Hellboy: Unnatural Selection (17 page)

"Gal, are you sure you're ready for another sending?"

"Never ready," Gal muttered.

"Maybe we should wait?"

Gal shook his head but did not answer. In the stark moonlight, as the mist thickened and settled on their clothes like rain, Richard thought he looked like a walking corpse.

"They chased it," Richard said. He had cast a spell of course and was hunched over the book, reading by moonlight. It gave the words a particularly sharp edge. "It had taken a child, a farmers baby, and the father was killed trying to fight it off. But they thought it was wounded. Its familiar call was higher and more frequent. They saw a shadow as they ran — the creature with the child in its mouth. Out of the village and across the moor toward the rock like a pointing finger. There." Richard nodded at a distant hillside, where a single weathered rock pointed skyward. He set off, and Gal followed.

Richard kept the
Book of Ways
open before him, staring down and trusting instinct not to walk him into a hole. The spell of course was still rich and potent, and he could still see the truth threaded between Zahid de Lainree's words and diagrams. The book's stories were as hidden as the creatures it talked about.

"How did they wound it?" Gal asked.

Richard stared at the book and shook his head. "It doesn't say. I suppose even a werewolf will develop an itch with a pitchfork in its throat."

"Father will use this well," Gal said, quieter than before. "It'll be one of his secret weapons. It can sit among people forever until he needs it to do his bidding. No tentacles or fire breathing, you see."

Richard heard no jest behind his brothers words. "If you want me to go on, then keep quiet. This isn't easy." He stopped and looked down at the book again, half closing his eyes so that the true path of the words could shine through. "Here," he said. "This is where it made its first stand. Dropped the child. Hid behind a rock — that one there — and pounced as the pursuers reached where we are now." Richard looked at the huge rock, half expecting the werewolf to appear from within its shadow again. But the moor was as silent and secretive as ever.

"First
stand?"

"Yes." Richard squatted and looked again at the book. "It killed two men and a woman here, and took more wounds. But each cut made it more ferocious. It tore one of the men apart while others were spearing it. And then it picked up the child ... "

"And?" Gal said after a pause. "Which way did it go then?"

"It picked up the child and killed it in front of everyone. It wasn't hungry anymore. Just wanted to make a point." Richard stood and started walking again, conscious of Gal following him.
Is this really us?
he thought.
Do we really want something that'll do such a thing. There are wonders in the Memory but monsters too. Have we been doing this for so long that we've forgotten how to differentiate?

Gal walked past him, still hunched into his coat. "This way?" he said, pointing. "That way? Which way, Rich?"

Richard closed his eyes and pointed. "There. Down into the valley. It was running faster now, and the people were terrified at what they'd seen. But there were two who followed hard on its heels: the child's mother, eager for revenge, and the werewolf's wife."

The brothers walked down the hillside into the shallow valley. Richard led the way, the
Book of Ways
held open before him, and Gal held back. The mist was heavier here, and soon they were enveloped, its coolness like a moist breath on their exposed skin. Shapes floated here and there, parting the mist, and they could have been wraiths. Richard ignored them, knowing that they would not trouble the two brothers.

"Here," Richard said. His brother stood by his side and waited. "This is where it made its second stand. There were still a few villagers keeping up with the child's mother and the creature's wife, and this is where it stopped to dispatch them. There, on that rock. There were scratches and cracks on the stone surface, and by the time the battle was over, they ran full of blood. They gave a message ... but no one ever knew what it said."

"I'll bet we would," Gal said, jumping onto the rock and striding across its surface. He looked down, kicking at moss here and there, trying to uncover the faults and scores talked of in the book. "This is much older than everything else around here, you can just feel it. And its been used for ... things."

Richard moved on. "Gal. Whatever was written there has been changed since the werewolf. Too much time has gone by, too much weathering, and it isn't used anymore."

"But it will be," Gal said. "When Fathers time comes, places like this will come back into the land. And we'll be there to see it happen!"

Sacrifice and murder,
Richard thought.
Werewolves killing children and adults becoming monsters. Father never told me it would be like this.
He had never stated his burgeoning doubt to his brother, and he hoped that Gal could not sense it. Richard had no idea what his brother's madness could make him capable of.

"After that," Richard said, "there was only the wife left. The child's mother lay dead on the flat rock."

"So how did she kill it?" Gal asked. "I assume the wife killed the werewolf, otherwise why would we be here?"

Richard shrugged. "It wouldn't be the first time de Lainree's text has led us astray."

"No," Gal said. "No, the wolf died here. I can feel it. Can't you? Can't you smell its final breath on the mist, see its final visions flitting through the shadows?"

Richard kept walking, but he knew what Gal meant.

They had entered a haunted place, and the haunting was not merely human. It was something else and something more. "A marsh," Richard said. He looked down at the book and turned a page, and the mist parted to allow the moonlight access. Like blood running across the flat rock, moonlight illuminated the paths of truth between and under de Lainree's writings.

Richard stopped and pointed. "There. The werewolf fell into a marsh ... the wife saw it struggling, sinking, howling ... and when it went under, she sowed the marsh with her and her husbands lifetime savings: a handful of silver coins."

"How poetic," Gal said, but he sounded hungry.

"I'm tired," Richard said. He sat on the damp ground and dipped his head, closing the book at last. The spell of course faded quickly, and he felt the usual sense of relief at its passing. Magic had never been easy for him. "I'm exhausted. I need to rest, and you ... you ... "

Gal placed his coat around his brothers shoulders. "I'll dig," he said.

The werewolf had been preserved by the peaty ground. Much of it had reverted to the man upon death, but here and there patches of fur remained, and its lower jaw still sprouted fearsome teeth that were chipped with use. Gal had a whole body to choose from.

When he finally had the small sample to send, he drew shapes in the damp ground with his shovel and placed the werewolf's finger inside. And then he cast his spells, started chanting, and submitted himself to the Memory once again.

Both brothers woke up at daybreak. The mist was gone, the sun was up. And the moor felt just as haunted and alien as ever.

K
ATE CORRIGAN CALLED
Abe and filled him in on Blake, London, and the possibility of Abby Paris being more of a mystery than they thought. Abe listened and responded at all the appropriate places, but when Kate severed the connection, he sat staring at his satellite phone, blinking slowly and trying to digest what he had just heard. He had pulled off the freeway to answer the phone, and he watched the cars going by, taking people from here to there, the past to the future, and none of them really knowing anything about the world around them. He often envied them that.

He threw the phone onto the passenger seat and shook his head. The more he thought about what Kate had said, the more worried he became. He knew Abby better than anyone, yet still she was an enigma, and some of what Kate said could well be true. Perhaps that was part of what drew him to her so powerfully: she was as mysterious as he. Now that she was missing, and this stuff about a mad old scientist and magician had surfaced, he was more worried about her than ever.

Especially as she had killed her own kind. He had no concept of how that would make her feel.

But Abe was unconvinced by the Benedict Blake idea. It all seemed too easily explained and logical, whereas what was happening in the world right now was the return of mystery.

He sat by the freeway and thought things through, but whichever way he went he came up against a wall. Abby's disappearance did not surprise him — he had always thought that she would run one day — but its timing did. While not as involved as Abe or the others, she had seemed committed to the BPRD and the cause it furthered. To abandon it in what might well be its hour of need ... that did not seem like Abby. It did not seem
right
.

But am
I
abandoning it as well?
Abe thought.
Leaving Hellboy and Liz and the others to face these things on their own?
It was an uncomfortable thought, and yet it did not trouble him as much as it should. Because somewhere, beneath the surface action and reaction that had ruled his day, he could perceive a deeper truth: Abby was still involved, and by following her he would be playing a significant role in events. All he had to do was work out how, and why.

As it stood he had no idea where Abby was going. He had suspected Paris, and Kate had mentioned London as a possible target for some sort of attack. Those two cities weren't a million miles apart, so at least he had the larger destination of northern Europe in mind. Once he was there, the situation might have advanced enough for him to pin down her location much more easily.

But first he had a dead werewolf to view.

"Take it easy, Abby," he said, pulling out onto the freeway. "Just take it easy. I'll be with you as soon as I can."

In the morgue of the Baltimore Medical Center, several policemen stood in a close huddle while Abe waited for the mortician to wheel out the body. They stared at Abe, whispering behind gloved hands, but he ignored them. He was used to the attention. If they got too annoying, he'd flare his gills. Give them something to tell their grandkids. The world today was full of bedtime stories in the making.

"Nothing weird, nothing wacky," the mortician said, pushing the trolley into the room ahead of her. Her name was Mary, and Abe had spoken to her before on several occasions. She had worked at the hospital for more than thirty years, and by her own admission she had seen many strange things, and a few beyond strange. "Just a dead guy with half his head blown away."

"I guess you see that all the time," Abe said.

Mary shrugged. "Enough to make it normal." She flipped back the sheet.

Abe glanced at the dead man's face. Witness statements said that Abby had pushed the pistol into his eye and pulled the trigger. Abe could believe that. The top of the guy's head had disappeared, and a flow of brain matter stained the gurney.

"Still traces of the silver bullet in his skull," Mary said. "That
was
strange. Cops said a few of the witnesses reckon he was the supposed werewolf that's been stalking Baltimore."

"Do you believe in werewolves?" Abe asked. Mary looked at him with such a strange expression that Abe went back to examining the corpse.

Even dead, the man seemed to have a smile on his face. If he'd died with Abby straddling his chest, Abe could maybe understand. He closed his eyes and shook his head, wished Hellboy were here to offer a wisecrack. Then when he looked again, he saw something.

"What's this?"

"Where?"

Abe pointed to a part of the spilled brain that looked as though it had been heated with a blowtorch.

"Powder burns is my guess," Mary said.

"Powder burns inside a head?"

"I'm thinking she pulled the trigger twice in quick succession. First bullet blew out the skull and left bits of itself embedded in the bones. Second one splashed the guys brains all over the road. Ballistics are still down there, scooping out the gutters to find the second bullet."

Abe shook his head. "It's the effects of silver. Melted the guy's brains as it opened up his head."

"Right," Mary said. It would have been difficult to inject more sarcasm into her answer, so Abe did not look up again.

He moved down the body, pushing the sheet to its feet. The postmortem wounds were roughly sewn. The man's chest was hairy but not unnaturally so. His nails were well manicured, his toes the correct length, and while he was well muscled, there was nothing here that could not be worked on in a gym.

But Abe saw what he was looking for straight away, and he could not believe what Mary had missed.

"Thanks, Mary," he said. He turned to leave, and the mortician called after him.

"Is that it? So what did you find?"

"Something not there," Abe said. The cops parted and let him walk between them. "Guys," he said. The morgue doors closed with a secretive whisper, and Abe made his way quickly from the building. It was dark and raining outside. He stood with his head up and his mouth open, refreshed.

He has no navel,
he thought.
The werewolf was never born.

In the single, confused, intimate moment he and Abby had shared, the first thing that had struck him about her — beyond her beauty and grace — had been her lack of a belly button.

Abe sat in his car and spent a long time wondering what this meant.

T
HE SERPENT BLINKED
the rush of tainted salt water from its eyes, felt the seas acidity working at its scales, snorted out the stench of unnatural filth and rot that permeated the ocean, and yet still it reveled in this wonderful new existence. Where it had come from the floating had been of a different kind, and the simple pleasure of life had been absent for so long. Existence had been of a moment, a space between heartbeats, a point of potential rather than the endless sea of sensation it was now experiencing. It had no memory of that place other than a long, blank eternity, and each instant that passed by now was the richest it had ever known. It swooped deep and startled a school of small fish; it rose up and felt the alien heat of the sun on its slick spine. It had been back for years, yet life was as exquisite as ever.