Despite the weight of the creatures trying to keep him down, Hellboy managed to stagger to his feet and turn toward her, just in time to see her body shake in a surge of white-hot energy. The best he could manage was a weak, “Liz—”
The water at her feet blasted outward as a concave shockwave of fire exploded outward and devoured every single thing in its path.
Something was ringing in his ears.
No, wait—it was a pulse, a…something. A heartbeat, that was it. His own heartbeat.
Hellboy sucked in air painfully, then nearly retched at the stench of smoke and cooked flesh. It felt like it took every bit of strength he had left just to throw off the weight of the two dead Sammaels still draped over him like an unwanted blanket; the sight of their half-charred bodies made Hellboy gag and crawl away, but when he struggled to his feet and staggered forward, he crashed into a pile of blackened bones, yet another Sammael corpse, this one grilled almost beyond recognition. His mouth was cracked and dry, coated inside and out with ash—water would have been a great and wonderful thing, but it was a sure bet he wouldn’t find any around here. There was a faint orange-and-red glow left over from the conflagration, and for as far as he could see, nearly everything was half-buried in a cracked, bone-dry bed of mud.
He spied Liz a few feet away and headed toward her, intending to move faster than he found he actually could. Hellboy’s legs felt like toasted petrified logs, but at least he was alive, at least she was alive, too. On the far side of the room he caught a glimpse of Myers, okay but a little singed around the edges as he clawed his way out from behind a rock, and too groggy to acknowledge anything. Hellboy shook his head, but he still couldn’t hear anything—Liz’s firestorm had knocked out his hearing. Hopefully it would come back, but in the meantime…
He turned around, his eyes widening. Only a few feet away was Grigori, bare-chested and resplendent in his black robes. Amazingly, the man was laughing; Hellboy couldn’t hear it, but he could see Grigori’s face working, watch his wide-stretched smile expose teeth and his thin body shake with mirth, as though the dark man was witnessing some absurd comedy.
Something, instinct perhaps, made Hellboy twist around and look to the side.
Just in time to see the coldly beautiful Ilsa raise her hammer and, in a simple and brutal move, whack him solidly on top of the head.
23
HELLBOY LIFTED HIS HEAD—
Headache.
—slowly. His skull felt like a big old piece of lead balanced on his neck, and there was a certain spot right in the top center that was throbbing worse than the rest of it. What the hell had happened? Oh yeah…that walking blond iceberg had smacked him with something hard. A hammer, that was it. Being hit with a hammer…now that ticked him off.
Hellboy started to raise a hand to his head, then found he couldn’t. He moved his head a little too quickly as he tried to see why and got a significant stab of discomfort across the crown of his scalp; painful but not debilitating, and it was lessening as the seconds passed. But why couldn’t he move?
His eyes were still squeezed shut and he forced them open and tried to blink away the double dose of grogginess caused by Liz’s firestorm and Ilsa’s blow. Man, he was learning he really had to watch out for the women in his life.
A few more seconds and feeling was coming back to his limbs. Until now he hadn’t realized he wasn’t actually sitting; rather, he was standing and chained firmly to some kind of massive wooden yoke. He tested the chains but they held, and besides, he wasn’t at full strength yet. But when he got there…
In the meantime, Hellboy studied his surroundings. More chambers, more space—Rasputin’s tomb must be full of catacombs and secret places. This latest one was large and churchlike, surrounded by dozens of funeral niches; in each alcove stood a shadowy, crumbling statue holding a sword aloft, and no doubt every single stiff statue had some great and secret meaning. Spaced evenly around the room were tall stone and marble columns, several of which flanked a number of huge mechanical gears. Hellboy would have chalked the machinery up to being more leftovers from Kroenen’s crazed preoccupations except that in the center of everything, where in a normal church an altar might be, was some kind of huge solar system model. It glittered and shimmered in the oil lamps set around the space’s high ceiling.
A noise bled into his eardrums as his hearing returned, small, rhythmic thuds undercut with the sounds of delicate glass breaking. Still blinking, Hellboy followed the sound and saw Ilsa; she’d set out all the grenade belts and was methodically working on destroying the timer on each grenade with that nasty hammer of hers. So much for the grenades as an artillery option.
Hellboy’s vision was clearing and his thinking process was rapidly doing the same. His searching gaze eventually found Myers, tied to a stone pillar next to the main nave. Although the front of him was heavily stained with blood, the agent didn’t look that badly hurt—at least not much more than he’d been back in the egg chamber—but Hellboy had doubts about what the future held for the guy; beneath Myers’s feet was a channel clearly meant for blood, and it led to an immense slab that looked like it was made of polished white marble. Slabs were never a good thing, and big slabs were even worse.
But where the hell was Liz?
Over there, and didn’t it just figure that the man standing over her was the gloomy guy himself, Grigori. Lying at his feet, Liz was clearly unconscious. Dressed in black ceremonial robes, Grigori had his back to Hellboy, but Hellboy could still see that the man was reading from an open, ancient leather book. Splayed across the wall in front of him in cracked paint was a mural of the angel Abbadon. In the mural, the figure had lots of dark, curly hair, spiky wings and proudly held a key aloft.
Grigori lifted his chin and spoke in a booming voice. “And I looked and beheld an angel, and in his hand was the key to the bottomless pit!”
What was this—a sacrifice? Of Liz? Hellboy tensed, his headache forgotten along with the hundreds of Sammael injuries along the rest of his body. He could feel fury building inside him, heating up his insides, making his blood pound in his veins.
A few feet away, Grigori waved grandly at the huge piece of marble, and for the first time, Hellboy realized that even though Grigori wasn’t facing him, the guy knew very well that he was conscious. “These were the words I heard as a peasant boy in Tobolsk,” Grigori said. “And now, that door…” He stopped for a moment and inclined his head respectfully toward the marble slab. “Sent by the Ogdru Jahad so that they might at long last enter our world.”
Finished with the grenade belts, Ilsa put away her hammer and strode up to where Hellboy was chained. She stared at him with an expression that was almost adoration. “You are the key!” she told him excitedly. “The right hand of doom!”
Hellboy scowled at her, but his gaze was drawn inexorably back to the marble slab. For the first time, he noticed the engravings on it, the three hand imprints.
“What did you think it was made for?” Ilsa demanded triumphantly. She gestured at it jerkily. “Go on—open the locks!”
Hellboy stared first at her, then at his own huge right arm. Was he seeing what he thought he was seeing? Was this really what this part of his own body had been made for? He knew he shouldn’t but at the same time, there was that continuous curiosity, that itch that screamed to be scratched. What exactly would happen if he did?
Myers’s voice momentarily cut into Hellboy’s thoughts. “Don’t do it!” Myers yelled. “Don’t do it!” The agent pulled frantically at the ropes holding him and scrambled his feet along the floor, but it was useless—he couldn’t get free.
Ilsa took two long steps and kicked the agent hard in the face. “Silence!” she snarled. Myers’s head snapped back against the pillar and blood sprayed from his nose and lips, but he didn’t pass out. Still full of fight, Myers spat a mouthful of blood at her in retaliation, but Ilsa had already moved out of range.
Far above them, a metal dome slid open, revealing the huge, b
loated-looking moon. As Hellboy twisted his neck and stared up at it, the moon’s lower left edge suddenly grayed out—the start of a full lunar eclipse. The solar system panel monitored the eclipse’s progress, ticking along as the bright surface of the moon was slowly consumed by darkness.
Ilsa sidled up to Hellboy and gave him a radiant, sinister smile. “Imagine it,” she cooed. “An Eden for you and—” She pointed at the still unconscious Liz. “Her.”
Hellboy ground his teeth. “No.”
Surprised, Grigori turned to face Hellboy at last. “No?” He tilted his head, then gestured at Liz with his palm up, like a benevolent saint pardoning a sinner. His voice was calm, utterly reasonable. “In exchange for her life, then,” he told Hellboy. “Open the door.”
Her life? For a stupid door? No—that couldn’t be. Things couldn’t come to that, this couldn’t actually be happening. Was it? But he couldn’t open that door, he wouldn’t. It was a tormenting thing to have to do, but Hellboy shook his head. No.
Instead of looking angry, Grigori’s expression was one of infinite patience. “As you wish.” His voice was almost sad. He crouched next to Liz, then leaned forward until his face was directly over hers. A slight tilt to the side and Grigori whispered something in Liz’s ear that Hellboy couldn’t hear.
Liz’s body suddenly arched high enough to see the space between the small of her back and the ground. When her mouth opened, a bright plume of energy, red and delicate, wafted from her lips and Grigori pulled back and greedily inhaled it. A flash between her mouth and his, and as quickly as it had tensed, Liz’s body went limp.
“She’d dead,” Grigori said simply.
For a moment, Hellboy lost everything—his thoughts, his air, his heartbeat. Then he found it all again…and screamed. “No! Nooooooooo—” He surged against the chains that held him, but only one gave way. Ilsa, with her cold, evil smile, was a little too close; Hellboy gave her a swat that sent her stumbling backward and clutching at her face.
While Hellboy fought to free his other hand, Grigori stood and watched the eclipse, seemingly indifferent to Hellboy’s torment. Without taking his gaze from the disappearing moon, Grigori told Hellboy, “Her soul awaits you on the other side. If you want her back…” Finally his eyes grazed Hellboy’s struggling figure. “Open the door and claim her.”
No matter what he tried or how hard he pulled, the chain around Hellboy’s other wrist still held him fast—they must have put a spell on it, strengthened it with something that Hellboy couldn’t fight. Grigori’s words reverberated in his brain, each repetition becoming louder than the last.
“Open the door and claim her.”
But then, what about the rest of the world? What about Myers, and the B.P.R.D., and all the innocent blood that would be spilled at the hands of something unnameable that might be set free? Did he even know what that was?
Not a clue.
But if he didn’t do what Grigori wanted, then Liz was gone forever. Irretrievable. Dead.
Still tugging futilely at the chain, Hellboy tried just as hard to find an answer to his dilemma…but he couldn’t. Abruptly the room darkened, and when he looked up, he realized the moon was almost totally eclipsed. There was no more time left for decision making.
It was now or never.
Liz…
Hellboy dropped his gaze back to Liz’s still, silent form. When he spoke, his voice was a hoarse whisper.
“For her.”
Grigori looked away from the moon, then stepped over Liz and moved close to Hellboy. His mouth twisted as he saw Broom’s rosary wrapped around Hellboy’s wrist, and with a sneer he ripped it free and tossed it behind him; it slid to within a few feet of where Myers was still bound to one of the stone pillars.
Grigori’s dark eyes were shining like pits of oil as he studied Hellboy. “Names hold the power and nature of things,” he told Hellboy solemnly. “Mine, for example—Rasputin. The crossroads.” He smiled thinly. “And the crossroads I have become.” He glanced up at the moon, then turned back to Hellboy. The tone of his voice dropped to a deep bass rumble. “Your true name,” he intoned. “Anung-un-Rama. Repeat it. Become the key!”
Hellboy swallowed and glanced at Myers. The agent was shaking his head violently—
No no no no no!
—but Hellboy couldn’t help him now, he couldn’t help anyone but Liz. He didn’t want to. The best he could do was hope that once he’d done what he had to in order to let Liz live again, he could somehow undo it on the other end.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
“Anun-un-Rama…”
And then everything changed.
Suddenly, his stone hand went kiln-red and a line of ancient symbols of fire burned themselves around the heavy stone. For a short, stunning moment, as flames engulfed his entire body, he knew exactly what Liz felt like in her moments of supreme glory.
Hellboy roared as power and heat coursed through his body and huge, majestic horns, larger than any he’d ever had or imagined he would, burst from the nubs he’d kept so carefully shaven all these years. His voice was loud enough to shake the walls of the cavernous room and clouds of light and energy boiled out of his mouth.
Myers’s jaw dropped open as he cringed back against his post and stared at Hellboy. No, not Hellboy, but someone…some thing different—
The new Prince of Hell.
Inebriated with power, unstoppable, Hellboy freed his other chained arm with barely a thought. Consumed with arrogance and fire, he smiled as he strode forth and looked down on everyone else in the room. His shadow fell across the edge of the ancient white marble slab, then crept across the marble’s surface on its own accord and stayed, until it had completely covered the surface and turned it as black as obsidian.
“No—don’t do it!” Myers screamed from where he was imprisoned. “Listen to me!”
Smiling widely, the new Hellboy ignored the FBI agent and instead jammed his enormous hand into the first imprint on the slab, seated it firmly—
Clack!
—and twisted it.
A beam of light, crimson and thick, shot from the slab into the sky. Strong enough to be visible all over Moscow, strong enough to reach all the way to the darkened side of the moon, it bathed everything in a red, dirty glow. Symbols began to flicker in and out of view on each side of it, etching fire-tinged symbols into the very air. The red column of light spread, crawling outward to cut into the universe itself, rippling everything around it and haloing anything that was its own source of light. The sky was a vast ocean of stars beyond the ruby pillar of brightness, where something darker and unseen began to stir from a long-uninterrupted slumber.
Hellboy reborn watched with glee as the first imprint on the slab sizzled, then reformed into a strange, twisted glyph burned into the stone in scarlet. Overhead, far out of range of sight or reason but still sensed, the unspeakably enormous creature called Ogdru Jahad—the Seven Gods of Chaos—shifted and broke free, uncurling its gelatinous limbs, expanding and reaching…
With his face split into a wide, hellish grin, Hellboy thrust his stone hand into the second imprint—
Clack!
—and turned.
Watching in horror and disbelief, Myers refused to surrender to the idea that this was it, this was the end of…well, the end of everything. It took all of his strength and more flexibility than he’d ever dreamed he possessed, but Myers finally got one arm free of the flesh-grating ropes wound around him. Looking frantically, his gaze stopped on the rosary a foot or so away; people always says good things come in small packages, and size-wise, this sure wasn’t much…but it was going to have to do it all.
Up at the altar’s solar control panel, Grigori lifted his arms toward the wide expanse of sky visible through the open door. Lightning crackled across the heavens, skirting around the streaming scarlet light and sending flashes of electricity onto the impossibly gargantuan tentacles that were just beginning their reach into the earthly plane. Rev
eling in the first signs of the otherworldly arrival, Grigori sucked in air and began to laugh manically. “The final seal!” he shrieked. “OPEN IT!”
Myers wasn’t sure if Hellboy heard Grigori’s command or if he was just acting on his own volition. The diabolic smile that had grown with the turning of each portion of the slab had widened so much that it now looked as though the top and bottom of Hellboy’s skull might split; his horns were huge and sharp, glistening blood-red in the light. Just as Myers closed his hand around the rosary, Hellboy shoved his stone hand forward and fit it into the last engraving—
Clank!
When Ilsa saw Myers lift the holy necklace, she lunged at him. Without pausing, he slugged her full in the face, hard enough to send her staggering backward until she went down. He held up the rosary triumphantly, then, hoping he was in time, flung it at Hellboy with all his might, screaming, “Remember who you ARE!”
Caught in the millisecond pause before the final turn, the reborn Hellboy snagged it instinctively out of midair with his free hand. When his red fingers folded around it, smoke poured from between his fingers and he automatically tossed it away, not noticing that it landed next to the grenade belts with the destroyed timers.
Instead of turning the final imprint, Hellboy opened his palm and stared at the charred imprint in the center of it: the cross, surrounded by beads. For a long, strange second, the demonic Hellboy blinked at his injury with a half-puzzled, half-hurt expression. Then he looked over at Grigori, who was waiting expectantly for the completion of his precious ritual.
With a blood-curdling scream, Hellboy yanked his stone hand out of the slab’s depression, reached up with both hands, and savagely broke off his horns. Blinding light and energy spilled from the stumps, making everyone throw their hands up to protect their eyes. Spinning around with one horn still clutched in his big hand, Hellboy thrust it forward—
Hellboy Page 19
