Not for much longer.
His chest started to burn. Exercise was his friend and all, but this was ridiculous. His hooves pounded the earth, and he was practically in free fall, whipping down the mountainside, dodging through trees. He holstered the pistol on the run and stumbled over a rock, nearly falling. The heads started to shriek, calling to one another again, and he thought he knew what that meant. It was a good sign.
Until they started suicide runs. One of them slammed into him, fangs tearing the sleeve of his jacket before it fell, and he trampled it underhoof. Another came at his face, and Hellboy raised his ancient, massive left hand and punched it without slowing down. It spattered his face and body like a bug on a windshield, that skunk stink all over him now.
"Oh, great. That's just freakin' great," he shouted at the forest around him.
One got its fangs into his right thigh before he swatted it away. Two more were trampled. They were frenzied, now, as they tried to stop him from reaching open ground.
Then it was too late. Hellboy burst from the woods with the Chonchonyi darting all around him, their dark wings slapping the air, jaws gnashing, shrieking in fury and alarm.
The village lay ahead, a pretty little settlement on a lake. But the dwellings were quiet, empty. The villagers had other plans today. As Hellboy tromped into the clearing with the leeches flying around him, chanting filled the air. The words were an ancient spell, passed down through generations of Araucanians. Hellboy kept running until he'd passed the Seal of Solomon that he and the village elders had drawn in the dirt in the middle of the clearing.
The chant grew louder. The creatures began to falter in the air, flying in strange, wandering patterns, disoriented by the spell; then one by one they flew shakily toward the Seal of Solomon. Several fell to the ground and had to flop there, dragging themselves toward the Seal, scuttling like crabs on the ridges of their wings.
The villagers looked on in amazement and horror. One little boy screamed, and his mother covered his eyes. Several other children turned and fled toward their homes. But most of the people remained, mesmerized by the sight, chanting and watching as the malevolent, bloodthirsty things that had preyed upon them throughout the ages gathered in the air and on the ground above the Seal of Solomon.
Hellboy looked around for the rest of his team, two professorial types and a pretty, red-haired young woman with her arms crossed and a look of defiance etched upon her features.
"Liz," he said, "come on. It's time."
"You know I can't do this," she said, with an insouciant toss of her hair, glaring at him as though damning him for his expectations. "Did you not notice the village, all the people, and oh, maybe the nice, flammable forest?"
Hellboy stretched, bones popping. His shins ached. He yawned as he plucked leaves from his jacket.
"You're fine," he replied. "We're in a clearing, hundreds of yards from the village. All the people are behind you, out of the way. Scorched earth policy, Liz. You don't have to control the power of the burn, only direction."
Something in her face gave way, and he saw in her again the little girl she'd been when they'd first met--the little firestarter who'd accidentally roasted her family and neighbors alive. The tough facade was gone, and all that remained was the fear of the fire inside her. It'd been years since the last time the flames had gotten the better of her, burning uncontrollably, but she could never forget. The fire was the enemy, even when she needed it--especially when she needed it. He hoped she'd make peace with it someday, but for now--"Liz..."
She tucked a lock of red hair behind her ear and peered past him at the abhorrent, absurd creatures flying in drunken circles above the Seal of Solomon. More of them were dragging themselves on the ground; they would remain disoriented as long as the villagers continued their chant.
Gnawing her upper lip, Liz raised her right hand. White flames danced on her fingers and began to spread to her wrist. The fire blossomed from her hand, a churning inferno that rolled across the ground and engulfed the creatures.
The chant grew louder, so that the villagers could hear one another over the roar of the fire and the screaming of the burning demons. Liz closed her hand, snuffing the flames on her fingers and palm, then put her hands over her ears. Hellboy turned her around and led her back toward the village, wishing he had never come to Chile.
"Flying heads," he muttered. "My life's a circus."
Professor Trevor Bruttenholm sat at his enormous cherrywood desk among shelves upon shelves of scrolls and manuscripts and leather-bound tomes of arcane lore. Most of the books ought to have been stored in the archives of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, along with the artifacts and magical talismans that lay on his desk and on the mantel of the fireplace, gathering dust. But Bruttenholm had been one of the founders of the BPRD, and spent fifteen years as its director. Even the parade of bureaucrats who had headed up the Bureau after he'd resigned that position understood that the man deserved a bit of indulgence.
No one disturbed Professor Bruttenholm's office. Every artifact and manuscript existed as a mystery he had yet to solve. Some of them might take him years to decipher, and others he might never figure out, but he never stopped. Each of these he considered open cases, and they never remained far out of his mind, or out of reach.
This morning he sat in the high-backed chair behind his desk and smoked his pipe, the air redolent with the sweetness of his Turkish tobacco, and leafed through the pages of a German text he'd had in his possession since the Second World War. He easily translated the words, the strange prophecies, within, but had never been able to make sense of them. In almost fifty years, not a single prophecy from the book had come true. Every other agent or researcher in the employ of the BPRD he'd consulted over the years had presumed it must be a fraud, but something about it troubled him.
Trevor Bruttenholm trusted his instincts. Everything in his office held secrets yet to be unlocked. That was why he had given up the position of director so many years ago, and why, though he was an old man, he still functioned as a field agent for the BPRD. Life was brief, and he hadn't time to waste on the sort of politics that the director's job required.
Dust motes swirled in the morning light that crept across the room through the trio of tall windows on the eastern wall. Bruttenholm had never been a sound sleeper, and age had only exacerbated the problem. This morning he had come into his office just after four o'clock, long before dawn. Such hours were not uncommon for him. He rubbed his eyes and went back to deciphering German prophecies. The lamp on his desk was still on, but the morning sunlight had faded it to a dull glow.
There was a knock at the door, and Bruttenholm raised a bushy, white eyebrow as he glanced up. He slipped a finger into the book to mark his page.
"Come in."
The door opened immediately, and Dr. Tom Manning took a single step into the room, one hand on the knob. In his other hand, the BPRD's Director of Field Operations held a case folder. The man's pallid complexion seemed almost jaundiced in the morning light.
"Why is it always so dark in here?" Dr. Manning asked.
"I have a predilection for dark wood and heavy drapes, Tom. You know this. It's very British of me, or so you've told me a dozen times."
Manning actually smiled, not a common occurrence. His hair was thinning, and the twenty-five extra pounds he carried around depressed him almost as much as the bureaucracy he had to deal with every day. One day, he would make a fine old curmudgeon, if a heart attack did not take him first. In truth, Bruttenholm thought that one day, Tom Manning would make a fine director for the Bureau--far better than the politicians who had served in the role for so long. He had a "buck stops here" mentality that was more than necessary for such a job, and for the Field Operations post he currently held.
"Good morning, Professor," Dr. Manning said, beginning again.
"And to you, Tom. To what do I owe the pleasure?"