by Tim Lebbon
He had never asked her what she had eaten before he found her in Paris, and she never volunteered the information.
Now she had gone, and the full moon was bearing down. Whatever had instigated her flight, however tied up it all was with Blake's sudden resurfacing, Abe's one great fear was that Abby would, at last, find that which had eluded her for so long.
So he kept on her tail and watched the sky. And he promised himself that should the situation arise, he would kill her before she stained her soul by killing someone else.
* * *
Ministry of Defense, London — 1997
"WE HAVE ... THE situation ... under control," the minister said. She was a tall, charming brunette, but her eyes were hard.
"With respect, ma'am, you don't." Hellboy stared at the minister, impressed that she was able to return his gaze. She was nervous, he could see that, but she was also very much in control. Confident of her control, at least. His job was to blow that confidence out of the water and get some action, not words.
"Heathrow was a disaster, I'll admit that, and I'd like to offer our government's official thanks for your help."
"It was nothing."
"But I assure you, the conference will go ahead. I can't go into details, but the security arrangements for it are very stringent."
"Those police marksmen on the rooftops?" Hellboy asked.
"Yes, those," the minister said. She took a drink from her cup of tea, averting her eyes for the first time.
"Hmm. Pretty good. And the army guys hiding out in warehouses across Docklands? Tanks, helicopters ... that does sound stringent."
The minister raised her eyebrows, but she was not naïvé enough to ask how Hellboy had come by his information.
"And those SAS guys? Now, they're good. Dealt with them once back in the seventies. Impressed the hell out of me. No pun intended."
"I won't ask how you know the more refined details of our security arrangements, Hellboy. It doesn't surprise me. You're not ... normal. No offense."
"None taken." Hellboy pursed his lips and sat up straighter. His tail whipped at the floor and pulled threads from the ministers expensive carpet. What's normal? he thought. You see normal when you look in the mirror every morning Minister?
"But this is our security operation. We're acting in close liaison with several foreign governments, including your own, and everyone's happy with our arrangements."
"Have you polled them again since your largest airport was almost wiped out by dragons?"
The minister glared at Hellboy. Again, he was impressed. She's hard. Or maybe just stubborn. Sometimes the two get mixed up, and they mean very different things.
"What do you want from me?" she said.
"I want you to admit the possibility that you're not as well prepared as you thought."
The minister snorted, and Liz cut in. "Your Tornados got to Heathrow very quickly," she said. "I'm impressed. They were obviously on standby for any trouble."
"And?"
"The missiles they did manage to fire missed the dragons and destroyed Terminal Three. How many of the hundreds dead are a result of that? Friendly fire, I think they call it."
The minister stood and walked to the window. Hell, she is big, Hellboy thought. Six-two if she's an inch.
"I've heard about you, Miss Sherman," she said. "I don't trust you. You killed your family."
Hellboy raised his eyebrows and glanced at Liz, sensing the heat of rage simmering beneath her surface veneer of calm anger.
The minister turned to Hellboy. "And I don't trust you either."
"And what's my special reason?" he asked, voice as cold as an Arctic night.
"You're from hell."
The room fell silent. The minister and her bodyguard stood behind the desk, waiting for Hellboy and Liz to leave. Hellboy stared at the minister. A clock ticked, and somewhere ice chinked in a glass. She never offered us a drink, Hellboy thought.
He stood. The bodyguard moved slightly, bracing himself, hand already disappearing inside his jacket. Hellboy smiled at him, and the guy's face paled. "Ma'am," he said, "I understand your doubt, and I'm used to not being trusted. But if you don't get your head out of your butt, very soon you'll all know what hell is like." He strode from the room, feeling Liz burning with anger behind him.
* * *
They met Jim outside. He was leaning against a wall smoking, watching the cars crawling past in the never-ending London gridlock.
"No joy?" Jim asked.
"What do you think?" Hellboy said. He lit a cigarette and stood next to Jim.
"People just can't get beyond the norm," Jim said. "They see the surface of things, and if that's acceptable, they have no inclination to go deeper. Too much trouble. Too much thinking involved. And too much fear."
"Fear of the unknown?"
Jim shrugged, then shook his head. "Fear of knowing too much," he said. "Most people want a simple life. Look, over there. See that bus stop? Young woman waiting there, short skirt, leather boots, presenting a nice image?"
"Yeah," Hellboy said. "Cute." He glanced at Liz, and she rolled her eyes.
"There's a ghost standing behind her," Jim said. "Just standing there. No expression on its face. Arms down by its sides. It's looking at her, as though it can make itself felt if it really concentrates. Probably someone from her past, family or friend, but she'll never see it, never give it peace. She doesn't know how. Most people don't, and it's because they're scared of knowing too much. They'll happily buy a tabloid newspaper and think that's it, that's the news, that's what's happening. This celebrity's marrying that one, and all is good in the world tonight."
"I can't see a ghost," Hellboy said. He looked hard, glancing left and right to give his peripheral vision a chance. But she was just a young woman waiting for a bus.
"Maybe you're too optimistic," Jim said.
"I see it," Liz said. "The instant you told me it was there, I saw it."
Jim smiled sadly. "Then you're someone not scared of knowledge."
Hellboy threw down his cigarette and crushed it out. "Jim, we need your help. We have to get close to the Anderson Hotel, and we need to be able to move fast when the time comes."
"What do you think will happen now?"
"War," Liz said. "Fast and bloody. Blake is ready to start a war for what he believes in, and it's obvious from Miss Minister up there that she's ready to lose."
"We have to spend more time here," Jim said. "We have to try harder to make her understand."
"We go in there again, and they'll throw us in the deepest dungeons they can find," Hellboy said. "At least, they'll try. And whether they believe what we're telling them or not, the time will come very soon when their forces are forced to face what we're warning them about. Forewarned is forearmed, but at least we know they have some protection down there."
"We need to be ready to go after Blake," Liz said.
"Exactly." Hellboy rearranged his coat over his shoulders and delved into the pockets for another cigarette. Stumps. That's all he had. One day he'd have to buy some new ones. "And that's why you need to find us a helicopter, Jim."
Jim Sugg raised his eyebrows.
Hellboy smiled at him. And he kept smiling until Jim looked away, shaking his head.
"There are some favors I can call in," the ghost hunter said. "Damn, Hellboy, this is getting messy."
"Getting? Wait till this time tomorrow. I hate to say it, but by then this city will know what messy means."
Jim led them back to the embassy car, and within minutes they were fighting their way through the London traffic. It was almost two in the afternoon. The environmental conference had begun at midday. Somewhere a clock was ticking down, and Hellboy thought it might be only hours before the alarm started to sound.
* * *
North Sea — 1997
THE RUKH DRIFTED HALF a mile above the ocean, keeping watch. It was unnerved at being this far from its father and home, but it also knew that the time was clo
se for it to launch out from the New Ark one last time, and then home would be a different place entirely. It experienced freedom every minute of every day. Now, its father had said, it would have the opportunity to experience life as it should be lived. Below, the New Ark had been slowing down for more than an hour. Its wake stretched behind it like a scar on the ocean, and occasionally the wake itself was disturbed by things breaking the surface. Its bow pointed toward land — the first land it had seen for some time — and every one of the heavy hold doors along its deck was swinging open. Several large boats were being lowered along both sides of the ship, and the rukh could see shapes scurrying, walking, or sliding across the deck, filling the boats and readying to depart.
Several flying things rose from the New Arks holds, spiralling skyward and heading off to the west. The rukh knew its kin, and it also recognized the other things that took wing: the dragons, the phoenix, the griffin. Shapes that it did not recognize rose from another hold; too small to identify from this distance, there were so many of them that they seemed to form a cloud, drifting across the surface of the ocean.
And below the ocean there were shadows. From this high up the rukh could make out several areas where they were concentrated, a couple on either side of the ship and more farther away, ahead, heading toward land. It had seen the things breaking the surface sometimes, sliding out and back into the water as if testing an alien environment for just a few moments. There were hooks and claws, teeth and suckers, horns and other appendages that could kill, and the rukh was astonished at the variety of deadly weapons the things of the sea possessed. It made it grateful that it was of the sky, not the ocean, and that its own defenses were the beak and the claw. It had only ever used them for the hunt.
But now Father said there would be fighting and war. And it was ready.
The rukh performed a long, wide circle around the New Ark, and when it faced west again, it saw a spot on the horizon that did not belong there. The spot grew quickly, manifesting itself into a machine that had no right to be in the sky. The rukh could smell it from miles away, stinking up the air and slashing at it with spinning slices of metal. The giant bird rose into the clouds, drifted for a while, and then came back down, falling onto the noisy machine and smashing it from the heavens. It came apart as it fell, disgorging several waving shapes that screamed as they tumbled into the sea. The rukh watched them fall down, saw the splashes as they hit the surface, then the larger eruptions as things rose to feed.
The boats had left the sides of the New Ark and were powering toward land. There were six in total, containing all manner of its father's creations, all ready to serve and fulfill the purpose they had been given. "Find life," Father had told them all as he rescued them from Memory. "Find life, but first there will be death to mete out."
More shapes rose from the Ark and took flight. More shadows swam from underneath. It was as if the ship were bleeding itself into the water and the air, and by venting life it was giving it as well.
The rukh called out loudly, thrilled and excited and proud, and when the last shadow had left and the ship was still in the water, it turned westward and followed its cousins toward land. It had its own mission that Father had whispered in its mind that morning.
It could see its proud father on the bow of the ship. It knew that it was leaving him behind. But it knew also that it would see him again.
* * *
They were leaving their home, and the memory of the Memory, to find a new home out in the world. Their father had promised them this, and now the time had come. His thoughts followed them all, and in each alien mind he was saying something slightly different. But the messages amounted to the same thing: Now is your time.
* * *
Motorway approaching London — 1997
IT WAS ONLY AS SHE neared London that Abby began to worry about Blake sending something to stop her.
She had touched something there in the Memory, or been touched, and if she could do that, then so could he. She had hurt him on the day she escaped, both physically and mentally. The physical hurt would heal, but the mental hurt — the betrayal he must have felt — would be paining him still.
The thing that had given her the hints that led her here was unknowable. She could not trust it, appreciate it, understand it, and yet she was following its lead, rushing headlong into something about which she had no idea. She did not know what to expect, and she had foolishly believed that the thing had spoken only to her. But what if it had spoken to Blake as well? What if that thing had motives more convoluted and obscure than she could possibly imagine? Blake had deserted it there in the Memory, so it said, but perhaps it wanted Blake for its own. Maybe it would haul him into the Memory as well, thereby finding its own way out.
Maybe, perhaps, who knew ... there was too much going on in her head for her to insulate one problem from the next. She had been driving hard and was running out of fuel — one problem. She had no idea how she would get back onto the New Ark and confront Blake — another problem. And it was full moon tonight — there was another problem, the biggest of them all, and the one she would likely have to confront first.
She swerved back into the outside lane and overtook a line of buses. She kept speeding without realizing, glancing in her mirror to make sure the police weren't chasing her. She was driving against the clock, she knew that, and as the minutes ticked by, she was beginning to realize that there was less and less chance of her actually making it to London in time. And even if she did, she had no idea where the New Ark was or exactly what Blake had planned. It was hopeless. This whole journey was hopeless, desperate, and by fleeing the BPRD she had exposed herself to a danger that had been kept down for so long.
But I'm sick of the taste of deer!
Abby hissed and shook her head, trying to clear the thought from her mind.
That bastard I killed in Baltimore, so mocking, so full of life.
"Dammit, just drive. Drive!"
Maybe it's because of what he eats.
Sometime back in the darkness of her past, after the Memory but before her real life began with the BPRD, there were the years she had spent on the ship. She had consciously cast them from her mind the moment Abe found her and dragged her kicking and screaming out of the Seine. Something had changed for her that day. To begin with, she thought it was recognizing the strangeness of Abe's existence and realizing that people — things — like him could exist without having any link to Benedict Blake. But she had eventually come to understand that it was nothing to do with Blake, or what he meant, or what he had done. It was Abe, and the look of concern in his eyes. People could care for her, she had realized then. The world was much larger than she had ever believed.
But still alive in her dreams of that time onboard the New Ark — and always there as a memory after every full moon, whatever she had been fed, however satisfied she convinced herself she was with the deer and other cattle — was that tangy taste of warm flesh and rich blood, so peculiar, so distinctive of human meat.
Abby glanced across at the driver of a car she was passing. He looked at her and smiled, and she smiled back. As she passed he must have accelerated, because he remained alongside her for a few more seconds. Abby did not look again.
I could lead him off the road, climb into the back of his car, tear out his throat —
"No!" she screamed. She pressed down on the horn, leaning hard on the center of the steering wheel and lifting herself from the seat. Her car swerved across the motorway, cutting in front of the man and passing several feet from the nose of a bus filled with schoolchildren. Other horns blared, and she wanted to stop, run them off the road, watch the bloody red mess of the accidents —
"Oh, Abe," she said. "Abe, I'm sorry, I'm so damn sorry ... "
Abby drove on, trying to ignore the thoughts instead of cutting them out altogether, but they were there always, like the echo of a meal waiting to be tasted again.
And there was something else. Intruding into her thoughts
, then out again. Touching her from somewhere much farther back than she was prepared to go ever again. Intruding from the Memory, marking her and then withdrawing once more.
"Get out of my head," she said. In the distance came a rumble like distant thunder, or laughter.
* * *
Abe Sapien followed Abby's car. He watched it swerve across the highway and then straighten again. At one point he drew close enough behind to see her thumping the steering wheel, shaking her head, and shouting at herself in the mirror, as if her reflection were someone else. Several times he almost flashed and tried to pull her over, but he was afraid that to do so would only make her go faster, increase the chance of her crashing and burning away.
And besides, she obviously had a destination in mind. Unless something terrible happened, the best he could do was follow.
* * *
London Docklands — 1997
THEY FLEW ABOVE London, sun slanting in from the southwest and warming their skin. They were losing altitude, heading down toward the conference hotel, and they had yet to be challenged.
"Thought you said security was tight," Hellboy shouted above the roar of the rotors.
"This is an official chopper," Jim replied.
"On unofficial business." Liz was smoking her third cigarette of the journey. She was doing her best not to look out the windows, but the sun came in and made interesting shapes of her exhalations. She stirred them with her hand and tried to make sense of them. She wondered whether this was the sort of thing Jim had seen to begin with, before he could see ghosts for real.
