Hellboy: Unnatural Selection (28 page)

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.

T
HEY 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.

Liz kept thinking about the ghost standing behind that woman at the bus stop. She had not wanted to see it, but she had, and she was not grateful to Jim Sugg for that experience. Not grateful at all.

"We're about a mile away now," the pilot said in their headphones.

Hellboy nudged Liz. "You OK?"

She nodded, then smiled at him for added reassurance. His expression said that he could read her smile so well. OK? Yeah, sure, apart from the fact that she'd just seen a ghost, they were hanging above a city in a machine that should never fly, approaching what could become the most momentous and important battle this country had ever seen. Yeah, fine, just dandy.

"They're only animals," Hellboy said.

"Say that to the people melted into the tarmac at Heathrow."

"Liz, they're only animals. I shot those dragons, and they didn't rise again."

"You didn't see the phoenix."

"Animal. Not understood as real anymore, but it's a creature. It's not something from beyond death, a demon or a monster conjured up by Rasputin. We're dealing with animals that've been brought back from a place they should have been left. We've fought their like before, but only singly. They've never ganged up on us before. And they were in the Memory for a reason: they'd had their time. Their influence on this world was over, apart from appearing in stories and movies and tucked away in the backs of people's minds at night. Dreams, that's what they should have been, because dreams are important. But Blake has brought them back and made them mad, given them his own agenda. And that's what we've got to keep in mind. The supernatural in this is balanced by the science he used. He's a scientist who knows magic. The bringing back, that was magic. The things we're about to see, all science."

Liz looked up at her big red friend and smiled. "You out of breath now?"

"Huh?"

"I think that's the most I've ever heard you say in one go."

Hellboy frowned. "I'm nervous."

"Scared?"

He shrugged. "It's a living."

The helicopter started to dip and turn, slanting sun moving across the cabin, and then the pilot swore.

"What is it?" Jim asked.

"Something ... "

Hellboy clicked open his harness. "Let's take a look."

Liz followed him, holding on to his belt as he swung the sliding side door of the Lynx wide open.

"Oh hell, oh Jesus, oh what in the name of ... ?" the pilot mumbled. He had brought the helicopter to a halt, hovering, paused just as his heart must have paused at the sight below.

"Too late," Hellboy said.

Below them, London Docklands was spread out like slabs of shattered glass: spits of land, spreads of water, docks and canals, islands and quays. Buildings rose like shards, their windows catching the sun and glittering at the sky. Roads and railways snaked between buildings and waterways. And things were moving down there. At first Liz thought they were boats, but they were moving too quickly and erratically. When she looked closer she realized that they were flying things, dipping and diving, climbing and hovering. And between them buzzed smaller, less able shapes, some spitting fire, others exploding, spiralling down to splash into water or erupt into fire on land or buildings far below.

"Dogfight," Hellboy said.

Liz could hardly believe what she was seeing. Even after the past few days, the sight of this battle over London was beyond belief. And that was exactly why the dragons and griffins and other flying things were winning.

West of the battle, perhaps a mile distant, the Anderson Hotel thrust up from the ground, an edifice of steel and glass. As yet untouched, it was being buzzed by several army helicopters, and three jets roared overhead as if to lay claim to the building. They were too far away to make out activity on the ground, but the hotel was built on a long spit of land, and on either side the water was lined white with the wakes of fast boats.
Ours or theirs?
Liz thought.
Metal and wood or bone and flesh?

"It's really happening," Jim said. "Jesus, it's really happening."

"History in the making," Hellboy said. "Look. On the river."

The Thames curved away to the east, passing below the helicopter. Leaning forward slightly and looking down, Liz could see the wakes of several large boats as they powered upriver. Shapes parted from the boats as they moved, some splashing into the water, others taking to the air and breaking left and right. One of the vessels slowed and nudged against a timber jetty, and dark shapes swarmed ashore, splitting up and disappearing along roads, between buildings, under covered ways.

"Is that more of them?" Liz said. "I cant make out."

"If not, they're soldiers with wings and aqualungs," Hellboy said. He leaned out farther, hanging on to the heavy winch that hung above the door. "Oh crap, that's not all."

"What?" Liz continued looking down at the river. Two of the boats were still traveling, the others having moored and disgorged whatever strange cargo they carried. The streets down there must be swarming with the things already, though the only movement she could make out was cars screeching to a halt, crashing into lampposts, and people fleeing their vehicles as they saw ... something. "What, HB?"

"Look," he said. "
Under
the river."

The shapes had been too large for her to notice without being shown. She had assumed that the shadings and coloring of the water were a result of silt beneath the surface, plant growth, the angle at which the sun hit the water and reflected from surrounding buildings. But the shapes were moving ... and silt did not do that.

"They're huge," she said.

"What are they?" Jim was lying on the floor of the Lynx, head out over the edge. He looked up, and his eyes were more haunted than ever. "What are they throwing at us now?"

"Kraken," Hellboy said. "Sea serpents. Things with tentacles. Damn, why does it always have to be tentacles?"

The shapes crept upriver, shadows beneath the water that changed in size and shape as they moved. One of them passed under a large motor cruiser, and the boat flipped up onto its side and broke in half. Something gray rose from the water, glinting oily in the sun, curled around the broken boat, and pulled the bow down beneath the disturbed surface. It passed on, leaving shapes splashing in the river behind it.

"Jim, are you in touch with anyone inside that hotel?" Liz asked.

"Not directly, but I can patch messages direct to the American embassy. They've got people inside."

"Do it. Tell them to get everyone down into the basement, if they can."

"If there is a basement," Hellboy said. "That things built right next to the river."

"There is a basement," Jim said. "That's where I spent some time when the thing was being built."

"Then they need to get down there," Liz said. "We can hope the army and police on the ground will realize that. Easier to defend, especially against those flying things."

"What the hell are the kraken going to do when they get there?" Hellboy said.

"The hotel's right next to the water," Liz said. "My guess is that they'll try to bring it down."

Jim started talking into his satellite phone, and Hellboy and Liz watched events unfolding below. There was a terrible sense of inevitability about the whole scene. The flying creatures circled the hotel, darting in now and then to take on a helicopter, dodge fire from the hotel itself, and veer away again, skimming the rooftops of surrounding buildings and battling the snipers positioned there. The things that walked — Liz could not identify them from this high up, and she was grateful for small mercies — approached the hotel, darting from cover to cover, and fresh firefights broke out south and east of the Anderson. Explosions erupted between buildings, gushing flame and smoke at the sky. Bodies fell in the streets, mutilated by things with long bodies and many legs.

Closer to the hotel there was a larger explosion as a helicopter went down. Something was wrapped around it as it fell, a creature being whipped and torn to shreds by the rotor blades. It crashed on a walkway beside the hotel, and both creature and aircraft were engulfed in flames. The smoke rose high, staining the sky.

Liz could see men running back and forth across the roof of the hotel. Machine guns spewed bullets into the sky, but they seemed to be firing wild. A dragon flew directly up the side of the building, tail smashing windows and scoring a scar in the edifice, and when it reached the roof it hung on to the parapet and poured flames at the men. Some ran, others were caught, thrashing briefly until the fire scorched them into stillness.

"They've patched me through to an SAS sergeant in the hotel," Jim said. "Seems the minister of defense has suddenly realized there's a problem, and as we're on the scene — "

"We won't be for long," Hellboy said.

"What do you mean?" Jim asked.

"They're all coming upriver," Liz said, "which means we'll be going downriver. There's not much we can do here, other than relay what we know to that SAS guy. We have to find Blake."

"What good will that do now that he's released these
things
on us?" Jim asked. For the first time Liz heard a note of panic in his voice.

"Stop him, and maybe we stop this," Liz said. "Hellboy?"

"It's worth a shot," he said. "He's got to be controlling things somehow, guiding this. As I said, these are animals. Where's their purpose? What's motivating them to destroy a hotel? They're puppets. We need to find the guy who's holding the strings."

Liz nodded. "And cut them. Here, let me talk to the SAS guy." Jim handed her the satellite phone, and she pressed it to her ear, covering her other ear to try to shut out the roar of the rotors. "Sergeant?" she said.

"Smith. Who's this?"

"I'm Liz Sherman from the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense."

"Hey, this must be just your cup of tea." Liz heard some shooting in the background, someone shouting, and then the gunfire was suddenly lessened by the slam of a door. "Excuse me if I talk while I'm on the move."

"No problem. Listen, Sergeant Smith — "

"Just Smith."

"OK, Smith, now listen. You have to get everyone down into the basement or whatever the lowest point is in that building. Understand?"

"I'm approaching the conference hall right now. If I can get anyone to listen I'll do my best. You in a chopper?"

"Yes."

"How does it look?"

Liz paused for a couple of seconds, looked down at the battle. There were more fires now, more explosions, and the sky was fining with smoke.

"That bad, eh?" Smith said.

"It's not good. You don't need me to tell you what's happening, what's assaulting you?"

"I've just been out onto the concourse. Two of my men were killed there by a lion with a man's head, and I emptied a mag into a giant bloody black dog before the damn thing even decided to sit."

"They're in the hotel already?"

"No, we're — " Smith broke off, and Liz held the phone away as the crackle of gunfire came again. "We're holding them off," he said. "So yeah, I've got a rough idea of what's happening. The world's come to us. That sound about right?"

"That's about right. Smith, there's worse to come. You're being harried at the moment, but there are things coming up the river — big things — and they'll be with you any time now."