraw and think about the information he'd collected, but the situation was too instable and chaotic. As far has he had understood, someone had turned children into their Helloween costumes. He shuddered as he thought about the possibilites. There would be axe murderers, devils, demons and skeletons and a lot of other strange beings on the streets. He himself was not really here, he understood that now, just his mind in the body of another young man.
But, not all costumed people had been turned into their costumes. The catgirl, obiously called Cordelia something-or-other, was still herself... and he saw a small group of children, clutching their bags of sweets, standing scarred in the middle of the street. And there was a horde of smallsized creatures running in their direction.
He didn't know much about the young man, who's body he was borrowing at the moment, but from what the redhead had said, he could deduct that the youngster was helping to fight the dark side. So, he hoped, the boy wouldn't be too angry with him, when he interferred on behalf of the children.
Lt. Kaljetzny, in the body of Xander Harris, readied his gun and stepped out in the street.
He was getting bored again. None of the beings here was a challenge for him. Only the normal trash. Those were barely better than the slobbering ghouls the freaks left behind when they fed. A decapitation here, a heartshot with his jackal there, he hadn't even needed to release one of the control seals on his powers. Boring, boring, bo... wait a minute! Theren some hundred meters furter up the streetn he could see something interesting. A boy, wearing army fatigues, defending a small group of young children against a troup of demontrash. He couldn't help but admire the boys courage, he'd seen older and far more experienced soldiers falling before far more easier enemies. So far the boy was holding his own and it would only take one or two seconds until he had reached this improvised battlefield to tear the demontrash into pieces.
Two seconds that the boy didn't have. One of the cowardly demons had snuck around and had attacked him from behind. And the boy fell.
Alucard was enraged. Yes, he would be the first to admit that he wasn't completely sane, but some things never changed, no matter how many centuries passed. He still had his code of honor when batteling a worthy enemy. The demontrash wasn't worthy, but the boy could have been a worthy partner. Angrily he released the control art restrictions, invocing the cromwell approval. The trash died in a few seconds time, completely shredded into bits.
When he resolified into his normal shape, the trash, that hadn't died, had run of and the children, the boy had protected, had sought shelter in one of the houses. He was alone with the soldier boy.
Soldier boy was dying, right before his eyes, his right lung punctured and his liver mashed into bits. No mortal medicine could help him now but... the boy was an innocent, pure, a virgin in mind and body, he could feel it. And he hadn't had someone to train since police girl had decided to buck up and learn. Truth to be told, he'd been a bit bored for quite a while now. Maybe soldier boy was a wink of fate.
He knelt down in front of the dying boy, looking into his eyes. There was a determination, a will to live in the boys eyes, that told him, that he was making the right decision. Alucard bit into the boys neck, at the same time as he shoved his bleeding wrist into his mouth, taking the dying mortal blood and replacing it with something far stronger, turning the boy into a true child of Vlad Trepes Draculea.
The turning was done rather quickly and now his new childe was sleeping, healing the lifethreatening injuries and changing into something new, something stronger, better, something that belonged to him. But the demontrash was still littering the streets and he still had a job to do. He needed to find a save place for his childe. Something where the boy could sleep undisturbed through his changes and where no one would stumble over the sleeping nosferatu. He summoned his familar, letting him rip through the streets, to find something suitable and his faithfull hellhound was sucsessfull, finding him an abandoned mansion.
He entered through a portal of darkness and deposited his sleeping childe in one of the bedrooms. To protect him from wandering demontrash, he erected several wards and let a bit of his blood drip on the ground, warning every vampire in the area that he had claimed this house as his.
Then he left, the same way he'd come, to continue his work.
When the bust of Janus was shattered, Jonathan looked in shock at his two guns, that had reverted to painted plastic again. He remembered bits and pices of splattering blood, battle and death and he vomitted onto the sidewalk.
Far away in London, a vampire woke in his coffin, alarmed at the images he'd seen in his deathsleep and feeling the need to go to Sunnydale as soon as he could.
And in a bedroom with carefull boarded up windows at Crawford street, Xander Harris woke up, his red eyes glowing in the darkness.
He blinked. Closed his eyes, took a deep breath and then opened his eyes again. But the scene around him hadn't changed. He was in a bedroom. Neither did he had an idea how he had gotten here or where here was. Only... only the weired dream he'd had. The one with the minisized monsters and the man with the red eyes. Xander sat up and the second thing he noticed was that there were no lights on in the bedroom, yet he could still see perfectly. The first thing he noticed, was that his clothes were torn and sticky. He reached down, to finger the rips and his hand became smeared with a cold, halfdried fluid. With a feeling of dread, he raised his hand, held it up in front of his face. At the same time as he saw the rusty brown and dark red smears on his hand, he finally noticed the coppery smell that hung in the air. No doubt, the fluid was blood. His own blood.
But he wasn't in pain nor could he feel any wounds. In fact, he felt better than he should have. The bruises of the scuffle with Larry didn't ache anymore and the stitches, he'd gotten after yesterdays partol, weren't no longer noticable. He rolled up the right sleve of the ruined fatigue and starred at his arm in shock. There were the stitches, but the wound, they had closed shut, was gone. Only smooth unbroken skin, marred by the black thread.
Xander started hyperventilating, as he thought about possible explanations. As bizzare as it felt to him, he couldn't shake the feeling, that his dream had something to do with it. He stood up. Maybe Giles could help him.
When he left the room, he noticed some movement on the right side and went to investigate. What he found, was an old, halfblind mirror, reflecting his own movement.
And in the mirror he saw something, that turned his world upside down. He saw himself. Himself, but with crimson red eyes and both his upper and lower eyeteeth elongated to fangs.
The dream! The man with the red eyes! Him dying on the pavement! Everything had been real.
Xanders world shattered.
Giles had just settled down in his armchair, with a good glas of whiskey and a good book, trying to push the memories of Ripper and all his youthful exploids into the deepest darkest regions of his brain where they belonged, when his door burst open and a completely unraveled Xander stormed into his house.
The boy looked terrible, his costume torn to shreds and soaked with a reddish brown fluid that he identified as blood, thanks to his watcher training.
"Giles! Giles, something has happened, has happened to me! And I think it is really, really bad!"
Xander looked up and Giles starred in shock. Xander's eyes were red, bloodred.
The words tumbled out of Xander's mouth as he told him about the events of the evening, the dream that hadn't been a dream, and as he tried to discribe the man in the read coat the best he could.
But Giles wasn't really listening. He knew which kind of supernatural creature had to be responsible for Xander's change. The red eyes, they were the trademark of one very rare type of undead. And from Xander's description he was quite sure, who had been the one to turn Xander. But how to explain the boy, that he had been turned into a draculinian vampire by 'the' Vlad Trepes Draculea himself?
He looked up at the ceiling. The paint was slowly peeling of, leaving patches of darker color, forming a patchwork made out of decay. Xander didn't know why he had returned to the mansion on Crawford street, he only knew that he felt save there, like he was protected by someone stronger than him.
Xander sighed. Giles had explained to him, what he had become. A draculinian vampire, called thus after the first of the Line, Vlad Trepes Draculea. And here he'd thought the book to be a total sham. Giles had told him that most of the book was extegerated and distorted, but that certain facts were the truth.
But he wasn't thinking about that.
He was a vampire. A draculinian vampire, but a vampire none the less.
He was dead... ok undead, but not longer alive in the sense of the word. He would never go back home, go back to his normal life, because he didn't has a life any longer.
And above all of this he was confused. An lonely, so very, very lonely.
After Xander had left, Giles had sat in his chair in complete silence. He hadn't touched his drink, he didn't thought about Ripper and Ethan and their escapades, but about Xander's fate.
The Council wouldn't touch him. The vampires of Draculea's line kept their souls and more often than not they tourned against their demonic brethren.
Xander was safe from the Watchers. But he would need someone to teach him about his abilities, would need someone to tell him how to be a true childe of Draculea. Xander needed his sire.
Giles reached for the phone.
Lady Integral Wingates Hellsing, head of the Hellsing organisation and last remaining heir of the honorable family of Van Helsing, put the phone back down and reached for a cigar. Her mind was working furiously. It wasn't everyday that she recieved a phonecall from the Council of Watchers and she was wondering, what the delegates of the most infamous and secretive Order, of those fighting against the dark side, could want from her.
But at least it wasn't another meeting with the fanatic head of Iscariot. With the Watchers, she could deal. They were a bit formal, but always respectfull. Well, she'd only met with some of their delegates twice until now, once because of a violent chaos demon, that had escaped their wet team and was hiding on Hellsing grounds and once when the Hellsing group had found a restless poltergeist while cleaning a nest of freaks. The Council had send in a specialist to exorzise the building and her troups could finish their work.
They were professionals and she could respect that. Also they were the oldest group of demonhunters, being able to follow their history to as far as Ur in Sumeria.
The cigar glimmed one last time and then went out. She sighed. She could only wait and see what they wanted, but right now she had other things to do.
He had waited at his door when Buffy finally came that afternoon. Willow was already here and worried, because she hadn't seen Xander since before the costumes had become real.
Giles sighed. Xander was the reason he'd asked Buffy and Willow to meet him in the libary after school. He had talked to the boy after his phonecall to the Council and the boy had agreed to let him tell Buffy and Willow the truth. Again he sighed, as he thought about how dejected Xander had looked. But on the other side he could understand that Xander wasn't to happy about his new undead status. The first vampire Xander had killed, had been his best friend, an admission Giles had wrought out of him when he had looked specially depressed.
"Hi Giles! One Slayer present and ready to slay. So where is the big evil?"
He removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. Buffy was quite obviously in a perky mode and it was giving him a headache.
"Please sit down, Buffy. I have to tell you something."
She pouted, but sat down.
"Yesterday night, Xander was attacked while protecting several children that hadn't bought their costumes at Ethan's. You remember he'd dressed up as a soldier and he was able to hold his own, but in the end there where too many."
Willow gasped loudly and the hands in front of her mouth couldn't quite muffle her sobs. Buffys face became grim.
"The fight also attracted someone else. I am not 100 percent sure, but Xanders description sounded a lot like the founder of the draculininan line of vampires... . He turned Xander."
"WHAT?!" Buffy jumped up from her chair. Willows reactions was similar forcefull and Giles reminded himself, that Willow, unlike Buffy, knew about Jesse.
"Where is he? Do I have to stake him?...."
"NO! You will not touch him! The vampires of Draculeas line keep their souls and many of them become demonhunters because they like the challenge and hate the demons. I already called the Council and Xander will have their protection. Right now they try to find a teacher for Xander."
"Teacher?" Buffys eyes went wide.
"Lady Hellsing." The representative of the Watchers sketched a short, yet acurate, bow and sat down in the offered chair. "I know your time is short, so I will go straight to the point. Yesterday night a chaos sorcerer unleashed a ritual of change on top of the hellsmouth......
"You want us to do WHAT?" The normally so unflappable Walter C. Dolneaz looked flusterd. He was used to a lot of strange things happening, but he had never believed to hear a request like this. America? Lady Integral had to be joking!
But it didn't looked like she was being deliberately funny.
"I was asked by the Council of Watchers to send some people to Sunnydale in California to train a young man that was turned yesterday by a and I quote 'tall man dressed in red, who was ginning manicly and who had weired squiggles on his gloves'."
She gave a hard glare into the direction of Alucard, who was shrugging and muttering something about a strange dream he'd had the day before.
"I know that there is no way that you could have been there yesterday, but there was a worshipper of Janus who invoked the Ritual of Janchja Usaya on the costumes he'd sold the people for Helloween. He obviously found something of yours," she looked pointly at her vampire servant, "to act as a focus, for him to be able to draw you into the spell. I expect you to find out what he used and to either regain it or destroy it, for I wish no repeats of this event."
Alucard nodded silently. He really didn't like people using magic to mess with him. The sorcerer was as good as dead.
"Also I asked the Watchers, why the boy couldn't be brought to England and be trained here..." She stopped for the effect, "... it seems that Mr Harris is part of a group of young people, that protect the hellsmouth from misuse by demonic forces."
"The hellsmouth?" Alucard perked up. This could be more interesting then he'd thought. Hellsmouths might be a lot of things, but they were never boring.
"Yes, the hellsmouth. It appears, that he had several brushes with the paranatural and the demonic already. The Watchers want him to stay with the group, since he had displayed the most peciular ability to bent prophecies to his will."
He whistled through his teeth. This was a very unusual gift to have. Right now he couldn't think of anyone he'd met, seen or heard of in his long life, who'd displayed the same ability. Of course the Watchers would want him to remain in the prophecy-prone area of the hellsmouth.
"So when will we go?" He grinned wolfishly. This was going to be a lot of fun and he couldn't help but wish they could move as soon as possible.
"The Council has sent a car to pick you up." Integral shrugged. "You will be going, as soon as both of you are finished packing."
Walter was muttering under his breath that he was getting too old for this, but Alucard just grinned. He was going to train a new childe, was getting to hunt something different then the normal freaks and ghouls and he was going to tease Walter all the way.
This, he mused as he rechecked his guns, this was going to be perfect.