Hellboy: Unnatural Selection(48)

Tom shrugged. "Not our problem right now. What is our problem is that if the banshee was right and Blake is targeting London, it could be he's planning to take them out."

Hellboy frowned. "So ... everything else is a distraction?"

"That could be why London has escaped thus far."

"World leaders, you say?"

"Some of the biggest."

"Hmm. So we leave these monsters all over the world to get on with their killing and murdering, and we fly off to London — where nothing has happened so far — to baby-sit some soft-assed, smooth-skinned politicians?"

"Hellboy ... we're not trusted. You and I aren't trusted, the BPRD is a shadow organization to many people, and what we do here is often questioned at the highest levels. We make our own choices because we're allied to no one. Do you think I'm going to come off the phone this afternoon having convinced NATO that they need to mobilize their armed forces? Protect London? What do I say when they ask for proof of this theory?"

"Tell them I beat the truth out of a banshee in Central Park."

"Precisely."

"Abe," Liz said. "Abby!"

"I was going to come to that," Kate said.

"What?" Hellboy asked.

"Abby killed a werewolf in Baltimore," Kate said. "And Abby is a werewolf. She disappears just as the cryptids pop up ... and maybe I'm adding two and two to make five again. Or maybe I'm not."

"Hang on," Hellboy said. "You're suggesting that Abby is one of Blake's?"

"I don't know," Kate said. "Dammit, we know nothing But it just seems to be strange timing, and I wouldn't be surprised if what's happening now is relevant somehow to Abby. Why else choose now, when shit the size of Nova Scotia is hitting the fan, to do a runner?"

Hellboy stood. "This is all too much," he said. "Too clear and convenient, and too woolly. Where do these things come from? The Memory? What is that? Somewhere described by a book that probably doesn't exist? How can Blake — if he even exists — pull them through? You say he'd be over ninety. That's old for a magical criminal mastermind. Where is he hiding? What are his reasons? Where are the other things he's created out of mythology and legend? Where, what, how, why, who, and why am I so damn pissed that I can't put any of this together?"

"Way I see it," Liz said, "is that none of that matters," She stood and walked over to Hellboy; He was resting his forehead against the window, scraping the glass with his right hand as if trying to score his way through. "What matters is this, HB." She showed him a picture of a dead child, throat ripped out by a monster. And then a photograph of a building smashed to pieces by something big. Another one, a tank on its side with its crew spilled out like soft red innards. They were all dead, and black things with membranous wings were eating them.

He turned and pushed past her, going back to the table. "Let Abe know," he said. "And tell him about London. If there's any truth in all this, Abby may somehow know where Blake's going. And for whatever reasons she may have, she could be going there to meet him."

"Hellboy, I don't think Abby — "

"We just can't tell," he said. "Dammit, Abe." He shook his head and wished more than anything that he could take off after his friend. But Liz was right. She had shown him what mattered. Conjecture aside, there were certain truths that could not be denied. BPRD could not fight this whole new world of chaos, but if there was the slightest chance that they could tackle its cause, its core, then that was where he should be.

"London?" Liz said.

Hellboy nodded. "London. Let's see if we can talk some sense into those Brits."



* * *





Yorkshire Moors, England — 1988



"IT WAS A LONG TIME ago," Richard said. "Almost five hundred years. Around that time there were few records being made of the world, few histories written down for future generations. But our friend Zahid de Lainree has those histories, and they're as certain in his book as any I've ever read."

"So what does he say about the werewolf?" Galileo Blake asked.

"Nothing too obvious," Richard said. "That wasn't his way." He was tired and angry, and having to hike across the moors in the dark had set him on edge. He had been to many strange places — underground tombs, forgotten temples, graveyards to myth and memory — but these misty, mysterious plains really got to the heart of him. Perhaps because everything was so of the here and now, yet they could have been walking across a landscape ten thousand years old. The fears of the moors were timeless. And that was why he and Gal were here.