Untill the end of time

Hellboy’s vision started to focus again, and he discovered he was back at the head quarters. The damn thing must have hit him pretty bad if it had taken him out that long. He slowly tried to get up, his body still protested a little, but all in all it wasn’t too bad.
By the time he had found his clothes and managed to get descent, Abe walked in.

“So how are you feeling, my friend?” Abe informed.

Hellboy shrugged his shoulders “Not too bad, should be fine in a couple of days. Nothing serious. Have I been out long?”

Abe shook his head “We just got here, so it ain’t too bad. The two creatures you saved are in a worse shape I’m afraid.”

Hellboy raised his eyebrows “Creatures? What do you mean? They looked pretty damn human to me.”

Abe was moving towards the door “Not everything is what it seems.” And with that he walked out, knowing Hellboy would follow as he was by nature very curious.

Hellboy did exactly that and followed his friend down the hallway. “What do you mean? What are they then?”.

Abe motioned for him to follow him “Come and I’ll show you.”

They entered the room and Hellboy stopped dead in his tracks. “What the hell is that for?” he asked as he pointed at the two big cages, each containing a bed with a person lying in it. Abe walked towards the first of the two cages, checking the monitors lined up just outside the cage.

“This my friend” he said as he motioned for the person in the bed “is a real life vampire. And because, even though you were fighting the same enemy, we’re not taking any chances, so the cages are just for our own protection. We don’t have a clue what they are capable of.”

Hellboy slowly walked up to the first cage and stopped a few inches away from the bars. The man in the bed was beaten up pretty bad, there were tubes and wires coming from all over his body. His face was swollen on one side and here and there you could see stitches, from where Abe had tried to fix him up. He had pale skin stretched over high cheekbones and long silvery hair still matted with blood was spread out over the white pillow. His right arm was stitched up in several places as well and on his upper arm there was a tattoo, the unmistakable silhouette of a dragon.

Hellboy turned to Abe “Has he been awake yet?”

Abe was still looking intensely at the monitors and slowly shook his head. “Even though they are regenerating fast, their injuries are severe. Actually, he isn’t doing to bad now, I expect he’ll come round any time. I am more concerned about her” he said as he pointed to the other cage.

“Her??” Hellboy asked, as he walked to the second cage.

The second cage indeed contained a woman, she looked even worse than the male did. Her full lips showed some cuts and there were more cuts along the side of her face, the rest of her body was covered by a sheet. She had the same pale complexion the man had had, it gave her a slightly exotic touch.

He turned back to Abe after a while “What was it that thing down there in that pit? I haven’t seen anything like it.”

Abe gave him a guilty look “I have no clue what it was, as there was nothing left of it, but I don’t hope to run into something like that again. It took the three of you down.” Abe replied as he let his gaze go over the two vampires in the cages.

Hellboy gave the vampire in the first cage another look. “They don’t look too good, that creature really had his way with them.”

“It sure did. Hopefully they’ll come round soon, I actually can’t wait to learn more about their nature.”

HB shook his head “Always the scholar eh?” and with that he walked out, no point staring at them any longer right now.

Abe gave the monitors another look. These creatures were already interesting, even in this state. Body temperature seemed slightly higher then that of a human, and their heartbeat was a bit faster as well. Abe only hoped these would be reasonable creatures and he could ask them some questions. What if they were not?

Hellboy slowly walked down the hallway, he discovered it was already late in the afternoon and everybody seemed to be working in their offices. Nobody to harass. Too bad. John was nowhere to be seen either, so Hellboy made his way back to his room, making a quick stop at the kitchen, he was pretty hungry. He made himself a bunch of sandwiches and found a couple of beers in the fridge.

Back in his vault he found several felines were reclining on his couch and he had to carefully brush them off, before he could take a seat and switch the TV on.

TV wasn’t very interesting either, just some soaps and commercials. He paced the room undecided a couple of minutes, and eventually decided to have another look at those vampires.

When he was nearing the room he heard a clatter, when he rushed in, he quickly took in the situation. Abe stood nearby seemingly unharmed, but when Hellboy followed Abe’s gaze he figured out where the noise had come from.

At the bars of the first cage stood the male vampire, it had yanked out all the cables and tubes and was staring at Hellboy and Abe. His unearthly blue and grey eyes showed no emotion, he was just simply watching them, not moving a muscle. Just when Hellboy started to doubt that the creature was even aware, it spoke.

“Open the cage”, he said calm and clearly.

Abe was the first one to react: “I am afraid I cannot do that.”

The vampire didn’t move, but repeated his question again, slower and sounding much more threatening this time.

Abe tried to clarify himself: “As long as I don’t know what your intentions are I cannot open that cage. I am sorry. We don’t want to cause you or your companion any harm.”

The vampires eyes flickered to the other cage and then fixed his gaze on Abe again. “Let me out of here or I’ll have to do it myself.” The vampire said slowly.

Hellboy didn’t move, but didn’t lose the vampire out of sight for a moment. For a couple of minutes nothing happened, finally the vampire moved.
It firmly grabbed the bars of the cage and within the wink of an eye, the vampire had bended the bars far enough from each other to step right through them. Moving with unnatural speed and before Hellboy could react the vampire stood outside its cage. Hellboy started to move towards him, and the vampire turned to face him. Hellboy wanted to take a hold of the creature, but found his hand grabbed in middle air by the vampire. He started to use more pressure, but noticed the vampire had no problems whatsoever resisting him. The vampire was just looking at him curiously and seemed to take no further action. Hellboy slowly started to back of and the vampire released his hand, his eyes following every movement he made.

Hellboy moved away from the vampire and stopped when he was a couple feet away from him. The vampire hadn’t moved all that time and just looked at him without any expression reading from his face. He was just wearing a pair of pants and on his upper body the traces of his last beating were still visible. He was not abnormally tall and even though he was well muscled, Hellboy was amazed at the little display of power he had just seen. The vampire had just resisted him without even breaking a sweat, without any trace of effort for that matter.

Suddenly the vampire fixed his eyes on Abe and Hellboy heard a muffled scream behind him. He turned around to see Abe down on his knees, holding his head. Hellboy ran over to his friend and helped him up on his feet again, Hellboy wanted to ask what was wrong when the vampire behind began to speak.

“I am not sure how I got here or what I am doing here, but so far I don’t like it much. First you lock me up in a cage, mistake number one. Then this red something here tries to grab me, mistake number two. Last blue fishy guy tries to get in my head, mistake number three. Normally three strikes is out, however I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt as you saved me from that rev and she is not looking to good.” He said as he nodded in the female vampire.

“But I do deserve some explanation I think, and don’t try to do something funny again. Although it is not really in my nature I could get really nasty if I choose to.” He ended.

Hellboy was about to charge at the vampire he just insulted him and was being a smart-ass, not a good combination, but Abe put a hand on his arm to stop him.

The vampire grinned, showing two pointy silvery canines “You actually wanna try me?”

Hellboy started to reach boiling point. First he hurt his friend, insulted him, was being a smart-ass, and now he was making fun of them. Abe however was not planning to let go of his arm, he remembered the strength of the vampire, and eventually he decided to see what would happen.

Abe started to speak slowly. “My friend Hellboy over here, saved you from that creature, what you just called a rev. We took you two over here to recover at the Bureau. You can call me Abe.”

Abe stopped for a moment, but when the vampire didn’t react he continued “We put you into cages, because we didn’t know if you could be any danger to us.”

The vampire grinned again, showing those weird fangs again “if I could be any danger? Oh yes I could be, but don’t worry as it looks now I won’t be. My name is Morgan and my friend over there is Riana. How is she?” he inquired as if nothing had happened
.
“Getting better, she was beat up pretty bad.” Abe answered.

Morgan smiled “Stupid woman, wanting to chase those revs down on her own. Nearly killed the both of us. I thank you for getting rid of that rev.” The vampire said facing Hellboy.

Hellboy’s anger was slowly fading and he shrugged his shoulder “It was nothing.”

Abe was becoming curious. “What was it what actually attacked you, a rev you call it?”

Morgan sighed, “well you could say a rev, short for revenant, is a screwed up vampire. Another vampire is made through blood exchange, but for some reason some changes go wrong. Blood seems to be not compatible or something, we are not sure what causes it, but the result is a rev. They are stronger than vampires and feed on pretty much anything including vampires, but they do lack the intelligence. As you might have noted they are pretty stupid, but by all means dangerous for humans and vampires alike. In combat, most vampires usually end up biting the dust, so to speak.”

Abe had grabbed a notebook and had jotted down some notes.

Hellboy was started to get interested. “How did you get tangled up there in that pit?” he asked

“Oh well, you see this woman over here gets me in trouble all the time. There is something weird going on. The rev you saw was weird, remember the claws and the size of that thing?” Abe and Hellboy nodded.

“That was abnormal. There have been showing up more like those and they are causing trouble lately. They are killing mindlessly, not even for food, more like just for the heck of it. Both human and vampire victims are piling up, so we kill as many as possible. Riana probably saw one and went after it. A cry for help hit my mind just when I started to get worried about her, and just in time or so I found out. I found her battling these three monstrous hulking revs, it was clear they had her in a corner and she was going down. I had no weapons with me and she’d lost her weapons probably. Usually I can take on a couple of revs without any problem, but these three were abnormally strong and the claws was another thing I hadn’t count on. I was losing a lot of blood, and my strength was leaving me. I managed to take out two, but I knew the third one was gonna finish the job. Then you showed up just in time and took him out. Saving two lives.”

Hellboy smiled “Me and the good ol’ Samaritan are a pretty good team, glad to help.”

When the vampire gave him a questioning look, he clarified himself “The Samaritan is my gun.”

Morgan smiled “Gotta tell Riana that, she always thinks I am an idiot for naming weapons.”

Hellboy caught another glimpse of his fangs and then it hit him, they didn’t just have a strange color, they were made out of some kind of metal. You probably don’t want to get caught between those.

Abe put down his notebook, which he had been scribbling on. “How do you feel? how rude of me for not asking.”

Morgan experimentally flexed his arms “Doesn’t feel too bad, felt better though. Riana is gonna feel a hell of a lot worse I guess. Could you open her cage? She is no more threatening than I am.”

Abe thought it over for a moment, and opened the cage, probably better to keep this vampire friendly.

Morgan walked up to her bed and slowly started removing the tubes and wires from her body, while doing that he spoke to her in a soft voice in a unknown language Abe nor Hellboy had ever heard before. He pulled down the sheet uncovering her naked body and looked her over, then he turned around to Abe. “The tubes and stuff aren’t really helping her body to regenerate, as a vampires body nearly rejects any foreign substance, it slows her recovery down, as her body will try to get rid of it.”

Abe looked a little ashamed “I am sorry, I didn’t know.”

Morgan smiled reassuringly. “Don’t worry about it, how should you know? I’ll see if I can fix her up. I do have to know if you have some er…say spare blood around here?”

Abe nodded, not really knowing what the vampire was up to. “I am gonna help her, but I’ll need some blood myself after that.” Morgan turned around and asked for a knife.

Abe handed him a scalpel and watched curiously, to see what the vampire was going to do.

Morgan slid the scalpel across the palm of his hand, which started to bleed immediately. He held his hand on one of the more severe injuries on her chest, his blood slowly spreading over the wound. Morgan lifted his hand and slid the scalpel over his hand again, as the bleeding had stopped due to his regenerating abilities. He now moved to a wound on her hip. Much to Abe’s and Hellboy’s surprise they could actually see the wound on her chest disappear before their eyes.

Morgan kept opening the wound on his hand until he had tended to the larger cuts on her body. Last he swept his hand over her face, and the cuts and bruises disappeared within seconds. Morgan covered her again with the sheet and wanted to leave the cage, when his legs almost gave away. Hellboy quickly moved towards the vampire and caught him, just before Morgan could actually fall. He helped the vampire to a chair and the vampire sat down. He looked even paler than he had before.
Abe rushed over and asked him what he could do to help.

“If you don’t mind you could get me some blood, doesn’t matter what kind. I underestimated my own injuries.”

Abe retrieved a bag of blood from the fridge and looked at the vampire uncertain what to do with it.

“I am sorry I have to ask you this, but can you put it in a cup, or a glass or something like that?” Morgan asked.

Abe poured half of the bag in a cup and handed it over to Morgan, who gratefully took it. When he finished the cup he looked at Abe questioningly. Abe filled the cup again and Morgan emptied it again.

“Thank you for that. I knew I would need some blood, I didn’t count on the fact it would take so much out of me, helping out Riana.”
Abe pulled up a chair and took a seat. Hellboy stuck to standing.

“Would you help us out a little? I don’t have a lot of data on vampires, and I hoped that you could help us out a little.”

Morgan sighed “depends on the questions you have, I have my restrictions on what I can tell you, but I’ll do my best.”

Abe asked the vampire needed to rest a little or he was fine. Morgan felt well enough and they moved to the nearby study where the threesome took a seat in some more comfortable chairs.

“So what is it you want to know?” Morgan asked.

Abe wasn’t sure what to ask as he didn’t want to offend the vampire. “Er… maybe you’ll tell us a little more about yourself. The only thing we know is your name is Morgan and that you are a vampire.”