Hellboy followed her gesture and his shoulders slumped. When the wall turned in on itself and surrounded the main area, it went from solid to tall and stately wrought iron. It was through this metal barrier that Hellboy and Liz could see the well-known garbage truck and a couple of black sedans as they steered onto the hospital grounds. “Great,” Hellboy grumbled. “The Nanny Squad.”
As though on cue, at least a dozen agents clambered out of the three vehicles, with Clay and Myers at the forefront. Another second and Broom pushed out of one of the sedans, his movements oddly slow and clunky. They weren’t making any effort to be quiet, and Liz and Hellboy could hear them easily from here.
“Sir?” Myers asked. “May I go first?”
Myers started their way, but Clay stopped him. “Not so fast,” the older agent protested. He turned to Broom. “He barely knows him.”
Liz saw Hellboy chuckle beneath his breath at Professor Broom’s reply. “Then he should make it his business to change that.” Always the no-nonsense approach.
It would be only a few seconds before Myers got here, so Liz stood and put a hand on Hellboy’s shoulder. “Listen, H.B.,” she said. She tried to make her voice half firm, half pleading, but in reality, what were the chances either would work? So much of the time he just did what he wanted. “I’ve got a chance out here. If you truly care about me…don’t come back anymore.”
For a long, painful moment, Hellboy said nothing, just sat there staring unhappily at the ground. She was already walking away when he tried unsuccessfully to smile. “Good night, then.”
“Good night,” Liz said, but her voice was already faint, as though her mind were anywhere but here or on Hellboy.
She didn’t turn around.
10
HELLBOY WATCHED LIZ WALK AWAY…AGAIN.
There was a lump in his throat the size of the Brooklyn Bridge, but he’d be damned if he’d be left standing here like some moke who’d just been dumped, even if that was pretty much what had just happened. Every self-respecting guy knew that the least he could do was try to get the last word in.
Hellboy cleared his throat, but his voice still sounded like driveway gravel when he spoke. “Yeah,” Hellboy said, a little too loudly. “I gotta go, too. Lots to do.”
His head was spinning a little—funny how being around Liz could do that to him—but he stood up anyway. He registered a sort of splooshing sound and felt the fabric of his overcoat drag, like he’d been standing in the rain; when he looked down at the bench, he was vaguely surprised to see an actual puddle of blood on the bench, enough so that it was dripping down the front of the stone seat into a pool at his feet.
Hellboy ignored it and looked up as Agent Myers tentatively approached. “What took you so long?”
Myers glanced at the scarlet circle on the ground and concern flashed over his features. “Come on,” he said. “Time to go home.” He inclined his head toward the oozing wound in Hellboy’s arm. “Tape you up.”
Hellboy tried to scowl at him, but the light-headedness creeping up on him made it difficult. His mouth and jaw felt numb and vaguely uncooperative. “What are you, a Boy Scout?”
Myers shook his head. “No. I never was.”
Hellboy felt behind him for the bench. Maybe he’d sit down again for a bit. “Could’ve fooled me,” he managed to retort. He waved a hand in the air. “Go away.” He meant it to sound like a command, but even he had to admit it came across as pretty damned weak when his legs wobbled and instead of sinking back onto the bench, he went down to his knees.
Like worker ants surrounding a big, tasty bug, Agents Clay, Quarry, and Moss were on him in an instant, right alongside the new and determined to be ever-present Myers. Hellboy wanted to push them away as they pulled him back onto his feet, but he didn’t have the strength.
Agent Clay’s big hand was firm around Hellboy’s elbow. “Come on, champ. You look a little woozy there.”
Hellboy tried to shoulder him off, but he couldn’t. His head just wouldn’t clear up and his ears were ringing. Even so, he snorted and glanced at the gash on his arm. “This? This is nothing. You know what’ll kill me?” Hellboy stabbed a finger toward a doorway across the garden; Liz stood silhouetted in it, backlit by the hospital fluorescents. “Her.”
His legs jittered and he keeled over with a grunt, then tried unsuccessfully to help the agents as they struggled to get him back to the garbage truck.
When that was finally done, Myers wiped his brow and glanced back at the hospital. The woman Hellboy had been talking to—Liz—was still standing in the doorway and watching them. His gaze caught hers and they stared curiously at each other. Before Myers could think about it further, the woman turned and disappeared into the building, pulling the door firmly shut behind her.
Overbright white lights, white walls, lots of gleaming stainless steel and antiseptic-bathed counters and cabinets, sterile air that smelled like alcohol and clean cotton. The stainless steel table on which Hellboy was lying was built more for efficiency than comfort, but at least it was cool against Hellboy’s perpetually hot skin, always a good thing. Still, they ought to think more of the patient—he’d bet that when Liz sat down to talk to her psychiatrists, she had a nice, comfy couch or a recliner to sit on, maybe made of good leather that was cool against her skin.
He wondered what she was doing right now.
Probably not thinking about him.
Hellboy gave himself a mental shake and refocused on Father, who was sitting on a stool beside the table and studying him with those sad eyes of his. On the other side of the table, Abe bent over Hellboy’s injured arm, peering into the ugly wound with a magnifying glass. “You were burned by some organic acid,” Abe finally told him.
“I’m lucky that way,” Hellboy said without bothering to look.
Abe plucked a sterile scalpel from a tray next to Hellboy’s head and began to probe inside the gash. Despite himself, Hellboy grunted with pain.
“Son,” Broom said quietly. “About Rasputin—”
“Don’t worry,” Hellboy said before Father could finish. “I’ll get him soon enough.”
The professor shook his head and leaned closer to Hellboy. “Listen to me. This time is different. There’s more at stake than ever before.”
Hellboy only looked at him out of the side of one eye. “How hard can it be? I punched the crap out of that thing he sent—ouch!”
Abe paused, but Hellboy’s attention went back to Father and his next words. “I worry about you.”
Now Hellboy turned his head toward the old man. “Me? Come on.”
Father looked away. “Well, I won’t be around forever, you know.”
Hellboy scowled. “Oh, stop that—damn!” He jerked his face back toward Abe, who tried to look appropriately guilty, then bent back over the wound anyway. “Be careful there!”
But Abe wasn’t interested in Hellboy’s discomfort. He had other questions on his mind. “Red, how long was it latched on to you?”
Hellboy grimaced. “I dunno. Maybe five seconds—OW!”
Agent Myers, who had been pretty quiet since they’d gotten back to the B.P.R.D. and carted Hellboy into the infirmary, stepped up to the side of the table. “You want me to hold him down?”
Hellboy’s jaw dropped open, then he snickered. “That’s right, stud. Hold me down.”
Before Myers could say anything in return, Abe said, “Professor.”
Something about the tone of his voice made Hellboy forget the next crack he was going to toss at Myers. As Father climbed off the stool and moved around to the other side of the table, Hellboy sat up a little straighter. He’d always been right with the this-isn’t-good intuition and it was looking like right now was no exception. He started to lift his head so he could see, but Broom’s sharp voice stopped him. “Don’t look—turn around!”
Hellboy let his head thunk back down on the table. “Is it bad?” Okay, so he’d felt pretty crappy back at the hospital, and maybe he’d lost his footing
in the hospital garden. And sure, the ride back to the B.P.R.D. was pretty hazy. But now that he was lying down, things were back on target.
Weren’t they?
Okay, this was one of those cases where no news was bad news, and Hellboy just couldn’t handle that. Despite Father’s command, he picked his head back up and peered at the slice in his arm that Abe had now spread wide with a scalpel and a pair of medical tweezers. His angle was bad, his neck was bent, but he could just see what the big deal was.
Three eggs, nestled like ugly translucent ticks, just inside the flesh of his forearm.
Hellboy jumped as Abe plucked out the first one and held it up so they could all see it, then dropped it into a waiting glass container. “Touched you five seconds,” Abe said almost admiringly. “Laid three eggs.”
Hellboy glowered at the egg-thing in the container, then steeled himself as Abe went after the next one buried in his arm. “Didn’t even buy me a drink,” he grumbled. By the time the second one had been extracted, he felt like a pincushion; if three times was the charm, he needed to have a serious talk with the idiot who’d come up with that stupid saying.
Still, he was feeling a lot better now that he’d had the uninvited tenants in his forearm evicted. They moved from the exam room into one of the medical bays, and in no time, Hellboy was sitting up with his arm neatly stitched and bandaged—no more leaking onto his coat and doing the bob ’n’ wobble when he tried to walk. Myers had tossed his coat into the laundry and since Hellboy knew he looked lousy in white, he’d refused the agent’s offer of a triple-extra-large lab coat. He was even starting to get a little of his appetite back, and life would’ve been A-OK if not for the annoying beep! from the computer a few feet away. They all crowded around the monitor to see the image that came up with the machine’s analysis, and all of a sudden Hellboy just wasn’t so high on life when he saw the enlarged color view of one of the throbbing eggs.
Abe, obviously, was fascinated. He pointed at the image with one of his webbed fingers, sounding awed. “The eggs are very sensitive to heat and light. They need a humid, dark environment to hatch.” He brandished a new pair of tweezers and picked up one of the eggs, then passed the metal holders to Hellboy. Hellboy squinted at it and passed it back; it was probably ridiculous, but he didn’t want these things anywhere near his flesh, didn’t want to take the chance that they might have this DNA-level idea that Hellboy was their freebie hotel.
Myers tracked the egg as it went from Abe to Hellboy, then back again. “Down there,” he finally said, “did you ever lose track of him? Of Sammael?”
Hellboy blinked. “Well, let’s see…there was that moment when I had a train on top of my head.”
Father’s eyes were troubled as he caught Hellboy’s gaze. “We can’t risk it,” he said after a long moment of thought. “You’ll go back to the tracks tomorrow with a group of agents. Search the area, top to bottom.”
Off to the side, Myers listened while watching the screen and its blown-up image. His mouth twisted in revulsion when on the glass, one of the eggs twitched as something small and fetuslike inside wiggled.
Back in Professor Broom’s office, Myers watched the old man place a new set of books on the reading stands in front of Abe’s tank. He hadn’t seen that much of the B.P.R.D., but Myers thought that this office, with its soft lighting and the thousands of carefully maintained books, all overlit by the gentle, swaying glow from Abe’s tank, had to be the most comfortable place in the entire complex.
Obviously Broom wasn’t going to say anything, so Myers finally cleared his throat and spoke. “I’m in way over my head. I know that.”
Broom didn’t look up as he carefully set up a couple of new books to be Abe’s reading material, opening them to the first page of the first chapter of each. The titles were interesting in light of the creature—no, Myers told himself, person—who would be reading them: a vampire novel called AfterAge and a zombie novel titled Deadrush, both by the same author. Myers would have pegged Abe for a straight facts man, hard science and maybe geology; then again, considering he was such an integral part of the B.P.R.D., reading these supernatural stories wasn’t that far off from the truth.
“You’re doing fine,” the professor finally said as he finished. He glanced at Abe, who was still wearing his breathing apparatus and was sitting quietly on a chair in the shadows near the door.
Myers scrubbed at his face, feeling the stubble there and not remembering the last time he’d had time to shave. “No,” he said. “I’m not. He respects Clay, not me. I don’t know why you chose me, sir, but I’m not qualified.” There, he’d said it, the worst part, out loud. The part he hadn’t voiced was his disillusionment, the composite of shame over his own failure and his profound disappointment that he couldn’t make himself into someone Hellboy would accept. And when Broom didn’t argue, Myers figured there wasn’t anything else to add—the professor obviously agreed with him and would find someone else for the project. Swallowing his discouragement, Myers turned and headed for the door.
“I’m dying, Agent Myers.”
Shocked, the younger man stopped and looked back at Broom. His mouth worked, but he didn’t know what to say. He barely knew this man, but already he liked and respected him, already he wanted to slip into denial mode—Don’t be ridiculous, if you’re sick, we’ll get a second opinion; whatever’s wrong can be slowed or halted altogether. All of which was ridiculous since he didn’t know the details and hey, Professor Broom was more intelligent than most of the people in this building. No doubt he’d already delved into all his options…and found them nonexistent.
“As a father,” Broom continued, “I worry about him.” The old man pinned Myers in place with his gaze. “In medieval stories, Agent Myers, there’s often a young knight. Inexperienced but pure of heart.”
“Oh, please,” Myers said automatically. “I’m not pure of heart.”
Abe shifted on his chair. “Yes, you are,” he said softly. Myers shifted uncomfortably, not wanting to think about how Abe would get the information needed to make a statement like that.
Broom walked carefully over to Myers until he stood directly in front of him, looking straight into his eyes. “What I ask from you,” he said firmly, “is that you have the courage to stand by his side after I’m gone. Help him find himself. Who he must be.” He paused, and unaccountably Myers felt the hair rise along the surface of his arms before the professor had even finished his next sentence.
“He was born a demon. You will help him become a man.”
Myers had been at this for hours, but it felt like minutes. Somewhere in that time period, he’d eaten a sandwich—the crumbs and bits of wilted lettuce were still wadded up in the wrapping paper on the floor where he’d missed the wastebasket—but he couldn’t have said what kind it had been, something premade from the B.P.R.D. cafeteria. Ditto with the thirty-two-ounce soft drink—Coke? Pepsi? Or maybe it’d been something appropriately red, like Hawaiian Punch. Myers had no clue. Had his dinner been something good, say a couple of peanut butter and honey sandwiches, he would have remembered it. As it was, whatever he’d eaten was sustenance, nothing more; fuel for the body so that the mind could keep going. Learning, especially something in which he was particularly interested, had always been like that for him.
He was in one of the conference rooms off the main B.P.R.D. archive. In it were dark leather chairs surrounding a mahogany table, and top-of-the-line projection equipment—all the finest things tax dollars could secretly buy. Off to the side was a computer station, and it was here that Myers had chosen to spend his time, hammering along at the keyboard while he learned not only about Hellboy, but what the next part of his own life would entail.
The images of Hellboy flashed by on the screen, everything from the tacky tabloid headlines to the more intimate photographs taken as he’d grown up. There he was as a kid, only seven years old, and despite the seriousness of everything in which he was involved, Myers had to grin. Put a uniform on
him and he would’ve looked like a sturdy little red football player…well, except for the horns and the tail and that stone arm of his. The photo of Hellboy at age twelve really made Myers chuckle—had it been Broom or Hellboy himself who’d had the idea to dress him up as a human for Halloween?
The next image in the group of photos on this latest disk made the agent pause a little longer as he saw the files go into detail on someone associated with Hellboy, rather than the red man himself. Myers had seen the format of The National Enquirer a thousand times in the supermarket checkout line, so often that he’d stopped paying attention. Now that he was involved in the B.P.R.D., Myers realized he was going to have to give those seemingly ludicrous headlines a little more consideration.
“Arson Suspect Now Working for Secret Government Agency!”
It was a grainy black-and-white photo shot through a telephoto lens, still clearly outside the range of the camera’s capabilities. Despite that, Liz Sherman was, at least to the knowing eye, clearly recognizable. Head down, dark hair shielding her eyes as she smoked a cigarette, there was something unaccountably miserable about her, an aura of pain that was belied by the sensationalism of the headline. Myers would have thought he was imagining it, until the words of the next clipping sunk into his overtired brain.
This one was from a regular newspaper, buried back a couple of pages and out of the limelight of daily life; it probably would have made the front pages but for the mudslinging that had been going on at the time between two mayoral candidates. There was Liz again, this time at age eleven. In the photo, her eyes looked more like those of a haunted victim; she was crying, and a nasty dark smear on her forehead in the black-and-white photo could only be blood. “Tragic Explosion” read the caption below a picture of what was left—not much—of a row house somewhere in the uncaring city of Detroit.
Hellboy Page 9
