Disclaimer: Hellboy, Liz Sherman, Abe Sapien and the B.P.R.D. are owned by creator Mike Mignola for the comics, and by screenwriter/director Guillermo del Toro for the feature films.
Only my original characters and story are mine.
Demon Capture: An extended night on duty for Hellboy, when a villainous demon from beyond drops out of the sky.
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Now at just shy of 2 a.m, Hellboy gave up on the idea of sleep in the rear compartment of the BPRD garbage truck. He'd had room to stretch out, but the ride was bumpy and loud enough to be annoying. It was time he beat the boredom of the drive home by joining Agent Leach, forward in the cab.
.
Leach looked over his shoulder as Hellboy slid aside the separating door panel, and let himself in. The passenger seat was a good fit for his size, even to having a low cutout fabricated to accommodate his tail. He gave his back a relieving twist, then looked over at his driver.
"You weren't back there very long," said Leach.
"I want my own bed, about now."
Leach shifted up a gear. "I'd welcome you helping to keep me awake, though. I haven't heard much about your case from last month. What's happened with it?"
"Gone cold. From beginning to end, it took less than a week for the killings of a whole thousand animals, around the city and beyond."
"Why did the Bureau get involved for that?" Leach frowned. "What about civilian law enforcement?"
"State troopers filed reports and got stalled at the evidence – because the big gutted carcasses were found landed on rooftops, jammed high up in trees, and stuffed into random vehicles."
"How big?"
"Big like cattle, horses, and deer. Big like nothing from earth could have done it."
"Any progress?"
"The perps must have to be built for slaughterhouse sized slice and dice. Since they went inactive, I've been bumped to other jobs."
"Tough break," Leach droned under low energy. "I'm glad to be heading home. How far off are the others?"
"I'll find out," Red offered. But an incoming signal beat him to it.
.
"Sutton," he acknowledged, "What's going on?"
"Elder and me, we're okay, but delayed," Sutton transmitted. "We just witnessed a vehicular hit and run, and the victim left for dead off the roadway. We chased down the driver and have him pinned down in our truck."
"Then call in the troopers," Hellboy said. "Unless, something else?"
"First, we need you back here, to take a good look at this victim. It's nothing human. Still alive, but pretty badly injured."
"Where are you?"
"There's a skeleton here, too, of kind of a horse that was run down with him." Sutton added, his tone weary with resentment over this new delay.
"Kind of a horse," Hellboy mused, "Nothing human. We'll head over. So, what's your 20?"
"The entrance of the Weequahic Park golf course."
Leach huffed out a sigh. "Got to find an acre to turn this rig around..."
.
"When we get there," Hellboy transmitted, "you and Elder head out of sight of me with your prisoner, then call the troopers and turn him over. You'll be busy helping that investigation for awhile."
"And what about when the troopers want to check out the scene?" Sutton asked.
"Nobody will know who took the victim away, right? Run with it."
.
They located Elder waiting at the scene to greet the them. Hellboy stepped down from the truck with a flashlight at the ready.
"The creature guy is lying there." Elder pointed as they walked up together, "and his condition now, is no worse than when we found him. And over there, about forty feet from him, that – dead horse thing."
Hellboy signalled Leach to join him by the ditch. "First, give all your Bureau gear to Leach," he told Elder, "and get going."
.
Elder jogged up to the truck where his partner was occupied with guarding the arrested man. He collected Sutton's badge and weapons and returned to put them and his own, into Leach's hands. Returning, Elder took the rear seat beside the inebriated prisoner.
"Go back to where we left this joker's SUV, then wait a little," he said. "Red needs time to get clear."
"Good," slurred the drunk driver, "Take me to my car. I left my bourbon in there."
Sutton smirked. Seemed the drunk would be easy enough to handle until he saw what was coming to him. "Just don't puke in my truck."
.
At the edge of the dark roadway, Hellboy sent Leach to bring a backboard from the truck, while he passed his beam over the groaning figure.
"Hey, it's a boy," he announced to Leach.
The victim hissed at the glare of artificial light on his face, his parted jaws baring a double set of curved interlocking fangs, and the bone-crushers behind them. Stuttering a cry, he stretched one long-haired arm in the direction of the skeleton.
"Never mind that, now," Hellboy told the creature. "We're moving you."
"What is he?" Leach set down the board by the patient.
"He ain't the Jersey Devil," quipped Hellboy, sliding his hands under the shivering being's shoulders. The dusky skin was mostly covered with patches of spotted dun coloured fur that somewhat hid the definition of hardened spindly musculature, and he wore little but a flexible woven chest armour.
.
Leach pulled on gloves, and hurried to belt the crooked legs to the foot end of the board.
"How the hell would a guy with these backwards knees, sit a horse?"
"Look out for the hind claws," Hellboy cautioned, as he saw to buckling straps across the elbow joints and torso.
With the critter laid down in the rear of the truck, Hellboy handcuffed one wrist to a floor-bolted bench.
"Watch him from outside," he told Leach, "I'm goin' for the other body."
.
It didn't take long. What lay against the iron fence might at some time have been a live horse. Now Hellboy was looking over the smashed heavy-boned skeleton of one, with highly decorated tack tangled in its rib cage. He picked up a blanket covered with heraldic embroidery, a glittering bridle and reins, and tossed them onto the dry bones. Any flesh and blood had long gone. Hoisting the skeleton onto his shoulders, Hellboy strode to the truck and pushed it inside.
.
He signalled Leach to drive off, and sat down on the bench to which the creature was bound. Hellboy studied him closely. Eerie double irises moved across his veined eyeballs like liquid mercury, and he turned his head toward the horse bones while he muttered in a broken, mourning whisper. Then with his free clawed hand, he scratched his shaggy mane to fall across his muzzle and eyes, shutting out the light.
Judging by the swellings and twisted appearance, Hellboy figured that his captive's pelvis must be fractured. From the outside, it didn't look like he'd bleed to death – if that was possible.
.
This hairy demon was to blame, that he wouldn't get back to be with Liz tonight.
"Answer me this," Red began. "What House owns you?"
"The Seeker – wouldn't take warning," gasped the injured one, gulping air before every scratchy, hoarse phrase. "He was broken – dying, and he gave me leave – I set him free."
"No one like you, gets to ride a Seeker."
"Your life – that could have been mine," was the senseless whisper. His eyes followed with alarmed suspicion as Hellboy stood up to remove his coat, towering over him and uncovering his holstered hand cannon.
Hellboy's expression hardened. "You'll give me your name. And why you're here."
.
The creature yanked hard at the handcuff and looked away. Speech, along with some intelligence, didn't mean any cooperation was coming. Hellboy grabbed a handful of the wiry fur hanging over his forehead and pulled it back. The wound he found underneath, told him that the Master's brand had been skinned off – and he'd find out the reason for that.
"You can't live long on this human plane," he warned, "with no home, no Master to feed you."
"The prey is weak, and slow."
"You need to kill."
"All that is useful." The furry seemed to like the chance for a little evasive humble-bragging to a much larger demon.
"You've killed a lot of meat," Red continued. "The four-legged kind."
He looked at Red, and licked the sides of his muzzle.
"And the human kind?"
"They – are slower still." He answered more defiantly now, with the clearer tone that Hellboy's question was stupid. "To hunt them is for too little food."
.
He was oddly honest enough, and as close as Red had come to a suspect. The cold investigation had counted no human victims. He put out another challenge.
"You came away from Hell, just to hunt four-leggers?"
"Do you not eat them, too?" The furry sounded too stubborn to die, now.
"I know you didn't come alone."
"Now that I am come, it is you who are less alone."
Hellboy accepted that the talk had gone off the rails, for now.
But the creature then looked boldly up at him, and erupted in a voice rough with pain, "Your life, that could have been mine! Anung un Rama, will you kill me?!"