Hellboy: Unnatural Selection(43)

"Like no other."

"Hard old hag."

"Did it speak?"

"Of course it did. It said London."

"Right. I'll call that in, then I guess it's back to HQ for us."

"I guess."

"And the banshee?"

Hellboy puffed at the cigarette, and its glowing tip lit his face redder than ever. "Back in dreamland," he said. "Let's go."



* * *





Baltimore, Maryland — 1997



AFTER SO MANY YEARS, so much time trying to forget her genesis, and after all the help she had received from her friends at the Bureau to forge a new life and existence in a blinkered world, Abby Paris found herself drawn once again to the Memory. Even in her dreams she had never thought to visit there again. Even in the deepest nightmares, when visions of Blake's unnatural New Ark haunted her, she had never found herself tempted back to that dark place that had once been her home. It was partly fear, and a desire to disassociate herself from anything Blake had been, but it was also terror at the idea of revealing her deceit to Abe. She had told him and the Bureau that she had no memory of her early life, and she had weathered the tests they had conducted. As far as they were concerned, she was a blank slate upon which they could help her create a whole new history. In fact, Abby knew that her slate was already tainted, and the writing there was dreadful.

There was treachery, and lying, and in the end she supposed she had always known that there would be betrayal. But that did not make it any easier.

She sat in the ruined church and felt the lure of the full moon closing in on her. Deep inside her burned a small fire, one of desire and animalistic freedom, and it was slowly growing. The side of her she could not control was coming to take charge, and in two days she would no longer be herself. Or, she supposed, she would be more herself than ever before. She would be pure Abby Paris, not the restrained, recreated Abby Paris she had lived her life as since escaping Blake.

She looked down at her hands and clenched them. Her fingers were long and fine, graceful, and her nails were short and functional. There were no hairs sprouting from her tattooed knuckles yet. No stretching of the nail beds, no thickening of the nail, no bulking out of her hand and palms to create the pads of feet. She closed her eyes and felt that fire inside simmering, but she knew there was still time. Her betrayal of her friends was cutting deep, but at least she would have a chance to lessen its impact. She would visit the deep blackness of the Memory, do her best to discover where Blake was now, and then she would kill him. Simple to say ... but she did not wish to dwell on the practicalities.

Then she would return to Abe and the Bureau, and her future would be her choice. They could accept her back into the fold — the werewolf they knew about, the liar they did not — or they could let her go out into the world. Any other possibilities did not bear thinking about.

She closed her eyes and tried to calm her mind. It was too busy and too stretched, so she started breathing deeply, concentrating on one point of light, filling herself with its source, and letting it out with each breath. She let her mind wander where it would to begin with, knowing that to rein it in too soon would be detrimental to her efforts. Soon her slowed breathing became more natural, her heartbeat dropped, and the point of light in her mind's eye suffused her bones, flesh, and muscles. She felt illuminated, and her mind drew back and wallowed in the sensation. Such freedom gave her confidence, and that confidence gave her peace of mind, for now at least. The future was always a dark place, so she did not look that way. The past was mostly pain, so did she not look that way either. The present, the here and now, was where she could truly find salvation. Every second of every minute of the next few hours could provide her with an opportunity to validate her life, and she guessed that was all anyone could ever really hope for. Some could merely exist, and some could live, and she wanted so much to live.

Something touched her leg, but Abby ignored it. A cat or a rat, it would move on, finding nothing of interest here. Water dripped on her head from the broken church roof, but she reveled in it, an anointment from history. She became separate from the outside world, existing deeper inside her own mind than ever before.

Then, when she felt the time was right, she went further.



* * *



As a true creature of the Memory, her way back was relatively easy to find. Abby moved forward into the light, pressed deeper, and when she emerged from the other side, darkness prevailed. This was the primal darkness, the place that was the everywhere and nowhere before creation had come to build upon it, and its vastness terrified her. She hung back for a while, sheltering in her own mind and aware of the light behind her. It no longer shone, but it was there, as much a presence as her own mind. It comforted her, and in this place comfort was hard to find.