Chapter 1

Hellboy barreled down the mountain trail, breaking a new path through the trees. Branches slapped at him, scratching his face and generally pissing him off. He let out a thunderous shout of frustration and annoyance as he hurtled between a pair of tall trees. The space was too narrow, and his shoulders scraped the trunks, tearing off bark. His hooves pounded the hard earth beneath him, maneuvering over rocks and upraised roots, sliding in moss.

I came to Chile for this? he thought. Coulda gone to Rio, watching some half-naked girls on parade.

He came to the edge of a ravine, but his momentum was too great. No way could he stop. Instead he leaped, throwing himself toward the opposite side. His arms pinwheeled, and he pulled his legs up, sure he would make it… then sure he would not.

"Ah, crap." He crashed into the wall of the ravine, a few feet shy of the top. Vines hung down, and he tried to get his hands tangled in them, tried to get ahold of something, but it was too late.

He landed in a heap at the base of the ravine, legs buckling beneath him, and sprawled across the richly smelling earth. Something ripped, and he hoped it was the tear in his jacket getting worse and not the seat of his pants. This whole mission was humiliating enough already.

Hellboy stood, bones aching from the sprinting he'd done, and brushed leaves and moss off of his long, brown jacket and shorts. He pulled some kind of weird fuzz off of his cheek, where it had stuck to his bristly stubble.

"This was a stupid plan," he muttered, even as he warily looked up at the edge of the ravine twenty feet above him.

A shape darted into view, dark against the gloom of the forest, wings beating the air as it circled above him. In the shadows, it could have passed for an owl. But he wasn't that lucky.

The thing let out a flesh-prickling cry and began to circle faster. Calling all its little buddies, Hellboy thought. Fantastic. All according to plan. Use the big, indestructible guy as bait.

Even as the thought went through his head, he saw other shadows flitting out of the trees, wings fluttering as they joined the first, gliding above him like vultures.

"All right, buzzards. Just had to catch my breath."

With a sigh, he drew his gun, a huge, heavy pistol with a barrel four times the width of any ordinary handgun. Growing up, training with the BPRD, his marksmanship scores had never risen above pitiful. But if he got close enough, and with a gun this big, he could hit just about anything.

They dived toward him, dropping out of the sky, wings pinned as they came in for the kill. Hellboy took aim, squeezed the trigger, and one of them exploded into gristle and red mist. Then the others were swarming around him, and Hellboy gritted his teeth in disgust.

Flying heads, he thought. That's what my life has come to? Flying heads?

They had a name, he knew. The locals—the Araucanian people of Chile—called them Chonchonyi, but Hellboy couldn't take the damn things seriously. They were huge, monstrous heads with hideous, elongated faces. Their narrow fangs jutted up from black, ropy lips, and black, ridged wings stuck out from the sides of the heads like grotesque ears. Despite their ridiculous appearance, they were as vicious as any other strain of vampire, feasting on the old and infirm and relishing the blood and flesh of small children best of all. They never would have come after Hellboy… but he'd gone after them first.

"It's nothing personal," he said. He leveled the massive pistol again and pulled the trigger. The bullet tore a wing off one of the bloodthirsty heads, and it fell to the ground, convulsing. "It's my job."

Hell of a way to make a living.

They swarmed him. Hellboy swatted at them with his huge, stone hand. One of the Chonchonyi landed on his left shoulder, fangs tearing through his jacket, sinking deep into his flesh. He cried out in pain, swore loudly, then slammed purposefully into a tree, scraping the thing off on the rough bark. It left a stinking, bloody smear and released a stench like skunk cabbage. He knew he'd never get the smell out of his coat.

Another bit into his tail, and he whipped the appendage up, tossing the bloodsucking predator into a tangle of bushes.

"That's it," he muttered. "The tail's off-limits."

He ran again, wondering why he'd stopped. Sure, the fall down the ravine had slowed him down, but trying to make a stand against a swarm of ravenous, flesh-eating, flying heads was just stupid. He had crap aim and not enough bullets, and anyway, that wasn't the plan.

Stick to the plan, he told himself.

Copyright © 2007 by Mike Mignola.