Hellboy

by Yvonne Navarro

  Up ahead, Sammael dismissed the little dragon and bounded on, splattering more of the green tracking goop with every step. He paid no attention to any more of the trick-or-treaters or their parents as he darted past, heading straight into the street and the heavy evening traffic. Brakes squealed as the drivers tried to stop; the kids screamed in surprise and delight as Sammael leaped again and landed on the opposite sidewalk.

  Hellboy was right on his heels, as unconcerned with the traffic as Sammael was. And following closely behind was Myers, who should have been paying a little more attention to the cars and trucks, particularly the oversized four-by-four with the high, off-road tires that was heading straight at him.

  It was too late to go back, and there wasn’t enough time to get the hell out of the way. Myers froze, staring at the oncoming headlights like a proverbial deer getting shined by a poacher on a country road. A glance back gave Hellboy the whole picture—the four-by-four being driven too fast by the reckless teenager, and Myers, a very breakable human smack in its path. He thought he saw Myers close his eyes in surrender.

  Not acceptable.

  Hellboy’s next step was a powerful half turn that propelled him back in the direction he’d come from and somersaulted him high over the parents and costumed kids in his way. He came down with a ground-shaking thud that was hard enough to spiderweb the roadway, right next to where Agent Myers had no choice but to wait for his end. Hellboy’s stone hand shot forward and met the front of the truck where in another instant it would have had Myers’s face imprinted on its grille.

  Yep. He could still find plenty of uses for the ol’ Right Hand of Doom.

  The impact flipped the car clear over Hellboy and Myers. It landed behind them with an ear-splitting crash that deployed both air bags and smothered the astonished screams of the kid driving it. A double spin and the screech of twisting metal, and the vehicle finally came to rest smack in the middle of the street. The smell of burning rubber filled the air along with blaring horns as the other cars on the road slammed on their brakes and the traffic ground to a stop, hopelessly snarled.

  Next to Hellboy, Myers inhaled and finally opened his eyes.

  “Are you okay?” Hellboy asked. When Agent Myers nodded, Hellboy looked satisfied. “Good. Stay here.”

  And before Myers could protest, Hellboy was off again, bounding into the lights of the carnival amid the delighted squeals of a hundred trick-or-treaters who never fully understood what they were really seeing.

  7

  HELLBOY SAW THAT SAMMAEL PUT THE LITTLE CARNIVAL into the been-there, done-that category quickly, and he was grateful for this. Still, the hound creature was leaving a bright green trail. He didn’t need more wrist-slapping from Father for being seen and making the Bureau have to come up with yet another denial…in addition to the Halloween stories they were going to have to make up to cover tonight’s fiasco. The trail led him quickly into an adjacent alley, poorly lit and full of overflowing trash bins, half-crushed boxes, and old tires. The roadway was cracked and crumbling with disuse, poked with holes worn into it by thousands of cars and trucks. Way down at the end, Hellboy could see the twisted remains of a metal grate; when he got there, he found it’d been ripped free from the front of a large, round opening in the ground. The smell wafting upward was one of dampness and dark, undercut by mildew and, of course, Sammael’s meaty slaughterhouse scent. From somewhere far away, Hellboy could hear a heavy rumbling. He thought of sewers and water reclamation centers, and decided it could be worse.

  Always one for an adventure, he dropped into the opening.

  It wasn’t too far down. He landed with a thud, then paused and looked around curiously. Subway tunnel—he should have realized. That didn’t surprise him as much as seeing Sammael a few yards away. The demon looked like he was just sitting there, expecting Hellboy, maybe gonna invite him to tea.

  Okay. Hellboy could deal.

  “Waiting for me, Sammy?” he asked. He wasn’t sure Sammael actually could talk or understand him, so Hellboy didn’t bother listening for an answer before he started toward the beast. He’d taken all of two big steps, gun drawn and ready, when something very, very loud blared from not far away.

  Hellboy grinned and put away the Good Samaritan when he saw the headlights barreling down the tracks toward them. “Uh oh,” he told Sammael with deceptive mildness. “Between a rock and a hard place.”

  But Sammael only gave him a tooth-filled grin, turned, and sprinted right for the front of the approaching train.

  “Aw, crap!” Hellboy exclaimed as he saw the demon unhinge a long, scythelike bone from its forearm. The front car was only a few feet away when Sammael leaped at the front car and smashed right through the leading glass and steel door.

  Sparks showered onto the tracks and Hellboy’s ears caught the sound of screaming people and crunching metal—he could imagine the razor-whip that was Sammael’s tongue punching easily through all the car doors until the demon could flee out the rear of the train and onto the tracks behind it.

  And, of course, here was the train, hurtling right at Hellboy.

  He grimaced, but by the time he leaped, he already knew he’d waited too long to clear the top of it.

  HUMPF!

  The train hit him hard and his legs rattled over the tracks as he punched a hole through the bottom of the train with his stone hand and grabbed hold of anything that might carry his immense weight. Steam exploded from the rupture and surrounded him with heat and sparks; bouncing wildly, he looked up just in time to see the train engineer, a panicked expression on his face, yank a fire extinguisher off the wall of his cab. Another second and he was leaning down and slamming Hellboy on the head with it.

  “Ow—hey!” Hellboy protested, trying to ward off the blows. “Hey! I’m on your side—”

  Another whack and he lost his grip and clattered under the train, bumping and thumping painfully down the center of the tracks until he could figure out how to more or less flatten himself enough to let the train whiz by overhead. The undercarriage grazed his horn stumps, heating them up until they smoked; no amount of trying would make his head get any smaller and out of the way.

  Finally, the train was gone. Hellboy stood up and rubbed the smoking nubs of his horns irritably, think that this whole Sammael thing was getting to be a real pain in more than one bodily area. He glanced around, but the tunnel was dark, damp, and totally empty. Sammael was gone…but then Hellboy grinned. There it was, that handy trail of green glop, nicely leading the way. There was just nothing like pounding the crap out of monsters and he marched after it, ready to fight again, gaze trained on the unfolding tunnel.

  Abruptly the trail ended.

  What the hell? Glowering, Hellboy turned first in one direction, then the other. There was nothing but the darkness, cut by the occasional dim safety lights. The rounded tunnel was filthy and stained, feeding moisture into long puddles that ran beneath the rails at the bottom. And as before, it was also completely empty.

  Something wet and gooey dripped onto his hand.

  He looked down and started to shake off the water, then realized it wasn’t water at all. His eyes widened at the sight of the glowing chartreuse droplet hanging on to one knuckle. He craned his neck and looked up. “Aw, I forgot—”

  Hanging overhead like a pallid, deformed bat, Sammael dropped heavily onto him, wrapping its muscular arms and legs around Hellboy and squeezing him in a lung-crushing bear hug. With a grunt, Hellboy twisted as hard as he could, then got his hands up and around Sammael’s jaw; a vicious pull, and the bones parted with a shuddering crack!

  Sammael released Hellboy and staggered backward, his clawed hands pawing at his face. Hellboy started to move in for the kill, then jerked back as the demon shoved the bones of his face back in place and they snapped together; another instant and there was a faint shsssssssk sound as the flesh literally knit itself back into one piece in front of Hellboy’s eyes.

  Nice trick, Hellboy thought, but before he cou
ld formulate his next move, Sammael swept the bone-scythe in his arm forward. It caught Hellboy painfully across the ankles and knocked him off his feet. He landed heavily between the center rails, then Sammael was on top on him and—

  tchaaaaaaak!

  —the creature sunk the scythe deep into the meat of Hellboy’s left shoulder.

  He roared in pain and tried to buck Sammael off, but he was pinned by the protrusion from Sammael’s arm. Every movement doubled the agony, and already Sammael’s mouth was opening and his evil, yellow tongue was rearing back to strike.

  Hellboy jerked his head away instinctively, then out of the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of something only a couple of feet away. He gave Sammael a toothy grin as he stretched out his stone right hand. “Screw you!”

  And latched on to the third rail.

  Lightning and fire filled his vision and the smell of burning flesh shot up his nose. There was heat—a lot of it—but Hellboy being what he was, that just wasn’t such a big deal. He held on for a count of three, then released the rail; when his vision cleared he could see the smoke rising from his hand and the rest of his body; on top of him was Sammael, convulsing and crispy in a cloud of black vapor. When Hellboy swatted the demon, he fell over with a thud, the bone spur that had been embedded in Hellboy’s shoulder collapsed in a pile of dark ash.

  Hellboy pulled himself to a crouch, then stood and flexed his shoulder. It hurt, but he’d survive. One arm still had a little bit of flame running along it, so he pulled one of the cigars out of his belt pouch and lit it, then shook his arm until the fire went out—gonna have to get his coat repaired again. He looked down at Sammael’s body. “I’m fireproof,” he told the corpse as he puffed on the cigar. He exhaled thick smoke, then gave the dead body a final kick and turned away.

  “You weren’t.”

  Traffic was tied up completely now, made worse by the oversized tow truck dragging the totaled four-by-four onto its bed and the requisite fire truck and ambulance. Adding to that were the ever-present television reporters and their crews, shoving microphones into the faces of anyone who looked promising; they’d given up on the kid early on when it was obvious he’d dropped into trauma nonmemory. Myers had told the cops to keep the press away from him and so far they’d done a good job of it; he was putting his signature on the latest pile of police forms when his radio beeped. The sound made him jerk and sent a nasty little spasm of pain through his freshly bandaged arm.

  “Myers? How’s your arm?”

  The police officer took the clipboard from him and Myers turned away so he could talk. “My arm is fine,” he told Hellboy tersely. “Where are you?” He made sure again that no one was close enough to hear, then repeated himself. “Where are you?”

  When Hellboy answered, his radio voice was static-filled and hollow, like he was fast on the move. “I just fried Stinky,” he said. “Tell Father I’ll be home. He shouldn’t wait up.”

  Myers’s eyes widened. “Wait,” he said urgently into the mouthpiece of his headset. “Wait—you can’t go anywhere! I have to go with you—”

  There was a long enough pause where Myers thought he’d lost the transmission, then Hellboy finally answered. “No, no, no,” he said. “It’s fine. I do my job, I take a break.”

  Myers was pacing now, walking in a tight, frantic circle on the sidewalk. His only focus was this conversation. “No,” he said sharply. “Stop. Don’t do this! Listen to me—tell me where you are.”

  “Myers?”

  Agent Myers repositioned the microphone nervously. Maybe Hellboy was having problems hearing him. “Yes?”

  “Good-bye.”

  In the subway tunnel, Hellboy imagined Myers’s face and grinned to himself. Poor guy—this was just his first taste of what it was going to be like as Hellboy’s babysitter. With a flick of one oversized finger, Hellboy turned off his belt locator and moved away into the darkness.

  Never noticing that behind him, the charred remains of Sammael’s body began to leak a pale, poisonous black light.

  Standing in the abandoned baths, Kroenen carefully adjusted the volume on his old phonograph. The strident sounds of Wagner filled the room, echoing off the dirty white tile, sinks, and stalls surrounding him, Grigori, and Ilsa with majestic music.

  Off to one side, Ilsa stood behind Grigori with a wickedly sharp straight razor in her hand. The wet blade glinted in the low light as she ran it lovingly over Grigori’s scalp, carefully following the bumps and curves, never missing or nicking. When that was done, she put down the razor and dried his skin, then soaped and rinsed her hands thoroughly before lifting two glass eyes from a sterile container on one of the counters. A gentle push positioned one in each of Grigori’s empty eye sockets; as he turned his head, they automatically slid into the correct position.

  Grigori smiled at her and Kroenen. “Sammael has fulfilled his destiny,” he told them. He held up his closed hand, then unfolded the fingers. On his palm, rolled into a foul-looking ball, was the light that had escaped from Sammael’s scorched form. “Die in peace,” he said softly. “And be reborn again…and again.” He closed his fist and looked at the others.

  Ilsa nodded in agreement. “Only seven more days to the eclipse, Griska.”

  Rasputin—Grigori—stood and Ilsa stared at him, fascinated and, as always, in adoration. He was an awe-inspiring sight as his neck and shoulders swelled and rose, shifting and rolling beneath his human skin. “The child will be there,” Grigori said dreamily. “And so will we all. Won’t we?”

  Grigori turned and looked behind him, where a tunnel branched off of the main baths. A silhouette appeared in the darkened entrance, and then another. Even in the shadows, the twin shapes were unmistakable.

  Sammael.

  8

  THE LIBRARY WAS A MESS.

  Professor Broom walked slowly through the rubble, looking for anything and everything that might help them get to the bottom of this attack. When Dr. Manning came striding up behind him—no doubt he’d made his grand entrance in his usual slick black limousine—Broom made it a point not to jump. He just would not give the younger, already power-drunk man the satisfaction. Crews with classified-level clearances were cleaning up all around him, sweeping up the debris, picking through the imitation artifacts, carrying out what pieces remained of the bodies and partially-eaten clothing worn by the guards.

  “Every time the media gets a look at him,” Manning said in an overly loud voice from directly behind Broom’s shoulder, “they come to me. I’m running out of lies, Trevor.”

  Broom turned around to face him and raised one eyebrow, fighting not to aim a sarcastic smile toward him. “I thought you liked being on TV.”

  “I do,” Manning said. He looked like he wanted to talk about his latest appearance; he frowned and paused for a moment, forcing himself to get back on track. “How many escapes?” he demanded. “This year alone—five!”

  Broom shoved his hands into his jacket pocket and looked at Manning sharply. “Tom, he’s our guest, not a prisoner.”

  “Your ‘guest’ happens to be six-foot-nine, bright red, and is government funded,” Manning reminded him. He crossed his arms and regarded Broom stoically.

  The professor sighed. “He’s just going through a phase.”

  Manning swung one hand into the breast pocket of his jacket and removed a thin, expensive cigar, then lit it using a kitchen match. “A phase?” His voice was filled with acid. “What do you think this is, The Brady Bunch? These freaks—” He choked off his sentence when he realized Abe Sapien was looking at him and listening to every word. Ears attuned, Abe was prowling the exhibit hall, palm open and ready to pick up on anything he could. “These freaks, Trevor,” Manning continued in a lower voice, “they give me the creeps. And I’m not the only one.” He glared at Professor Broom. “You’re up for review. You and your petting zoo.”

  Broom rubbed his forehead wearily. “I know where to find him. I’ll get him back.”

  Manning scowl
ed but didn’t say anything, then focused on Abe Sapien as he noticed something embedded in the floor, a long, sharp dagger. He reached for it. “Hey, fish stick,” Manning said sharply. “Don’t touch anything!”

  But Abe only waved away Manning’s instruction. “I need to touch it to see.”

  “See what?” Manning demanded, moving toward him.

  Abe regarded him calmly. “The past, the future…whatever this object holds.”

  Manning gaped at him, then turned on Professor Broom. “Is he serious?”

  “Don’t worry about fingerprints,” Abe said. “I never had any.” Before Manning could stop him, Abe reached down and picked up the dagger, then blinked thoughtfully and turned to Broom. “They were over here, Professor.”

  Manning rolled his eyes, then added a fluttering motion in the air with his fingers. “Oooooh! Who was here? Nixon? Houdini? Do you mind sharing your mystic insights?”

  Broom ignored him and examined the dagger Abe offered him. When he turned it over, he saw the Ragnarok symbol that crowned its hilt. A dragon and a swastika.

  “Show me, Abe,” Broom said softly. He reached out one age-spotted hand and met Abe’s eyes. “Show me.”

  And Abe did.

  The Magick Exhibit Hall was dark and quiet, deserted. At the far end, a lone guard checked one of the alarm monitoring stations. Everything on the console looked good, but he frowned as something odd caught his attention—a ticking sound. Pulling a flashlight from his belt, he walked the perimeter of the room, shining the light into the corners and under the furniture. There was nothing to see, so the security guard shrugged and moved into the next room.