Don't Go Alone

by Christopher Golden

  “Fujimara,” Dahlia said, with every evidence of pleasure, “you are such a welcome sight.”

  “As are you,” he said, and bowed.

  “If you can get this lovefest over with, hold his arm,” Dr. Ludwig said.

  Octavian moved behind Ripley’s shoulders and gripped them. Fujimara took his right arm and held it out for the doctor’s examination. Dahlia held a flashlight to help Dr. Ludwig find the right spot to put the needle.

  Ripley struggled, but he gave up after a moment or two. “What are you going to do with my blood?” he asked, fearfully.

  “There’s a disease that’s killing witches and sorcerers in my world,” Octavian said. “Your blood can be used as a cure, as soon as I get home.” Now that he had a moment to think, he began to figure out how he’d do that in time for the blood to still be viable. He’d created a portal into the land of the Fae and he should be able to create another leading from Dahlia’s world into his own. Since he could visualize his own home exactly, the weaving of the appropriate spells would take much less time.

  “Curing a disease, that’s good,” Ripley said weakly. It was evident he didn’t want to look at his own blood flowing out. “What about you, pretty vampire?”

  “I will take this to doctors who work for my sheriff,” she said. “We hope to become immune to the weakness we have for the Fae.”

  Ripley shuddered as the fourth Vacutainer was sealed. Dr. Ludwig, who was muttering to herself, had two waterproof pouches. So far, she’d put two Vacutainers into each one. The rain pattered down around them, and Octavian was glad of the continuous sound of it. He hoped the people in the house would not wake up. In fact, he cast another spell to keep them deep in sleep, for their own protection.

  By then each pouch contained three vials of Ripley’s blood, and the big man looked close to passing out. Surely his loss of blood could not be that serious? Was he just queasy because he didn’t like to see his own blood leave his body?

  “He’s going to faint,” Dahlia said, and her companion let go of Ripley’s arm. But Octavian could feel the new tension in Ripley’s shoulders, and he said, “No!”

  It was too late. Octavian lost his grip on the wet man and Ripley tore himself away and leaped through the place where the portal had been. None of them had anticipated how easy it was to see the portal in the human world, since it was still gray and opaque. Dahlia and Octavian had been too preoccupied with moving their agenda forward.

  “You let him go,” Dahlia hissed at Octavian, and then she was on him, her hands seeking his throat. Octavian reared back and punched her in the head, then got a hand up and hit her with a concussive burst of magic that knocked her backward. He was wet and hard to hold onto, and she went flying.

  He crouched and braced himself, but her vampire companion simply said, “I don’t think he let Ripley go, Dahlia. I think Ripley fooled us.”

  “Since the patient has left, so will I,” Dr. Ludwig snarled. “Tell your sheriff to expect a very high bill in the mail, and he’d better pay it on the nose.” She trudged off, her case clutched in her hand.

  Dahlia retrieved one of the pouches so swiftly that Octavian could only see a blur. She reached for the second one, but Octavian snatched it up first. “Mine,” he said. “This is an even and fair divide, Dahlia.”

  Her companion looked at her, one black eyebrow raised.

  Dahlia looked angry for one moment, and then her face smoothed out into what Octavian thought of as vampire mode. Cool impassivity.

  “It would be better if I took all of it,” she said. “But we did help each other get out of the Fae dungeon, and we did find Ripley, though that was mostly me.”

  “We did elude the Fae pursuit, though that was mostly me,” Octavian countered.

  The Asian vampire seemed to be quite good at letting Dahlia solve her own problems. “You appear to be even,” he remarked calmly.

  “Yes, you’re right,” Dahlia said, giving him a genuine smile. For the first time, Octavian realized she was beautiful, though he thought he would just as soon have a wolverine as a buddy.

  “Then we can go home? Joaquin is waiting.”

  “Can I have one of your vials?” Octavian said. He didn’t want to think of it as begging, but he would have felt wrong if he hadn’t even asked. “I am trying to save lives.”

  “Don’t push it, magician,” Dahlia said. “We are not doing something as noble as you think you are, but great things may happen if we don’t feel the impulse to slaughter every fairy we come across.”

  “Fae blood. Mmmm,” Fujimara said, his eyes closing in delight.

  “So, we’ll go,” Dahlia said. “Goodbye, Octavian. I hope you don’t die.”

  “Goodbye, Dahlia. Try not to kill anyone who hasn’t earned it.”

  He could hear her laugh as she and her companion vanished from sight.

  Octavian felt he could hardly get any more sodden, so he sat in the garden for a few more moments, gathering his strength. Any place would do, though he’d rather be dry, and he’d rather gather a few supplies. He got up and stuffed the waterproof pouch inside his shirt.

  He began walking, identifying the driveway mostly by feel, and he could tell it would be a long time until he got to the road. But when he did, he saw headlights. Hesitantly, he went to the driver’s side. The window rolled down. The dome light came on.

  “Hey, you Peter?” the driver said. He was old and grizzled and had a thick Cajun accent.

  “Yes,” Octavian said cautiously.

  “Then hop in, I’m taking you to New Orleans,” the man said.

  “I’m glad,” Octavian said. “But who asked you to? And I don’t have money on me.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” the man said. “I got hired by the vampire sheriff in Shreveport. He got a call a few minutes ago, some vamp business. He’s doing a favor for some sheriff somewhere else. All I know is, I was supposed to show up here and wait for you and take you to the Big Easy. Oh, and give you this.” The grizzled man handed Octavian a wad of bills.

  Surprised, Octavian climbed into the vehicle, which was a clean pickup truck, and said, “I didn’t expect this.”

  “I heard them arguing about it,” the man said. “But the Asian dude, he spoke up for you.”

  Octavian smiled. “Then let’s be on our way,” he said.

  I have lives to save.

  THE NUCKELAVEE

  A Hellboy story

  by Christopher Golden and Mike Mignola

  The old man had a shuddery way about him, a fidgety, near-to-tears aspect to every glance and gesture that said he'd jump at every shadow, if only he had the strength. If only he weren't so damned old. But his eyes weren't old. His eyes were wild with terror.

  It was a cold, clear evening in the north of Scotland, and the sky was striped with colors, from a bruised blue on one horizon to the pink of sorrow or humiliation on the other. The rolling hills that surrounded the crumbling stone estate had no name save for that of the family which had resided there for more than five hundred years: MacCrimmon.

  "That's it, then. Just as I said. It's dry as kindling, now, and ne'er will run again," said the old man, whose name was Andrew MacCrimmon.

  He was the last of them.

  MacCrimmon's wild eyes darted about like those of a skittish horse, as though he waited for some shade to steal upon him. Night had not quite fallen, and already, it seemed the man might die of fright, heart stilled in his chest so as not to be heard by whatever he feared might be hunting him.

  Whatever it was, it had to be horrible, for the old man stood on the slope of the hill beside a creature whose countenance would give a hardened killer a week of restless nights and ugly dreams. Hellboy carried himself like a man, but his hooves and tail, his sawed-off horn-stumps, and his sheer size spoke another truth.

  There were those who thought him a devil. But Andrew MacCrimmon would have sought help of the devil himself if he thought it would have done him any good.

  "You'll stay, th
en, won't you?" the old man asked. "You must."

  Hellboy grunted. He stared at the dry river bed, gazing along its path in both directions. It didn't make any sense at all to him, but he hadn't been there more than fifteen minutes. Just a short way up the bank of the dry river was a small stone building. When the water had still run through there, it would have stood half in, half out of the river.

  "What's that?" Hellboy started off toward the stone structure.

  "Ye don't understand," the old man whimpered. "Ye've got to help me. I was given to understand that ye do that sort of thing."

  As he approached the small building, Hellboy narrowed his eyes. The thing was ancient. Older, even, than the MacCrimmon place, which stood on the hill behind them. It wouldn't have been called a castle. Too small for that. But it was too big to be just a house, and too dilapidated to be called a mansion.

  But this other thing . . .

  "What is this?" he asked again.

  "It's as old as the family," the old man told him. "Been there from the start. My grandfather told me he thought it was the reason the MacCrimmons settled here."

  Hellboy studied the structure. The ancient stone was plain, but overgrown with ivy save for where the water would have washed across it before the river had gone dry. Centuries of water erosion had smoothed the stone, but he could still make out the faintest impression of carving. Once upon a time, there had been something drawn or written on that stone surface, but it was gone now.

  Curiously, he clumped down into the dry river bed and around the other side of the edifice. His hooves sank in the still damp soil. There was something else on the river side of the building. Set into the stone, there was what appeared to be a door.

  "How do you get in there?" he asked.

  The old man whimpered.

  There were no handles of any kind, nor any edges upon which he might get a significant grip. Still, Hellboy tried to open the door, to no avail.

  "Please, sir, ye must listen to me," MacCrimmon begged.

  Hellboy paused to regard him. The man's long hair and thick, bristly beard were white, and his face was deeply lined. He might have been a hermit, a squatter on this land, rather than its lord. Of course, "lord" was a dubious title when it referred to the crumbling family home, and a clan which no longer existed.

  "Go on."

  "The river was here before us, but the legend around the doom of Clan MacCrimmon was born right here on this hill. When the river goes dry, the legend says, it'll mean the end of Clan MacCrimmon. I've no children, ye see. I'm the last of the clan. Now that the river is dry, death will be coming for me.

  "I knew it right off," the old man said, becoming more and more agitated. "Took three days for the river to run dry. Three days, you understand?"

  Hellboy grunted. "Not really."

  It was then that he noticed that the river wasn't completely dry. A tiny trickle of water ran past the door, past the building. It wasn't more than three inches wide, and barely deep enough to dampen the earth, but it was there. Hellboy reached down to put his finger into the water, and MacCrimmon cried out as if in pain.

  "No, you mustn't! It's the doom of the MacCrimmons, don't you see? When the water stops running, the doom of my clan will be released."

  "That's . . . interesting." With a shrug, Hellboy stepped up onto the slope again. "So what do you expect me to do?" he asked, confused by the old man's babbling. "Some legend says you're gonna die, I don't know how I'm supposed to deal with that."

  The old man clutched at Hellboy's arm with both hands, eyes flicking back and forth in that disturbing, desperate twitch.

  "You'll stay for dinner," he said, but it wasn't really question. "You'll stay, and you'll see."

  It was a very long drive back to anywhere Hellboy might stay that he wouldn't be shot at by local farmers or constabulary, so when Andrew MacCrimmon urged him on, he trekked up the hill to the crumbling manse alongside the old man. It was a gloomy place, a testament to entropy, with barely a whisper of the grandeur it must once have had.

  Once they had entered, Hellboy saw that he had not been entirely correct about its origins based on his initial observations. While the manse itself was no more than three hundred years old, it was built around an older structure, a cruder, more fundamental tower or battlement, that must once have served as home and fortress for whoever had built it.

  MacCrimmon Keep, someone at the BPRD had called it. Hellboy hadn't understood before, but now he saw it. This was the keep, and the rest of the place had been built up around it.

  When they had settled inside, the old man brought out cold pork roast and slightly stale bread. There was haggis as well, but it looked like it might have gone over somewhat. Not that Hellboy was the world's greatest expert on haggis, but there was a greenish tint that made him even less likely to eat it than if he'd been trapped for a week on Everest with nothing to gnaw on but coffee grounds and it was a choice between haggis or his fellow climbers -- which was pretty much the only way he would've eaten the stuff even if it were fresh.

  "Sorry I don't have more to offer," MacCrimmon muttered, a mouthful of questionable haggis visible between what was left of his teeth as he spoke. "The cook and the other servants left three days ago, when the river started to slow. They know, y'see. They know."

  When the meal was done, MacCrimmon seemed twitchier than ever. The manse was filled with sounds, as every old building is -- a sign of age like the rings in a tree stump. The old man must have been familiar with most of those sounds, but now they frightened him, each and every one. He seemed to draw into himself, collapsing down upon his own body, becoming smaller. Decaying already, perhaps, at the thought of death's imminent arrival. Or imagined arrival.

  "Cigar?" he asked suddenly, as if it were an accusation.

  Hellboy flinched, startled. "Sure."

  MacCrimmon led him to the library, which was larger than the enormous dining room they'd just left. Two walls were lined floor to ceiling with old, desiccated books, but Hellboy's eyes were drawn immediately to the other walls. To the paintings there, above and around the fireplace -- where the old man now built a roaring blaze -- and around the windows on the outer wall. Clan MacCrimmon came to life on those walls, in the deep hues and swirls of each portrait, but not one of them was more vibrantly powerful than the one at the center of the outer wall. It hung between two enormous, drafty, rattling windows, and seemed almost a window itself. A window onto another time, and another shade of humanity. For the figure in the portrait was a warrior, that much was clear.

  "Clan MacCrimmon?" Hellboy glanced at the other paintings.

  The old man seemed reluctant even to look at the portraits, but he nodded his assent as he handed Hellboy a cigar. With wooden matches, they lit the sweet-smelling things and began to smoke. After a short while in which nothing was spoken between them, the old man looked up at the portrait of the warrior that hung between the windows.

  "That'd be William MacCrimmon. A warrior, he was, and fierce enough to survive that calling. Old William lost his closest friend in battle in 1453, and promised to care for the other warrior's daughter, Margaret."

  Hellboy took a long puff on the cigar, then let the smoke out in a huff as he studied the old man. MacCrimmon was warming to the story of his ancestor, clinging to it as though it were a life preserver. It might only have been a way to pass the time, but Hellboy wondered if, somehow, it was the old man's way to keep his fears at bay, just for a while.

  "Though already quite old for his time, William fell in love with Margaret, and married her. It was a sensible thing, perhaps the best way to care for the girl. Trouble was, Margaret was a Christian. William had to make some changes. He wasn't from the mainland, ye see, but from the isle of Malleen. Margaret wouldn't hear of living on the island, for there were stories, even then, of the things which thrived there."

  Hellboy raised an eyebrow and scratched the stubble on his chin. "Things?"

  For the first time since he began the story,
MacCrimmon looked at him. The old man grinned madly.

  "Why, the Fuathan, o' course. Ye've never heard of them?"

  Hellboy didn't respond. Considering the job, he didn't study nearly as much as he should. The old man didn't seem to notice, his attention drawn back to the portrait of his warrior ancestor.

  "Old William had known the people, the Fuathan, since he was a bairn, ye ken. Shaggy little beasts that might be men if not for the way nature twisted their bodies. The legends say they hated men, but not so, not so. They were the servants and allies of the islanders, and held malice only for those from the mainland.

  "Still, when William married Margaret, and chose to remain here in the north country, rather than return to the island, the Fuathan had no choice. They came along. It was they who built the original keep, and that pile out in the river bed. It was they who made the river run, so the legend goes, for the Fuathan were ever in control of the water.

  "What it was built to house, the legends dinna say, but the story has it that they raised it in a day, and the keep itself in a week, all the while, making certain Margaret MacCrimmon would never see them. There's a circle of stones in the wood over the hill that were used for worship. The Fuathan lived there, in the wood around the circle, and the clan grew with both the new religion and the old faith."

  Hellboy shivered. He'd heard similar stories dozens of times, about the encroachment of Christianity into pagan territories, one family at a time. But in this case, with the results crumbling and gloomy around him, it seemed far more tangible. Honestly, it gave him the creeps. The clash of old and new faiths could not have been a healthy one. He had to wonder what it had done to the offspring of that union, down across the centuries.

  The old man seemed to have run out of steam, though he still stared at the portrait of the warrior. And there was something odd about that portrait, something that held the eye. Hellboy tore his gaze away, took a puff of his cigar, and turned his attention back to the old man.