Butch drove away from the burning homestead softly humming, "What A Friend We Have in Jesus" as he drove along. His aide, Larvae, sat alongside him with his eyes focused on the man.
"So... Iowa?" Larvae asked after a moment, ignoring the glow of the fire engulfing the home that the two had driven away from.
Butch paused and nodded and gestured to a smartphone that lay on the seat between them. Larvae looked to it, though he had to brush aside some empty McDonald's food wrappers that the two of them had picked up in the course of their latest mission. Tracking down the family weredogs had been rather lengthy, but that was typical.
Butch was a big man who had lived to lift weights and had even thought of a career as a professional boxer for awhile. However, he ended up getting caught up in a steroid ring that he had bought from some company that had claimed that they could help him gain the power to be a better boxer. He had been lucky not to get a lengthy sentence and had been disheartened by how easily he had been mislead. While in prison he had come under the influence of a rather eccentric evangelical minister who had brought him the "good news," but had also carried a very "the end is near" sort of air to his preaching. Butch had been very pleased to hear that he would be forgiven if he did the Lord's work and told the minister he would do ANYTHING to earn God's favor. The minister smiled and took the man under his wing.
When Butch was released from prison, he could recite the Old Testament from memory, and that was despite having only a six month sentence with no probationary period afterward. He joined the minister's church where he had been told more about the dangers of sin and the ever presence of demons threatening the nation. He was told that demons were real and caused all sorts of trouble. They made women get breast implants to try and make themselves more attractive. They made women tempt men with sex. They made men think about sex. Worst of all, the minister told him were the demons that hid in the form of animals, as they truly lived to make humans engage in all of the other major sins. Butch later vowed to stop them and from there set out, not knowing whether or not the minister that he had listened to and followed so fanatically had been speaking metaphorically or literally.
From there Butch had begun a quest to hunt them down, but found that it wasn't easy. He had started going from town to town asking if anyone knew of these animal demons, and more often than not he'd been laughed off as some sort of religious loon. He spent some time researching into what was on the internet for information on were-beasts, since he figured that was the other reference to the animal demons to see if there were ways of tracking them down. That hadn't worked, as while the internet had come up with multiple hits, they rarely had the same information and the more academic sources usually stated that the beliefs were the result of poor science which faded when science proved the superstition wrong. It was only when he met Larvae that Butch got an opportunity to put his promise into practice.
Larvae, was very religious as well, but was generally a rather skittish man who shied away from direct conflict. However, for some time, he had been tormented by strange howling at night from the woods near his Florida home. He posted a nervous complaint online in the hopes of finding someone who would dealing with the howling problem. Friends told him to let it be, as it was likely dogs "bayin' at the moon" and was nothing to be worried over. That didn't ease Larvae's worries, and eventually, Butch replied to his post online with the inquiry as to what HE thought was howling. Larvae said it sounded like a wolf, but no wolves lived in Florida. Human hunters had exterminated the Gray Wolf in that region LONG ago. Butch promised to come and investigate, and arrived about a week later. Larvae showed him the edges of his property and the swampy forest that bordered it, with nothing but that marshy forest for several miles.
Butch tracked and traversed the forest for about a week until one night a startled deer cut him off. It was soon followed by a huge male bipedal wolf, which skidded to a halt in front of him. It actually said "uh" before Butch emptied his Remington auto-loading 1100 shotgun into it, with the last shot practically decapitating the beast. He called Larvae in to identify the beast. And while Larvae had never seen the beast before, he figured that it was the beast. The two then watched in surprise as it resumed a more human shape and looked exactly like one of Larvae's friends. One who had told him to "let it be." From then on, Larvae agreed to help Butch with his cause.
Though it wasn't an easy one. Typically, they could only go odd rumors and stories as tips, and it took a month or so to actually confirm whether or not the rumors that lead them to an area. One failed hunt had happened when Butch had misinterpreted when a girl in Georgia called another girl a "bitch" online. Others were proved simply to be hoaxes or teen pranks and so on. With all of this, Butch had figured that these animal demons went to great lengths to keep themselves hidden and only revealed what they truly were when they had their target isolated in a scenario where they could overpower the human in question, and this meant hunting them down was a time consuming process. It had taken them a little more than a month to actually stalk down the werefox family that just murdered, with many of the initial leads being the same. Though, this time, it had been a blog post with a blurry picture of a fox-like tail disappearing into the bushes... but looked too big to be a normal fox. From there, Butch and Larvae asked around if they had seen any odd behavior, and eventually the two parents were pointed out as a bit eccentric with regards to enjoying sex and their own looks, but their marriage had claimed to be loving and hat they doted heavily on their daughter. With the target identified, they had then stalked the family, always making sure to make sure the wind blew toward them and that they didn't follow the family close enough to make them realize that they were being stalked.
Which lead them to where they were now. The animal demons dead and Butch driving away rather confidently. The werefox family had lived in a rather remote area and it was doubtful that anyone had any evidence to make any sort of claim that he or Larvae were involved. With the werefox family dead, they were now off to the next supposed rumor of a animal demon's presence being.
Larvae picked up the smartphone and looked at it. As he ran his finger along the touch screen and it pulled up an internet article read: "Thief Claims Dogmen Stalk Farmlands." There were no pictures, but the article talked about a thief turning himself into to a local police department about being caught by a bunch of dog-like people and being chased by them. The thief was found not to be under the influence of anything but the article gave the impression that the police didn't trust him.
"So... dogmen..." Larvae said slowly.
"Dog demons," Butch answered
"I'm sure you'll get them," Larvae commented, "though... I'd suggest we lay low for a little while when we get there."
"Lay low?" Butch answered.
"You and I both know that people aren't going to respond well to removing those demons," Larvae gestured to the house burning behind them, "they don't believe they exist."
Butch sighed heavily as he remembered many of his early attempts to hunt the animal demons. Being laughed off as a loon had heavily irritated him and he'd had to spend a night in jail when he'd argued with an old woman who didn't believe him and told him to "grow up." Larvae was probably right. These local officials, would likely see their act as murder, not as saving humanity from demons. It would make sense not do anything too soon, as it would only bring more non-believers in places of power after him. Besides, it would take some time to restock his ammunition and get stocks of water to bless it.
"Of course," Butch sighed, "wish there was a way we could show them just how deadly and dangerous these animal demons are... not to mention how REAL they are."
"We'd need to catch them transforming..." Larvae commented, "and film it... so far, everyone we've caught was already transformed."
"In the end it won't matter... so long as we kill them all," Butch sighed, "even though I wish we had a way to expose them... It'd make our job easier."
Larvae could only nod.