Silt covered everything at the far bottom of the cistern. As Abe’s feet lightly touched the bottom, the silt billowed through the water, sending small, dirty clouds up to Abe’s knees, the watery equivalent of blowing a century’s worth of dust off a tabletop. As Abe strained to see what he was stepping on, he caught his first glimpse of what he’d been sent down here to look for: a small, translucent egg glimmering in the darkness. Pulling a thin glass canister from his belt, he plucked it from its resting place and pushed it inside. Abe reached for the next one, then jerked as he felt something dark glide past him. He turned, but there was nothing there.
His movement along the bottom had dislodged the silt and its lighter-weight contents. Now eggs were floating everywhere around him, undulating and winking in the currents like glowing, amber fireflies. Abe swam slowly through the water, collecting them one by one. Just when he thought he’d retrieved all of them, he saw a small pile of the golden globes wedged between two rusting machines. Holding the canister in one hand, he stretched his other arm into the opening. As he reached, something tugged sharply along his belt; when he looked down, Abe saw the small reliquary Hellboy had given him had caught on a protruding lever and broken free. It was floating downward, heading for a drainage grate in the floor.
Abe stretched as far as he could and snagged the eggs, then shoved them into his canister and swam after the reliquary. It was resting on the grate, rocking back and forth. His fingers had almost closed on it when the movement of the water loosened it. It bobbed one more time, then slipped through the opening and disappeared.
Cursing to himself, Abe rose—
—and found himself unprotected and staring into the snarling face of Sammael.
Before he could get out of the way, the demon raked him deeply across the chest. Instantly the water filled with dark blue blood. Sammael blinked, surprised, and Abe razored backward through the water and into the first place of shelter he could get to, a long, jagged fissure in the concrete of a collapsing interior wall.
Sammael was after him in a heartbeat, clawing at the concrete as he tried to cram his pallid, oversized body into the too-small opening. He wouldn’t fit, but there was always his deadly tongue; again and again he jabbed it into the rupture in the concrete, barely missing Abe, leaving the demon to scream in rage. Fear and pain made Abe scream with him, sending a trail of blue-tinted blood bubbles floating upward. Adrenaline had gotten him to safety—for now—but the flight rush was gone and now the agony of his wounds was hammering viciously into his nerves.
The bubbles broke the surface of the cistern far above, where a second Sammael sat and watched them pop with keen interest.
Well, so much for his mental crack about hoping Agent Clay would be able to use common sense in tracking him.
Hellboy stopped and turned first one way, then the other, trying to reorient himself. He had no idea where he was and he’d lost Kroenen in the constant twisting and turning of these empty, useless tunnels. Every one of these corridors looked the same—dirty, dark, and full of mold and old litter. The place was like an underground tomb, silent except for the occasional dripping of disused pipes and the faint squealing of rodents.
Since he couldn’t do anything visually, Hellboy raised his chin and sniffed the air, catching a faint whiff of…something. He wasn’t exactly sure what he was picking up here, but the scent wasn’t good. He turned right, following his nose, and found himself facing yet another open portal; when he stepped through, it was like he was walking into the storage room of a nightmare concentration camp.
Duct work crisscrossed the area overhead, leaving gaps of black shadows between the jumble of metal and pipes, making the ceiling too far away to see. For some strange reason, gas masks lined the bottom of metal tubs, interspersed with more masks made of leather. Some were old, some were new. There must have been half a hundred hanging from hooks everywhere; worse were the old pictures of children tacked on the walls beneath the masks—the small faces missing from the photographs Hellboy had found earlier, all with haunted eyes staring at him from every direction and giving him the willies. If each pair of eyes represented a ghost that was going to show up, he hoped they were friendly, because he was going to be badly outnumbered.
Moving cautiously, Hellboy went deeper into the room, moving around the disused furniture and sidestepping an open service shaft until he reached the small, battered table in the middle. On it was an engraved plaque, and when he shone his flashlight over it, Hellboy could just read the faint words.
“Sammael: Seed of Destruction. Death becomes the fertile ground.”
When Hellboy started to straighten up, a glob of drool smacked against one of his horn stumps.
He shook it off, then glared up at the ceiling. Wouldn’t you know it—there, clinging to the side of a metal duct like a colorless leech, was Sammael.
“Didn’t I kill you already?”
Sammael’s answer was a leap, but Hellboy was ready for it. He moved with the creature as it came down, then shifted his own weight to the side, steering the demon’s body toward the open shaft a few feet away. Sammael howled as he went over the edge, and Hellboy was almost rid of him.
Almost.
If it hadn’t been for Hellboy’s own damned tail.
He felt Sammael’s clawed fingers wrap around it, and there was no time for him to free himself before Sammael dragged him into the black abyss with him.
It was a long, long way down.
And painful—yeah, that, too. Clinging to each other more than fighting, the two crashed through wiring, bounced against ducts, and slammed into pipes. Through his fragmented vision, Hellboy saw light and hoped it was the end of the fall, but no such luck. They slid a few more excruciating feet, then tumbled into yet another downward passageway. This one was filled with dripping water pipes and jutting, bone-bruising, steel I-beams; they ricocheted through, hitting side to side before finally dropping onto a flat surface of mesh-filled insulation—the ceiling to something below. Too light to hold their weight, it promptly collapsed.
They fell heavily—
—right into a subway station crowded with people.
Of course they came down fighting, and they landed right on top of the token booth. The steel gave way and glass and coins exploded outward, shrapneling the unfortunate people nearby. Amid the screaming and the fleeing people, one man, braver than the others, hurried forward and began grabbing at the money scattered on the ground.
The crowd gaped as the dust settled and they saw the two creatures pounding on each other in a ragged crater in the platform floor. Sammael reared back and punched Hellboy, putting all of his weight into the blow and sending Hellboy flying backward onto a line of turnstiles. His weight pulled every one of the machines out of its base, flattening most into useless rectangles.
Sammael jumped at him, unsheathing the bone scythe in his arm on his descent. Hellboy rolled out of the way as Sammael jabbed downward with it, ramming it into the floor. He tried again, missed again, this time managing to embed it firmly into the side of a concrete column. Hellboy hauled himself to his feet, but before he could go after the demon, Sammael gave him a tooth-filled grin and yanked viciously on the column. Hellboy registered the groan of stressed metal, then part of the office mezzanine level above him gave way.
People ran in every direction, trying to get away from the falling debris—chunks of concrete, steel cables, office furniture, file boxes of papers, and more. The noise escalated to panicked shrieks as Sammael shook the last of the concrete from his bone scythe, then took a purposeful step toward a clump of people trapped and cut off from the exit. He spread his vein-riddled arms wide and roared at them, getting ready for the slaughter.
CLANG!
The demon jerked around as a desk flew into the air from the pile of post-mezzanine rubble. A bright red fist thrust from the debris and waved triumphantly.
“Hey, chunk-face!”
Sammael growled and crouched as Hellboy burst from the mi
nimountain of wreckage.
Hellboy grinned smugly and gave his overcoat a shake as he glared at Sammael and headed toward him. “You can do better than that. Big monster like you?” Before Sammael could react, Hellboy reached to the side without slowing, ripped one of the turnstile bars free and whacked him with it. “See?” Hellboy hit him again. “It hurts!” He began to beat on Sammael in earnest. “You shouldn’t hit people!”
Hellboy swung again, but this time Sammael was ready; he blocked it and ducked underneath, then swept the bar out of Hellboy’s grip hard enough to plant it deeply into the tile wall a few feet away. Hellboy tried to pull back but wasn’t quite quick enough to avoid Sammael’s hard uppercut.
The blow was powerful enough to send him soaring, right up and through the plate-glass window of the second level mezzanine above them. The people who’d been crowding up to the window and staring down now scrambled backward, their eyes wide, shock etched on their faces as they realized they weren’t out of harm’s way. Hellboy skidded past the staring office workers, scraping a jagged line across the linoleum with his stone hand. He still couldn’t stop himself from crashing into a row of backlit subway advertisements; his progress was finally halted when he careened off the wall and, along with the glass and metal pieces from the ads, he crashed into a line of oak benches and snapped one completely in half.
Hellboy had just about enough time to shake the stars from his head when Sammael climbed onto the mezzanine with him. Ignoring the pain and the blood dribbling from the glass pieces lodged all over his back, Hellboy pushed to his feet. He and Sammael had taken all of two steps toward each other when a childish wail cut through the air between them.
“My kittens! My kittens!”
Standing by the far wall was a little girl, maybe eight years old. Her face had done the instantly-blotchy-and-streaked-with-tears thing as she pointed frantically to Hellboy’s left. He jerked and his gaze tracked her extended finger to where a small, semi-crushed box sat on the bench next to the one Hellboy had just demolished. Inside, three spotted balls of black-and-white mewling fur.
“Aw, crap,” Hellboy said, just as Sammael charged.
Hellboy lunged to the side and scooped up the box just before Sammael pulverized the wooden seat with his bone scythe. It didn’t surprise Hellboy a bit that Sammael would be vindictive enough to attack something so small and helpless—demons had a tendency to be nasty like that. When his attack failed, Sammael turned on Hellboy, slashing at him wildly enough to scatter the few foolish onlookers still remaining. Hellboy retaliated with the Good Samaritan, but as before, his bullets did little permanent damage. He ran out of ammunition, and Sammael’s tongue shot out before he could get to a new clip. Obviously firepower wasn’t going to be an option.
The little girl screamed anew as Hellboy threw the kitten box high in the air, then blocked Sammael’s tongue-lashing with his stone hand, jerking his wrist in a circular motion and trapping the yellow appendage within his thick, unyielding fingers.
“Second date!” Hellboy yelled gleefully. “No tongue!”
Hellboy’s tail zipped forward and neatly caught the falling box of felines before they hit the ground. With the end of his tail still wrapped around the box, he jerked Sammael forward by his tongue and hurled him through the heavy glass that separated the mezzanine from the subway tracks below.
The glass shattered and the demon went through. Hellboy landed heavily on one side as Sammael’s weight jerked him off his feet, then the demon must have gotten a handhold on something, because he started dragging Hellboy toward the busted window, either to take him with him or to use him as a personal ladder. Damn, Hellboy thought as he juggled the box with his tail and fought against the pulling. I really thought he’d let go!
Hellboy leaned back, digging in against Sammael’s grip with his massive legs. It didn’t help; the linoleum beneath his feet wrinkled and folded in front of Hellboy as he was towed forward a foot, then another. Sweat squeezed out of his skin, mixing with the blood dripping from his forehead and nose, stinging his eyes and the cuts patterned down his cheeks. He grunted and pulled back again, but he knew it was a losing struggle. He was only millimeters away from the jagged edges of the window, nearly kissing the waiting spikes of glass—
Wooooooohhhhh!
Hurtling around the curve below, a subway train smashed dead center into the dangling Sammael.
The creature’s tongue abruptly released. Without Sammael’s body as a counterbalance, Hellboy fell backward, landing awkwardly on his butt. He was back up in an instant, but when he hurried to the opening and peered down, he knew he could relax, at least for the moment. Sammael’s motionless body was sprawled at the side of the tracks…well, except for the other pieces and parts of him that had caught the more unyielding front of the train. What remained of those were on the tunnel walls on either side of the tracks, sliding down the rounded surfaces in slow, nasty blobs.
“I hope that hurt,” Hellboy grunted. He turned at a noise behind him and saw the kid who’d hollered about her kittens; most of the other people had fled, but she’d worked her way up to within six or seven feet, showing a lot more courage than any of the adults. Her gaze darted between Hellboy’s face and the box of kittens he still had entwined in his tail.
Hellboy gave her what he hoped was a passable smile although he knew he probably didn’t look very approachable right now. He brought the box down and offered it to her. Inside, the three unharmed kittens meowed enthusiastically, tumbling over each other in the comical way that uncoordinated babies did. The girl took the box and made a show of inspecting the animals; when she saw they were fine, she nodded. “Thank you,” she said solemnly.
Hellboy ducked his head. “My job,” was all he said.
He left the child standing there and went back to the window just as a panicked-looking woman—probably her mother—pushed her way through the staring onlookers. At the opening, Hellboy cleared away the broken remains of the glass with his stone hand so he could jump down to the tracks and inspect Sammael’s body. There wasn’t much to see; where the bulk of the demon’s corpse had been was now a small pyre of black flame. There was no hiding it—not from Hellboy, and certainly not from the crowd of onlookers at the end of the platform. Another fun and fine cleanup job to which the muckety-mucks at the FBI could look forward and point backward at. He could almost hear the I told you so! litany from Father and Manning, and he hoped to God none of those train yuppies had been armed with a camera, or worse, a camcorder.
It was a surefire deal that cops, rescue, and maintenance and repair were on their way. Hellboy stood over the dwindling fire and watched it for as long as he dared, then finally turned to go, opting to head into the darker realms of the subway tunnels and away from the curious eyes of the rush-hour commuters.
He gave the smoking remains one last glance over his shoulder. “This time stay dead, will ya?” he rasped as he strode away.
As he rounded the curve and passed out of sight, behind him, the black flame of Sammael’s fire flickered and finally went out.
15
IN THE DARKNESS, THE BRACKISH WATER WAS SUDDENLY disturbed by two small circles of movement. The water rippled outward, barely discernible above the two unhatched eggs. The amber tone within them was lost to a bright inner glow of purple that grew to twin halos of hellish black light. So small…but then their diaphanous surface began to bulge and twist, starting their fantastic metamorphosis. It was only a matter of seconds until the embryos burst free, twisting and spinning like tiny pieces of agonized flesh. The barely born creatures swelled, each one’s parts distending and growing faster than the last.
Around the edge of a stack of water-eroded concrete piling, out of sight of the two hatchlings, Abe finally peered from his cramped hiding spot. There was no sign of Sammael, and Abe was badly wounded, far too much so to stay put and continue to play dead. He had to risk trying to get to the top or he was just going to stay wedged down here and bleed to death.
Never in his life had Abe thought there would be a time when he’d be glad to get out of the water, but now was certainly it. He surged up from the water and broke into air, choking and flailing at the sudden change. Then he dragged himself out of the pool and onto the filthy tile floor, gagging as his lungs tried to shake off the sudden excess oxygen. But there was no time for such luxuries as lying down and dying, so Abe staggered to his feet and lurched toward the nearest thing he could see that might give him shelter: a line of crumbling shower stalls.
Abe had barely made it into one when he heard the water back in the pool begin to churn. Shaking with pain, he pulled himself up and onto a small triangular seat built into the wall of the shower stall in which he’d chosen to hide, making sure his feet weren’t showing. He’d left a trail of blood, of course, but the floor was so filthy and the area so dark it was nearly impossible to notice it. Smell, however, was something different, and he had no idea whether whatever was hunting him was likely to pick up his scent; all he could do was hope the water would dilute it to irrelevance. Beyond the flimsy divider, he could hear the sloshing as the creatures—definitely two—heaved themselves out of the water. It wouldn’t be long until he found out, and frankly, Abe wasn’t even sure he was going to be conscious when that happened; the darkness around him was soaked with black-and-yellow sparkles, the precursors to passing out.
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