Myers hit the Next key and a QuickTime window expanded onto the screen. The interview was short and concise, and the only person on which the camera focused was young Liz Sherman. Now she was in her early twenties and armed with a Polaroid camera; as a title typed itself under the film box—“Elizabeth Anne Sherman, First Interview, B.P.R.D., Pyrokinetic”—Liz raised the camera and pointed it at the person videotaping her. That done, she lowered her Polaroid and focused on the camera rather than the videographer and interviewer a few feet offscreen.
“I don’t like the term ‘firestarter’,” she said. Myers noted her reluctance to look into the camera, the way she seemed to be talking more to herself than the interviewer. “I just don’t. And ‘pyrokinesis’ sounds like psychosis or something. I don’t know…maybe that’s right. Not being able to let go…” She shrugged, but still didn’t take her gaze off the Polaroid resting on her knees. “It’s scary. Sometimes you hear so-and-so lost control and just…exploded.” She paused and for a long few seconds didn’t say anything. “They’re lucky it isn’t true.”
And finally, she raised her dark and tormented eyes and looked straight into the video lens.
“With me…it is.”
11
“QUIET NIGHT, HUH?” BRAD NUDGED TERRENCE, HIS coworker and best buddy, in the arm, then paused and pushed open the next door in line just enough to shine his flashlight inside the room. The patient in there was sound asleep, nothing more than a covered lump on the bed. “Wanna play poker after we finish up rounds? I brought change.”
Terrence shrugged, then veered to the left to check the next room on his side of the hallway. “Why? So I can end up owing you another five or six bucks until payday? You know I’m lousy at cards.”
“You’ll learn.”
“I’ll go broke before that,” Terrence retorted.
Brad grinned, then pushed open the door to the last room. He shone his light around the inside, slowing as it played over several hundred photos taped to a white bulletin board. Layer upon layer, but as far as Brad could tell, they were nothing special, just scenes of everyday life, everyday people, and a lot of the patients in here. Who knew why the woman kept taking them? Like the other rooms, the night-light in the bathroom kept this one from being truly dark—that scared too many of the patients—and he could see the woman sleeping on the bed. Liz Sherman was a pretty gal with dark hair and perpetual circles under her eyes, but there was something about her that creeped Brad out and made him keep his distance. When the beam of his flashlight passed over the back of her head, it was almost like she felt it; she rolled over and faced him but thankfully didn’t wake up. He hated it when they did that, always winced at the accusing glares. Hey, he and Terrence were just doing their jobs.
“Rounds are done,” Terrence said, careful to keep his voice low. “Come on. I’ll give you one last night of poker, just to show I’m a good sport. But first we check out one of those microwave pizzas.” He spared the corridor a final glance, then motioned for Brad to follow him back up to the orderly station. “There’s absolutely zero going on here tonight.”
Grigori watched the two foolish men leave, his form deepening the shadows in the far corner of the room. It always amazed him that the everyday eyes of a man were so useless—take those two, for instance. Their eyes were seemingly perfect, clear and strong, and yet there they’d been, inches away, and they had seen nothing at all.
Dismissing them, he stepped from the corner and glided up to stand next to Liz Sherman’s bed. Such a lovely woman, he thought as he gazed down at her. And such a powerful, powerful tool.
Slowly Grigori extended his right hand. His voice was an oily caress floating on the night drafts that passed over her face.
“The Master is calling your name now, my girl. We are all part of his plan. You must return to the child. So once again…” Grigori smiled and ran his forefinger gently over the scar on Liz’s forehead, careful to make his touch just short of waking her. Something twisted rolled beneath the skin of his arm, momentarily rearranging his muscles into a new and hideous shape. The fingers of his hand began to glow. “Dream of fire,” he whispered.
On the bed, Liz’s eyelids squeezed tight and she suddenly convulsed. After a moment, a small ripple of heat began to rise from her forehead.
There were smokestacks rising above the roofs of the buildings around hers, belching puddles of darkness into the air on a daily basis. The grown-ups complained about them now and then, but like everything else, mostly they were just a part of the way life was, like the overflowing garbage cans and the litter on the streets, the rats that scurried in the alleys.
And the kids who never, ever stopped teasing her.
The smoke and the garbage and the rats—none of that mattered to her, but the kids were a different story altogether. Staring sullenly out at the street, Liz sat on the steps of her tenement house all by herself, fingering the gold crucifix around her neck. Sometimes she thought this crucifix was the only spot of color in her life. This cross was supposed to represent something hopeful, something good to come, and so she’d gotten into the habit of touching it constantly, unconsciously rubbing it like it was a genie’s lamp. And why not? She certainly didn’t have any friends and she probably never would; even as young as she was, she’d already accepted that her place in the world would never be a normal one. She was, through no fault or wish of her own, destined to be an outcast.
And behind her, of course, her mother, always trying to make things better for Liz, never truly understanding why things were the way they were or that she’d never be able to fix them, never be able to get Liz “in” with the other children. Adults just didn’t get it.
Liz glanced up and saw her mom smiling at her above the basket of apples she carried. There was such hope in that look, enough to break Liz’s young heart. “Liz!” she called. “Liz—come on, darling. Give mummy a hand!”
Liz didn’t move. Her mother was headed over to the birthday party in the small, grubby courtyard at the side of the apartment building. She didn’t know the kid whose birthday it was, and didn’t want to; as far as she was concerned, the bright balloon archway the adults had pieced together looked crooked and out of place between the dirty, medium-income buildings. Armed with the apples, her mother hurried through the opening and headed toward the table and a waiting pot of melted caramel.
Waiting until Liz’s mother had passed, the three kids hanging out below the entrance poked at each other, then pointed at Liz and laughed cruelly. Around bites of caramel-covered apples, they lost no time in starting up their taunts.
“Freak!” yelled one.
Most of the time, she could ignore them. She’d trained herself that way, done what the Bible called “hardened her heart” to their ridicule. Today, for some reason, she couldn’t—she didn’t want to, she really didn’t, but today Liz was unable to stop herself from turning and staring at them.
One of them, an older blond kid, grinned and punched one of his friends on the shoulder. “See? She knows her name!”
Ducking her head, Liz forced herself to look away from them and stare gloomily in the other direction. Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough to get them to leave her alone.
“Go home, you freak!” shouted another. “We don’t want you here!”
Liz flinched as a stone bounced off the steps next to her, then got up and backed away as they threw another one; it missed, but the third try whacked her painfully in the shoulder. Frightened, Liz turned toward the party, hoping to spot her mother. Before she spotted her, the next rock, bigger than the others, caught her hard in the face, splitting her forehead and splattering the pavement with blood. Sobbing, Liz stumbled and fell down the short flight of stairs, trying to crawl away.
The threesome over by the makeshift balloon arch only giggled. The oldest boy snatched up his next stone, then sailed it high and hard, aiming again for Liz’s head.
Halfway there, the rock burst into flames and turned to ash.
; Liz gasped and scrambled back to her feet, forgetting about the pain in her head and the blood running down her face. A ripple of heat was working its way up her hands, finally culminating in a pale blue flame that ringed her entire arm.
“Not again,” she moaned. “Please…not again !”
As she looked down, she saw a small dot of firelight glint off the crucifix hanging on her chest.
“Mommy!” she screamed suddenly. “Mommy!”
Across the sidewalk, her mother jerked and looked up from the pot of caramel, recognizing Liz’s voice instantly. It took only that long—a second, no more—for her to train her eyesight on her daughter’s small figure and see the flames outlining her body.
“Mommy, help me! I’m burning!”
Liz’s mother screamed. The hot pot of caramel upended and the apples tumbled off the table as she abandoned it and ran toward Liz, pushing aside the gawking children and the horrified adults. She had to get to Liz, to her daughter—
“Help meeeeeeeeeee!”
She never made it.
Liz felt herself… explode, felt everything that she was, inside and out, go white-hot and expand, the way the stars looked on the science fiction programs she sometimes watched. A rolling cloud of hot brightness engulfed her, the courtyard, her mother, the building, and everyone around her. All she could do was stand there and endure, knowing without being told that her mother’s body had burned away like flash paper along with her brother, her father—who had unwisely come to visit his estranged family only for the party—the trees and birds and rats, everything. And at the end, after the hot white of it, the shockwave hit and did the rest of the job, flattening four solid blocks of buildings around ground zero—
Liz.
Left standing and sobbing after her destruction of anything and everything that had existed in her small and unhappy world.
On the bed, Liz Sherman suddenly screamed.
The rubber bands on her wrists vaporized and her back arched as her body was completely engulfed by flames, the burning so bright that it silhouetted the organs and bones inside her skin, the orbs of her eyes within her skull, and made her ribs stark X-ray outlines visible all the way through the sheet and blanket that covered her. It was only a matter of seconds until the glow streamed out of her room—
—and into the corridor, where it lit the nighttime dim walls with a dangerous orange-yellow glow.
Safe within the guard booth, Brad and Terrence were sharing their pre-poker game pizza and listening to the radio, some disk jockey who liked to think he was big on the humor on WXRQ. The rock and roll was decent, and if nothing else, at least the two of them agreed the guy was a moke who didn’t know funny when it bit him on the ass. They had the music a little too loud, high enough to drown out the tinny beep from the console, so it probably took four beats for Brad to realize that the faint pinging he thought was in the radio’s speaker was actually a patient’s alarm. The sight of the red light flashing on the board was so unexpected that for a moment they both just stared at it in amazement—nothing weird ever happened down here on the second floor. Then Terrence slapped a hand on the radio’s Off button and the two of them grabbed their batons. As they stood, a sound, low and huge, rumbled through the floor and the furniture and everything else around them.
Brad swallowed and thought vaguely of earthquakes, then saw Terrence’s eyes actually bulge as the other young man stared through the glass separating them from the corridor. He followed Terrence’s gaze and his mouth dropped open.
Thirty feet down the corridor, a ball of fire was rushing straight toward them.
Brad gasped and turned, but there wasn’t enough time to run, and there was nowhere to go, anyway. All they could do was stand and wait, surrounded by a suddenly eerie and almost serene silence, staring in terror at what was almost certainly their oncoming death.
Terrence finally found his vocal cords. “Oh my—”
The fireball engulfed the booth, and they dove for the floor and the dubious cover of an overhanging shelf.
The glass walls exploded in the heat and the flames roared in, drowning everything in searing orange. Moments later, every single window on the hospital’s second floor shattered and the fire poured outward, showering glass and ash onto the gardens below.
And then…
Silence and ash and cinders.
12
HIS NERVES SINGING, MYERS TRUNDLED HELLBOY’S breakfast cart quickly forward. Even through his anxiety, the agent had to admit it smelled pretty good—three dozen steaming pancakes, a mound of hot bacon, and buttered toast. Myers hadn’t eaten since his marathon learning session last night but he was much too wired to think about breakfast right now. The news of Liz Sherman’s latest conflagration had spread like wildfire—pun intended—through the grapevine of those agents who, like him, for one reason or another had the need to know. Based on what Myers understood was currently going down back at Bellamie Mental Hospital, Hellboy ought to be in quite the mood right about now. Myers wasn’t stupid enough to think the big guy hadn’t already found out.
Almost shaking with anticipation, Myers pushed open the door to Hellboy’s bachelor den.
Inside, Professor Broom was sitting on the edge of the truck bed that served as Hellboy’s couch. His thin arms were folded and his expression was implacable.
Hellboy was so angry he was practically waving his fist. “How many buildings does she have to burn?” he demanded. “She belongs here!”
Broom didn’t so much as blink as he met Hellboy’s gaze. “That’s not how she feels. She may never feel it.”
Just in case they hadn’t realized he was there, Myers deliberately cleared his throat. They’d heard him, he was sure of it. Even so, both ignored him.
“It’s her choice,” Broom told Hellboy. “She’s human.”
Hellboy’s glare became even more pronounced. “Oh,” he said sarcastically, “as opposed to…” He didn’t finish his sentence, and neither did Broom.
Hellboy spun and stomped over to where a large mirror hung on the wall above a shelf loaded with personal hygiene paraphernalia. He jerked up a handheld belt sander, flipped the On switch, and savagely began grinding away at the stumps of his horns. Sparks flew in every direction and the noise drowned out any possible conversation; after about ten seconds, he finally seemed a bit calmer. He set the sander down, then sniffed the air. “Mmmmm,” he noted. “Pancakes. We’re going out?”
Myers pushed his hair back with one hand. “Professor, that girl you were talking about?”
Hellboy whirled, his eyes blazing. “Hey, you think twice—”
Myers plunged on. “I read her file. She blamed herself for that explosion in Pittsburgh, the one where all those agents died when they were possessed by demons and she and Hellboy fought back.” He looked from Broom to Hellboy. “I think I can help,” he said. “Talk to her. I can bring her back.”
Hellboy’s angry expression faded into amusement. “What landed you this job pushing pancakes?” He chuckled, clearly proud of his little jab. “What was your area of expertise?”
Myers shrugged and muttered a reply, forcing Hellboy to lean forward. “What was that?”
The agent lifted his chin and looked Hellboy full in the face. “Hostage negotiations.”
It was the first time Myers had seen Hellboy truly pleased with him.
Myers really hadn’t been prepared for this.
Yeah, he’d had his briefing, heard the news reports, weighed the rumors quickly spreading among his fellow agents. For an agency with a taciturn reputation, he found his fellow agents never stopped talking. Only to one another, of course, but still, it seemed nearly nonstop. If the nature of their business would keep them from sharing what they did and what they knew with everyone on the out side, then they would damned well turn over every single aspect of it with one another, over and over and over. Everyone wanted to be a part of everyone else’s work, the quintessential beehive, all for one and one for all, and sometimes Myers
thought it was a miracle that anyone got anything done at all.
But even with all that information, no one had passed along the gory details, the real ones that would have warned him that Liz Sherman had damned near destroyed most of Bellamie Mental Hospital.
Yeah, the photographs in her file and the archives should have given him a heads-up, but photos, especially old ones, were…stagnant, unreal. This was the real thing, the icepick stab of reality right to the frontal lobe. And man, Myers was getting a serious case of brain freeze.
It was, he supposed, a small miracle that the top four floors of the hospital hadn’t caved in on what was left of the bottom part. The second floor was still there, but all the windows were shattered, their metal frames twisted and torn, the safety glass with wire mesh running through it shattered despite its metal reinforcements. Each window opening looked like a large, blackened mouth; some had the scorched remains of window blinds hanging out of the opening at crooked angles, dangling in the light October breeze like teeth held in place by the last, jagged remains of fleshy tendons.
Below the semidemolished remains of the building, the gardens were filled with still-burning debris—sheets, a few mattresses and chairs, a thousand other unidentifiable bits and pieces. Repair crews rushed in every direction, trying to figure out how to get things patched back together as quickly as possible, while firemen scurried around them, aiming hoses and extinguishers at the flaming mini-masses. Myers could see figures through the lighted windows of the upper floors, staring down curiously, shoving each other out of the way to get a better view. The maximum security personnel up there were clearly having a hell of a time keeping everyone quiet and calm. The lighting wasn’t that great—generators were for emergencies, not surgery—and Myers could see some of them with their palms plastered against the windows, pushing on the glass and rocking with excitement. He could only imagine how much fun things were going to be on that ward tonight.
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