Chapter 5

Shadow:

Hellboy swings his coat over his shoulder and walks down a hallway with strange glass cases and even stranger things in those cases. His hooves click along the tile floor.

"Ok, we're out of the room. Now what?" I quietly ask Alley.

"We'll just have to wait and see where he goes," says Alley. "Then, when he puts the coat down, we'll get out."

"If we end up out on the streets again because of this," I hiss at her, "I will box your ears until you look like a dog."

"Will you stop being a kill joy?" she hisses back. "We'll be fine. We just have to wait until he puts the coat down."

Hellboy is still carrying the coat over his shoulder when he reaches a large room. From what I can see of the room it is carpeted, has a floor to ceiling bookcase along an entire wall, some stuffed chairs, a desk, a spiral staircase and a shallow metal basin with a fire burning in it.

"Humph," I grunt as we're dropped, unceremoniously, onto one of the chairs. Alley and I start struggling to get out of the pocket and out from under the coat, hoping that no one will notice the coat moving on its own. We finally find our way out from under all that material and peek out. There's another human man here. He's mostly bald, older than the other two humans we've seen and has a self important air about him.

"Ok, Manning," says Hellboy, "what's the scoop?"

"The scientists have just completed the autopsy on the creature you brought in," says Manning. "That thing you shot was a dog."

"Excuse me?" asks Hellboy. "That thing was anything but a dog."

"Actually," Abe says, "it used to be a dog. Something happened to transform it."

Abe's voice sounds like its coming from several different directions at once. It also sounds like he's talking through a metal tube. I carefully crawl out from under the coat the rest of the way trying to see him. I'm hoping we can follow him until he puts my glove down, then we can get it back.

What I see is quite a shock. The wall opposite of the bookcase is completely made of glass. It looks into another room that is completely filled with water. In that room, floating near the glass is Abe. All he's wearing now is shorts. The collar is gone. He's all blue and there are gills on the sides of his neck. I'm so shocked that I just sit there and stare. Hellboy's voice wakes me out of my trance.

"Would someone please explain this to me?" he asks testily.

I quickly run and hide in a shadowy corner of the room. Alley soon joins me.

"According to my research," explains Abe, "there is a certain demon that whoever partakes of its flesh will gain the aspect of the demon."

"In English?" growls Hellboy.

"What it means," says Manning with a rather smug attitude, "is that if someone eats part of this demon, they become a demon themselves."

"So this dog just went up to this demon and took a chunk out of him?" asks Hellboy.

"Not exactly," replies Manning. "I've sent some agents out to investigate. What they've come back with is that there is an old house out in the forest not far from where you found that thing. Hikers have reported hearing strange things going on there. We need you to go investigate further."

"Sounds like fun," says Hellboy. He picks up his coat as if to leave.

"Wait, Hellboy," says Manning, "there's more. There were bite marks on the corpse when the scientists went in to do the autopsy. Abe says that one of the kittens you found attacked it. I think one of your new cats may be infected."

"WHAT!?" yells Hellboy. He takes off back up the hallway we just came through, Manning close behind him.

I stare at Alley. She just looks back at me and says, "What?"

"Alley," I quietly answer her, "they think you're going to turn into a demon."

"No I'm not," snorts Alley. "What's a demon?"

"It's that thing that we saw in the alley," I remind her.

"Oh," she says. "Well, I didn't eat any of that thing. I never even broke the skin."

"That's good," I breath a sigh of relief. "Now where do you suppose Abe hid my glove?"