Hell Hath No Fury

Hell Hath No Fury Chapter Thirteen
Disclaimers Apply

A/N Goddess Foxfeather is a wondermous beta and queen of mad Plotbunnies and BUSIEST WOMAN ALIVE ™ to boot… Readers/Reviewers: *sigh* I suck, I know. This will wrap up at chapter twenty. In the mean time, thanks to Rubber Duck for kicking my ass into gear with their review. 

“Abe?” Liz blinked sleepily and pulled the comforter, borrowed from Jean and smelling faintly of fabric softener, up to her chin. “How the Hell did you get in here?”
“With no small amount of difficulty,” he replied snippily. “Where did you put him?”
“Red?” She yawned and reluctantly swung her feet out of bed, standing and stretching, ignoring Abe’s impatient noises. “He’s downstairs somewhere probably. Smokin’ with that pointy haired guy, Logan.” She bounced on her toes and squinted at her alarm clock. “God, Abe! It’s one in the morning!” She glared at him accusingly. “Couldn’t this have waited till noon or something?” She padded past him, frowning. “I’m dog ass tired here…”
Abe rolled his eyes. “As charming as that mental image is, I have to find him…. Kurt, that is.” He cocked his head to one side and seemed to be thinking very hard about something. “Yes… Kurt is the name he’ll use most often, I should think.”
“What are you talking about, Blue?” Liz frowned, narrowing her eyes. “How’d you get in here?” she asked again, moving closer. “Did someone let you in?”
“You did,” he replied, pointing to her open window. “I didn’t want to wake anyone and this was the easiest way in… Kurt has a very good reason for thinking he needs to go to Hell,” he continued in a tangent. “I need to find him. We need him back at the labs as quickly as we can manage.”
“What? Why?” Liz trailed after him, tugging on her bathrobe, following Abe down the hall, stopping when he paused at the head of the stairs. “Down and down and left?”
“Huh? Oh… yeah…Wait up,” she said as he started forward again. “I hate it when you’re oblique. What’s going on? Don’t give me some mystic answer,” she added hastily, “just spill it.”
“Yeah, that’d be good.” Logan filled the space behind them, still dressed for the day and looking seven kinds of angry. “Spill, Fish Lips.”
Abe sniffed imperiously. “I’ll thank you to keep your derision to yourself. Nice hair,” he added under his breath. “I need to see this Kurt immediately. There’s something I need to check before I make a final declaration on the matter.”
Liz made a frustrated noise and followed Abe down the stairs, acutely aware of Logan on her heels, his displeased presence oppressive. “Abe, we’ve pretty much figured out he needs some sort of help he can’t get from us… this Professor guy is calling one of his doctor friends in to talk to him and see if maybe he needs some sort of medical help, you know what I mean?”
They had reached the foyer, the clear barrier around Abe’s face fogging just slightly with the temperature shift from upstairs to down. “You will do no such thing! The boy is not mentally ill! He’s a demon!”
Liz stared, then burst out laughing, something about Abe’s tone and posture coupled with the late hour and the sheer preposterousness of the statement just made the sound bubble out of her throat and into the foyer. “He’s not a demon! He can’t be…” She paused, catching her breath. “Is it?”
Logan snorted. “Kid looks funny, sure, but he ain’t a demon. Demons ain’t even real.” He leveled his gaze at Abe and added in a much more dangerous tone. “I don’t like having to weed out the kids’ rooms at one in the morning and like it even less when it’s a trespasser. You get real serious real fast or I’m breakin’ that fishbowl of yours and doing something *really* nasty with the glass…” He reached out and tapped Abe’s face plate for emphasis.
Abe did not respond to the threat. Rather, he stared curiously at Logan for a long moment and sighed. “In doing some research, purely by accident mind you, I found that your Kurt is most likely a rare human and demon hybrid.” He nodded to some unasked question and waved the thin sheaf of papers he had been clutching ever since leaving the relative safety of the labs. “It was astonishing, to say the least. The text doesn’t lie, though!”
He was almost, Liz thought, jittery with excitement. “Abe, this isn’t making sense… he’s half human and half demon? I didn’t think…”
“Surprise,” Hellboy muttered, unfolding from the shadows. “You people could raise the dead with your voices,” he added tiredly. “Can’t a guy get his beauty sleep around here? I don’t get my ten hours and I’m just a bitch to work with,” he murmured, making Liz snort.
“Red!” Abe sighed as if to say “finally, someone who understands me!” “I’ve found the most *amazing* information about this boy…”
Hellboy sighed. “I heard… Look, Abe, don’t get your hopes up He’s just one of these mutant types. Ain’t his fault he looks like one of mine.” He shrugged and added, “Not nearly as good looking though, huh Liz?” He did not give her a chance to answer, pressing on. “I’d have known if he was a demon, Abe. Sorry, but he ain’t.”
“No,” Abe sighed patiently. “He’s not. He’s only half demon. It’s the demon half which concerns me,” he trailed off, frowning. “It seems his father is a very powerful figure, one we do not hear about often in demonology. Not since the Dark Ages at any rate.”
“Make it trot, fish head,” Logan snapped. “I ain’t got a lot of patience right now!”
“Rude!” Abe snapped. “I don’t come in here, making fun of your hair or lack of gills, do I?” He sniffed and pointedly turned away from Logan and faced Hellboy and Liz instead. “Azazel.”
“Gesundheit,” Logan sighed, folding his arms over his chest and refusing to be closed out.
“Azazel,” Abe continued, frowning, “is accused of many things but he is mostly known as the Angel of Death in the pre-Judaic times in the Middle East… He’s not…well, he can be very unpleasant.” He seemed relieved to have said it aloud finally.
Hellboy raised a brow. “And…?”
“And?” Abe echoed, perplexed. “And nothing! Kurt is half demon!”
“And I’m all demon, USDA approved,” Hellboy shrugged. “So why the crazy?”
Liz wrinkled her brow and looked up at Abe. “You don’t think being half demon made him…unbalanced, do you?”
Abe shook his head. “Not entirely, if at all… I think we’re dealing with something more dire than that… I stopped by to visit with the boys in the big lab to pick up some supplies, just in case…” He reached into some pocked in the coat he had on to cover his odd appearance and produced a small crystalline ball. “They said this started glowing last week. So did the corresponding ones in London, Berlin, Paris, Rome, Cairo, Perth, Sao Paolo…”
“Enough with the geography lesson,” Logan interjected. “What is it?”
Hellboy plucked the glowing ball from Abe’s hand and stared into the pink, shimmering surface. “It’s big trouble…”