by Mark Morris
Now, however, she was smiling, and it transformed her. Hellboy had to employ all his willpower to stop himself smiling back. Maintaining his frown with an effort, he growled, “I’ll live.”
“Maybe there’s some kind of cream you can use? A scorched-butt ointment?” she suggested innocently.
“You’re walking a thin line, Liz,” Hellboy said, though he couldn’t quite make it sound convincing.
Liz laughed and reached up to pinch a great slab of his red cheek between her dainty thumb and forefinger. “Aw, you’re so cute when your pride is wounded,” she said.
“And it’s getting thinner all the time,” he muttered.
Liz was about the only person in the world whom he’d allow to treat him like that. Damn, she was the only person in the world who would dare to treat him like that.
Sitting a few seats in front of them on the private jet, working his way conscientiously through the information dossier Kate Corrigan had presented them with after last night’s meeting at B.P.R.D. headquarters in Connecticut, Abe Sapien turned around. To anyone not used to him, Abe was a startling sight. He was a humanoid amphibian of unknown origin, his skin a shimmering blue-green, albeit etched with striking markings that resembled jagged black lightning bolts. Although his face was expressionless and his large, globular eyes unsettling, his cultured voice was full of warmth, humor, and intelligence.
“How you two doing back there?” he asked.
“Don’t you start,” grumbled Hellboy.
If Abe had had eyebrows he would have raised them. “I was only — “
“I know what you were only doing,” Hellboy said. “You were mocking the afflicted. Hey, you try getting stung by a Sumatran fire-worm, see how you like it.”
Shielding her mouth with her hand, Liz confided loudly to Abe,”HB’s a little sensitive about his swollen butt.”
“It didn’t sting me on my butt!” Hellboy protested. Less convincingly he added, “It was my ... lower back area.”
“Burned a hole right through his shorts,” Liz said breezily.
“Can we talk about something else?”
“Gladly,” said Abe, and held up the dossier. “How about the particulars of our current mission?”
Hellboy groaned. “Jeez, you sure know how to kick a guy when he’s down. We went through all this at the meeting!”
“Did you actually listen?” Liz asked.
“ ‘Course I did. Every word.” His golden eyes flickered away from her almost-black ones. “Well ... all the important ones,” he amended.
Abe and Liz exchanged a knowing glance. The only time Hell-boy had come alive throughout the debriefing had been right at the end, when their boss, Tom Manning, had glibly informed the three field operatives that they were to fly to London right away. The big red guy had still been smarting from a particularly bruising encounter with a Sumatran fire-worm, which had been unwittingly invoked by a bunch of college boys in Milwaukee. Eight of the thirteen amateur cabalists had been barbecued by the worm by the time Hellboy arrived, and although it had been a pretty routine stomping on his part, it had been messy and he had been knocked around pretty bad. He had arrived home wanting only three things: a big dish of paella, a hot bath, and a long sleep. But he had literally stepped off the chopper and straight into a full-blown meeting, which hadn’t put him in the best of moods.
“I’m not flying anywhere right now unless it’s in comfort,” he had said. “No way am I getting back into one of those damn choppers. The seats chafe. And you can forget your Lear jets too. They’re cramped and smelly and there’s no tail room.”
Tom Manning had sighed. “Hellboy, our helicopters are top of the line — “
“I want somewhere I can lie down,” Hellboy had interrupted rudely. “And I want a bar.”
“You’re being a little petulant, don’t you think?” Kate had said.
“You wanna see what that bastard worm did to me?” Hellboy growled at her. “Take a good look.”
So he had shown her his wound, and Kate had almost passed out. Even Liz had clenched her teeth and murmured, “Yeech.”
Hellboy had got his luxury jet. Liz had no idea what strings had been pulled to procure it, but half an hour later they had been climbing aboard. And now here they were, halfway over the Atlantic, flying from an American evening into an English morning.
“Well, it won’t hurt to hear it again,” Liz said now.
“Gimme a break,” grunted Hellboy.
“Cheer up, you big lummox,” said Liz. “You’re going home and you’re with the two people you love most in the world. Besides, it’s a long flight. What else is there to do?”
“Sleep,” said Hellboy. “Drink.”
“If you want a drink I’ll get you a drink. In fact, I’ll get us all one. As for sleep, there’ll be plenty of time for that later. What’ll you have?”
Hellboy requested a quadruple bourbon. Abe opted for a small tequila. The bourbon smelled good, so Liz poured herself one too, though she added plenty of ice to hers.
“There,” she said, handing Hellboy his glass; it looked ridiculous in his huge hand. “Now will you give Abe half an hour of your time?”
“Twenty minutes,” Hellboy conceded grudgingly.
Abe puffed himself up and straightened his back. Leafing through the dossier, he said, “As you know, in the past eighteen hours London has been hit by a wave of odd, apparently random occurrences. Some of these are supernatural and others distinctly not.”
Hellboy groaned and slumped further down in his seat. “Get on with it already,” he grumbled.
Liz slapped him lightly on the arm, but Abe, who was used to his friend’s brusque manner, merely carried on as if he hadn’t spoken.
“The most interesting thing is that even the non-supernatural occurrences do have a certain occult resonance, which suggests the events aren’t random at all, but somehow interrelated. The odds are astronomical of any of it being coincidence.
“To recap, four bloodless human torsos were found yesterday in separate locations in central London. It could be we’re just dealing with a psychopath. It could also be the deceased were victims of a gang war, dismembered to prevent ID. Or it could be that these are ritual killings, which would help explain the locations chosen for the placement of the bodies.”
“Chosen?” said Hellboy. “You mean the bodies weren’t just dumped?”
Liz concealed a smile; HB’s question was proof, if any were needed, that he hadn’t been listening to a word Kate had said. She wondered what expression Abe might have been wearing if his face had been less immobile. Exasperation? Smugness? Indulgence? As it was, he simply bestowed a blankly silent look on his friend, which in many ways seemed to speak volumes, before continuing.
“No,” he said, “they weren’t just dumped. The locations seem to have been chosen very carefully, which implies that the bodies may have been offerings — “
“Sacrifices,” interrupted Hellboy.
“Exactly.”
Hellboy took a gulp of his drink. “So come on,” he said, “don’t keep us in suspense. Tell us where the bodies were found.”
“I was about to,” said Abe patiently.
“You see?” said Liz. “You are interested.”
Hellboy gave her a sidelong look. “You know me,” he said. “I always like to stay informed.”
Resisting the urge to scoff, Abe said smoothly, “The first body was found in a locked upstairs office in the British Medical Association building in Tavistock Square. Official history will tell you the building was designed and built for the Theosophical Society. However, dig a little deeper and it becomes clear that the building was the original headquarters of the Black Magick House of Theosophy, founded by Madame Blavatsky, one of history’s most powerful practitioners of the black arts. Occultists believe that London can be divided into a magical grid, and that where certain grid lines cross there are locations of significant occult resonance.”
“We’re talking dark
magic,” Liz said. “Places where terrible things are supposed to happen because of all the bad juju seeping up from below.”
“Exactly. The current BMA building was built on one such site,” Abe continued, “though the members of the Theosophical Society had a different attitude towards the ‘bad juju,’ as Liz puts it. They believed they could harness the power and utilize it to their own ends. Whether they ever managed it remains to be seen. Certainly they didn’t stick around for long.”
“Thanks for the history lesson,” Hellboy said, finishing his drink, “but can we move on? I’m guessing these other places are so-called crossover points too?”
Abe nodded. “The second body was found at 186 Fleet Street, in the offices of the Dundee Courier. Supposedly this address was once the home of the barber who inspired the story of Sweeney Todd. There’s no hard evidence to support the claim, but local rumor has it that the unnamed barber murdered around a hundred and fifty people on the premises, and sold their remains to a female friend, who used the meat in the pies she sold in her pie shop.”
“Nice,” said Hellboy.
“The third body turned up in a flower bed in the back garden of a house in Bartle Road, Notting Hill. Again the location has a gruesome history. Although the house itself is no longer standing, this was once the setting for 10 Rillington Place, made famous by John Christie, who murdered eight women there, including his wife, and hid their rotting remains under the floorboards.
“Finally, the fourth body was found in a Masonic Hall in Great Queen Street, close to Covent Garden, which was the site of the first temple of the Golden Dawn, an occult group founded by William Wynn Westcott in 1888, and often linked to conspiracy theories involving the Freemasons, the Illuminati, the New World Order, and even the Jack the Ripper murders, which began the year that the Golden Dawn was founded.”
“Though according to Kate,” Liz said to Hellboy, “that was probably a coincidence.”
Hellboy raised his eyebrows and rolled his eyes. He was thoughtful for a moment, and then he said, “I don’t buy it.”
Abe glanced at Liz. “Which part don’t you buy?”
“All this occult-grid stuff. It’s too pat. So a guy kills his wife and some other people in a particular house? Big deal. That just means you’ve got a crazy guy, not an evil house.”
“There’s an argument,” said Abe, “that evil men are attracted to evil places. Or even that a place can warp a man’s mind and push him over the edge into wickedness.”
Hellboy shrugged. “Still seems to me you’ve just got some crank who’s latched on to this grid crap and is chopping people up, thinking the nasty gods below will bestow him with superpowers.”
“Stranger things have happened,” said Liz.
Hellboy grunted.
“It may sound callous,” said Abe, “but in some ways the deluded crank is our best-case scenario.”
“Yeah, but it’s small-scale stuff,” said Hellboy. “Something for the cops to sort out. We didn’t need to come rushing over here for this. I could at least have had a good night’s sleep first.”
“Aw, you’re just cranky ‘cause of your butt,” said Liz. “You know how much you love England. You usually jump at the chance to go back.”
“I’m just saying — “
“Okay, let’s put the murders aside for now,” said Abe, “and concentrate on the stuff that does fall within our jurisdiction.”
He looked to Hellboy, who wafted a weary hand and said,”Go ahead. But keep it simple. This worm poison stings. It’s giving me the mother of all headaches.”
Abe nodded and said crisply, “Since yesterday morning London has been dealing with all sorts of supernatural happenings. Many people have reported seeing ghosts. A family in Willesden was forced to flee their home by a destructive force. The entity was invisible, but more than a dozen witnesses saw the place being torn apart by unseen hands. An undertaker, his staff, and an elderly widow have claimed that in a funeral parlor in Shoreditch the dead climbed from their coffins and walked. A hysterical young woman told the police that a huge creature made of black rock came out of a subway tunnel in Finsbury Park and carried off her boyfriend.”
“Rock, huh?” said Hellboy, glancing at his own stone hand. “Three guesses as to who’ll be handling that one.” He rubbed his left hand over his leathery, lamp-jawed face.”You all done now?” he asked Abe.” ‘Cause I really need a couple hours of shut-eye.”
“Well, we could speculate and theorize over what we’ve learned,” said Abe, deadpan.
“And we could stuff you in the bathroom and barricade the door,” Hellboy replied.
“Maybe we all ought to get some rest,” said Liz. “It sounds as if we’ve got a long day ahead of us.”
Hellboy adjusted the mechanism that extended his seat into a makeshift bed and closed his golden eyes. “I’m already dreaming,” he murmured.
Chapter 2
Ah, Soho, thought Colin Proctor, forging his way through the cramped, narrow streets, buoyed by the warm, ever-changing tide of exotic scents emanating from the gay bars and heaving pubs, the restaurants and all-night delis. Soho, Soho, Soho, so good they named it thrice.
He cackled as he walked, hands thrust into the pockets of his beat-up leather coat, collar turned up against the drizzle that beaded his graying, untidy hair.
A smart young couple glanced at him with disdain as he strode by, but Proctor merely grinned at them. He knew what they would see — nicotine-stained teeth in a podgy face, a glint of the predator in his alcohol-yellowed eyes — but their evident repulsion didn’t bother him. He didn’t give a toss what people thought.
Even so, he couldn’t help wondering what the young couple took him to be. It was a game he often played with himself. Did they imagine him to be a gangster? A pornographer? A seedy private eye? Perhaps a down-at-heel hitman or a booze-raddled artist, or merely an urban flaneur, on the lookout for the weird and the wonderful?
He could have been any and all of these things. This was Soho, after all. Human life was here in its abundance and its infinite variety. On these potent, heady streets the wealthy and the privileged rubbed shoulders with the needy and the dispossessed. These concertinad buildings were home to media and city types; to tailors and craftsmen; to strippers and prostitutes; to actors, artists, and musicians; to market traders, grifters, wheelers and dealers, and entrepreneurs.
Proctor spread his arms, the drizzle forming a sheen on the brown leather of his jacket, and embraced it all.
Soho, he thought. My Soho. Look at me, Ma — king o’ the world!
The truth was, Proctor was neither a gangster, nor a pornographer, nor a hit man. He was something far worse than any of these things.
He was a tabloid journalist.
He was forty-four years old, but he looked older. Whenever anyone pointed this out to him, usually with malicious relish, he simply laughed and told them he had had a very hard life.
He hadn’t, though, not really. Or, if he had, then it was no fault but his own. Proctor’s ex-wife, Tina, had told him often enough that he was great at his job but crap at life. What Tina didn’t understand, however, was that her definition of “life” did not necessarily tally with her ex-husband’s. Tina had frequently accused Colin of being a philanderer, a waster, a sleaze, and a drunk. But she used those terms as an insult, whereas Colin would gladly have worn them as badges of honor. He had never wanted to be staid or reliable, had always shied away from the thought of “settling down.” He was a man forever drawn to the smoke and the bright lights, and he had thought that Tina understood that, had even thought it was one of the things — his “lust for life,” to quote the great Iggy Pop — that she liked about him.
It had taken nine years and two beautiful daughters to relieve him of that notion. Tina would say that she had spent those years striving to make things work between them. Colin’s opinion was that she had spent them trying to beat his square-peg philosophy into the round hole of what her idea of his life
should be. In the end the two of them had emerged from the fray bruised and exhausted, but clutching their spoils of the struggle.
Tina, of course, had got the biggest prize, which was the girls, Chloe and Jasmine. Proctor had been resigned to losing them, but having to say goodbye and move out of the family home had been a dreadful wrench all the same. Although aware of his many failings, Colin knew that one of the accusations that could never be leveled at him was that he was a bad father. He might not have been around a lot of the time, but he was a doting dad nonetheless. He loved his daughters and he’d do anything for them. Well ... almost anything.
“If you really loved them you’d stop this ... this debauched life of yours!”Tina had raged at him once during one of their countless rows.
Proctor had known that in essence what she was saying was true. But his “debauched life,” as she called it, was part of his nature, imprinted into his DNA. It was more than an addiction, it was a necessity, like food and drink and air. When he had tried to explain this to her, when he had said that he could no sooner give up his “debauched life” than he could shed his skin, or grow an extra head, she had curled her lip and sneered at him.
“You’re pathetic,” she had said. “You’re a sorry excuse for a man.”
“Maybe that’s true, but unlike you at least I’m happy,” he had retorted.
She had flown at him then, lashing out with her fists, spitting vitriol. “If I’m unhappy, then it’s only because you’ve made me like that.”
Even now, more than a year after it had become officially over between them, the arguments kept raging. They had had their latest this morning. Proctor had called Tina to tell her what he was buying Jasmine for her birthday.
“A Walkman?” she had scoffed. “She’s eight, Colin.”
“So?”
“So she’s too young. What the hell do you think she’s going to use it for?”
“Duh ... listening to music?” he had said, as if she were a retard.
Curtly Tina had said, “She’s not into music. She’s still a kid. She likes riding her bike and playing with her Barbies.”