“Something’s wrong,” Hellboy whispered. By the time he saw the door on the first of the cars fling open and Agent Lime bound out of the passenger side, Hellboy was on his feet and leaning forward, desperately wishing he could hear what was being said. But all he could do was watch helplessly as Lime grabbed Myers by the arm and began talking rapidly and gesturing. Then he saw Liz clap her hands over her ears.
Her scream just about ripped his heart out.
19
THERE WERE AT LEAST TWENTY PEOPLE BETWEEN HIM and Broom’s office, but Hellboy didn’t notice; he shouldered roughly through the crowd, making no apologies, meeting no resistance.
The B.P.R.D. cars had beat him back to headquarters, of course, so it hadn’t been until he’d arrived a full twenty minutes later that Hellboy had found out what the big deal was. Now his mind and heart were all jumbled up with self-loathing, guilt, grief, regret, and anger—how stupid of him to be out there following Liz around and worried about his own emotions when he should have been back here, should have stayed here where Father had put him, should have been protecting his own. If he’d done that, maybe Father would still be alive and his attacker might be a very small pile of broken bone fragments.
But recrimination was free and hindsight was just as cheap; right now Hellboy had plenty of both and no doubt there would be more to come.
The old man’s office was wall-to-wall people, and to Hellboy’s eyes, it all seemed particularly harsh and heartless. The person he loved most in the world—Father—was slumped on his chair. Tilted slightly to one side with his chin resting on his chest and his eyes closed, Broom looked so fragile and still, as if he’d only fallen asleep while working. Lately, that hadn’t been uncommon, so it was disconcerting to see him in that position now, yet know the pose meant something entirely different. If Hellboy had had any doubt, there were plenty of nasty reality reminders in the form of camera flashes as the B.P.R.D.’s on-staff forensics investigators worked the room inch by inch. Oh, and let’s not forget the scarlet pool of blood that had gathered around Father’s feet, soaking into the fine, soft leather of his favorite oxfords.
Tom Manning was there, but he respectfully stepped aside as he saw Hellboy come through. Even though she’d been in the building, Liz had waited until Hellboy’s arrival to go in; now she was right on his heels, and he heard her whimper as she saw the professor. Hellboy’s face was contorted with grief as he knelt at the side of the chair, and when he looked at Liz, there were tears of disbelief streaming down his face. No one in the room dared to stop him as Hellboy reached out and tenderly pulled Broom close to his chest. The old man’s head lolled against his shoulder and his arms hung limp. So many times as a child Hellboy had sat on this man’s lap and rested his head against his chest, heard Broom’s strong and steady heartbeat through the familiar woolen vest. Even though he expected it now, when nothing but silence came through to his ears, Hellboy just cried harder. “Father, I-I’m back,” he managed to say. “I’m back. I’m back.”
Even Manning couldn’t bear to see Hellboy like this. As unobtrusively as possible, he herded everyone out. Liz hung back, staying at the doorway and blinking back tears as Hellboy hung his head and touched the forever-stilled hand. His voice was low and utterly heartbroken.
“I wasn’t here. You died alone….”
It seemed fitting that it was pouring rain for Trevor Bruttenholm’s funeral. The old man had liked rainy days and the weather matched Hellboy’s mood—dark and brooding, a storm brewing just out of sight.
He wished he could go to the funeral, be a pall-bearer or even just carry Father’s coffin all by himself. But no, he was stuck here, squatting on the edge of this damned roof like a gargoyle, helpless, forbidden to follow and attend as Broom was lowered into his final resting place. He watched as the pallbearers, Manning and Myers among them, carried the mahogany casket between two rows of B.P.R.D. agents, then loaded it into the hearse. His golden gaze followed the men as they climbed into the waiting sedans, then tracked the procession as it wound toward the main gate and finally went out of sight. Rain sheeted down from the heavy gray sky and soaked through Hellboy’s overcoat, but he didn’t feel it, wouldn’t have cared if he had. When the cars were out of sight, he stayed where he was and stared at absolutely nothing.
While from the shelter of a doorway across the rooftop, Liz Sherman hung in the shadows and watched him.
“He hasn’t spoken to anyone in three days,” Liz said worriedly. “Not a word. He doesn’t eat, he doesn’t sleep.” She paced the floor in front of the tank in the med lab, her face lit by the blue-green sheen of the gently moving water beyond the glass. Inside it, Abe floated upside down, conscious but still in his biocast, still with a ways to go on the road to being healed. Like most hospital patients, he was thoroughly bored at his confinement, and he’d been playing with a Rubik’s Cube, trying in vain to get the colored squares to line up where they should go. “I’ve never seen him like this. Never.” She stopped her pacing and looked at Abe. “Should I stay? With him, I mean?” A faint smile crossed her face.
“Listen,” Abe said. Coming through the speaker, his voice was bubbly and slightly hollow-sounding, like the transmission from a scuba suit microphone. “I’m not much of a problem solver.” He held up the cube for Liz so she could get a better view of it and gave her his own slightly disgusted grin. “Three decades and I’ve only gotten two sides.” He frowned at the cube, then twisted it once or twice, succeeding only in screwing up what he’d managed to accomplish so far. He sighed and put his attention back on her. “But I know this much. If there’s trouble, all we have is each other. And I’m stuck here, so…” He let that sink in for a moment, then raised a webbed hand and pressed it against the tank’s glass. “Take care of the big monkey for me, will you?”
She nodded solemnly, then slid her hand over his, only separated by the glass.
It was dusk outside, but in the underground conference room at the B.P.R.D., there was no way to tell that…except that Myers could feel it in his muscles, the way they wouldn’t relax despite an undercutting of constant fatigue brought on by the stress of recent events. Manning had the projection screen warmed up, and now he hit a button on the remote and the darkened room filled with light from the screen, the tan color of an old piece of paper filled with black Cyrillic writing. The image washed the room in a sort of sepia tone that was reminiscent of 1930s photographs, making the faces of the agents seated around the table look sallow and unhealthy, painting deep-set shadows beneath their eyes and in the hollows of their cheeks.
“We’ve collected and destroyed thousands of eggs,” Manning was saying. “There’s no trace of this Sammael or this Rasputin character. But we have this address.” He used a laser pointer to draw multiple circles around part of the writing displayed on the screen. “Sebastian Plackba #16. Volokolamsk Fields, fifty miles from Moscow. We leave as soon as we get clearance and equipment.”
Manning turned and faced the men listening attentively to him, then folded his arms. Backlit by the tan lighting, Myers couldn’t see Manning’s face, but the hard tone of his voice covered it all. “Hellboy’s coming, but I’ll be in charge this time. Either we wrap this up or I’m closing this freak show for good.”
An awkward silence fell over the room as he snapped off the projector. Manning’s way of finally dismissing them was to start gathering up his papers and shoving them jerkily into his briefcase. Out of the corner of his eye, Myers saw Liz pass by the open conference room door, but he dared not get up and follow her.
Liz found Hellboy standing in front of Professor Broom’s desk, staring pensively at the knickknacks arranged on its surface. His massive chest was bare except for the bandages still covering the wounds he’d received in the recent battle with Sammael. She watched him from across the room and didn’t say anything, wanting to leave him undisturbed in his grief, but at the same time wanting to somehow comfort him. But how? After all that had happened to her and in her life, she wasn
’t sure she had comfort left in her for anyone, even herself. And certainly there were others in the world more qualified to offer it.
Waiting, she saw Hellboy pluck something from the desk’s surface and hold it up. The item—Broom’s black rosary—gleamed in the low light of the office, and Hellboy swung it back and forth a couple of times, but gently, as though he were afraid he’d offend a higher power if he were too rough with it. He stopped and leaned forward, reading something on one of the opened pages; even from where she stood, Liz could see that a portion of the contents had been underlined.
“Hi,” she finally ventured.
He straightened and turned to face her as she slowly came forward. “Hi.”
She rubbed her fingers together absently, then made herself stop when she felt a small burn start to build in the tips. “I’ve…changed my mind. I’ll come to Moscow. If you’re still going.”
Hellboy nodded, then cleared his throat. “I am.” He hesitated, then looked as though he had to force his next words to come out. “But I have something to say, too. I…never had the guts before.” He’d been looking at his hands, at the floor, at anything else, but now he raised his gaze to her face and looked Liz squarely in the eye. “I understand what you don’t like about me,” he said. “I do. What I am makes you feel out of place out there.” He gestured vaguely toward the ceiling, and Liz knew exactly what he meant.
Liz inhaled. “Red, I—”
“Listen,” Hellboy cut in. “I’m not like Myers. He makes you feel like you belong. And that’s good, it really is. I wish I could do something about this,”—he pointed at his own face—“but I can’t.” He looked down at the floor for a moment, then gave her a faint grin. “I can promise you only two things. One, I’ll always look this good. Two, I won’t give up on you. Ever.”
For a long moment, she didn’t respond at all. Then, very softly, she said, “I like that.”
Hellboy nodded firmly. “Good.”
20
TOPOCKBA STEEL MILLS, MOSCOW
MOVING SLOWLY, THE LIMO AND MOTORCYCLE CARAVAN wound its way through the wasteland of rust and decay that was all that remained of the Topockba Steel Mills. Times were hard and had been for a very long time. Likewise, money was—at least to the average man—scarce, and political favoritism was reserved for the select few. The economics of it all could be seen in the rotting warehouses that lined the litter-filled streets like dead, steel watchdogs, black-windowed buildings with twisted metal supports and broken-out glass. The only movement in this land of frigid desolation was a few lonely and heavily dressed sentries who, until they saw the limo, stood miserable and shivering in the cold and were clearly less than enthused about their lot in life.
The limo pulled up in front of a warehouse no more or less significant-looking than any other, easing to a halt like a predatory black snake. A tiny guardhouse stood to the left of its heavy metal door, and the noise of the car and the motorcycles made a guard poke his head out of a window; his annoyed look quickly evaporated into a smart salute and a moment later the scarred door trundled open so they could steer their vehicles inside.
When the limo was stopped, the back door opened and a fleshy Russian military man, General Lapikov, struggled out, waving away the chauffeur who offered to assist him. A moment later, Grigori and Ilsa slid from the backseat with a lot more grace than their escort.
“I have accumulated many objects of great interest,” General Lapikov told them proudly. He puffed his chest out, stretching the already well-tested buttons on his heavily decorated uniform. “All in the interest of preserving our heritage, of course.”
As the general led them through the storehouse, Grigori and Ilsa looked at each other, communicating their disdain with eye contact while carefully maintaining poker expressions. The place was damp and badly taken care of, full of spider webs, rat droppings, and puddles of moisture in the low spots on the floor. It was also a repository of bric-a-brac—to their left was a towering, unattractive marble sculpture of Lenin’s head, to their right a line of old master paintings which might or might not have been authentic. Other more questionable objets d’art included battered tanks, warheads, missiles, and a jumble of unidentifiable weapons.
“Many,” continued the general in his heavy Russian accent, “believe Mother Russia to be very close to an historic rebirth.” He’d led Grigori and Ilsa down several aisles, and now he stopped in front of a cargo container and gestured for one of the soldiers following them to come forward. He obeyed, unshouldering a small butane torch. It took only a few seconds to melt away the lead Kremlin seal that ran across the two main boards, then he pulled them open and exposed the contents for their inspection.
“Rebirth,” Grigori mused. “I like that.” He and Ilsa stepped closer and gazed at the opening. Inside was a massive stone monolith, probably of polished marble.
“Twenty tons of stone,” Lapikov said. “This thing fell from the sky into Tunguska Forest.”
Grigori nodded. “June 30, 1908. It burned hundreds of square miles of forest. The Romanovs took possession of it immediately, and the czar guarded it jealously. I’ve wanted it for ages.” His long fingers brushed over the smooth, perfectly white surface, then stopped at an imprint in the center: two circular engravings that matched Hellboy’s four-fingered stone hand. He smiled “Now, finally, it’s mine.”
General Lapikov arched one heavy eyebrow, and it was the first time he’d looked worried since exiting the limo outside the warehouse. “You are aware, of course, there is no way you’ll get it out of Russian territory.”
“He is aware,” Ilsa said curtly. She reached into the shoulder bag and pulled out a small, heavy chrome box. The general relaxed when she flipped open the lid and revealed a healthy-sized pile of gold coins. They gleamed in the poor overhead light.
The general smiled happily and quickly took it from her. “It’s a pleasure doing business with you. Perhaps you have…other interests?”
“Enjoy the bright metal you’ve earned,” Grigori said laconically. He didn’t take his gaze from the cold marble. “There will be no further transactions. Only…closure.”
RUSSIAN AIRSPACE OVER THE BLACK SEA
Hellboy watched the white eye of a full moon out of the tiny, round window as their oversized cargo plane sliced through the air. On a map tacked up to a plastic divider a few feet away, one of the airmen had drawn a red line indicating their flight path and its progress—they were close, very close. Turning away from the window and trying unsuccessfully to shut out the ceaseless drone of the engine, Hellboy forced his attention back to the brightly lit worktable in the center of the cargo hold. Off to one side, Myers was keeping a large cargo crate steady as Agents Lime and Stone stenciled the words Fragile! Live Cargo! across its front.
Leaning against the worktable, Hellboy pointed out the medieval illustration of Sammael on its surface to Liz and Manning. “ ‘One falls, two shall arise.’ So you pop one, two come out. You kill two, you get four. You kill four, you’re in trouble.” He looked at Manning through narrowed eyes. “We have to nail ’em all at once. And the eggs.”
Manning’s mouth twisted in distaste. “When we do, no mumbo-jumbo. Double-core Vulcan-65 grenades.” He held up a set of heavy grenade belts. “We’ve installed a very handy timer. Set, and walk away. The cable pulls the safety pins—kaboom! Easy to clean, easy to use.”
Hellboy stared from Manning to the grenade belts in amazement. “Those things never work—never!”
“Each of us gets a belt,” Manning said, pointedly ignoring him. He pushed a couple toward Hellboy.
“I won’t take ’em.” Hellboy set his jaw stubbornly. “They never work,” he repeated.
Manning scowled at Hellboy, but before he could say anything more, Agent Myers came forward. “I’ll carry his.”
“Boy Scout,” Hellboy muttered. Dismissing the grenade belt, he opted instead for wrapping Professor Broom’s rosary around his wrist.
VOLOKOLAMSK FIELDS, MOSCOW
They had two gleaming black vans and a black truck, and they probably stood out like bull’s eye targets against the stark white, snow-covered roads of pre-winter Moscow. Inside the truck’s cab, Liz and Myers struggled with a map of Moscow, trying unsuccessfully to pinpoint their own location and where they were headed. Giving up, Liz picked up her radio. “Sparky to Big Red,” she said, then rolled down her window and stuck her head outside so she could look back at the truck. The air whipping through her hair was frigid and damp, brutally cold; it would be pouring through the breathing holes drilled into Hellboy’s crate, and she hoped Hellboy was okay back there. She worried about him, sitting in the back like that, in the dark and the cold. Was it really a good idea to pen him up like this right now, and leave him with only his memories and regrets?
But his voice came back instantly. “Sparky? Who came up with that—Myers?”
Liz snickered but didn’t bother to answer. Next to her, Myers said, “We’re almost there.”
Myers slowed, then turned off the pavement onto a dirt road. Liz lifted the radio to her mouth again. “We’re leaving the main road, so hang on.”
The truck hit a series of bumps, banging and rattling along a road whose dirt and rock-riddled surface was hidden by the soft-packed snow. Liz could hear the crate shifting, feel the truck lurch over a bump, then rattle again as the crate bounced in the back. She hoped Hellboy was holding on or he was going to have more than horns for bumps on his head. As if he could hear her thoughts, the radio crackled to life. “This better be the place or I’ll puke.”
Myers braked and pulled over as the van he’d been following stopped. Before he had the chance to shut off the engine, Liz hopped out of the front and trudged to the back of the truck, shifting from foot to foot impatiently until a couple of the other agents pried open the crate. “Come out and see,” she suggested as Hellboy squinted in the suddenly bright light.
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