by Brian Hodge
"So that's what we all have been waiting for?" Artaud asked.
"Yup," she said. "You can take it as long as you can pry it from Hellboy's cold, dead fingers."
What she'd brought, which H.B. had first used to transport a delicate German alchemical manuscript, was a steroidal version of the attache cases that had been in use for decades to ensure that documents got from Point A to Point B without theft, loss, or pilfering. But unlike a standard case, the outside of this one was made from two layers of titanium alloy sandwiching a layer of Kevlar, and was impervious to just about anything short of an artillery shell. The inside was triple-lined and could be hermetically sealed, with a built-in power source and regulatory system able to maintain up to two weeks' worth of consistent internal temperature and humidity, without which fragile old documents could deteriorate.
And, like the cases it mimicked, this one was equipped with a handcuff. The difference was, there was only one wrist in the world that this particular cuff fit: on Hellboy's right forearm, which was as big around as a gallon can of paint and made of some rocklike substance that had been stymieing scientists since before she'd been born. Plenty of similar cases, carried by everyone from diamond merchants to cocaine dealers, had been stolen by thieves who had no qualms about hacking through the arm it was chained to. Assuming someone could manage to restrain Hellboy in the first place, they were welcome to try. Take a chainsaw to his wrist and the most they'd manage would be breaking its teeth.
When he and Abe made it down from the tower, the only way she could tell they probably hadn't had any sleep since they'd gotten here was Abe's eyes. Hellboy? Forget it. He could probably lose most of his blood and would still walk into a room like a four-star general fresh from calisthenics. Abe, though...his eyes were a dark aqua color and normally shiny and bright, but they lost some luster when he was weary. As far as she was aware, he never realized that she'd picked up on this, and she was content to let it lie. Maybe he didn't even realize it about himself.
They all kept one another's secrets well. Who else was going to?
They'd shown up with another Swiss Guard, who was toting what looked like a stainless steel storage drawer. Abe came over to greet her, then took the case, seeming to want to waste no time. Artaud excused himself, and he and Abe joined the Guard, and they busied themselves transferring something from the steel bin to the case.
"Thanks for coming," Hellboy said. Was there just the slightest touch of relief in his voice? Yes. There was. "Short notice, I know."
She shrugged it off. "Kinda goes with the paycheck and the room and board."
His brow, that fearsome brow, crinkled. "We need to talk."
"I figured as much. Anybody could've brought you that case. There must be a reason it had to be me."
"Yeah," he said, and once he'd told her, well, at least that explained why every few seconds he glanced up. Up the nearest stairway, up at the high windows, up at the ceiling itself. Just up. And there was a lot of up around here to keep track of. Hellboy, nervous? She'd yet to decide whether that was a good thing or a bad thing; whether he was better served by a dose of caution or by the blithe self-confidence that had gotten him this far, against so many odds.
"You're really putting us in the line of fire this time," she said. "Literally."
"Are you going to be okay with that?"
"Like I'd tell you even if I wasn't?"
"You know I'd want you to. You've got to know that."
She reached up and rested her hand along the side of his face. Even apart from the whiskers that bristled down the side like a half-hearted attempt at muttonchops, his face felt like no one else's that she had ever touched. It felt alive, of course, although it didn't quite feel like normal skin, either human or animal. The closest thing she could compare it to was the fibrous bark on the giant redwoods of Northern California. When she'd visited the forests in her late teens, on one of her earlier aimless sprints away from the bureau, she'd been surprised and delighted by the way these trees felt. Massive, yet strangely warm and softly yielding. You just knew these things breathed and were aware of you, in their own way.
Appropriate, then, that they would remind her of Hellboy. Because what was he if not like some big sequoia, red and towering, and likely to be standing long after everyone else in the forest had returned to dust.
"I just have to wonder if I'd do any good if they come back," she said. "Seraphim...we're in uncharted territory with this one. Are they even vulnerable to fire?"
"I don't know." At least he didn't lie. But then, he wasn't very good at it. Not around her, anyway. "I do know if those things hit us, you've got a better chance of blowing them out of the sky than I do. They throw fire, you throw fire. I'm just going by what they left behind upstairs, but yours, when you're on full-burn...? I think it's hotter, more forceful. I don't claim to know the thermodynamics of it, but I'm betting you could consume their fire with your own. Block it."
"If you're wrong, it's your barbecue. Mine too, probably."
"My guess is you'd be okay," he said. "Don't think I didn't spend some time mulling this over. But if you were to square off with one of these things, I think you'd be okay."
Maybe he was right. Obviously, whenever she torched up--accidentally or on purpose--she remained unharmed, immune to the effects of the blaze emanating from her being. The bureau had studied her relentlessly throughout her teens, dotted her with so many electrodes it was like having a rash, and one constant they'd found was that even during episodes hot enough to smelt iron ore, her skin temperature never elevated by more than a couple of degrees--no worse than a mild fever.
As near as she could discern, even in the midst of a full-body detonation, she was surrounded by a cocoon of sorts, an insulating layer of something that stood between flesh and fire. One of the researchers had called it an etheric version of the protective gel that movie stuntmen slathered over themselves when they did pyro stunts--staggering out of a flaming car wreck, gags like that--only far more effective. It not only kept her from burning herself, but also shielded her from external fires; they'd tested her with everything from candles to propane torches.
Holy fire was something else entirely, a complete unknown, but Liz figured her chances of surviving it had to be better than even. Just the same, she hoped she wouldn't have to find out.
One of the priests who'd been milling about inside the North Gate when she'd arrived now stepped into the museum lobby and reported that the armored car was on its way, heading down the Viale Vaticano from where it had been parked in waiting.
"Armored car?" she asked.
"Yeah," Hellboy said, as Abe brought over the attache case, sealed now. "One of the cardinals pulled a few strings with a security company that works for the Banca di Roma."
She looked up, just as Hellboy had moments ago, an instinctive impulse now that she knew the next couple of minutes might turn into a kill-or-be-killed situation. Fry-or-be-fried.
Abe latched the enormous cuff over Hellboy's wrist.
As they started for the exit, she took one last look behind her, not without regret. It had nothing to do with the danger. Join the BPRD, travel the world, visit interesting places, she thought. And bug out again before you've actually had a chance to see them.
Hellboy was through the doors first, ready to absorb the brunt of another attack in case the seraphs were lying in wait, perched outside on the roof like gargoyles ready to swoop in for the kill. Tough gig, walking point under these circumstances. Fire wouldn't kill him, only hurt like a bitch for a long time. He stood in the open for several moments, tensed and ready for a fight, seeming to dare them to come for him. With his left hand he'd drawn the massive revolver he carried on his hip and, aiming it upward, extended his arm back toward them like a traffic cop's: Wait, just waaaait...
Lingering near the doorway, Liz wondered--in that way one's mind can lock onto small things during tense moments--if he ever broke sweat. She'd known him since late childhood and couldn't th
ink of a single time that she'd seen him sweat.
All clear? So it seemed. Hellboy gave the gun barrel a couple of twitches and the rest of them were on the move, she and Abe rushing out the museum doors--Abe, ever the gentleman, lugging her suitcase--and flanked by a pair of Swiss Guards who stepped up the pace to beat them to the outer gate. Hellboy threw his gun arm around her shoulders and she felt herself yanked off her feet, puppet girl, boot tips skimming the ground in abnormally long strides as though she were on the surface of the moon.
The North Gate swung open before them and they dashed through onto the sidewalk along the Viale Vaticano--into another land, literally, the traffic and tumult of Rome so much louder now that they were on the other side of the wall. On the street sat the armored car, rumbling and grumbling like a small tank. They made straight for the back end, where a dark-skinned security guard stood in a uniform and jacket and beret, a machine pistol slung from a shoulder strap. He swung the doors open and motioned them in.
The skies were clear in the chilly autumn night, and she found it hard to look away. If they came, she feared they would come not like doves but like missiles.
She was inside the armored car then, a cross between an ambulance and a bank vault, Hellboy practically tossing her in the way men in cartoons pitch noisy cats out the door in the middle of the night, and then Abe was right behind her, with H.B. bringing up the rear, the titanium case bouncing at the end of its chain as if it were no more to him than a trinket on a charm bracelet, and the guard was pushing the doors closed and Hellboy turned and pulled them the rest of the way, two bone-rattling impacts and a sequence of sharp metallic clacks as he engaged the locks.
And they were in. Safe.
He stood framed by the doorway, staring at her peering behind him.
"What are you looking at?" he asked.
"Just making sure you cleared your tail," she said, and burst into laughter that was more relief than anything. "Because if you didn't, I don't think you'd even realize."
A moment later they heard and felt the slam of the front side door as the guard jumped back in the cab, and the armored car surged forward into traffic they couldn't see.
"So what's the plan here?" she asked once they were settled into the seats. "I feel like I'm in a hazing. You guys have grabbed me up but I don't know where I'm going."
While they'd been waiting in the museum lobby, Kate Corrigan had already filled her in on the Masada Scroll, so she'd been apprised of that much. And that the end goal--until opposing factions in the Vatican had no more reason to antagonize each other--was to get it back to BPRD headquarters, where the scroll could be safely stored inside the old fireproof bunker where she'd spent so many long days and nights weathering the turmoil of adolescence. The prison of her own making, she'd thought it on good days; on bad days, it was just the dungeon. Burn up enough bedrooms during accidents and bad dreams, and you get a reputation.
But for traveling back to the States, Hellboy had decided that flying was out of the question. They had to cover all that distance under the assumption that they might be attacked with the same ferocity that had befallen the Vatican Archives, by assailants to whom altitude apparently meant nothing. On the ground, they might have a fighting chance--it was, after all, the reason she was here--but in the sky they would be vulnerable to the point of suicide. After fireballs at 36,000 feet, and the inevitable crash, there wouldn't be enough of the team left to scrape up with a shovel.
Surface travel it would have to be, then. With the main objective getting the scroll out of Rome and, for its first way station, to a BPRD safehouse in England. Once there, on secure ground, they could work out a method for moving it across the ocean.
Even so, Rome to England wouldn't be an easy jaunt. A few months earlier, they might have motored north out of Italy and into France, then headed for the western coast and taken the English Channel Tunnel. Not now, though. It was mid-October, with snow already falling in the Alps, and they could ill afford to risk getting stranded on a mountain pass in the north of Italy or the south of France.
Under the circumstances, the best way out of Rome lay at the end of a twenty-mile drive southwest from the Vatican: the Mediterranean. Earlier in the day, Hellboy had arranged for a charter yacht that would be waiting for them on the other end of this armored car ride, at the docks of Ostia. It would take them west across the sea, out the Straits of Gibraltar, then up past Portugal and the tip of Spain, and ultimately to the harbor of Falmouth, on England's southwest coast. From there, they could motor to the BPRD safehouse near Bodmin, in the middle of Cornwall. Here the scroll should be secure enough for the time being in the basements, while they finalized the rest of the journey...which, with luck, Kate and the British team would already have arranged by the time they arrived.
It would take longer than flying, but posed no risk of a fiery crash. And if the worst happened and they were attacked, the saving grace along most of the journey would lie beneath them: all that water. The seraphim were going to boil an ocean dry? Not likely, Hellboy said.
"They wouldn't have to," she told him. "Just enough to turn the immediate area into a saucepan."
"I'll make sure they focus on me. I may look like a lobster, but I don't cook up like one."
She pinched the scruff of his chin between her thumb and forefinger. "Level with me, okay? If these things went blasting through the Vatican, of all places, what's to stop them from coming after us whenever and wherever they want?"
"They have their limitations. They're not all-seeing."
Now Abe stepped in: "It seems they do what they're summoned to do. No more and, judging by the other night's failure, sometimes less. As long as the men who arranged for the attack on the Archives don't know our travel route, the farther away we get, the better off we should be."
"So why not just get away from Rome and catch a flight someplace where they wouldn't know about it?"
"Because what if I'm wrong?" Hellboy said. "I'd rather be just plain wrong than wrong and stupid."
Then his mood lightened. He didn't smile, exactly, and in fact rarely did--truth be told, whenever he tried to smile like a normal person the effect was fairly ghastly--but he had this way of cocking his head to the side that was downright endearing.
"Make you a bet," he said. "If we make it as far as the yacht and shove off without trouble, then it's smooth sailing the rest of the way. A leisurely cruise. And if I'm wrong, then I owe you one."
"What are we betting here?" she asked, wary.
"Loser gives the winner backrubs for a week."
Liz barked a derisive laugh. "Some incentive. Your back's three times as wide as mine. And let's not even talk about the difference in hand size."
Hellboy looked at Abe with a stage-managed sigh. "Well, I tried bribery..."
As the ride went on, Liz tried to judge how far they'd gone. Not easy to do, with no windows to look out and the frequent start-and-stops of city traffic. They must have at least gotten far enough south to clear the main congestion of central Rome, because they seemed to be rolling more smoothly now.
Then she noticed Abe, and the way he seemed to be tensing with the realization that something was wrong, pins and needles growing under the skin. His gills suddenly fanned out and rippled.
"Abe?" she said, and now Hellboy had snapped to as well. "What is it?"
"We're going the wrong way," he said. "That last turn...we're going east."
"Yeah, so?" Hellboy said. "The streets here have to work around the Tiber. It's the most screwed-up street layout I've ever seen."
Except Abe wasn't having it, shaking his head no, no, no. "We're going the wrong way now..."
And when Abe started talking navigation, you tended to believe him. It was more than a knack, like her father's keen directional sense when childhood vacations took the family to unfamiliar towns in which he hardly ever got lost. No, with Abe it seemed to go much deeper...a fundamental part of him, maybe on some level aware of polarities and magnetic fields
. Something to do with the Icthyo part of his makeup, she suspected, rather than the Sapien. Like the way salmon could abandon the ocean to return to the same river where they'd been spawned.
"We're heading away from the sea."
And that's when Hellboy and Abe's radio beepers started to go off.
Chapter 8
He'd hardly used it at all this trip, but it was sure squawking now: standard bureau issue, a cross between a walkie-talkie and a mobile phone. Everybody carried them on investigations for occasions when they might separate on-site. Sync up on frequency and encryption code before arrival, and they'd be good to wander apart. Transmissions could be sent to an entire group or to just one agent. Hellboy's unit had spent most of the time in Rome being ignored.
He plucked it from its leather sleeve on his belt, Abe slower on the draw.
"Yeah?" he said, but even before he heard her voice, he knew it could only be Kate.
Except she wasn't coming through clearly. He didn't know how many miles they'd ridden, and could never remember the effective range of these things, but they must have been on the ragged edge of it right now. The thick steel walls of the armored car probably weren't helping, either.
"You're breaking up," he said. "Make it quick."
Choppy, frazzing into bursts of static, whatever Kate was trying to tell him was coming in as though her words were being run through a broken fan. She must've realized it, though. Sounded like she'd boiled her message down to its essence and was repeating it over and over...
Bodies, he picked out.
--guard--
--found--
--street--
Under the circumstances, that was about all anyone needed to hear. He switched the radio on standby again and stuffed it back into its sleeve.
"I think we've been hijacked and didn't even know it," he whispered, and with Liz and Abe looking at him, he touched a finger to his lips: Shhhh.
He stood, moved to the front of the compartment. Undid the lock on the sliding metal plate that, when opened, would reveal a small grilled window into the driver's cab. He gave it three jaunty taps, then slid it aside. Couldn't see much. There was the back of someone's head directly in front of the window. A beret over mouse-brown hair that looked like it could use a good washing. Didn't look like it was the same guard with the machine gun who had opened the back door for them--the skin at the neck was too pale, too...sallow. It wasn't the driver, either; he was too close to the middle for that. Whoever it was, he wasn't moving.
