A Grim Fairy Tale

Nancy A. Collins

He was nursing his second cup of coffee when Liz Sherman walked into the conference room with the early edition tucked under her arm. "Have you looked at the morning paper?" she asked.

"No. Should I?" he grunted, arching an eyebrow.

"See for yourself," she replied, tossing the newspaper so it slid half the length of the table.

Even if he didn't have eyesight many times keener than average, he still could have made out the headlines from across the room:

Who's Hizzoner Gonna Call?

Mayor Taps BPRD For Missing Tots Case!

"Great," he growled, flashing a fang in disgust. "Who let the cat out of the bag?"

Liz shrugged. "It's the Big Apple — I'd rather fight poltergeists with Attention Deficit Disorder than get involved with the press in this town."

He sighed and, despite his better judgment, reached out to draw the tabloid closer for further inspection, setting aside his coffee in order to use his left hand. Using his right hand was not an option, as that particular appendage was only good for pile-driving or crushing cinderblocks, since it was made of living stone and disproportionately large for his body. The overall visual effect was not unlike that of a gibbon wearing a solitary boxing glove.

Then again, when it came to the rest of his body, none of it was exactly what anyone would mistake for 'normal', at least not outside of Dante's Inferno. Standing over seven feet, weighing in at close to five hundred pounds, with bright scarlet skin, cloven hooves, and a long, prehensile tail that looked like a cross between a lizard's and a monkey's, he certainly fit the only name he had ever known — the only name he had, to his memory, ever been called:

Hellboy.

He scanned the newspaper article, which was long on hysteria but short on real news, typical for the tabloids. The only thing of real interest was the side bar, which featured pictures of the missing children — twelve total, so far.

It was clear, despite the overheated prose, that New Yorkers were genuinely worked up over the disappearances. While such concern might seem odd for a city that prided itself on its history of indifference, there were several factors that made it an emotionally volatile situation: First, the age of the missing children — none older than six years; second, they had all been taken from Central Park, the city's most sacred reprieve from the concrete and glass that surrounds it; third, the abductions all happened in broad daylight, within feet of the children's parents or guardians; fourth, all the children were from good, upper-income families and were well cared for, even pampered; fifth, no ransom note had been received by any of the families in the six weeks since the disappearances began, giving the distinct impression that the motivation for the kidnappings was depraved, not financial. Someone was stealing the children of Midtown Manhattan, and now, four days after the twelfth child was plucked by unseen hands from one of the gaily painted horses on the Carousel, there was finally some evidence that pointed to a paranormal force behind it all.

Which was why Hellboy and the others from the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense had choppered in at the crack of dawn from their headquarters in nearby Fairfield, Connecticut to meet with the mayor at Gracie Mansion. Who had yet to show.

Typical. Hurry up and wait. Hellboy grunted.

Suddenly the doors to the conference room flew open and the Mayor entered, flanked by several of his aides and a personal secretary, and Professor Bruttenholm at his elbow. The mayor looked like a man trying to eat breakfast, finish dressing, and call his office for messages all at the same time. It was occasions like these that Hellboy was glad his job only required him to fight monsters.

"Look, Mitch — I don't care what you think, the Sanitation Workers' Union has our nuts in a vise and they know it!" The mayor barked into the cordless phone while giving his tie a final adjustment. "Life in this city is a big enough pain in the ass as it is without commuters crawling over trash bags to and from work. And let's not get into the tourist thing! Let the Budgetary Committee squawk! I refuse to have a garbage strike on my watch, and that's final! You don't make it to the Governor's mansion on a mountain of disposable diapers. Look — I got other things to worry about right now. I'll get back to you on this later." Rolling his eyes in frustration, the mayor closed his phone and handed it back to one of his aides. "I'm so sorry to keep you waiting."

Hellboy rose from his seat, extending his left hand to the Mayor. "That's perfectly understandable, Mr. Mayor ... "

A true politician, Hizzoner didn't even blink as he shook the hand offered him.

"I'm honored to make your acquaintance, Mr. Hellboy."

"Just Hellboy, sir," he explained, returning to his seat, which groaned uneasily under his immense weight.

Professor Bruttenholm coughed dryly into his fist. The old man was physically quite frail — after all, he was well into his nineties — but the fire in his eyes belied whatever physical shortcomings his age had brought him. As the Bureau's founder and Hellboy's foster father, Trevor Bruttenholm was still a force to be reckoned with.

"I had my men sweep the area where the last abduction is reported to have taken place. The spectrogram results indicate without a doubt that occult energy was expended at the sight. Whatever is stealing these children is of a paranormal nature."

The mayor frowned. "You think it's Satanists?"

Bruttenholm shook his head. "Not of the nature you are suggesting, no. But demon worship as a motive for the abductions is not out of the question."

"So how soon do you think Hellboy can find these kids and get them back safe and sound?"

There was an uncomfortable silence and exchange of glances amongst the BPRD members. After a long moment, Hellboy spoke up.

"Mister Mayor ... sir ... I don't like to make this situation any more distressing for the families than it already is, but there is less than a one percent chance any of those kids are still alive. Whatever is stealing them is doing it for one thing and one thing only — consumption."

The mayor visibly blanched and his personal secretary looked like she was going to be sick.

"My God. You mean — a cannibal?"

"I don't know about the cannibal part — but we're certainly dealing with an anthropophagous entity," Bruttenholm explained.

The mayor's brow creased. "A what?"

"Something that eats humans," Liz said helpfully.

"What kind of thing would do that?"

Bruttenholm rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "There are numerous creatures with a taste for human flesh — but given the types of victims and the circumstances of their disappearances, I'd hazard that we're dealing with an ogre — possibly a minor demon of some sort. Both are known for their fondness for child-flesh. Then again ... it also shows signs of classic fairy abduction."

"I beg your pardon?" said one of the aides, who wore a pink triangle button on his lapel.

"All legends and folklore have their basis in fact, young man," Bruttenholm replied sharply. "There are numerous accounts of children being charmed by the fairy folk and carried off to The Land Under The Hill — Never-Never Land, if you will."

"Are you saying Peter Pan stole these children?"

"Not Peter Pan per se, because he was a work of fiction — but the reality on which such fanciful characters have been based."

The Mayor shook his head in disbelief. "I thought I'd seen and heard it all after a lifetime of living on Manhattan, but this really takes the cake! Are you sure it's not Satanists?"

"Pretty sure."

"Damn." He stared at the ground for a few moments, then he began to smile, as if something had suddenly occurred to him. "If the children were abducted by leprechauns or whatever the hell they are — at least they're okay, right? I mean, fairies aren't dangerous — they're just little women with butterfly wings, right?"

Hellboy glanced at the Professor, who shook his head. The old man was probably right. The less said the better in some cases, especially when it came to political types. The Mayor was desperate to find some kind of happy face to put on the situation should it go balls up. Telling grieving parents that their kids had been spirited away to Rock Candy Mountain by the Pied Piper certainly sounded better than saying they'd been eaten alive by an ogre.

It was decided that, given the size of Central Park, it would be better if the Bureau operatives placed themselves in strategic locations. Liz was stationed at the Children's Zoo, the Professor was keeping watch by the Carousel, while Hellboy found himself assigned to the Heckscher Playground.

With two jungle gyms, a sandpit, several sets of swings, and a Punch-and-Judy-style puppet house, Heckscher was the largest of the park's twenty different children's play areas; and given its easy access from Columbus Circle, it was considered the most likely target should whatever was preying on the park's young visitors strike again.

Dressed in his brown leather duster, his collar turned up, and with a wide-brimmed hat pulled low over his brow to hide the stumps of his amputated horns, Hellboy sat on a wooden bench not far from the swings and did his best not to look suspicious.

Thank goodness he was in New York City, or else he would have been failing miserably.

As he watched the hordes of children race back and forth amongst the swings and slides, it occurred to Hellboy that he had never before been exposed to such a large number of human children all in one place at one time. He was amazed by the energy and intensity they put into their play-time activities, as if the fate of the world hinged on how high they could ride the swings, or who went down the slide first.

Hellboy wasn't very comfortable around kids. His had been a solitary childhood — if it could be called that at all. However, Hellboy's uneasiness around children was not merely the result of his being raised apart from them. His biggest problem with rug-rats was they tended to break real easy. Given his bull-in-a-china-shop reputation, Hellboy was terrified of even touching them.

Since he had been raised in laboratory-like conditions, where his every development, both physical and mental, was measured, weighed, and documented, Hellboy had never been exposed to other children his own age, much less his own species. He had known of their existence, of course. He could still clearly remember when the Professor handed him that first copy of Fun With Dick and Jane, and how baffled and dismayed he had been to discover that not all little boys had bright red skin and cloven hooves.

Still, Hellboy did not consider his an unhappy childhood. The Professor had tried his best to raise him as he would a human child, given the unique conditions they found themselves in. And whenever Hellboy thought about how he might have turned out had his upbringing been left to the Nazis responsible for his deliverance upon this mortal plane, he shuddered. Still, these things did not keep him from experiencing a twinge of loss as he watched the children romp and play.

As the day wore on, Hellboy was surprised how many children were out enjoying the park, despite the dire events of the last few weeks. However, if the children were oblivious to the sinister cloud hanging over their favorite playground, the same could not be said for the adults accompanying them.

As he scanned the neighboring benches, Hellboy couldn't help but notice how intently the parents, nannies, and other care providers were watching their individual charges, eschewing the usual idle chitchat in favor of stony vigil. He understood their concern, but it would do little good, given the nature of the enemy they were up against. Mere human eyesight was of little use against forces more ancient than the standing stones of the Druids.

He sniffed the air, casting for the tell-tale stink of the paranormal, but all he caught was the odor of horse manure from the nearby Bridle Path and, when the wind blew from the east, the reek of far more exotic beasts that made their home at the zoo.

"Hellboy — come in, Hellboy. Do you copy?" Liz's voice buzzed in his pointed ear, thanks to the tiny headset he was wearing.

"Yeah, I hear you loud and clear," he growled into his lapel mike. " 'Sup?"

"Nothing much. I thought I might have spotted our target, but it turned out just to be a garden-variety pedophile."

"That's a cheery thought."

"Do you think the newspaper coverage might have scared it off?"

Hellboy shrugged, even though she was not there to see it. "That's assuming it has the brains necessary to read the papers, much less the pocket change to buy them. You know the drill, Liz. We stay put until Bruttenholm says otherwise. There's too much at stake here."

"You're right, Hellboy. Still, I can't help feeling we're spinning our wheels here."

"We'll see. The day's not through yet. Over and out." After another hour, however, Hellboy was beginning to agree with Liz about the stakeout being a total bust.

There was a sudden throbbing just above his brow. Hellboy sat up straight, every sense razor sharp. He always got phantom pain from his horns when there was a paranormal being in the area.

At first he mistook it for one of the parents, but there was something about the way it moved that caught his attention. It walked with a swift dedication to purpose, like an underwater welder who knows he only has a certain amount of time before his air runs out, stranding him in a hostile environment. It was dressed in loose-fitting, flowing garments, with a scarf over its head, obscuring its features from the casual observer. It was too willowy to be a man, but too tall to be a woman. It ignored the other children crawling over the playground equipment like ants on a piece of candy and headed towards a pair of tow-headed children who were off by themselves, playing with a toy ball.

The stranger called out to the children, who stopped what they were doing to look up at its hidden face. The little boy, the older of the two, immediately smiled and dropped the ball.

Hellboy spoke hurriedly into the transmitter as he got to his feet, his left hand going instinctively to where he kept his gun.

"Professor! Liz! Come in! I see it! It's here!"

"Hellboy!" Bruttenholm's ancient voice crackled in his ear. "What is it?!? What are we dealing with?"

"Tell Cartier he wins the office pool," Hellboy growled back. "We got ourselves a fairy."

"What sub-species?"

"I can't tell from here. It's zeroed in on a couple of kids."

"Can you shoot it?"

His dislike of supernatural creatures was so strong, he was tempted to go ahead and fire, but at the last minute his Bureau training took over. "I can't — there are too many civilians in the area — mostly kids."

The mother of one, if not both, of the children, left her seat on a nearby bench and hurried forward, grabbing the stranger's sleeve. The creature turned towards the woman, removing its veil to momentarily reveal an androgynous face with high cheekbones, almond-shaped eyes, and smooth skin. Its radiant, sexless beauty was so pure it transfixed and disarmed instantly, like the face of a saint. However, the feral hunger burning in its golden eyes was far from beatific.

The woman's face went blank and her hand fell away from the stranger's sleeve and hung at her side as if dead. Without saying a word, she turned around and resumed her seat on the bench, staring off into space, caught deep within the same glamour that had once ensnared Merlin, long centuries before.

As the creature moved to replace its veil, Hellboy glimpsed gossamer-fine hair the color of a robin's egg. His eyes widened. The fairy turned its hypnotic gaze back on the kids and took their tiny hands in its own and began to walk from the playground, back in the direction of Columbus Circle. The children obediently followed their abductor without a cry or whimper.

"Crap," he groaned.

"What? What's going on?" Bruttenholm demanded testily. "Hellboy — talk to me!"

"It's a Cailleach Bheur."

"That's what I was afraid of," the old man replied. "Try to keep it there. We're on our way."

"Too late, Prof. It's made the grab and it's impossible for me to engage it — not under these circumstances. I'm going to try and follow it."

"Follow it — ?!?" Bruttenholm blustered.

"It's going to ground, Prof — if I track it, maybe I can find the others."

There was a moment of silence on the Professor's end, then the old man's voice came back over the receiver, sounding far older than even Hellboy knew him to be. "Very well, son — go ahead and follow it. Don't forget to turn on your homing beacon."

"Thanks for the reminder, Prof," he replied. "I'm already halfway across Columbus Circle."

Hellboy's big worry was that the fairy would hail a cab and disappear into the city. That concern disappeared when the creature led its prey down into the subway, only to be replaced by a new fear of losing them on the crush of the platform. Hellboy clattered after it, cursing under his breath as he wedged his sizable bulk through the turnstiles. He spotted his quarry standing on the downtown side and was secretly relieved to see that the little boy and girl, outside of being extremely quiet and docile, seemed otherwise unharmed.

Hellboy carefully jockeyed himself in the crowd so the creature would not accidentally catch his scent. The last thing he needed was it getting wind of him and hurting the kids. However, the fairy seemed to be too preoccupied with keeping both children under its control while maintaining its own semblance of humanity to pay much attention to anything else.

As Hellboy surreptitiously followed the fairy onto the train, he couldn't help but marvel at how well its race had adapted to the modern world. He wondered how many of the faces on milk cartons were the direct responsibility of creatures like the one he was following. After all, fairies had been abducting mortal children for centuries — long before the gray UFOnauts ever thought of making the scene. Why should they stop now?

The problem with fairy infestations was that modern humans didn't believe in them anymore, which gave the more vicious variants room to run wild. As far as the average human was concerned, fairies were thumb-sized little girls in tutus with butterfly wings, quaint little figments of the imagination best suited for children's books and animated films and nothing else.

Of course, 'fairy' was something of a misnomer. There were numerous species and subspecies, just as there were with such catch-all descriptions as 'bird', 'primate', and 'fish'. All were, at best, tricky and unpredictable, and many were genuinely baleful creatures. They came in various shapes and sizes, and had apparently existed alongside mankind since the most ancient of days, thanks largely to their gift of 'hiding in plain sight' via a supernatural ability to cloud the minds of humans.

The fairy race ranged from such creatures as the strikingly beautiful Seelies to the gnarled Kobolds, to the shapeless horror of the Brollachan. In this case, he was faced with a Cailleach Bheur, one of the most dangerous and unpleasant members of the whole damned family.

In ancient Scotland, before the Christian religion took hold, they were one of the most feared breeds of fairy folk. Back then, they had been known as Blue Hags, infamous for their cruelty and their rapaciousness. They were especially dangerous to travelers and children sent to collect firewood or fetch water from the highland streams. As time passed, and civilization grew, it became harder and harder for them to rely on such direct methods of predation. They were forced to become more daring and inventive if they wished to remain fed. So they used their power to cloud the minds of men — to cast glamours, or spells — to make themselves more attractive to their prey. And so the fearsome Blue Hags were replaced, in time, by the beautiful Blue Fairies.

And humans, being what they are, romanticized this history of systematic predation by writing ballads and lays and all manner of fanciful crap about fairylands and fairy brides and changelings. All of which was complete and utter bullshit. Tarn Lin, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, Le Morte d'Arthur, The Faerie Queene, Peter Pan, The Pied Piper of Hamlin ... all of it a total crock. Those lured away by the fairies didn't go to a world under the hill where it was always summer and no one aged and they danced and fiddled all night long. They went directly into the fairy's belly, if they were lucky. If they were unlucky, they were used as incubators. Hellboy hated dealing with fairies. They were invariably tricky bastards, and deceptively hard to kill, given their build.

The Cailleach got off the train at the last stop before Brooklyn. Hellboy wasn't surprised it had chosen to make its lair in the East Village. Walking amongst the sullen, black-garbed, heavily pierced and tattooed denizens of Avenue A, the Cailleach and its victims were the picture of normalcy. Even Hellboy didn't rate a raised eyebrow past Avenue B.

The fairy was headed toward the deepest reaches of Alphabet City, where the real-estate developers had yet to lay claim to the dilapidated tenements and chase the remaining crack-heads and junkies from the shadows. In this blighted neighborhood, isolated from the financial rejuvenation that brought sushi bars and trendy boutiques to the northern end of Houston Avenue, there were still shooting galleries and rats the size of small dogs brazenly feeding from overflowing garbage pails. Here, the streets were still mean, the shadows still dark. It was a perfect location for the likes of the Cailleach Bheur to tend to its grisly business unmolested.

Hellboy hung back by a half block, watching the Cailleach as it entered a dilapidated tenement with boarded-over windows and a crumbling facade heavily marked with graffiti tags and human urine. He increased his pace, hooves clattering loudly on the pavement. He couldn't wait for the others to join him. He had to move in now, or it would have all been for nothing.

The interior of the building was gutted, resembling a squalid four-story atrium, with criss-crossing wooden beams overhead. What was left of the first floor groaned under his weight as Hellboy tested it with his hooves. Even with his keen, dark-adapted eyesight, the gloom inside the abandoned building was too heavy for him to see what might be lurking in its shadows.

Grumbling under his breath, he removed his Bureau-issue flashlight from one of his duster's inner pockets and played the beam along one of the rafters directly overhead. They were swaddled in some kind of blue-white webbing, below which was a pendulous nest, similar to those created by weaver birds, made from the same substance. Hellboy cast the beam farther and was rewarded by the sight of a large cluster of silken sacs plastered to the far wall. He didn't have to count to know there were twelve of them.

A movement caught the corner of his eye. Instinctively, he moved the beam towards it. There was a man splayed across the wall, his arms and legs spread akimbo, as if making snow angels in mid-air, his wrists and ankles held in place by the webbing that composed the Cailleach's nest and pantry sacs. Judging from the tattered remains of the suit hanging from his wasted frame, he was some hapless commuter the Cailleach had seduced from the trodden path — a modern-day Tarn Lin lured into Never-Never Land by la Belle Dame Sans Merci.

The man twitched convulsively a second time. Hellboy moved closer.

"Hey, buddy — hold on — the cavalry's arrived," he whispered gruffly.

The commuter's head rolled back on his shoulders. His flesh was gray and covered in sores, his eyes sunken into their orbits. Save for a grotesquely distended belly, he looked more like a scarecrow than a human being. A pained, gargling sound was all that came from the dying man's throat. Whatever had turned him from commuter to incubator had taken his tongue.

With a roar of anger and disgust, Hellboy reached into his coat and withdrew one of the flares he kept for emergencies and struck it against the crumbling brick wall. A flame as red and baleful as those of the lakes of his birthplace leapt forth, giving light to the darkness, while at the same time creating contorted shadows.

"That's it! I'm through pussyfooting around, you bargain-basement maleficent!" he bellowed, his throat sacs bulging like those of a bull ape. "I know you're here and you know I'm here! So show yourself!"

There was a hiss like a basket of angry cobras from high overhead and Hellboy looked up and saw the Cailleach standing on one of the exposed beams, flanked on either side by the stolen children.

"The mortals are mine, demon! Go find your own child-flesh to fill your gut!" growled the Cailleach.

"No thanks — I prefer Chef Boyardee, if it's all the same to you," he snarled in return. "By the way — how the hell did you get up there?"

In reply, the Cailleach launched itself at Hellboy, revealing a pair of semi-opaque membranous wings, like those of a wasp, growing from its back. The fairy struck Hellboy with surprising force, knocking him onto his back and snuffing the flare.

The Cailleach straddled Hellboy's broad chest, raking the rhino-like hide that covered his face and upper body with long, sharp talons. Now that it no longer had to worry about keeping up appearances, the fairy was showing a face that no mortal had ever lived to tell about.

Gone was the ephemeral beauty that was so important in luring its human prey away from the herd, and in its place was something straight out of an exterminator's nightmare. Within seconds the fairy metamorphosed from a delicate, sylph-like creature of fancy into a hideous humanoid insect.

In place of a mouth were ferocious, segmented, pincer-like appendages capped by fangs dripping venom. Its golden eyes ballooned into bulbous, compound orbs. The long, silken robin's-egg-blue hair quickly sprouted all over the rest of its body, like the fur of a tarantula. Long, whip-like antennae flailed atop its head.

Hissing in frustration, the Cailleach arched its lower body, and Hellboy quickly rolled out of the way just as a foot-long stinger stabbed where he had been less than a moment before.

"You'll have to do better than that, sister. I'm not some clueless commuter from Long Island," Hellboy growled, getting back onto his hooves, his tail lashing back and forth like that of a stalking tiger.

The Cailleach made an agitated, chattering sound, as if sounding an alarm, then sprayed viscous streams of silk from its mouth glands, catching Hellboy across the eyes.

"Damn it!" he snarled, staggering backward, clawing at the sticky mess covering his eyes. Caught off-balance, he staggered backward, colliding with the ensnared commuter.

The tongueless man made one last choked cry and spasmed as the obscene swelling in his belly trembled violently. A multitude of tiny winged creatures, none bigger than the tip of a baby's finger, swarmed forth, exiting from the dead man's mouth, nose, and ears in a great, stinging cloud.

"Oh — great! Just what I needed: Pixies!" Hellboy growled. Without thinking, he used his right hand to swat the nymph-stage fairies, squashing the majority of the bothersome hoard against the wall with the massive stone gauntlet. The impact shook the gutted building to its crumbling foundations like a bomb blast, knocking the hypnotized children from their deep trances.

Hellboy froze, unable to take his eyes off the children overhead. He cursed himself under his breath for his rashness. To come so far, only to nearly kill them with a single, thoughtless action!

The little girl was the first to stir. She blinked, as if wakened from a dream and began to tremble and whimper. The boy rubbed his eyes, like a sleepwalker wakened in mid-step, and looked around, disoriented.

"Kids! Whatever you do — don't move! Just stay put!" Hellboy called out.

The little boy looked down, following the sound of his voice, and promptly lost his balance, slipping from the beam.

Hellboy took a flying leap, hoping against hope he would make it in time. The Cailleach snarled and moved to block him, but Hellboy was too fast for it. He caught the child in his outstretched arms a split-second before he struck the ground — and then fell through the rotted floorboards into the darkened basement below.

Hellboy pulled the child close to his breast and curled himself around the boy, doing his best to protect him from the impact. He hit hard, sending up a small atom-cloud of dust, but was completely unscathed.

They landed in the basement, not far from the disused furnace, the door of which hung open like the mouth of a hungry god. He glanced up at the hole he'd made as he regained his footing and saw the Cailleach's compound eyes peering down at him, dripping venom from its fangs just before it leapt onto him.

Hellboy instinctively turned his back to the creature, cradling his tiny charge as tightly as he dared. As the fairy's stinger plunged into his flesh, he grimaced and looked down into the upturned face of the child in his arms. The little boy's thumb was in his mouth and his eyes were so wide with terror they seemed blank. For the first time, Hellboy felt fear — not for himself, but for the tiny mortal held in the crook of his arm.

The Cailleach's sting was painful, but did not have the same paralyzing effect it would have on a human. Instead of shutting down his autonomic nerve center, it burned like someone had injected prussic acid into his spine.

"Get off my back!" he growled.

With surprising speed for his size, he reached behind himself with his right hand and grabbed the Cailleach's stinger as the creature struggled to plunge it home yet again. The Cailleach's shrill, insectile laughter quickly turned into shrieks of pain.

Hellboy spun around, using his tail to knock his opponent off its feet, then grabbed the wounded fairy's wings in his rocky grasp, crushing them as easily as he would a balsa-wood airplane. Ignoring the pain in the base of his spine, he then hurled the Cailleach into the open maw of the disused furnace.

Carefully switching his precious burden to the crook of his right arm in order to free up his left hand, Hellboy reached into one of the leather pouches on his belt and removed a small metal sphere.

"Heads up, girlfriend!" he barked, lobbing the activated thermite bomb into the furnace as the Cailleach struggled to free itself, then promptly turned his back and hunkered down tight, wrapping his tail completely around himself. There was a bright flash, followed by intense, searing heat, and a last, dreadful scream from the Cailleach Bheuh, then the stink of burning hair and roasting flesh.

A second later Hellboy opened his eyes and stood up, frowning at the small inferno that surrounded himself and his young charge. He'd forgotten about the trash that filled the basement, which had instantly caught fire. For the first time since awakening from his trance, the child in Hellboy's arms began to move, whimpering like a frightened baby animal.

"Hold on, kid," he said, trying his best to sound calm. "Hold on — I'll get us out of this — somehow."

The flames surrounding Hellboy suddenly lowered, then snuffed themselves out as abruptly as the gas ring on a range.

"Your friendly neighborhood pyrokinetic, at your service," Liz Sherman said, poking her head through the hole in the basement roof. The attractive young fire-manipulator was kneeling on the ragged edge of the hole, shaking her head in mock dismay. "What would you do without me to save your big red tail, Hellboy?"

"Roast like a chicken on a spit, I guess," Hellboy replied with a wry smile. "I was beginning to wonder when you guys would get here."

"We'd have been here sooner, but you try and get a surveillance van out of mid-town this time of day," Liz said, snorting in disgust. A look of concern crossed her face as she noticed the child clutched in his arms for the first time. "Oh, Jesus — the kid? Is he — ?"

"Alive? Yeah. But he's in shock."

Liz quickly motioned for a paramedic team which was hovering behind her to move forward. Hellboy held the child over his head, handing him off to the emergency rescue workers, who quickly whisked the boy out of sight.

"You need help getting out of there, big guy?" Liz asked.

"Naw — I'll be out of here in a jiffy — there are some stairs down here that look like they lead to the street. They're padlocked — but that's not a problem."

Less than a minute and a strong shoulder later, Hellboy was standing on the sidewalk. There were several NYPD cruisers and ambulances lined up along the street, their red-and-blue emergency lights throwing garish-colored shadows in the gathering dark. The look on those well-seasoned professionals' faces as they saw the horrors that lay within was one Hellboy was all too familiar with.

"Hellboy!"

The Professor was standing on the curb by the BPRD's tracking van, an oversized thermos of espresso coffee in hand.

"I thought you might appreciate this," Bruttenholm said.

"You know me all too well, old man," Hellboy smiled. As he sipped the steaming, bitter brew, a paramedic emerged from the building, carrying the little girl wrapped in a shiny thermal blanket.

Despite her ordeal, the child seemed remarkably self-possessed. To Hellboy's surprise, the little girl smiled and waved at him as if he was a purple dinosaur.

"Mr. Beast!" she shouted excitedly. "Thank you for saving us!"

Hellboy frowned. "What did she call me?"

"She thinks you're The Beast," Liz explained matter-of-factly as she joined Hellboy and the Professor.

"What?"

"You know — from Beauty and the Beast. The monster that's really a handsome, heroic prince on the inside."

Hellboy grunted and returned the little girl's wave.

But he was smiling.