Blood Type B

Vampires help funnel Jews out of Nazi occupied Europe, for a price. A Nazi goes crazy in pursuit of them, hellbent on revenge. Pulp fiction is your friend, so read it.

I watch too many B movies. Lmao. This story? Yeah. A friend of mine came up with the basis for the idea and I ran with it: God knows there's already a shitload of Holocaust fanfiction (no, really, Holocaust fanfiction, that's what it is every time someone writes another “Nazi guard has an internal existential crisis when he meets hot, pitiful Jewish chick”...or, alternately, less prevalently, and, in my mind, preferably, some sort of slash), but no vampires. Unless...uh, well, we're talking Hellsing.

Fuck yeah, Hellsing.

*

Prologue

*

28 June, 1941
0100 hours

In Paris...

“The coast is clear; get out and follow me.”

Five pale faces stared out from the back of the truck; two parents and three children. None of them said a word as they climbed out, and hadn't since the vampire Gregor warned them to be absolutely silent on the trip from their attic hideaway to the café, where they would stay for a while, awaiting the real beginning of their journey.

The street was black at this hour; they had been brought in earlier in the day by truck, and had to wait in the truck until it was safe to get out.

Clustered together for safety and warmth, they followed the vampire quickly into the back room of the café, wherein they saw two women, one older and the other fairly young-looking, sitting at a small table. One of them was drinking a clear liquid out of a small glass—it was too smooth to be water—the other had a wine glass full of deep, blackish-red liquid.

The wife flinched away from the pair, and grabbed the hands of her two smaller children.

“My name is Renaud,” the vampire who brought them out of the truck and into the chafe announced. “And I am the owner of this establishment. This is my companion, Annelise, and that is my employee, Merrill. She doesn't speak much French, but if you happen to speak German or English or can otherwise communicate to her your needs, like us, she'll be happy to help you any way she can.”

“Are they both vampires?” the husband asked, eying the two. "Is she German?"

“Only Annelise. We cannot go out in the daylight, after all, and business hours are only during the day. Someone has to handle customers. And no, Merrill is not German.”

Renaud then drew himself up to his full height.

“I'm sure Gregor made you aware of this. We'll save your lives now, for a price: you pay in blood,” the vampire said.

The two parents glanced at each other worriedly; the husband squeezed his wife's hand.

“You can take our blood, sir,” the husband said. “But please, don't take our children's.”

The vampire smiled in a way that sent shivers slither up their spines.

“Unfortunately, considering the amount of blood required from each individual, that would prove impossible. It would be lethal.”

“What reason do you have for taking so much blood?” the husband demanded.

“The Germans have instituted a curfew,” Renaud sniffed. “That makes it difficult to find victims at night. We can't very well stalk the soldiers who stalk the city.”

The mother pulled the two younger children close, the adults' and the oldest child's face blanched white. The two younger children were just confused.

“Oh, don't worry,” Renaud said. “We have every interest in seeing you safely along—all of you. This process—blood-letting, will be repeated at every interval where it is deemed safe until you reach England. It would be bad business to fail our end of the bargain and kill one of you.”

“Why not in England,” the oldest child asked. She was about thirteen and a pretty little thing with jet ringlets.

“Much better hunting there.”

“What will you do if the Germans win and you run out of...business?” the father asked.

Renaud smiled again.

“Annelise will help you to be comfortable before the procedure,” he said, lifting a hand to motion gracefully at the woman with the wine glass, who rose to her feet. “Please try not to be alarmed. At the end of your journey your memories will be wiped clean and replaced so that you will not remember what happened here.”

This did not seem to comfort anyone, but they mutely followed the vampiress to another room with little fuss.

Renaud turned to his employee, who drank the whole shot of liquor in one gulp as the door shut behind the group.

“Are you disturbed?” he asked in English, not entirely unkindly.

“Not really,” she replied. “Why, do I look disturbed?”

“I haven't known many women who drink liquor without having a reason to do so.”

“So I like liquor,” she said with a shrug. “Not bitch drinks.”

“Bitch drinks?”

“You know...bitch drinks. Sissy drinks. Drinks that are fruity, low in alcohol content, and people either drink a million of them before they get a buzz or they drink one of them and are completely shitfaced.”

“Is that what I have to look forward to, in the future?” he chuckled, leaning against the door and smiling at her fondly. The second he had chanced to bite her had been the second that decided to bring her here. Through the psychic connection of blood he had seen the future in her mind, and since then the two had been fairly close. “Easy pickings?”

“Gets more common, anyway,” the time traveler said, shrugging. “I mean, people do drink now, actually, more than I thought they did.”

Renaud nodded again and changed the subject.

“We have another group coming in tomorrow night, but that's it for the next week. We'll ship them out sometime in the next few days.”

“Right, I'll buy extra food for them today. I'll find out if the ones we've already got have any food allergies.”

Renaud nodded, shutting his eyes with a pleased smile.

“Smart girl.”

*

29 June, 1941
1430 hours

In Berlin...

Gruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich considered himself a very rational individual. He thought Himmler's occult experimentation was sheer idiocy—and that Himmler was, in general, pretty much an idiot, although a useful one.

But the report in front of him was anything but rational, and as the man who wrote it sat before him looking appropriately nervous, Heydrich read the notes again. This report and others had been bounced around in the departmental ranks before being bounced up to him all at once to decide the final word on it.

Throughout everything, the young officer had been absolutely insistent that he was not lying, and that he wasn't completely insane.

“You're telling me that a secret network exists whose purpose it is to funnel Jews and other undesirables out of Europe, operated by vampires who require blood as payment for safe passage. You've been unable to infiltrate their ranks because no members of the SD are vampires, vampires are capable of sensing deception, and furthermore you have been unable to pinpoint any cells because...”

Heydrich flipped some papers around, searching for the phrase itself.

“Because 'the vampires use hypnotism to cause operatives to forget all that they have seen.'”

Heydrich let the papers fall back into place. His expression said everything.

Faced with his notoriously unkind boss and his unhidden, undiluted derision, the officer tried even harder to melt into his chair and out of sight.

Heydrich leaned forward over his desk, and rested his weight upon his elbows, obviously waiting for an explanation.

“Sir, I know how it sounds,” the man pleaded. “I'm only reporting what I observed.”

“So, you have proof of vampires existing in real life?” Heydrich replied rather snidely. “Moreover you and your staff alone have escaped their hypnotism? I wait with bated breath to see your proof!”

“I can't—I can't give you any proof,” he said miserably. “You can't photograph them, and we haven't gotten anything from the wiretap; I mean, the, the—”

“Of course, vampires cannot even be seen in a mirror, why should they be seen in photographs,” Heydrich said lightly, nodding his head in mock understanding. “Standartenführer. I am faced with a choice. Continue to endorse you by persisting in keeping you on the payroll of the SD in the capacity in which you function now, or it is replacement, and reassignment. This is the fifth of this sort of report you have submitted to headquarters.”

“Sir, I—”

Heydrich glared at him, and the man shut up with a snap of his jaws.

“Of course I could also discharge you entirely. So, what choice should I pursue?”

The young officer could not have looked more mortified and dismayed.

*

Standartenführer Otto Hanke was not a particularly cowardly man, but the head of the SD was enough to scare the entirety of the whole high command, so on the whole Hanke felt he was doing pretty good so far by virtue of not having pissed himself.

He also wasn't a stupid man.

Actually seeing and experiencing vampires was one thing—there were healing puncture wounds at his throat, hidden by the high collar of his dress uniform—it did not mean he was willing to die for it, literally or metaphorically. He was not about to lose his career over this. He was not about to tell Heydrich to come to Paris and experience it for himself.

The vampires were taunting him, by leaving his memories intact; knowing that Hanke and his staff could do nothing, they were left looking crazy and thus less dangerous.

It was little comfort to know that the next group of people Heydrich sent in would have to say the same things, if they ever got close enough—or if they were cleverer than he, they might come up with something else. On some level he felt he just should have distorted the reality in the reports to make it less fantastic and in the meantime done his best with the ground situation.

Then again, he wondered if his honesty hadn't been a subliminal symptom of the need to try to get the hell out of the situation.

“Sir, I'd like to formally request reassignment...”

“And your staff?”

Naturally, they had been the ones to bring him this information, and Hanke hadn't believed them himself until he took personal command of a raid. That was two months and several hurried reports ago, and two days ago he had been summoned to the Prinz-Albrecht-Palais, SD headquarters. Hanke felt a little sick; they all ran the risk of being sent to the Eastern Front.

I mean, what the hell was he going to say! 'Please keep us in Paris, we'll start telling the truth this time?'

“I would like to take full responsibility for—for these reports.”

Heydrich looked like he was maybe possibly considering the idea—for about half an instant. Hanke felt something in him shudder.

“We'll see. Dismissed,” Heydrich said, and set aside the papers with the air of tossing out rubbish.

*

Questions, comments, concerns, complains? That's what the review button is for. Use it like a cheap whore. I don't delete bad reviews, either, so feel safe in that if that's what floats your boat. Really, I'm just happy to hear that someone is reading...