"Time to leave all this," Hellboy said.
"What about Trent?" Danovich asked.
"Wherever he is, he's not going anywhere."
The engineer flinched. "That's cold."
Hellboy shrugged. "He may still be alive down there. But that dragon could come back anytime. We've got to get the injured treated and find some kind of shelter. Redfield and Meaney won't be back with the chopper--and our friendly Mr. Lao--until morning at least, and trying to evacuate people that way will take forever. We need to figure out how to fight this thing."
"Fight it? Fight the damn Dragon King?"
"You got a better idea?"
Danovich didn't.
They started down from the ridge. Some of the tent fires had been put out, salvaging part of the camp, but many of them had burned to the ground. In places, all that remained of tents were the bottom edges, strung from one stake to the next, still burning. In the moonlight, the flickering of those flames seemed unearthly. To Hellboy, it looked like a battlefield, and they were the army that had lost the war.
The Dragon King, he could handle. The trouble was going to be keeping the big worm from killing anyone else in the meantime.
The sky filled with a shushing noise. Hellboy and Danovich exchanged a glance. Then Hellboy left the engineer behind, running down the slope toward what remained of the camp.
"Cover!" he bellowed. "Everyone take cover! Don't let it see that the job isn't done!"
As they scattered, some into the tents that remained intact and others behind rocky outcroppings or beneath equipment, trunks, and blankets that had been salvaged, Hellboy stopped to stare upward. The red stripe of the dragon's belly coiled across the sky above him, silhouetted against the yellow flesh of its body. He thought of the dead and the injured and of the way his father had felt dead when Hellboy took the old man into his arms.
He drew his gun, raised it high, and pulled the trigger once, twice, a third time. Hellboy could have sworn at least two of the bullets punched into the Dragon King's belly, but the worm was so swift that there was no time for a fourth shot. It swept across the sky above the ruined camp and hit the surface of the lake. The water roiled around it, and the Dragon King dived, vanishing beneath the surface. Small waves rolled out from the place it had gone under, but the dragon was gone.
Forty feet from where he stood, Abe Sapien knelt beside the expedition's M.D., Ellie Morris, while the two of them helped treat a burn victim who lay on a thick blanket.
"Abe!" Hellboy shouted, running toward him even as he holstered his gun.
The amphibious man stood and turned toward him.
"Go! Get in the water, now!" Hellboy barked at him. "You've gotta go after the dragon."
The fin ridges on Abe's neck rippled as though in a strong breeze, and he regarded Hellboy oddly. "Did you suffer some kind of head trauma?"
Hellboy skidded to a halt in front of him, staring down intently. "I'm not screwing around, Abe. Go after it. Now. I don't want you to fight it. Just track it. Figure out where its lair is down there. Without that, all we're doing is sitting here waiting for it to come back and kill us."
Abe cursed at the logic, turned, and ran swiftly but awkwardly toward the water.
The water did not soothe him. Abe Sapien knifed beneath the roiling surface of the lake, the water unnaturally hot. It slid across his flesh with the clinging film of mercury. Given a choice, he would have swum for shore, but he had a job to do.
He kicked and swam with all of his strength, propelling himself as swiftly as he could in pursuit of the great serpent. In the darkness of the deep lake bottom, he could barely make out the tail of the dragon whipping back and forth ahead of him. Its yellow scales gleamed only a little this far under water, at night. Instead, Abe relied upon the displacement of water, the disturbance of the Dragon King's passing, and the heat it generated to guide him.
The dragon sped up, swimming so powerfully that Abe felt himself caught and pulled along in its wake. He had to fight to keep from tumbling end over end in the water, and the Dragon King pulled ahead.
Alarm rippled through Abe. If he lost the thing's trail long enough for it to enter its lair unseen, his pursuit would be for nothing. Desperation raced in his blood, adrenaline surging. He gritted his teeth and swam harder, gills pulsing.
In his mind's eye he saw images of the Dragon King bursting from the lake in a spray of fire and water, saw the tents burning and the fear in Professor Bruttenholm's eyes as the old man had choked on the smoke and stared at the fire spreading along his arm.
A flash of yellow flickered through the water ahead--too close--and Abe drew back quickly. Somehow he'd caught up, and the terror of the Dragon King's nearness struck him. Catching up to the dragon was the very last thing he wanted to do.
What are you thinking, coming down here after it?
But even as the thought struck him, he pushed it away--pushed away all fear and hesitation, and the knowledge that this flying, burning engine of destruction was way out of his league, and maybe out of Hellboy's as well. They needed way more firepower than they'd brought up here, to the top of the world.
And what about when they got that firepower? The only way to destroy the Dragon King or seal him under the lake again was to figure out where he'd been sleeping and how he got out.
He darted through the water again, redoubling his efforts. The heat and wake of the dragon's passing was simple enough to follow, but it would fade if he slowed down any further. Abe's heart thundered with the effort as he struggled to catch up with the Dragon King. Even as he did, he scanned the dark smoothness of the lake bottom, the soft, shifting, almost featureless terrain. There was so little plant life that the fish population of the lake was also quite small. But he had searched the lake twice already, by night, then by day, and he had seen nowhere that the dragon could have hibernated.
Yet he had come from the water, so there had to be an answer down here somewhere.
Long seconds of frantic swimming went by before Abe felt the real pull of the dragon's wake again, then he saw the flash of its yellow hide up ahead. This time Abe did not slow down. The dragon slithered upward and darted down again. Abe swam too close and nearly collided with the serpent as it twisted toward the lake bottom, eagle talons pulled up tight to its body.
Abe treaded water, eyes wide, peering into the gloom ahead. Where was the dragon going? It darted toward a place where the sandy bottom gave way to the rocky basin of the lake, sloping upward toward the surface. There was a cloudburst underwater, dirt swirling in the lake, and when it had sifted down enough Abe stared in astonishment.
The dragon was gone.
Heart racing, he swam toward the place where he had last seen the Dragon King. The water began to clear, the wake to diminish, and Abe saw that between the slope on the side of the lake and the sandy bottom, there was a dark crevice. An orange glow of fire flickered once in that darkness, then it was gone.
He felt positive the crevice had not been there before. He would have seen it. Somehow the rumbling underground had shifted the lake bottom, releasing the dragon. Or perhaps the dragon could have come out whenever it wanted, and it had made the exit itself. As Abe swam toward it, a chill went through him.
The loose soil of the bottom was sifting into the darkness of that crevice, spilling away into nothingness. Abe wanted to know what was down there, in the gloom, but trying to find out alone would be foolish. Hellboy had asked him to find out where the dragon went, and he'd done that.
If Abe went down there after the Dragon King, he wanted to make sure he knew how to kill it. In his time with the BPRD, he'd learned such things were never simple. Killing a legend was difficult business.
The breeze off the lake made Professor Bruttenholm shiver. To feel cold in the aftermath of the dragon's inferno cut him with the bitterest of irony. Even the burn on his left forearm no longer felt hot. It stung and pulsed, but the pain made him shiver, as though the flesh had been frozen instead of seared.
"You still with me, Professor?" Sarah Rhys-Howard asked.
Bruttenholm blinked and smiled up at her. "No more chest pains, my dear. And whatever knock I took to the head doesn't seem to have addled my brains any worse than they already were."
He hissed through his teeth as she moved his arm and tried not to wince. "That, however, is quite painful."
"I'd imagine," Sarah replied. Moonlight and the dim glow of the small fires that still burned limned her with an angelic light.
But she was an agent of the BPRD, not some angel of mercy. Sarah had cut away the sleeve of his jacket and shirt, and now she held his arm steady as she pulled bits of burned cloth away from the seared flesh. Bruttenholm hissed through his teeth. Sarah was not a doctor or nurse; she did not spare him so much as an apologetic glance. Though she had medical training, she was a field operative for the BPRD, and bedside manner was not her forte. She had retrieved her medical kit from the tent she'd been sharing with Agent Meaney, who was still off with Redfield, bringing help back from Lhasa, and now she squirted an antibiotic ointment onto the second-degree burn on his arm and began to bandage it.
"You were quite fortunate, really."
"I'm aware of that," he replied.
Sarah frowned and glanced at him, then surveyed their surroundings. Smoke still rose from the ruined camp, and tiny flames still lingered in places. Two people had been burned to death. Several others were badly injured, including one young man who might well wish he had died by the time real assistance arrived or he expired from complications due to the severity of his burns.
Anastasia's team had Ellie Morris. Every major archaeological expedition had a doctor on staff, but Ellie served double duty as both archaeologist and medic. Neil Pinborough had given them a report on the condition of the camp, the wounded and dead, and his admiration for the way the woman was dealing with the crisis had been evident. Then Bruttenholm had sent Neil off to lend a hand. There were lives to save. The dig had come to a disastrous conclusion, and now their only concern was getting everyone away from Lake Tashi before the Dragon King resurfaced.
"There you are. That's you, done," Sarah said, standing up and brushing herself off.
Bruttenholm glanced at the bandaged arm. The burns sang with pain, but already it had begun to recede to a throbbing ache, thanks to the topical anesthetic she'd used with the antibiotic. There would be other painkillers to come, he was sure. But not yet. He needed his mind clear.
"Thank you, Sarah."
She nodded. "Not at all, Professor. "You've got a plan, I take it?"
"Not a good one," Bruttenholm replied. "Would be a damn sight better if we didn't still have a day or two yet before reinforcements arrive. For now, we'll simply--"
He caught sight of Hellboy, and all thoughts left his mind. Professor Bruttenholm had barely been aware of how worried he was until that very moment. Now, as Hellboy and Anastasia strode toward him across the remnants of the archaeologists' camp, a grim satisfaction filled him. When Hellboy had run off after the dragon as it made its return, firing his ridiculously enormous pistol, Bruttenholm had feared he would do something foolish--something that would cost his life. But, no, Hellboy was fine. Others had died, but not his son. It was dreadfully selfish, but he was only human.
Sarah turned toward the new arrivals.
"The dragon's back in the water?" Sarah asked.
Hellboy nodded toward his father in greeting, then turned to Agent Rhys-Howard. "Yeah. For now. I sent Abe down after it. If we're going to deal with this thing, we're gonna need to know where it's hiding out."
"You sent Abe?" Professor Bruttenholm asked, aware how cross he sounded. The searing pain in his arm grew worse.
"I know you're field leader, but you were off the board. Command decision."
"I see." Bruttenholm narrowed his eyes. "And has Abe returned yet?"
Hellboy met him with a slitted gaze that was almost a mirror of Bruttenholm's own. "Not yet. But he will. I see you're feeling better."
"Quite a bit, thanks to Sarah, here."
"How bad is the burn?" Hellboy asked her.
Sarah took a breath. "Could be worse. There'll be some scarring, but how noticeable it will be depends on how well it heals."
"What about the rest of the camp?" Bruttenholm asked.
Hellboy's expression darkened. "Redfield better get back from Lhasa quick, and with a full fuel tank. We need to get the injured out of here and get Kora as far away as possible."
As he spoke, Anastasia watched him. Her heart must have been broken over the deaths of her team members and her friends, and the ruinous end to her expedition. But she gazed at him with such tenderness in her eyes that Professor Bruttenholm could not help being touched.
"The injured and the girl first," Sarah replied, "but we need to get everyone out of here."
"What we need is to kick the crap out of that dragon, put him back where he belongs," Hellboy said.
Bruttenholm grimaced. "It's never easy to put the genie back into the bottle. I suspect it won't be as simple as having superior firepower. Even if it were, I doubt the cavalry will arrive with rocket launchers and tanks. Assault weapons are not going to stop the Dragon King."
"It'd be a start," Hellboy said.
"Too right," Anastasia said bitterly. "But I agree with Sarah. The sooner we remove everyone from the area, the better."
"On that, my dear, we are all agreed," Professor Bruttenholm said.
Anastasia's expression remained grim, and she did not respond. After their last conversation, the professor could not blame her. Seeing her with Hellboy--witnessing for himself the way she obviously still felt about him--he felt regretful.
"Dr. Bransfield," he said.
Her brows knitted as she regarded him coolly. "Professor?"
"My behavior earlier was boorish and inexcusable. I'm an old man, and sometimes I come to believe my age allows me to speak with candor that I later regret."
She blinked, obviously startled, then tried to brush the words away. "It's fine. Really."
"No. It isn't at all fine. Regardless of my feelings, I have no right to meddle. I dislike viewing myself as a troublesome old crank. Please accept my apologies."
Anastasia smiled softly. "Of course, Professor. I do. Thank you."
He allowed himself a moment of contentment, nodding at the woman, then he glanced at Hellboy and Sarah.
"All right, then. All the injured will be prepared to travel to Lhasa. We'll give Mister Redfield a brief respite upon his return, then he'll have to fly again. Sarah, I'll want our entire team here on the ground, so Ellie Morris will have to travel with the wounded on the helicopter."
She nodded.
Bruttenholm went on. "Dr. Bransfield, you'll need to break camp. Anything that can be salvaged should be packed up and ready to move. In your survey of the area, did you locate any caves or other structures nearby to which we can retreat until help arrives?"
Anastasia glanced up at the ruin of the dig. "There are caves on the other side of the lake, but given what we've just seen, I think going inside of them would be a spectacularly bad idea. There is an abandoned monastery not far--"
"It'll have to do," the professor said. "Hellboy, talk to Anastasia, and to Professor Kyichu about what he read on the inside of the preparatory chamber. If there's a clue in the legend of the Dragon King about how to destroy it, or at least to defeat it, we need to know. And we must all gather whatever weapons we can find. Fighting the dragon may be useless, but we must make the attempt."
Bruttenholm had been sitting at the base of the slope that led up to the archaeological dig, in the same place Hellboy had left him after Abe had pulled him from the burning tent. Now, from the darkness of the slope above their heads, came a sibilant whisper.
Hellboy drew his pistol and aimed it at a scattering of large rocks on the slope. His tail swayed behind him, and his huge right hand clenched and unclenched.
"Who goes there?" he demanded.
Brutte
nholm heard a hiss and narrowed his eyes until he could make out a figure among the rocks, perched at an angle, head downward. Twin candles of flame flickered to life, and as the figure moved, he saw that it was one of the dragon-men.
"Koh?" Anastasia asked.
Hellboy glanced at Anastasia and nodded. "Get Tenzin."
She turned and ran toward the makeshift camp, calling Tenzin's name. The professor and Hellboy and the dragon-man, Koh, all stared at one another. Koh must have realized what they were all waiting for. Less than a minute after she'd departed, Anastasia appeared once more, walking toward them with the guide and translator, Tenzin, following behind.
Tenzin did not flinch at the sight of Koh, clinging to the ridge above their heads. He knew precisely why he had been summoned. Before anyone could ask it of him, he began speaking to the dragon-man. Agitated, Koh pointed to Hellboy and rattled off angry words.
"His village is destroyed," Tenzin translated. "His father is dead, burned before his eyes. At least half of the villagers are dead."
Tenzin's voice rasped as he repeated this horrid news. Though Koh spoke no English, the anguish in the dragon-man's voice was terrible to hear, in any language.
Hellboy slid his gun back into its holster. He shook his head slowly. "I couldn't stop it. I know I said I'd take responsibility, but I never thought--"
Tenzin began to translate.
Koh dropped to the ground, landing in a crouch among them. Sarah moved protectively to Bruttenholm's side. Anastasia took a step back. Tenzin glared at the dragon-man. But Koh paid no attention to any of them. His focus was entirely on Hellboy.
Koh spoke again, and Tenzin quickly translated.
"Those of us who survive will hold you to your vow. To take responsibility, as you swore you would, there is only one thing you can do. You must destroy the Dragon King."
Professor Bruttenholm saw the tension in Hellboy deflate.
The Dragon Pool: The Dragon Pool Page 15
