She giggled softly, curling into my side. “You're so intense, Peter Hellsing.”
“You haven't seen anything yet.”
But as I held her, and her breathing became labored in sleep, I knew deep down that this fight wasn’t over. It was only just beginning.
GRACE
The silence before dawn was heavy. I came awake all at once, my body still and rigid, my eyes open but unable to see clearly. The air felt wrong. It was thick and motionless, pressing down on me as if wanting to choke me. My pulse thudded inside my head, slow and uneven. I tried to move, but my body wouldn’t respond.
Something was in the room with us.
I tried to turn my head toward Hellsing, but I couldn’t move. My limbs wouldn’t respond, my breath was stuck somewhere in my chest as if hands were wrapped around my lungs.
The air at the foot of the bed changed and became colder, denser. A shape lifted itself out of the darkness and I watched it, terror-stricken. It was something tall, wide, and pulsing faintly, like it drew its form from the night itself. The walls looked the same, the bed was the same, but I knew I wasn’t in the real world anymore. I was somewhere else. Somewhere in between reality and purgatory.
Bael.
Even with the powerful wards that Hellsing had put in place, he’d found me. And that frightened me beyond all reason,because it meant nothing could stop him. Not a sigil, not a ward, nothing.
He drifted closer. His presence spread through the room, soaking into every inch of space, into my skin, spreading over my body like a heavy coat of dread. His form rippled like smoke, but I could feel him, feel the weight of him, the hunger, its malevolence. The smell of sulfur and iron filled my nose, thick and acrid. My chest seized. I tried to pull air in, but nothing moved. My ribs locked. My throat closed.
“Little witch.” His voice came from everywhere at once. It slid into me, scraping the inside of my skull.
I tried to scream. Nothing came out.
“You opened the door when you touched him,” he said. His voice wasn’t a whisper. It was a vibration that rattled inside my ribs. His form stretched closer, lowering until the cold of him seeped into my bones.
“You boundyourself to the exorcist. You tied his fate to yours. And now you belong to me as well. His power feeds yours. And his soul feeds mine.”
The pressure grew stronger, crawling up the bedpost, over the blankets, until it loomed above me. My heart thrashed in my chest, pounding against an invisible grip. I tried to force breath into my lungs, but every inhale felt like it got snagged halfway. My body stiffened. My pulse slowed. I tried to force my arms to move, but they felt like dead weight.
The bed dipped beside me though nothing touched it. The room grew colder, darker, and the walls seemed to breathe in and out. They were narrowing, closing in on me.
“Stop fighting it,” Bael hissed. “Youmade this bond.Youcalled me.Youlet me in.”
My heartbeat turned erratic. The room darkened until I couldn’t see the faint gray of morning through the window. The edges of everything began to shift. The room pulsed once, then vanished. I was standing now, barefoot, there was cold stone beneath me, the air damp and foul. A tunnel stretched ahead, narrow and endless. I could hear crying, faint and distant, like voices trapped behind a wall.
Bael’s voice came again, circling me. “You’re already mine, little witch.”
He slid closer. His form hovered above me, and though he had no face, no eyes, I felt him watching me. Studying me.
“Hellsing cannot save you.”
I tried again to scream his name. My throat wouldn’t obey. It was like the air was glued inside me.
Bael’s voice sank deeper, crawling into the back of my skull. “You thought the wards would keep me out? You think his prayers matter to me?”
His tone sharpened.“I walked through his soul once. I can walk through yours.”
Pain shot down my spine, not sharp, but twisting, like something was pushing inside, searching for a place to sink hooks. I felt myself being pulled downward, deeper into the dream. No, into something beneath the dream. A black pit that roared with distant screams.
The room flickered. The bed rippled into firelight, ash drifted down around me. Then suddenly I wasn’t lying down anymore. I was standing in a narrow stone corridor where it was cold and silent. My bare feet touched the wet ground, my breath fogging out in front of me.
Bael’s voice echoed all around, bouncing from every direction.
“You’re already slipping. Give in to me. Let me inside and the pain will stop.”
Something pressed against my back. Cold fingers trailed up my spine, the chill of it ripped through me, forced me down to my knees. I arched forward landing hard on my hands, the stone scraping my skin. My throat burned, my voice locked deep inside. I tried to pull away, to move, to wake up, but my body stayed trapped in the dream.
