by Mike Mignola
“How should I know?” he said. “I’m just a grunt. It’s not my job to ask questions.”
“Yeah, right,” said Liz. “Because you’ve never had to use your initiative or intelligence before.”
He fixed her with his golden eyes and allowed his jaw to drop slackly open, revealing the chewed meat and bread in his mouth. “Duh . . . intelligence? Wassat?” he mumbled.
She threw a cushion at him. He caught it neatly and tucked it behind his thick neck with a sigh.
“Come on, though,” she said. “What’s your gut instinct?”
“What’s yours?” he asked.
She took a sip of her wine before replying, her brow creasing as she pondered over what she had learned that evening, both directly and after comparing notes with Hellboy when she had arrived back at the Old Bloomsbury.
It had been around midnight when a sombre and troubled Richard had dropped her off outside. Not surprisingly the two of them had foregone their proposed nightcap, the dead chicken having dampened the relaxed mood somewhat. Before getting out of the car, Liz had reached across and briefly clasped his hand. “Try not to worry,” she said. “I don’t think anything’s going to happen. Trust me, I know. I’ve been threatened by experts.”
He offered her a thin smile. “That’s very comforting. I’ll try to remember that when they’re kicking down my door at four in the morning.”
She felt a momentary flash of irritation, but managed to keep her teeth clamped over her instinctive, acerbic response. Reminding herself that most folks didn’t face Armageddon on a weekly basis, she tried to arrange her features into a look of sympathy.
“You’ll be fine,” she reassured him. “Just keep your door locked and your phone close to hand—not that you’ll need it.”
She gave his hand a final squeeze and wished him good night. As she headed across the hotel lobby to the lift, she was hailed by the night-duty receptionist, a plump girl with dyed red hair and bad skin.
“Mr. Hellboy said to let you know he’s back,” she said. She looked at Liz as if she were some curious and unknown specimen. Perhaps, Liz thought, she was trying to decide what would compel such an apparently ordinary girl to keep such fearsome company.
“Thanks,” Liz said, and went straight up to Hellboy’s room.
He answered the door in the silk dressing gown that had been presented to him by a group of Tibetan monks after he had cleared their monastery of salt demons one time. He looked oddly sweet, she thought. Almost vulnerable.
“No Abe?” she asked.
He shook his head. “A cop dropped off some of his stuff, together with a note saying he’d gone for a swim in the sewer.”
“Nice,” said Liz.
They ordered some room service and spent the next twenty minutes catching up, and then Liz asked Hellboy what his gut instinct was and he bounced the question right back at her.
She had been quiet now for some moments.
“You giving me the silent treatment?” he grumbled.
“Sorry,” she said, “just thinking.”
“Yeah, I thought I could smell burning.”
She narrowed her eyes at him and said, “Tell me what your buddy in the underground said again. That thing about the eye.”
Hellboy shrugged. “It didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Something about the all-seeing eye beginning to open. The usual mystical crap.”
“The all-seeing eye,” Liz mused. “There was an eye symbol above the bird nailed to Richard’s door. That would suggest a connection, wouldn’t you say?”
Hellboy shrugged and ripped the cap off another beer with his teeth. “Maybe. I guess we’ll know more when our guys speak to the rock monster, or whatever he is, in the tunnels.”
“You called them?”
“Well, yeah,” said Hellboy, as if she were insulting his intelligence. “Rachel Turner’s posted some guards, so that the big guy doesn’t go walkabout. Plus, she’s arranged for some people to go down there to talk to him. Communications experts. I’m not too good at that whole talking thing.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Liz. “I’ve always found you scintillating company.”
“Get outta here,” he said.
She grinned, then stood up and stretched. “I’m beat. Think I’ll call it a night. You gonna turn in?”
“I’ll watch some TV and wait for Abe.”
“You worried about him?”
“Nah. You know Abe. He’s more careful than the two of us put together. All the same . . .”
“All the same, you’d like to make sure he arrives back safe and sound.” She crossed the room and kissed him on the bridge of his nose. “At heart you’re just a big mother hen.”
“Didn’t I tell you to get outta here?”
—
Abe opened his eyes. He had heard something. Not the distant drone of traffic this time, or the ambient sounds of the city, but something inside the building . . . the scrape-bump-scuff of movement.
He had been sitting in the same position, eyes closed, for more than two hours. But the instant he heard the sound he was rising fluidly to his feet, his mind clear and his muscles tensed and ready. His previous weariness had drained away—which didn’t mean that, once his day was over, he wouldn’t lay his head on the pillow of his hotel bed and be instantly, deeply asleep. Whether by design or training—and it was almost certainly some of both—Abe’s body was a finely attuned machine. He might not have Hellboy’s sheer brute strength, or Liz’s awesome destructive capabilities, but his speed, agility, and perception were second to none.
Silently, he slipped out of the office and stood in the corridor, listening. There was definitely someone in the building. Abe estimated they were three or four floors below, but heading up towards him. He hovered a moment, wondering whether it would be best to wait here or go down and meet them halfway.
He decided on the former. His priority was to get answers to some of the many questions pertaining to the investigation, and to do that he needed to apprehend the new arrival. Without his belt he had no handcuffs, no twine, no charms, no talismans, no gun. He would therefore have to improvise with what he did have: clothes, sleeping bags, pillows. Slipping back down the corridor, he reentered the makeshift dormitory and stepped into the darkest of the shadows behind the half-open door.
He was motionless, his breathing so shallow it was all but silent—yet he suddenly became aware that below him the newcomer had come to a halt. Surely Abe hadn’t been found out? How could the newcomer possibly have detected his presence? A few seconds later, however, Abe’s suspicions were confirmed. From somewhere below came the sudden thump of rapidly retreating footsteps.
Instantly Abe was out the door and flowing down the corridor in pursuit. His quarry was at least a floor below him, which meant that he (or she) had a good twenty to thirty seconds, head start. But Abe was fast and his senses highly attuned. So unless his quarry managed to lose himself in crowds of people or a maze of streets outside the building, Abe was confident he had a good chance of making up the distance.
It was on the ground floor when he got his first look at his quarry. Abe was only a couple of flights above the newcomer when he heard the bang of the double doors on the level below and footsteps pounding across the wide expanse of wooden floor. Abe leaped down the stairs, wormed out through the doors, which were still swinging shut on rusty hinges—and suddenly there he was.
On the far side of the room was the fleeing form of a tall, skinny black man wearing a tight-fitting jacket and slightly ragged trousers a little too short for him. By contrast, his white Nikes were top of the range and looked brand new. They appeared to glow white in the gloom.
“Hey!” Abe shouted, and was delighted to see the man flinch and half turn, which caused him to stumble. Abe fixed his gaze on the oily whites of the man’s frightened eyes and flowed across the floor towards him, halving the distance between them in less than four seconds.
The man clambered to his feet. But this tim
e, instead of running, he turned and raised his arms. Then, using both hands, he formed his long fingers into the shape of an eye.
Thrashing, crackling serpents of yellow light instantly filled the space between Abe and the tall man. Abe barely had time to turn away before the light hit him with the force of a dozen electric shocks. Blinded and disoriented, he staggered and almost fell. He felt the light tearing into his mind, trying to rip away his consciousness. He fought it, momentarily aware of nothing but the need to wrest his thoughts from the force that was trying to expunge them. He felt like a drowning man fighting to keep his head above water, while tentacles coiled around his ankles beneath the surface, inexorably dragging him down.
Just as he was beginning to think he would have no choice but to succumb to the force, Abe abruptly felt it start to ebb. To his relief and astonishment, it dispersed quickly, like fog, enabling him to drag himself back into the real world. Although unscathed, his body felt sore and tender, as if he had been repeatedly stung by a school of angry jellyfish. Recovering his senses, he looked across the dusty, cavernous room.
The tall man was gone—but how long ago? Encased within the energy bubble, Abe had had no real sense of time passing. It had seemed like seconds, a minute at most, but it may have been longer.
Cursing loudly, he ran across the room, to a door which led into a narrow corridor, and then to a fire exit at the far end. The fire-exit door was standing ajar, creaking slightly. The cool breeze that curled in through the gap was like a balm on Abe’s stinging skin.
He exited the building and found himself on the bank of the Thames. Beyond a wide tow path, the river flowed by, timeless and implacable, its surface rippling like sleek, muscled skin. Abe paused a moment, listening for signs of the fleeing man. There was nothing. He scanned the tow path in both directions, considering his options.
Which direction would he have gone if he had been trying to escape a pursuer? Or rather, which direction would he have gone if he didn’t have the option of plunging into the Thames? Right towards Hammersmith Bridge and the bustle of Hammersmith itself? Or left around the outskirts of Fulham, past what looked like another half mile or so of warehouses?
Abe stood poised in the relentless London drizzle for a couple more seconds, then turned right on a hunch. Hammersmith Bridge, stretching across the river a quarter of a mile ahead, resembled the knobbly vertebrae of some vast creature. Now that he had made the decision Abe moved fast, his body cutting through the stiff headwind, spatters of rain sliding off his skin like oil. He was aware that his efforts might be futile, but urgency remained his watchword, because even if he didn’t catch the man he still needed to find a phone to call Hellboy, to tell him about the factory and what he had found in the waters below.
The factories and warehouses were giving way to more residential housing, and Hammersmith Bridge was beginning to loom above him, when Abe saw movement on the path ahead. He focused his vision through the static of rain, trying to make sense of vague shapes and half-glimpsed details. It took him a couple of seconds to identify the shape of a running man, and then two more to identify the man himself. He was loping along, all gangly, sharp-angled limbs and clomping feet, his white Nikes glimmering in the gloom.
Abe wondered whether the guy had any more of that nasty eye power to dispatch in his direction. Hopefully not, judging by the brevity of the previous attack. If he could call up the power at will, then surely he would have used it to more devastating effect the first time? Abe’s guess was that the power had come from elsewhere, and that the guy had been designated a limited amount, perhaps just enough to defend himself with.
The tall man looked tired, but he was almost at the bridge. Abe knew that if he could keep him in sight for the next minute or so, he would catch him. However, just at that moment, the man disappeared from view. For an instant Abe thought he had been snatched away by some arcane force. But then he realized that he had merely turned right on to a walkway that sloped upwards to meet the north end of the bridge.
The turn was so abrupt that the walkway was all but invisible until you were almost upon it. As soon as he reached it, Abe swiveled on his heel, twisting without breaking stride. The guy was a couple hundred yards ahead of him, almost at the top. Even though Abe was already running as fast as he thought he could, he dug a little deeper, looking for that extra spurt of speed.
He had no idea what time it was, but he guessed it must be around one a.m. Despite the late hour, traffic still rumbled almost incessantly over the bridge, and as Abe reached the top of the walkway and emerged onto the well-lit streets of Hammersmith, he saw that there were also still plenty of people about, many presumably heading home after a night out in the bars and restaurants of London.
What was immediately evident to Abe was that the black guy was too panicked to be thinking clearly. The only reason he was still noticeable amongst the dotted groups of people was because he was the only one running. He had crossed the road and was currently pounding past a large, grimy church on the street opposite, his lanky form slipping in and out of pools of light cast by the street lamps. He was attracting curious glances as he ran by—though the attention he received was nothing compared to the attention that was suddenly focused on Abe.
It didn’t help that Abe was all but naked, having stripped down to a pair of skintight black shorts for his swim through subterranean London. Although he always hated it when people called him “the fish guy,” and hated it even more when the ignorant and the bigoted referred to him as a monster, he guessed he could kind of appreciate that to the unprepared night owls of Hammersmith it must suddenly have seemed as if the Creature from the Black Lagoon had emerged from the Thames and was now running riot through their city.
Women screamed and men swore as he ran past. Many people simply scattered before him as if a tiger had appeared in their midst. A few hardy souls made halfhearted attempts to grab him, but he evaded their grasping hands easily.
Regardless of these distractions, Abe was gaining rapidly on his quarry. The guy was now staggering rather than running, his head wagging exhaustedly from side to side.
Oblivious to the traffic, the guy suddenly veered to his right, off the pavement and onto the road. A car screeched to a halt, missing
him by inches. The driver gesticulated angrily, but the guy ran on, ignoring him.
Abe looked past the man, and saw immediately where he was headed. Fifty yards away was the cavernous, brightly lit entrance to Hammersmith tube station. Abe guessed that the guy’s plan was to leap onto a train whose doors were about to close. It was a tactic he had probably seen successfully employed in a hundred movies. But Abe hoped that the guy would be disappointed. The odds of timing his getaway just right must be pretty slim.
Sure enough, the guy ran into the brightly lit station entrance. Abe followed, no more than thirty yards behind. He saw the guy scramble over the barrier, rousing a guard, who called indignantly after him.
The same guard reared back in shock as Abe appeared. “Sorry,” Abe muttered, and vaulted over the metal barrier like an Olympic hurdler. At this hour the station was all but deserted, for which Abe was grateful. He heard the tall man clattering down the metal escalator that led to the Piccadilly line trains. Abe appeared at the top just as the guy leaped the last half-dozen steps to the bottom. The guy stumbled and almost fell, but managed to regain his balance and staggered forward, into one of the side tunnels.
Abe followed grimly, knowing that the pursuit was almost at an end. But then he heard an approaching rumble, accompanied by a distant squealing and clattering. No, he thought, surely the guy wasn’t going to be that lucky. The train sounded as though it were mere seconds from thundering into the station.
Risking life and limb, Abe flew down the escalator and skidded into the side tunnel, bouncing off the tiled wall. Emerging onto the grime-gray platform beneath a digital display that flashed up the words ***STAND BACK***TRAIN APPROACHING***, he whipped his head left and right.
The guy was the only person on the platform—and unbelievably he was still running. In the bleaching light of the station, Abe saw the sweat glistening on his short-cropped hair, the dark wet patch on the back of his jacket, between his shoulder blades. The man was running towards the circular black mouth of the tunnel at the end of the platform. Raising his voice above the tortured squealing of the rails, Abe shouted, “Game over, my friend. There’s nowhere else to go.”
He felt a warm, stagnant breeze ripple over his skin, forced out of the tunnel by the approaching train. Lights appeared in the blackness. The bellowing of the train built to a crescendo.
The guy thumped to a stop and turned to look at Abe. His mouth was open and gasping, and sweat streamed down his face. He bent and put his hands on his knees. Abe walked towards him slowly, holding up his webbed hands. “I’m not—” he said.
And then, without warning, the guy jumped.
He leaped off the platform a split second before the train came screaming out of the tunnel. He was still in midair when it hit him. Although he was twenty yards away, Abe felt a warm rain of the man’s blood spatter over his skin. He turned his head aside and closed his eyes briefly. Then, even as the train with its cargo of shocked passengers was still slowing down, he gave a deep sigh, turned his back, and walked tiredly away.
CHAPTER 7
—
When Hellboy came down to breakfast, Abe and Liz were already there. They were sitting on the far side of the big, empty dining room with its crisp white tablecloths and immaculate silverware, the autumn sun shining on their window table and gleaming on Abe’s pale turquoise skin. Despite turning up at the hotel at two a.m., filthy and blood spattered, Abe looked none the worse for his night’s experience. After arriving back he’d taken a shower, told Hellboy his story, drunk some tea, and gone to bed.
Now here he was five hours later, filling Liz in on the details. As Hellboy came within earshot of his colleagues’ table, he saw Liz screw up her face. “Euww!” she exclaimed.
“Guess he’s just described the guy/train interface thing, huh?” Hellboy said.