“Captain Creaghan!” the man shouted. “Good God, sir, come on. You must see this!”
“It can wait, Agent Rickman,” Creaghan insisted. “It can . . .”
“No sir,” Rickman responded. “No sir, it really can’t!”
Rickman glanced nervously at Hellboy and Anastasia, then raised his eyebrows. His interest piqued, Creaghan began to accompany the man, with Burke and Carruthers bringing up the rear.
“What about them?” Rickman asked, gesturing toward Hellboy and Anastasia.
“What about them?” Creaghan sneered.
“I think we’re going to need him,” Rickman explained, and pointed at Hellboy.
“Say, what is this all about?” Creaghan demanded.
“You won’t believe me if you haven’t seen it first, sir,” Rickman declared. “Really.”
Simultaneously, they all realized that Rickman wasn’t nervous. Not at all. The man was terrified.
“Okay,” Creaghan relented. “Let’s go. But this stays here in this camp. I’ll not have the Americans sticking their noses into our business. Bloody assholes.”
Agent Rickman led them all to a tent where several people, including two MI5 agents, and Jenny and Larry from Anastasia’s team, waited outside.
“What are all these people doing here?” Creaghan demanded.
“She . . . she asked for them, sir,” Rickman stammered.
“Who? Who in the bloody hell are you talking about?” Creaghan barked. “What in Christ’s name is wrong with you people?”
Rickman stared at the sand beneath his feet.
“It’s Lady Catherine, sir,” Rickman said. “She wants to speak with Hellboy.”
Silence. Hellboy and Anastasia stepped warily forward, and Creaghan stood his ground, staring at the tent in front of him. Burke and Carruthers watched their superior officer a moment, but then they stepped aside. In that moment of silence, Hellboy thought Creaghan would shout and berate his men for what he would consider their foolishness. The Captain even opened his mouth, as if to question or clarify his subordinate’s words.
But before he could speak, they all could hear another voice. The delicate, feminine voice of a woman, speaking in soft, slow, dreamy cadence.
“Is he here yet?” the voice asked. “Is Hellboy here?”
“Good God,” Creaghan whispered.
Hellboy pushed past him, and then Creaghan followed. A moment later, Anastasia joined them.
Professor Lahiri crouched in the center of the tent, eyes wide as if he were enchanted. He did not react at all to their entrance, and Hellboy assumed that the man had, indeed, been put into some sort of trance.
“Hellboy?” the voice said again.
Hellboy stepped around Lahiri. On the floor, propped up on the black rubber body bag in which it had been kept, was the head of Lady Catherine Lambert. Several inches of spinal column protruded like a useless limb from the bottom of her neck and lay like a lizard’s tail on the black surface. There was a huge bite out of one cheek and teeth marks on her forehead.
But Lady Catherine’s eyes were bright and intelligent, and her mouth curled into a smile as Hellboy appeared in her line of sight.
“Good,” she said to herself. “And Captain Creaghan and Dr. Bransfield as well.”
Hellboy was aware that the others would be completely unprepared for this. He had spoken with the dead many times, but even a woman as extraordinary as Anastasia, or a man as formidable as Captain Creaghan, could not help but be horrified and probably revolted at the mere idea.
“Stay back,” he warned them, but more for their peace of mind rather than their safety. After all, Lady Catherine’s reanimated remains were nothing but her head. What could a head do?
“Why did you call for me?” Hellboy asked. “And why for the others?”
“I called for the others because each of them had friends and associates amongst the archaeological team that died with me. I am the only way in which they might communicate with their friends, to put them at ease. I was performing a service,” she said kindly, with none of the haughtiness Hellboy might have expected from a British royalty, even twice removed.
He didn’t point out that speaking to a disembodied head would not necessarily ease the minds of those who had seen friends murdered.
“But it was most important that we speak,” the head continued. “You must speak with Dr. Bransfield and Captain Creaghan. They hear me now, but I doubt they are truly listening. You must insist that everyone leave now.”
“Where are you now?” Hellboy asked, curious. Lady Catherine was a spirit. Her head was lifeless, but being controlled by the woman’s essential force, or soul, if you believed in such things. Which Hellboy did.
“We are in the oasis,” Lady Catherine explained. “All of us. Hazred’s magicks trapped us here, but we have one another for company, and so will not be lonely.”
“You’re damned to stay there forever?” Anastasia asked from behind him, and Hellboy marveled that she could even bring herself to address the savagely mutilated head.
“Until Mar-Ti-Ku has been defeated,” Lady Catherine answered.
“Okay, you’re going to have to give me a little more to go on, ma’am,” Hellboy insisted. “Who is Hazred? Who is this Mar-Ti-Ku that the Persian soldiers referred to? Are there any more of those zombie guys? Where were you kept after you disappeared from camp? What . . .”
“Please, Hellboy, I cannot keep up this communication for very long. Already we have spread our essences very thin to reach you. I will answer what I can, but the shroud of death has clouded life. Much is even now lost to me. Hazred is a sorceror, and leader of the oasis people. He worships Mar-Ti-Ku, an ancient Sumerian magician who was banished from our world eons ago, but yearns to return. I do not know if there are any more soldiers.
“Now, you must go,” she urged. “You are not safe here.”
“I don’t think so,” Hellboy said. “I’m sorry, but I want to have a little talk with this Hazred guy. You can’t just go slaughtering people and not expect some repercussions.”
“I plead with you to change your mind, but if you persist, I will say only this: be careful of the spiders. Besides the hideous and sadistic face of Hazred, they are all I can recall of my captivity. That, and water,” she said.
“Watch out for spiders,” Hellboy repeated. “Got it. You can’t remember anything else?”
“Nothing, and now my slaughtered comrades call to me from the oasis of Ammon. I must return or risk the dissipation of our souls,” she said. “Please go, for all your sakes.”
“Lady Catherine?” Hellboy asked.
But Lady Catherine’s eyes rolled back in her head. Her tongue lolled out of her mouth. The remnant of her spine twitched once and then was still.
“Christ, I think I’m going to be sick!” Creaghan muttered, and pushed past the tent flap out into the night.
Arun still crouched on the ground by Lady Catherine’s severed head. His eyes were wide and vacant, and he crooned a haunting melody so low that none of them had noticed it before.
“Professor Lahiri,” Hellboy said. “Professor, hello? Can you hear me?”
“What?” Arun mumbled as his senses returned to him. “What happened?”
“Why don’t you cover her up?” Hellboy suggested, and gestured to where the bloody head lay on top of the body bag.
Arun looked down at the head, shrieked in horror, and scrambled away from it as far as the tent’s confines would allow. He panted for a few moments and then mumbled, “She . . . she called to me. I remember it all now. Oh, my dear God.”
“Why you?” Anastasia asked.
“I was just passing by the tent, and I heard her whispering to me,” Arun explained, trembling. “I want to go now. I want to leave Egypt.”
“How could you have heard her whispering if her head was still inside the body bag?” Anastasia inquired.
“I want to go home,” Arun said again. He stood and pushed past them, then stepped
out of the tent.
“Give him until morning,” Hellboy advised. “He’ll be a lot more reasonable when the sun rises. His education could be helpful in getting to the bottom of this.”
“I think he’s out of his depth,” Anastasia explained. “Even the most detailed history books only refer very generally to the lost army of Cambyses. Many people believed it a myth, though obviously we now have proof that it wasn’t. If he wants to go home, I’m inclined to let him. What help will he be in searching out this Hazred person Lady Catherine mentioned?”
Hellboy searched Anastasia’s eyes for some sense of the revulsion and, more than likely, fear that he expected to find there. He found none of it.
“You’re awfully calm, considering what we just witnessed,” he observed. “I’ve been doing this for decades, and I still get creeped out talking to dead people.”
“Maybe you’ve forgotten,” she replied. “This is hardly the strangest night I’ve spent with you.”
Hellboy smiled. “Ah, yes. Corfu. Now that was weird.”
“Don’t get me started,” Anastasia said, and shivered. “Okay, I’ll try to talk him into sticking around. But I wouldn’t bet on it. So what now?”
“Now?” he repeated. “Now we try to get some sleep. Tomorrow morning I’m going for a swim in that lake. That’s where those zombie soldiers came from, right?”
Anastasia frowned.
“What, you didn’t expect us to leave, did you?” Hellboy asked.
“No,” she confessed. “I’ve known you too long for that. It’s just that this is my investigation. I ought to be with you wherever you go.”
Hellboy wanted to argue. The idea of Anastasia in any kind of jeopardy had always disturbed him. But he had learned a long time ago that she was a resolute and capable woman. And this was her show, after all.
Still . . .
“You don’t have any scuba gear handy, do you?” he asked.
“Of course not,” she said, and smirked. “We’re in the middle of the desert.”
“Well, no diving for you I guess,” he said. “Sorry.”
Anastasia opened her mouth as if to reply, then shook her head and slowly let out a breath.
“Be careful,” she warned.
“Hey, careful’s my middle name.”
“You don’t even have a last name!” she pointed out. “Big, silly bastard. Come on, then. Let’s get some sleep.”
Anastasia turned to go, but Hellboy didn’t follow her. Two steps from the tent’s flap, she stopped.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Lady Catherine,” he explained.
Hellboy turned, his tail sweeping through the tent. His hooves punched the ground, and in one place, tore the canvas tent floor. He knelt by the severed head of Lady Catherine Lambert. As gingerly as possible, he lifted the woman’s gory head and slid it back into the body bag from which Professor Lahiri had removed it.
When he stood, he lifted the body bag and carried it with him. Anastasia looked at him strangely.
“We may need her help,” Hellboy explained.
CHAPTER SIX
—
They exited the tent and found Captain Creaghan standing outside.
“Did you want something?” Anastasia asked him.
“Want something,” he sneered. “Well, it’s my bleedin’ tent, isn’t it?”
“Oh, I guess it is,” Anastasia replied.
They began to walk away.
“Hey!” Creaghan called. “What the hell do you think you’re doing with that?”
Hellboy and Anastasia turned. It was obvious what Creaghan meant. But the man couldn’t bring himself to refer to the severed head in the bag as Lady Catherine. He couldn’t even describe the object in the body bag, not after what he had seen inside his tent.
“Those remains must be returned to England, Hellboy,” Creaghan declared. “Dr. Bransfield should know better.”
“Before you leave for England, I’ll give Lady Catherine back to you,” Hellboy vowed. “But for now, she stays with me. We may still need her help.”
“You’re out of your fucking mind!” Creaghan cried.
“Really?” Hellboy asked. “Well, if you insist, I could just put her back in your tent. But you never know when she’s going to have something else to tell us.”
Creaghan stared at him, eyes narrowed with fury. He turned his hateful gaze on Anastasia, who remained expressionless.
“Don’t lose it,” Creaghan finally said.
“My head?” Hellboy replied, and could not fight back a wide grin. “I’ll do my best not to.”
Anastasia cracked up at his side, and the two of them walked back toward her tent, laughing. It was in poor taste, certainly, but after all they’d been through, the absurdity of it all was too much for them.
As they walked away, Hellboy heard Creaghan muttering behind them.
“Goddamned bloody asylum, this is,” the man said. “What next?”
Which Hellboy thought was an excellent question.
An even better question, of course, was where he was going to sleep that night. He didn’t have a tent or even a bedroll. The obvious answer was that he would spend the night with Anastasia. He knew she would offer. He simply wasn’t certain how comfortable either one of them would be with that arrangement. No matter how happy they were with the relationship as it was, lying together in the dark silence of the night, sweet memories would surely resurface. Such things could lead to more physical sweetness that would likely be regretted in the morning.
Love, in all its forms, was a dangerous thing.
They reached the opening of Anastasia’s tent and he began to follow her inside. She turned and held out a hand to stop him.
“I don’t think so,” she said sternly.
“Oh,” he fumbled, “I’m sorry. I just thought . . .”
She laughed. “Not you, silly. Just leave the head outside.”
Anastasia lay on her side and watched Hellboy sleep. They had talked for nearly an hour about old times, and more importantly, about what had occupied their lives in the five years since they had last been in one another’s company. Then they had stretched out on the floor of the tent, she in her thermal sleeping bag, he on a couple of extra blankets, with one thrown over him for good measure. It was very cold outside. Even though Hellboy wasn’t very susceptible to these climate changes, Anastasia knew that such small human acts, like curling up under a blanket, were a great comfort to him.
In truth, that had been the fundamental reason for the failure of their relationship: no matter how much they cared for one another, their intimacy served to constantly remind Hellboy that he was not, in fact, human. It was debilitating for both of them.
But as she watched him now in the innocence of sleep, she missed those times. His heavy brow, usually so stern with determination, was smooth with serenity. With each breath, his nostrils flared and she could hear a rumble deep in his chest, a profound purring from a lion in repose.
Hellboy exhaled warm air, with the faint scent of something spicy and exotic. Anastasia inhaled at the same moment, and the sensation of warmth and intimacy was very sensuous for her. She was happy he was asleep. If he were not, the moment might have led her to break through the wall of friendship they had so carefully constructed.
Instead, she remained content just to watch him and remember. They had spent more than a year gallavanting around the world from dig to dig. He had been her constant companion, her teacher and student. They learned from one another as they loved. But the scrutiny their relationship earned had been too much for both of them.
Anastasia bit her lip with regret. She watched Hellboy’s chest rise and fall, recalled so well the feel of that massive chest beneath her, his red flesh always hot to the touch, like laundry fresh from the dryer. During their time as lovers, even in midwinter, Anastasia had never needed a blanket or spread. Hellboy had been her own personal furnace.
The memory brought a smile to her face and tempta
tion to her heart. She reached out to where he lay, his eyelids flowing with REM motion, and wondered what Hellboy dreamed about. He never talked about his dreams.
Gently, she stroked his face and the stubble on his head. She ran a finger over the rough surface of the stump of one of his horns, and shivered. Hellboy kept them filed down, and apparently had done so for forty years. Horns didn’t fit his self-image. Of course, neither did a tail, or hooves, but the horns he could actually do something about. Still, Anastasia would have liked to see what he would look like if he allowed his horns to grow back.
Finally, she lay back down and tried to sleep. But the moment she closed her eyes, the fear washed over her. Anastasia had masked her terror and revulsion upon seeing Lady Catherine’s reanimated head. Her explanation was real — she had experienced much worse with Hellboy. But that did not mean the fear went away. The horrors of her time in captivity at the Obsidian Danse still haunted her, and each new experience with the paranormal only served to heighten her terror.
But she was no coward. She would not succumb to the urge to flee. Hellboy was determined to discover precisely what happened to Lady Catherine’s archaeological team. Anastasia would not allow him to go into such danger alone. Not to mention that, it was, indeed, her job to investigate the slaughter.
She denied her fear, but it lingered.
When Anastasia finally drifted off, she did not sleep well at all.
Dawn swept rapidly across the desert. A short time later, it became too hot to sleep within the tents, and even the most exhausted members of Dr. Bransfield’s team roused themselves and trudged out into the arid Sahara morning.
Anastasia ran a hand through her strawberry-blond hair, tied it back with a rubber band, and pulled her baseball cap snug onto her head. She blinked back the harsh light before donning a pair of dark aviator sunglasses. They were a disadvantage at times, distorting her visual perception in ways she didn’t really understand. But in the early morning, with the sun reflecting off the sand at a vicious angle, they were necessary.
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