Hellboy: Unnatural Selection (19 page)

He lowered his head. Yeah, Liz was a good friend, and she knew she could get away with more than most. Hellboy turned quickly and slung her over his shoulder.

"Damn ape!" she said. "Unhand me! Let go! You're a Neanderthal!"

"I'm just looking after you while I check the plane over," he said, and he did. Liz struggled and kicked for a couple of minutes, then just lay there having a rest while Hellboy did another circuit of the aircraft. He tried to hold in the laughter that was brewing. At first he passed it off as a burp, much to Liz's disgust. Then another rumble he put down to hunger. And then, just as his laugh burst out to deny explanation, Liz started laughing as well.

They boarded the Lear jet, holding on to each other as they climbed the steps.

"So we're going to London," Liz said.

"Yep. Back to good old Britain. Been there a lot, you know. Ireland, Scotland, Wales ... the place is steeped in history. Rich in mythology."

"Dripping with ghosts," Liz said.

"Awash with apparitions."

The Lear's jets roared, they accelerated down the runway, and Liz grasped his hand. "Swarming with specters," she mumbled.

The jet lifted clear of the runway, and Hellboy looked out the window. As always he was amazed at how quickly the ground fell away. Dawn was just rising out of the Atlantic, and down below, the freeways were starting to clog with rush-hour traffic. The low sunlight cast long shadows of houses and woods, and he wondered what hid within those shadows today. It seemed the world had changed a lot over the past twenty-four hours. For Hellboy it had never been a safe place — he had seen too much to believe that — but there had always been a balance, a natural equilibrium that had seemed to right wrongs, calm chaos, and set normality back in its place. Admittedly he often had a hand in that, but he was not arrogant enough to believe that he alone was responsible. Today, watching the land fall away below and not knowing what was to come, he felt more unsettled than he ever had before.

"Hey, HB," Liz said. "Dinner's served."

They sat and ate in companionable silence, swapping bits of food that one or the other did not like. Hellboy had a beer, and Liz took advantage of the well-stocked single-malts cabinet on the Lear. They both knew that the journey would take a few hours, so there was time to relax a little, drink a little, and reflect on what the next few days might bring.

Swirling her drink, ice clinking, Liz broke the silence at last. "It's all happened so suddenly," she said.

Hellboy nodded. "I was just thinking the same thing." He finished his beer, smacked his lips, and found himself looking forward to real British ale. Assuming he'd have time to sample it, of course.

"I hope Abe finds Abby soon."

"Yeah, he's sweet on her."

Liz continued swirling. The ice had almost melted. "She's strange."

Hellboy looked at Liz until she glanced up to meet his eyes. "You're not?" he said.

"You know what I mean, HB. There's something about her. Something hidden. She's never fully submitted herself to the BPRD, not like you, or even me. Hell, you're strange enough, but at least you admit it, you know it, and you'd happily do your best to make that less so."

"You really think so?" Hellboy said. "I thought the ladies liked an enigma."

"Well, some do."

"Then I'll retain my air of mystery, thank you very much. I'm actually an accountant from New York who collects beer mats and stamps in his spare time. I just paint myself red. It's all the rage nowadays."

"Yeah. Right." Liz finished her drink, reclined the chair, and sighed. "So ... Benedict Blake."

"I dunno, Liz. Kate's rarely wrong, and she has a mind like a damn encyclopedia. But if this is all about revenge, it seems a bit — "

"Extreme?"

"Well, yeah. If his wife really was killed in a state-sanctioned hit, whys he suddenly killing thousands of innocent people?"

"Maybe he isn't. Maybe he brought these things up out of the Memory for his own reasons, and now they've escaped and are causing all their own chaos. He could have had a base somewhere — South America, in the jungles — and the mythological animals broke out, and now they're going to change the world, and he can't do anything about it."

Hellboy stared out the window at clouds catching the sun. The ground had disappeared from view, and they could have been anywhere. Below them, hidden, the world was continuing on its own way for now. They were removed from it for the next few hours, and he was glad for that, but he was also nervous. When they broke through the clouds again on their way to land, he had no idea how much the world below would have changed. "This is just so big," he said.

"So visible," Liz said.

"Yeah. I'm used to fighting monsters in subterranean caverns or old tumbled-down places of worship. I'm never on the TV. Now my ass kicking by a dragon is probably prime-time the world over. That's not good."

"It's almost as if it's intentional."

Hellboy nodded. Intentional. That's what he had been thinking. Fate, he'd been thinking a lot on that too. And what were they doing now, if not dancing to the tune of everything that had happened? That was another reason for him to feel nervous, and why he'd checked the aircraft so thoroughly before they took off. "I guess events this big just can't be controlled, and you're rolled along with them," he said.

"Like Abby," Liz said. She took out a cigarette and flicked a flame from her thumb. The smoke curled up and set off a subtle, polite alarm somewhere in the cockpit. A heavy curtain was pulled aside, a man peered through and disappeared again, and the alarm was turned off. "Look at that," Liz said, drawing deeply on her cigarette. "They're used to dealing with freaks."

"Don't be so hard on yourself, Liz," Hellboy said. "At least people don't think you wear goggles on your forehead."

Liz laughed, and Hellboy liked the way that made him feel. Sometimes he thought if she were more level-headed, he'd maybe care for her less, but that was an uncomfortable idea, so he shoved it away. It was Liz the woman he loved as a friend, not Liz the firestarter. That was just a small part of the larger package.

He sat back and closed his eyes, but sleep, as ever, would not come. Instead he started turning over the facts in his mind, searching as hard as he could for the aspect of all that was happening that made him the most uncomfortable.

He'd been beaten by the dragon. That was hard, but it was hardly the first time. He had scars and aches to display other times something had got the better of him ... but he'd always won out in the end. Maybe that was it; maybe he felt unsettled by unfinished business. Wherever the dragon was now, it had an appointment with his fist.

His defeat had been shown on TV. That was bad, and unusual, and it opened up a whole can of worms for the BPRD. But although it had set him on edge, he was pretty sure it wasn't what was upsetting him right now. There were things going on in the world that were demanding much more attention, and it would be arrogant of him to believe that the sight of the dragon kicking his ass had any real significance at the moment. The film of the ocean liner had proved that.

So Hellboy swung back to fate yet again, and control, and the fact that he felt as though he'd been steered into this course of action. They all had. Even Kate Corrigan's recollection of Benedict Blake and his mad ideas had seemed so inevitable, so well timed, that Hellboy could not help but wonder just how involved Blake might be with all this. Was he the kingpin? Or just another backer? Did the mad old guy even know what he was doing?

Hellboy drifted, but he did not sleep. Every few minutes he woke up and glanced out the window, expecting to see little green men working on the wing joints with wrenches, or great beasts flying out of myth and memory to bring the jet down. Beside him Liz slept fitfully, frowning and mumbling her way through unknowable dreams. At one point light blue flames played across her eyelashes like Saint Elmo's fire, and Hellboy held his hand above her face and smoothed the flames away.

Later Hellboy slept, and he dreamed of the Lear jet's crew turning into ghosts and melting away, leaving him and Liz to wait until the fuel ran out. He dreamed of Liz erupting into flames beside him, a long-feared self-immolation that seared away everything he knew and loved and left her reborn, more of a mystery than ever. He dreamed of Abe, off on his own and so vulnerable, and Abby Paris, a werewolf the BPRD had tried to tame but who was untamable. He woke up and opened his eyes, and his right hand had twisted itself into something unknown, blood-red and ready to fulfill whatever destiny Hellboy knew he must have been born for. But then he woke again and sat up, startling the copilot, who had come back from the cabin to say that they were beginning their descent. Hellboy nodded his thanks, turned to Liz, and watched her sleep. She seemed more at peace now — no flames on her face, no twitching and mumbling — and as the Lear dropped slowly out of the sky, Hellboy wondered whether anyone ever truly woke up.

They broke through the cloud cover over southern England and began their approach into Heathrow, and Tom called to tell Hellboy the world was at war.

"M
Y NAME IS PROFESSOR
Benedict Blake.

"I am a man whom many will grow to hate, but everything I do and have done is out of love. I want to tell you that now, because for the next few days that may be difficult to believe. Years down the road perceptions may change, but now ... all I can say is that love is harsh, and it consumes. And more than anything, it demands sacrifice.

"The love I feel will be familiar to many: love for my dead wife; love for my sons, for whom all I want is a better world; and an endless love for the world I live in. Its multifarious wildlife, its varied geography, the smell of a rainforest after a storm, and the feel of desert sand between my toes. Many people love our world, and as individuals they worship it and call it home. But as groups — as a species — that love is beaten down by money and a desire for betterment. Call me cynical if you may; I've been called worse.

"You may feel that I have been bent out of shape — that what I have started here is madness — but sometimes harsh measures are necessary to protect those you love. I have been planning this for a long, long time.

"I am a scientist and a magician. Many of you will laugh at that or fail to understand, either because you do not believe that the two can be one or because you do not believe in magic. That does not concern me, as what I am doing requires no faith but my own. I do not ask for your faith. I do not ask for your understanding or even your blessing. Consider this an education.

"Twenty-five years ago I was wronged by people I trusted, shunned by fellow scientists, and my family was destroyed by murderers sent by my own government. My wife was killed, our home burned down, and my sons and I were forced to flee for our lives. I was blamed for their deaths, and in my absence — and without my being able to defend myself — my name was made dirt. My wife was buried without my being there, and only once have I visited her grave. She is a memory now, nothing more, though the memory is a rich and vibrant place indeed. My sons and I have been in hiding ever since. I suspect most people believed that I was dead as well. More fools they.

"Few recognized the warnings I gave, and yet now many have come true. Humankind is destroying the world. I predicted this, I foresaw the dirtying of the atmosphere and the poisoning of the seas, the death of crops and the spread of disease. Nobody appreciated the powers I had fashioned within myself — born of a melding of pure science and pure magic, the unsullied potential of nature realized at last — and yet the fear I instilled in people is still there.

"It is time for that fear to be turned back upon the world. It is time for me to take action, where governments have not.

"In recent days the world has seen its purest and most natural inhabitants return to their rightful homes. I brought them here, and soon I will introduce more. The world is about to change. I am proud to be the originator of the glorious new age that will arise, an age where myth again becomes reality, and the earth itself will be renewed and refreshed by its new inhabitants and rulers. These are creatures that love their home. A dragon will not dump toxic waste in deep caves. A troll will never rape the land of oil and minerals. A rukh will respect the air, not pollute it.

"I demand nothing, because justice will arise as a natural consequence of my actions. I do not want for anything, because I have the whole new world at my fingertips. This is simply a warning and a plea. The warning is that these creatures, newly returned from Memory and angry at their timeless incarceration, will be untamable and invincible. It is a wild, wild world that the sun will rise on tomorrow, but one that will last forever. Today the earth started getting better. The plea is simply this: let me finish what I have started. Fighting against me will lengthen the process of transition, and each day that fight continues will cost the lives of many more. People will die, and that is a sad truth of todays destiny, but it is all for the good. Throw away your guns, deny your governments, and this war will be brief and targeted. Some of those who die will deserve it; others may not. But I hope that the casualties will be light in comparison with what my victory will give: a new world that can breathe; a place where your children can live in hope, not fear; and, eventually, a humanity that stops eating itself and the planet it calls home.

"This is not revenge. I am not mad. I am simply saving the world. I don't ask for or expect your thanks, but I hope that in the future you will see that I was right.

"If governments had acted on my advice twenty-five years ago — instead of murdering my wife, sending me into hiding, and shattering any hopes my experiments may have raised — this violent transition would not have been necessary.

"Whatever happens over the next few days is not my fault."