Hellboy: Unnatural Selection(18)

The rukh's father was there. And he was smiling.

The rukh called out once more, its joyful cry winging across the North Sea like a spirit only recently set free, and then it settled itself into its home once more.



* * *



The man on the bridge continued to smile as the hold doors closed slowly above the giant bird. A unicorn galloped along the deck, and his smile broke into a grin. A mile to starboard the sea erupted as something huge and bright red broke the surface for a few seconds. A forest of tentacles slapped at the air as the thing dived for unknown depths, and Benedict Blake's grin erupted into a laugh. Nowhere near as loud as the rukh's call, still it filled the sky and winged its way out over the waves. Soon his voice would at last reach the ears of those who mattered. And then it would be his time once again.



* * *





Baltimore, Maryland — 1997



IT WAS NIGHTTIME, AND it was hot, and Abby Paris should have been back at BPRD headquarters hours ago. Instead she was walking the streets, just another face hiding an anonymous life behind averted eyes. Most people wandered in pairs or groups, chatting and laughing, shouting and giggling. Light and noise spilled from bars and restaurants. The smell of food permeated the air, steak and seafood and sweet stuff all adding their own signatures to the night. She tried to shut out that sense, but she could not. Heightened smell was another part of her curse. As was hunger; but not for this. She stopped by a street vendor and bought six doughnuts, ate them, then vomited them back up ten minutes later. She held on to some park railings and heaved, splashing her shoes. A passerby paused for a moment and watched, then moved on. A police cruiser slowed and sped up again, and she wondered what the policemen had seen that had prevented them from stopping and arresting her. Just another drunk? Or something else entirely?

Abby wiped away her tears and looked at her hand, but there was no change there. It was several days until full moon, but as always she wanted meat.

She had reported in to BPRD after killing the werewolf. He had reverted seconds after she put the bullet through his brain, but she knew that many of the bystanders had seen what she had seen, heard what she had heard. She knew also that the human mind had a way of ignoring such strangeness and relegating it to the stuff of nightmares. Most of those present would shake their heads, look down at their feet, assume that the shock of what had happened had conjured fanciful images in their minds. Those who doubted their eyesight less would still say nothing, through fear of ridicule. And if there had been one man there, or one woman, who truly believed what he or she had seen, that person would be called insane.

For all anyone cared, Abby had killed a man in cold blood and then walked away.

She had spoken to Tom Manning. He had told her to come in, she had agreed, then she had gone for a walk. And now she was still walking, and it felt good. It was good to be out from BPRD, free for a night. They were her family, but they were also her prison guards, keeping her locked away for her own protection and the protection of those around her. These people here, swaying along the pavement and paying homage to the alcohol in their blood. Those people there, sweating and grunting in a shadowy doorway. Innocents all of them, cattle going about their daily lives of eating and drinking and rutting without realizing that monsters lived among them.

"Monsters like me," she said, but she shook her head so hard that she cricked her neck. No, she was not a monster. She had shed that name the instant she escaped from Blake.

The man knew who I was talking about. Blake! He denied it, but in his eyes I saw that spark of understanding ... and something else. Something that could have been recognition. And that was why Abby walked. Because of Benedict Blake, and what he had done, and the secret that she had carried from the second Abe Sapien set his strange hand on her arm in Paris and rescued her from the night.



* * *



She could remember few details of her life before Paris. There was Blake, the force in her mind and the physical presence that had nurtured her, and there was her escape from him. Plunging through the night into the ice-cold embrace of the ocean; the panicked swim; those massive things moving beneath her, deep down and yet so huge that they seemed to exert a fearful gravity, pulling her down with them. Something touched her legs more than once on that long swim, but it never held her back. Fear drove her on, fear of what Blake was and what he might one day do. Somehow she could fear him — the others did not — and that was another secret she had dwelled upon ever since. After that, there were only fleeting memories of Paris, none of them good. None, that is, until Abe Sapien touched her arm. His touch had seemed to welcome her to the world, unnatural thing that she was. And Abe had welcomed her into his life. We have like minds, he had said as she coughed the Seine water from her lungs.