Demon Beyumé: The female and her surrogate spawn.
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Olsen apologized to Hellboy more than once that the guys hadn't been there faster to back him up, and that all he was doing now, was giving him and the corpse a lift back to Headquarters.
"I didn't ask, and it was my game, Olsen. Forget it."
"I'll get the body squared away to necropsy," he assured. "And Abe is waiting for you."
Hellboy returned a weary look. Yet another evening was stretching out way too long.
"One more thing. Ask the tech to compare his casts to the wound evidence."
"Done."
. . .
Red walked heavily to the medical wing, dragging his coat. Abe stared with consternation at the sight of his blood-sprayed friend, and the puncture wounds peppering his torso, arms and legs.
"Can't we do this tomorrow, Blue?"
"Have you seen yourself?" Abe made his close up evaluation. Red winced as the merman touched one protruding shard embedded in his chest. "And don't think of getting next to Liz with these." He picked up a pair of scissors and began to cut through Red's bedraggled shirt.
"Oh, right," Hellboy relented. "Go to it, doc."
"I'll be gone just a minute, to assemble what I need."
He located a sink and washed Chang'ur's sticky blood from his face. The mirror was not his friend. He finger gripped a splinter, and gave it a sharp pull. Not pleasant. And neither was the hurt of taking off his pants.
.
Abe had him lie down. "You," he remarked, "are a pincushion."
He extracted each iron fragment with pliers. Several hundred from his frontal skin. Hellboy stopped counting the clinks as Abe dropped them one by one, into a pan. The deepest had to be probed out with tweezers, to Abe's patient satisfaction. It took some time.
"Your right arm must have shielded your head and neck, very good," he said, wiping pads of antiseptic over the cleared wounds. "How do you feel?"
"Tired, Blue. Tired. Like one big sting."
"But unfortunately, you'll have more to do..."
"Finding this Beyumé and spawn, if they really exist." Red sat up stiffly.
"She's not accounted for, in my studies."
"A little search of the Pine Barrens should clear it up."
"The enormity of the Barrens forest!" Abe threw up a hand. "A little search! There's no such thing."
Red looked down at his Right Hand. "This is what he came for. I'm not convinced that he cared what happened to the wife. If I know demon trade-ups – she wasn't needed after doing her part."
"A revenge on his master?" Abe speculated, "And placing you in proximity of those whose mission it is to remove your hand. His thinking and behaviour were erratic, and the intent is too hideous – but-"
"Even dead, he's left the rest with me." He pulled up and zippered his perforated leathers. "You do good work, Brother."
"I'll walk with you before I go home," he offered, taking his place beside Red.
Arriving at his quarters, Red gave Abe his parting words. "Thanks for not yelling at me."
. . .
Finally home. If Liz hadn't been there, Red would have fallen into bed without the delay of a shower. Small sacrifice. He approached quietly, dropping his damp towel to the floor. Settling under the covers, he was careful not to wake her. But the new sensation of his heat drew her seeking fingers to his side, stealing across his chest and upward to his shoulder. Her arm slipped surely around his neck, her body creeping to close the last inch between them. Smiling at the warmth of her slow sleeping breaths against his throat, he brought his left arm from beneath, to rest lightly on her hip. Not yet still, Liz bent her leg and slid it up to rest across his thighs. This was now, hands down, the best part of his day, but his restless mind replayed Chang'ur's words and searched for answers, annoying him away from sleep while another hour passed. If there was any threat left to what he loved, he had to crush it, fast.
.
He lay half awake wondering about dumb things, like if he was staining the sheets from his hundreds of cuts, and if Liz had heard about the end of Chang'ur. Then she stretched a little, and moved her leg off him. He felt her subtle shrug away from his arm; her deliberate slither down beneath the covers. Hidden and making no sound, she captured his unquestioning attention. Her warm little hands spent leisurely long minutes caressing his torso and thighs, and she was slowly loving him with her questing lips. She trailed kisses down his sides, and ever lower across his abs, and he knew how good he was about to feel. Whenever he thought of her this way, he found that thinking was impossible. He breathed a shuddering low gasp when she closed her wet mouth over him. The thrill was so deep and ravishing, that he couldn't bear for her to stop. Her tongue's delicate moist swirling swamped him in restless lust, mastering the shallow rise and fall of his chest. He breathed restrained moans at the building sensations of her every move on him – the sensual probing, the smooth pressures gripping his length.
.
It was a sweet conflict in the way she took control. Scattering his mind, along with his will to care that it was happening. His arms and legs faded from purpose, from conscious action. She could siphon away his mighty strength, this small woman; concentrating it all into a riot of throbbing, hungry need. Her slim arms circled beneath the small of his back, and clutching him to herself most possessively, she surged over him again and again until he wanted only to keep straining toward her. He threw up his arms to cross over his face, his fists clenching. Each hot stream forced from him, he writhed through in exhilarating pain – they hurt so good. She held him there in her gentling mouth, way beyond the moments that his hard-flexed hips relaxed, and his breathing quieted.
When she moved back up to her pillow to lay beside him, he reached to her face, his golden eyes closing down.
"I can't stay awake," he apologized, his voice hazy with contentment.
She pressed a kiss to his forehead. "Drift off, HB. That's what afterglow is for."
. . .
He slept deep and dreamless, until the enticing aromas of a late breakfast wafted through their room. Liz had been out much earlier to fill the order, and was bringing the food cart up next to the bed. She nodded, seeing him awake and looking her way. As she climbed onto the bed carefully balancing a hot mug, Hellboy was ready to be his refreshed self.
"Take today off," she said, "but don't think I'm going to pamper you."
He pulled himself up to take the coffee she held out. She knelt to inspect his torso, her fingertips tracing over the many new scars of his healed punctures. "Abe wants to see you later. Did he get them all out?"
"If he's missed any, I think you would have found them last night." His mouth curved into a brief, telling smile at the memory. "You know about everything?"
"Yes. Abe brought me up to speed."
She turned back to the cart to uncover the breakfast plates, and set the first of them by him on the bed.
"I just looked in at the lab, for ten minutes. You know, he has the stomach acidity of a canine, still potent enough to disintegrate the pathologist's gloves?"
"It doesn't surprise me."
"The doc said he found live parasites in the brain, too. Grisly."
"Possibly one reason why he talked so two-faced. Saying he wanted to serve me like a brother. That went down the crapper fast, when he fought me for my hand. But this wife he's missing, I didn't get to find out what she's like."
"He could have been sociopathic, or insane," Liz surmised, "and I think he was absolutely meaning to use you in some way. I'll go with you on it, when it breaks again. And you can't say no."
"I'll give you that." His protective bent shouldn't get in their way, but it was hard to pull it back. Liz was a lot more, beyond being his woman. He breathed out a short laugh.
"What?"
"Do other couples shoptalk autopsies over breakfast?"
"All the time." She smirked winsomely. "But for now, let's let it go."
"I will, right after I get Manning to okay a flyover search of the Barrens."
. . .
"I've checked it out with Spud," Hellboy told Manning, "and the unmarked helicopter isn't assigned anywhere today."
"Do you know," the director advised, "that it took half a day for Biohazard to clean up the mess in that cell?"
"Yeah? Was housekeeping mad at me?"
Manning didn't appreciate the humour. "It would help a lot, if we knew what to look for. Is this supposedly missing wife similar to the dead specimen?"
"I can't confirm her kind. If the first Barrens search gets narrowed down, drones could do the job."
"See to it that the pilots are furnished with photos and the forensic report, and I'll send them out – but only for an hour."
"Better than nothing."
. . .
Red spent the late morning crafting new ammunition in the armoury annex, then dropped in on Abe. He wasn't surprised to find Liz in the library, studying a collection of photos on a monitor screen.
"We're trying deeper research into the names of Chang'ur and Beyumé," Abe explained, "but our references haven't yet related anything."
Hellboy read over Liz's shoulder. "A few of the pictorials look something like the corpse," she said, glancing at a number of print images from pathology.
"Old hyena-breath wasn't looking too good there."
"The subjects aren't catalogued, and who knows but the names could be fake."
"And I'm not going to the source to find out." Red smiled at his two favourite people. "You've been trying hard for me."
"Until my attention is otherwise urgently required, I won't put this down," Abe said. "I'm quite fascinated. Liz, you needn't stay. I think you may have better things to do?"
"I could think of something."
.
Outside the library doors, Red asked, "Want lunch?"
"Just a bite at the canteen."
When they were seated across from each other at a table with their plates, she resumed on topic.
"So much for us letting go of work. We have nothing further on all counts, and any shaky background on this female as given by Chang'ur, points to her knowing of you, too."
"I have fame and relatives in dark places. I can't change that." He looked at his girlfriend with stoic confidence. "But we're still kicking."
"If there's nothing else, would you like to head home, now?"
"Yeah, home." He took her hand to draw her into a huddle over the table and whispered, "Last night's been on my mind all day, and I sure am ready for you – again."
.
As they kissed under a warm shower, he murmured, "Your lips do magic, Babe. I want to lay you down, so bad."
In bed, he slipped out of her embrace. She closed her eyes, isolating her concentration to the pleasures of his mouth wandering all over her skin. Waiting, waiting for the touch of luscious invasion, she moaned at the first warm shock of velvet sensation pressed inside her. The onslaught of his tender stimulation consumed her, and she wanted more of him.
Watching him above her, she felt wild and free in her arousal; primitively dominated by his absolute possession – and thoroughly, unconditionally wanted. All of it fulfilled her, like his strength driving their joined bodies to heights of celebration. And after, they wanted for nothing but time to sleep off their exertions together, without intrusion.
. . .
With their pieces of information, it was possible to anticipate a sign. A night later, the Pine Barrens wardens were overheard on scanner, speaking of investigating a disturbance off Lake Atsion. Reported bursts of misshapen lightning above the trees and skipping over the lake, had caused no harm and were no longer to be found while the wardens' boat search was underway.
.
Hellboy, Liz and Abe, joined by two regular agents, boarded a mid-sized helicopter to fly out to the area. They had nothing to go on but Chang'ur's direction of 'lightning by the water'.
"Sightings of 'ball' lightning," Abe said, "have been claimed all over the globe since the last century, known in modern times to be unexplained as a meteorological phenomenon. It's reported to have been seen in many shapes, sometimes shooting skyward or hovering, sometimes running along the ground and in all levels in between. In our case, I hope it will be useful."
"Our patrol seems to have scared up something," pilot Hayes alerted, "on that stretch of rough shore. No houses."
"I see it. Get us as close as you can to the lightning." Hellboy carried a compacted inflatable to the hatch. He deployed the twelve foot raft out onto the lake surface and jumped to splash down beside it. Holding it in place to catch the others descending on a rope ladder, he waited for their safe landing and turned to swim for the shoreline, hauling the loaded raft behind him. Soundless bolts of light soared straight up to the sky, and low across the water. He touched ground and stood up at knee-deep level. The helicopter was sent off to wait for developments.
.
"You can stop it, now!" Red yelled out to the shore. "I'm here!"
The agents climbed from the raft and assembled on either side of him. Another bolt illuminated and fixed in place on the shore, behind a four legged crouching entity. Hellboy saw more it clearly then; an outworlder creature prone on the soil with its blunt-nosed reptilian head lifted, alert to their gathering.
"Anung un Rama," she crackled in a welcoming tone, erecting her upper body, "You pitied, and brought meat to Beyumé." Her head waved from side to side, her leathery tongue thrusting from her open jaws at the sight of the human beings. The white bolt began its collapse, disintegrating to a heap of flickering sparks.
"How did you get to this place?" All hand-held light beams were trained on her, drawing an irritated demand.
"Show me Chang'ur!"
"He won't be coming."
"I delivered in this wilderness from my body, the eighteenth son of Prince Andros. The beast to take your place was born, and grew strong while Chang'ur provided."
"Beside the point," Hellboy said, "there's no wilderness in New Jersey, and the lakes are full of fish."
"Was I to starve for my lone labours?" she hissed. " Andros abandoned our contract, leaving me without my mate, without food. For more than twenty-two suns, my signals for him went ignored." She crept closer to Hellboy and folded her scaly front legs, bringing forward her lengthy crocodilian tail to wrap around her shoulders. "The young beast served a final use. Look there."
.
Abe scanned his light over the ground and along the shore's tree line, until he discovered a crumpled form lying within a short walking distance. Backed by two men, he went to examine it. As Beyumé shifted herself in Abe's direction, Hellboy stepped into her path, his eyes stern with warning.
"It once was a large bipedal being," Abe called back, "now stripped of flesh."
"This is one angry old lady."
.
"You, the favourite son of legend, failed your noble father," she hissed to Hellboy. "When I bring to him your Right Hand, another will be chosen to own it, to complete the destiny that you refused."
"And what did he promise you for the double-cross?" He heard behind him, his four agents readying their weapons.
"Esteemed rank," she chortled, "a highly placed mate, and slaves of my own. Now – stand ready." She peeled her lips back in a ghastly smile, displaying her serrated instruments of amputation.
"This is getting old." Red laughed, drawing the Samaritan. "Come and get it!"
Liz whispered at his back, "Don't play games!"
.
The boom of his firearm slowed Beyumé's skittering forward crawl, but it was the speed of her tail, lashing forth to wrap his gun hand, that wrenched him to his knees. The rest closed in around him, firing body shots, head shots, and pounding at the muscular coil.
Beside him, Liz shouted, "All of you, run!" Blazing with superheated flame, she ducked under his arm and pressed her back against him. Beyumé twitched her tail away from the heat, and the kneeling couple stared into her advancing jaws. There was little need for Red to shield Liz with his Right Hand, as her surrounding field of fiery combustion sizzled the she-demon into a charred mass. But he held her tight, ready for the concussive flashover to hit.
.
Blasted back to a soft landing in the chilly lake, he pulled Liz upright, then called to the team. "All here?"
Exhausted, she leaned into him as they looked toward the small inferno lighting up the demon corpses, and spreading into the treeline.
Hellboy thrashed his stone arm across the lake surface, raising high arcs of water to cascade over the burning evergreens, until only choking gray smoke billowed up from the scene.
.
With the helicopter on call to return, the team loaded the remains into the raft and pushed it from the shore, ready for transfer into cargo nets. Hellboy deflated and folded up the raft while the others were hauled up inside.
"Was it good for you?" he joked to Abe, awaiting his turn.
"A weedy, but refreshing lake, Red. And our refuge, though an area of boiling did occur."
"Wardens are on the way," the pilot warned. "Let's get gone!"
.
"Your thoughts on that female?" he asked Liz. Seated beside him, she shivered under a blanket in her wet clothing.
"She birthed the demon child, and cannibalized him when there was nothing big enough left to eat. She made a last stab bargain to benefit herself, never meaning to mother it."
"And not much of a grieving widow, either. Chang'ur's hunting fed them both, so long as he trusted in a reward for having her carry and deliver Andros' son. Alliances with the hell princes got switched up, until it was every greed for itself. The living spawn was supposed to fight me, not Beyumé." He grinned. "But she had the best choppers for the job."
"Not funny!" she chided. "There's no figuring how long the spawn was alive, but judging by the remains, he'd grown to a size much taller and wider than the average man. How big could he have been as a full adult? And what made you take the chance of waiting long enough for her to grab you? She was ready to chew you apart!"
"The head shots didn't finish her. You've heard how dinosaurs had a second brain low down on their spines?" He picked a short tendril of lake weed from her hair. "Her tail end could move as fast as her front. You're the one who took the chance, Babe."
"You couldn't have stopped me."
His voice lowered to an intimate burr. "No? Why not?"
"You know why. I don't have to say it."
"I say it to you."
"I'm too worn out for a silly, circular talk. I'm wet and cold. My boots are squishing, and-"
"And you're just plain grouchy." He swiftly got rid of his own damp shirt, then lifted her onto his lap.
Their silence drew on, as the heat of his embrace contented her.
"You do right by showing me," she whispered. "I love you, Red. So much."