Fallen Angels

By six AM the team was flying over Virginia in the Bureau’s jet. They had assembled quickly and smoothly, and were now en route to an abandoned military base a few miles outside of Kippling, Louisiana, the town where they hoped to find a certain stripper.



Hellboy stared out of the window at the dark sky riddled with storm clouds. Around him the other agents slept or spoke quietly with one another. The demon didn’t join in.



Sixty years. Sixty years he had been on the earth and in all that time nothing he had seen had hurt him like that little boy. Hellboy had seen children wiped out in plagues, children killed in natural disasters, children killed in mindless, primal demon attacks, but never like this. That little boy had been tied facedown on a bed, sodomized with a lead pipe and then whipped to death. Hellboy’s experience with pedophilia was nonexistent. He dealt with a different sort of monster.



He imagined what the child would be like now. Probably around twelve or thirteen, with a family and friends. Had the child a family? No one had ever claimed the body. Did the boy leave behind a family broken by grief and the madness that comes with the knowledge of how their child had perished?



A cold fist of hate swelled in his chest.



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The four-hour flight out to Louisiana could have been described as uneventful, at best.



They landed at an abandoned military base about thirty miles west of Baton Rouge and three miles outside of Kippling, and immediately set up a base of operations in the hanger where they had parked the plane.



During the flight it had been decided that one of the male agents would go into the club first to try to identify the mysterious ‘Angel’. Unsurprisingly, there were so many agents willing to take this particular mission that Manning ended up having to pick a name out of a hat. Lyle Barton was the lucky man.



As his colleagues stood around him grumbling and sulking, Agent Barton was outfitted by Jenny Klein with a pair of fake glasses that had a tiny camera embedded in the corner hinge.



The technician placed her hands on her hips and looked Barton sternly in the eye. “Promise me that you will be careful with these; they’re government issue, but I’ve put a lot of work into them to make them a hell of a lot more sophisticated than anything the government could dream up. Please try not to loose or break them.”



Barton nodded. Jenny’s protection of her technology was legendary at the Bureau, as was her temper should anyone break something of importance.



Barton departed in one of the Bureau’s discreet pickup trucks, looking very much the Louisiana native in plain clothes. Thirty minutes later they got the call on the microphone that corresponded to Barton’s earpiece.



“I’m in town,” Barton said. “I see the club across the street…it looks like the whole goddamned town is here…or at least the men…oh no, there are a few girls going in the front…hmmm, this could be fun.”



Manning grabbed the microphone and growled into it, “Barton! Focus, or I’m going to pull you off this one. ”



“Right boss. Jenny? Is the camera coming through?”



The woman in question lifted her head from the laptop where she had been busily typing and grabbed the mic from Manning’s hand. “Just give me two seconds to get the link up…and…yes! We’re good Barton, you can get going.”



“Right.”



The screen of Jenny’s laptop flicked into life and they all gathered around it to watch as the night began to unfold. The camera, with Jenny’s improvements, recorded in perfect clarity.



Hellboy watched, as though through the agent’s eyes, as Barton made his way into the club and through the crowds of people milling between the bar and the stage, a long catwalk that cut the room in half and sported several poles.



A lithe redhead was just finishing up some sort of dance that involved two massive fans and a rhinestone encrusted thong and was strutting off backstage.



Agent Barton managed to slip into a chair relatively close to the stage as an announcer’s voice cut through the noise the patrons were making.



“Give it up for…Angel!”



The crowd around Barton exploded with cheers and catcalls, come men even rising to their feet, whistling as the lights dimmed once more. The curtain against the back wall of the stage opened up, revealing a black screen lit from below by a warm red light. Silhouetted on the other side, hip cocked and arms wrapped over her head, was the dark from of a woman. But the most remarkable thing about her was not the superbly defined body that could bring a man to his knees, but instead the outline of what was clearly two feathery wings against her back. Slowly the screen began to rise along with the music that was now filling the club.



The song was slow, heavy, with a throbbing beat like the pulse of a caged animal. The screen rose slowly and she turned. Silence filled the room except for the music. A woman’s exotic voice wound through the room, rising and falling on a single tone.



The woman called Angel stalked slowly down the catwalk, arms still held over her head and face tipped back in an expression of utter pleasure.



The closer Hellboy focused on her body, the clearer it became that the wings quivering on her back were suspended from thin straps that ran over her shoulders and under her black leather bra. They were fake. The false wings shuddered and shook with her every movement



She had reached the end of the stage where the pole was waiting for her. She wrapped one hand around the sparkling metal and swung her body in a smooth, practiced arc.



She moved with uncommon grace and Hellboy found it hard to believe that between the dangerously tall shoes and the faux wings she was able to keep her balance, let alone dance as she did.



The audio technology involved with the glasses-camera was crystal clear. The music was now competing to be heard over the hoots and hollers the audience.



She manipulated her body into a thousand different seductive poses. Black curls swirled around her face and neck.



The audience was shouting louder than ever as the dancer whipped them into a frenzy.



The music stopped abruptly, and so did she. The woman rose up on her toes, arms spread wide to encompass them all. The room was utterly silent, so quiet that even the members of the BPRD could hear the tiny moan that she released. A tiny little ‘oh!’ that shattered the tension in the club and had the audience roaring in appreciation.



She turned at once and vanished backstage.



Agent Barton move through the crowds, jostled on all sides by men and the occasional woman. He traveled quickly through the club and out the door into the night. All around him people were getting into cars or walking down the street to the nearest bar.



Hellboy watched as Barton found his way to the back of the club, where several men were loitering and dancers were slowly trickling out through the backdoor. A set of petite twins went laughing across the lot, followed by a woman with a long blonde braid. She kept her head bowed as she moved off into the shadows.



A massive man, easily wide enough to block the doorway with just his shoulders, stood on the back stoop of the club. He leaned his back against the door and his tree-trunk arms were crossed forebodingly over his mighty chest.



Barton walked confidently up to the bouncer, who looked unimpressed by the much smaller man.



“Excuse me, I need to speak with one of your dancers.” Barton said.



“No.” The bouncer answered plainly, clearly uninterested.



“Why not?” Barton asked innocently. Back in the hanger, Manning groaned and put his face in his hand, saying “The next time I want to send this kid out on a recon involving people skills, some one stop me”



The bouncer responded, “Do I look that stupid to you? I’m not gonna let some random guy into the backstage of a strip club. We’re real careful with the girls here. No one gets through this door who isn’t supposed to and when the girls get out I personally make sure they get to their cars in one piece.”



A sharp knock sounded on the other side of the door and the man pulled away just far enough for two women, a petite blonde and a willowy redhead, to pass through. They nodded familiarly to the bouncer.



“Night Mickey.”



“Yeah, g’night.”



“Hey, where’s Macy?” The bouncer asked of their retreating backs. The blonde turned around and answered as she walked backwards towards a black sedan.



“Keep your pants on Mick, she’s coming. You should know by now how long it takes to get spirit gum off you ass!”



“Would it have killed you to give her a hand?”



“Shove it Mick. She’ll be right out!”



The bouncer flipped the blonde a rude hand gesture, but he was laughing too, betraying the true joviality of the scene.



“Um…excuse me. Could I just talk to you for a moment?” Agent Barton tried again.



“Look, I told you already pal: no one gets in there unless-” Here another sharp knock stopped the man halfway through his sentence. This time there appeared a buxom brunette who, instead of bidding the impressive Mick goodnight and getting on her way, grinned up at the huge man and wrapped one arm around his back.



“Hey baby. You ready to go home?” Mick asked.



“Yeah, I’m exhausted.”



“Okay Macy. You go warm up the car and I’ll be right there.”



The woman nodded and trotted down the steps, sparing only a glance for Barton. Halfway across the parking lot she called over her shoulder, “I’ve got dibs on that pizza in the fridge.”



Mick swore.



Barton tried another tack at earning the bouncer’s confidence. He spoke in a tone very much not his own, one filled with masculine bravado and innuendo. “Hey! She’s a hot one; you take that home every night?”



Mick’s eyes blazed. “That’s my wife, you dip-shit!”



The rest of the BPRD watching this sad little display either groaned or, as was the case with Jenny, began laughing so hard that they fell off of their chairs.



They watched for a moment as Mick seemed to swell with anger and Barton stumbled over apologies, when the larger man’s wife called from across the parking lot.



“Mickey! C’mon, I wanna go home.”



“I have to wait for the other girls!” He answered.



“There’s no none else. I was the last to leave. Now let’s go; my mom is still watching the kids.”



With a last look for Barton that clearly said ‘ehh…you aren’t worth my time, tiny’ Mick pushed past the agent and went off to join his wife.



Manning swore. “Shit. We’ve got no more information than we started with.” He grabbed the mic dejectedly and said, “Come back Barton, we need to form a new plan.”



Barton’s voice reverberated through the speaker. “Okay. Sorry I fucked up with the-”. Suddenly he gasped as a terrible scream, somewhere between those of a hawk and a bobcat, filled the parking lot and, as a result, the hanger.



Barton took off running in the direction of the scream, which was now being followed by a man’s cries of pain. He turned the corner around the side of the strip club into the large deserted field that bordered the town and stopped in his tracks



A man lay in a pool of blood in the stubble of the shorn field. His breaths came in shallow gasps as his hands fumbled at the great gaping hole that had once been his stomach.



White feathers scattered the ground.