Hellboy: Unnatural Selection (3 page)

"How do I kill it?"

"Put on a suit of armor, and pick up a sword. They're not immortal, you know."

Hellboy frowned for a moment, then smiled at her. She was not mocking him. Far from it; she was trying to help. She shivered even in this heat, and he patted her leg softly. "Hey, I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to be gruff. That's just me, and ... well, I don't really like talking about me."

"I've always known about you, but in the flesh you're amazing."

"Hmph. I wish all the girls thought that way." Hellboy nodded his thanks and opened his door.

"Hellboy?" He looked back at Amelia. "That's a dragon," she said. "And that's impossible. A dragon ... it's myth. A story. They don't really exist."

At that moment the dragon roared and let fly a breath of fire at a helicopter that had strayed too close. The aircraft veered away, paint blistered and rubber door seals smoking from the heat. The creature flapped its wings, stretched its neck, then settled back onto its roost.

"I think he'd disagree with you, Amelia," Hellboy said. "Hey, do me a favor? Wait here for me. I don't plan on being long."

She nodded. "Be careful."

"If I had a last name ... 'Careful' would be my middle one."

On his way up the mountain in the deserted train, Hellboy called in to HQ. He asked to speak to Kate Corrigan, the BPRD's adviser on the paranormal, but she was busy somewhere else. So was Tom Manning, the director now that Professor Bruttenholm was dead. "Is there
anyone
there I can talk to?" Hellboy shouted, but the guy on the other end said something about being busy, having lots going on, and the world going to hell.

"Yeah, right," Hellboy muttered. He clicked off his satellite phone and tried to enjoy the trip.

The train clunked up the well-used tracks, taking him to a place where millions of people had previously journeyed to worship or admire or just to enjoy the view. He would be doing none of that. He flexed the fingers of his left hand, tapped the fingers of his right hand against the metal railing. They made a musical sound; if only he could identify the tune. And if he knew the tune, if only it had lyrics that would tell him more. Then he could sing along and learn the truth.

He had been called a dragon once. A Catholic priest in Ecuador had fallen to his knees when he saw Hellboy, clutching his rosary beads and prattling on in Spanish, shouting and screaming and generally acting upset. Hellboy was used to causing such a reaction, and he had smiled and shrugged and generally tried to exude benevolence. But even while he was being dragged away, the priest had raged, and the only word Hellboy had been able to make out had been
dragon.
That had offended him at the time, but later, sitting alone in the remains of a ruined church, he had looked at himself in a puddle of rainwater, and the offense had turned to sadness.

"Come on, dammit!" He thumped the side of the train car and left it dented. He shook his head. He hated these moments of calm before the storm, because they gave him time to muse upon his own nature. But then, he supposed that was good. Thinking such thoughts always got him in the mood for a fight.

Walking across the concrete esplanade, Hellboy was struck by the size of the statue of Christ. It was a magnificent effigy, beautiful, and he could only marvel at the builders who had constructed it so long ago.

Right now it was marred by the fire-breathing bastard sitting on its left arm. And below it, still steaming, dragon crap stained the hem of Christ's robes.

"Now that's just disrespectful," Hellboy said. "Hey! You!"

The dragon twisted on its perch and looked down at Hellboy. It was sleek and strong, its hide gray-green with shades of red on its throat, chest, and back. It moved without making a noise, and that unsettled him. Something so big and bulky should be clumsy, not graceful. Maybe he could learn a thing or two from this creature.

"We need to talk," he said. And for a second he thought that might suffice. The dragon put its head to one side, as if ready to listen. It dropped quietly from its perch, wings out for balance, and stepped daintily toward Hellboy, as if ready to parley.

And then it opened its jaws and sent a fireball his way.

Even as Hellboy rolled to the side, he was aware of the press helicopters homing in on this new confrontation. He hated the press. If they saw him trampled and gutted and having his insides burned out, they'd film, not help. He swore that today they'd get no scoop of that sort.

He stood and pulled the pistol, letting off a shot that punched a hole in the dragon's wing. It didn't seem to bother the worm in the slightest, and Hellboy saw why: its wings were giant sails, thick leathery skin strung between sinewy supports, and they were already full of holes. He'd wasted a precious round just to add another.

The dragon roared and came at him. Its claws, previously so light and elegant, scored channels in the concrete as it ran. Its tail waved behind it, ripping the steel hand railing from the edge of the esplanade. Its head swayed from side to side as it ran, and the closer it came, the larger its teeth appeared.

Instead of turning to flee, Hellboy ran forward to meet it.

The dragon pulled up short, perhaps surprised by Hellboy's tactic, and gushed another wall of fire in his direction. But Hellboy was ready for that and did a long forward roll through the flames and out the other side. When he stood, smoldering slightly, he was only feet away from the dragon's head.

"That's not nice," he said, and punched the creature square on the nose with his heavy right hand.

The dragon roared, then whimpered. It reared up to its full height — big, very big, easily ten times as tall as Hellboy — and snorted. A couple of weak flames came from its nostrils, and then only smoke. It snorted again. Blood flecked the concrete around Hellboy, and he wiped a glob of it from his eye.

"Again?" Hellboy said.

The dragon seemed to agree. It launched itself forward and fell on all fours, trapping Hellboy beneath its stomach and crushing him down into the concrete. Hellboy gasped, tried to twist away, lost hold of the pistol. And then the dragon began to move across the esplanade, dragging Hellboy beneath it.

"Crap.
Crap!"
His jacket was ripped, his skin scored by the concrete, and the creature above him rumbled with something that could have been laughter. "You laughing at me, barbecue breath?"

The dragon stood, and Hellboy immediately punched upward into its gut. It roared in pain and stumbled away, its swinging tail catching Hellboy across the chest as it retreated. Hellboy went sprawling, and as he came to a stop, he leaned over and picked up the pistol. "That's convenient," he said, firing at the dragons head. The bullet ricocheted from the heavy scales above its eye and winged off somewhere over Rio.

That really pissed off the giant worm.

This is turning bad,
Hellboy thought. Before he could stand, the dragon snatched him up in one of its claws and launched itself over the edge of the parapet.

The ground dropped away beneath Hellboy. Still clasping the pistol in his left hand, he was now loath to use it. Kill the dragon, fall a few hundred feet with ten tons of dead meat right above him ... that did not appeal. And besides, there were houses down there, cars, parks, and people.

His only hope now was to wait and see whether this thing took him over open ground. Then, perhaps, a bullet in the spine.

Looking way, way down, he could see Amelias Jeep parked in the station parking lot. He waved and almost laughed at the ridiculousness of the gesture, but he could not see whether the lecturer waved back.

The dragon flew hard and fast, and it took only a minute for the land beneath them to give way to sea.
Now,
Hellboy thought.
This is when I can
—

The dragon dropped him. They must have been a quarter of a mile up.

Hellboy wanted to scream, but then he'd lose the crushed cigarette in his mouth. He wanted to shoot, but his arms were pinwheeling in an attempt to keep himself upright as he fell. And he wanted, so much, to reach the water. Because he knew exactly what was coming next.

The dragon swept down at him and belched fire. Hellboy grimaced as the flames engulfed him, singeing his hair and goatee, stretching his skin, igniting his utility belt. When the flames guttered out, the dragon was already diminishing into the distance.

Hellboy had time to draw one puff on his newly lit cigarette before he struck the surface of the bay.

A
BE SAPIEN LOVED
Europe. He loved the variety of the place, the mix of races and religions, food and drink, custom and tradition. He loved the fact that everywhere he went was different, and every place he visited gave him unique memories and distinct experiences to take back home. The differences spanned from east to west, country to country, and in some cases valley to valley. Some countries were as different from one side to the other as America was from north to south, and some cities were like microcosms of the whole world. In London he had been fascinated with its network of hidden streets, in Barcelona the architecture almost knocked him flat, and in Paris he had discovered a werewolf, and she had taken the name Abby Paris for herself.

Abby. He hoped she was all right. After today was over, he would get in touch with HQ and see how she had done. He'd had to rush away without really telling her to take care, or wishing her luck, and even after several years he still felt very protective toward her. And maybe a little more.

If Abe loved Europe, he
adored
Italy. Art was all here, and that was nowhere more evident than in the thrilling history of this place. Every building had a story to tell; most were older than him. And here art and science had truly come together in the form of one of his true heroes, Leonardo da Vinci.

And Abe's favourite Italian city ... Venice. A paradise of one hundred and twenty islands linked by canals and lagoons. A city of romance and splendor, and so bound in with a watery existence that Abe had once thought to call it home. Maybe one day he would. Perhaps, if the time ever came when he found his own true history, he could begin creating a new future for himself here.

He only wished they could do something about their drainage.

And today the water did not seem quite so inviting as normal. Not with a thirty-foot alligator prowling the city.

Abe was riding in a police motor launch, crossing the choppy waters of the Grand Canal, and trying to ignore the stares of the two uniformed policemen accompanying him. The detective, Marini, was different. He could accept Abe's peculiarities, having already worked with another strange guy — Hellboy — on a case back in 1992. "Yeah, the old 'feces in the floor' case," Hellboy had said when Abe mentioned the detectives name. "That was a fun one. Never did catch that ghost." He had warned Abe to watch out for Marini's bad jokes, but so far the detective had been very quiet and subdued.

Abe stared unblinking at the two young officers until they looked away. He could always beat a human in a staring contest.

"And how many times has it been seen?" he asked.

"At least twenty times before yesterday," Marini said. "And then yesterday the incident near the Rialto Bridge, and there were dozens of witnesses. That poor woman ... the German ambassador is already turning it into a diplomatic incident."

"He's blaming your government for a giant alligator?"

"The woman was his niece. At present, he only has an arm to send home for his sister to bury. I can understand the man's heightened emotions."

"Hmm," Abe said. "Quite."

The boat skipped from wave to wave, hull thudding with each impact, and Abe suddenly wondered how easy it would be for an alligator thirty feet long to tip them over. But this was a city built on water, it survived through water, and the first thing he had noticed upon his arrival was that the canals were as busy with traffic as ever. They could let this freak occurrence cripple them as a city, or they could defy it. So far, defiance seemed to be working.

"How is Hellboy?" Marini asked.

"Moody as ever," Abe said.

Marini lit up. "Ahh, not moody, Mr. Sapien.
Deep.
That's a very different thing. Hellboy has depths, I'm sure you know, and he frequently spends time trying to plumb them. That's where his moodiness comes from. That and the fact that there are no Italian shoes that fit him." He laughed at his own joke.

"He did tell me to beware of your sense of humor," Abe said.

"Did he really?" Marini shook his head and spoke quickly to his officers in Italian, still laughing. They smiled nervously, glancing at Abe as if he were about to bite their faces off. "Well, did he tell you about the time I painted an
L
and an
R
on his horns while he slept?"

Abe shook his head, aghast. "And you're still alive?" If Marini were telling the truth, he was lucky still to be in ownership of all four limbs.

The detective waved a hand, guffawed, then shook his head and looked down. "We only worked together for a couple of weeks, but we had much in common. I, too, never knew my parents."

I know how you feel
Abe almost said, but he let it lie.

The launch powered down and nudged roughly against the dock. The young policemen jumped up and secured the mooring lines, then stepped back and watched in fascination as Abe went ashore. Marini finally seemed to lose his temper with his subordinates. He fired a few harsh-sounding words at them, and they scampered off, ducking into the nearby police station and letting the door drift shut behind them.

"Forgive them," Marini said.

Abe raised one webbed hand and smiled. "Of course. I can hardly blame them."

"Now, to business. We will consult the incident map inside. I've plotted the location of every sighting, investigated possible hiding places, and from all that I think we can decide where would be the best place — "

"I think right here," Abe said. He had turned away from the detective to see what was causing a commotion out on the lagoon. A gaily painted tourist barge seemed to be floating at the whim of the tide, drifting sideways with the waves, and shadows and shapes waved and danced on deck. Screams of fright and pain came their way. Balancing on the edge of the boat, head thrashing from side to side, mouth filled with tourist, was the largest lizard Abe had ever seen.