Hellboy: Unnatural Selection(49)

"But he says something that led us here, now, to this pissing place? Yes?" Gal was obviously tired and edgy as well.

Richard smiled at his brother, but perhaps the moonlight distorted it into a grimace. "It's obscure," he said.

"Isn't it always?"

Richard closed his eyes and let the coolness of the moor wash over him. He felt the breeze whispering secrets, felt the age of the land beneath his feet, sensed the mysteries it contained if only he were prepared to dig. He would be digging, but not here and now. Later. This evening probably, the following morning at the latest. And if the Book of Ways turned out to be as accurate and trustworthy as they had found it over the years, by tomorrow lunchtime his brother would be sending a trace of werewolf back to their father.

His brother. Galileo had aged over the past few years. His hair had thinned, its remnants turning gray, and his face had taken on the contour lines of a map of sad places. His eyes still showed the heart of him, the pain there, the anger, consuming and as rich as the day they had found their mothers body in the burning house. But there was something else there that Richard had grown to fear. He had suspected it for several years ... but this was his brother, his own flesh and blood, and the last thing he wanted to believe was that Gal was mad.

"Well?" Gal said.

"It tells a tale and draws a map," Richard said. "I can follow both, given time."

"Good." Gal groaned and pulled his coat around his shoulders, trying to shield himself from the breeze.

"Gal, are you sure you're ready for another sending?"

"Never ready," Gal muttered.

"Maybe we should wait?"

Gal shook his head but did not answer. In the stark moonlight, as the mist thickened and settled on their clothes like rain, Richard thought he looked like a walking corpse.



* * *



"They chased it," Richard said. He had cast a spell of course and was hunched over the book, reading by moonlight. It gave the words a particularly sharp edge. "It had taken a child, a farmers baby, and the father was killed trying to fight it off. But they thought it was wounded. Its familiar call was higher and more frequent. They saw a shadow as they ran — the creature with the child in its mouth. Out of the village and across the moor toward the rock like a pointing finger. There." Richard nodded at a distant hillside, where a single weathered rock pointed skyward. He set off, and Gal followed.

Richard kept the Book of Ways open before him, staring down and trusting instinct not to walk him into a hole. The spell of course was still rich and potent, and he could still see the truth threaded between Zahid de Lainree's words and diagrams. The book's stories were as hidden as the creatures it talked about.

"How did they wound it?" Gal asked.

Richard stared at the book and shook his head. "It doesn't say. I suppose even a werewolf will develop an itch with a pitchfork in its throat."

"Father will use this well," Gal said, quieter than before. "It'll be one of his secret weapons. It can sit among people forever until he needs it to do his bidding. No tentacles or fire breathing, you see."

Richard heard no jest behind his brothers words. "If you want me to go on, then keep quiet. This isn't easy." He stopped and looked down at the book again, half closing his eyes so that the true path of the words could shine through. "Here," he said. "This is where it made its first stand. Dropped the child. Hid behind a rock — that one there — and pounced as the pursuers reached where we are now." Richard looked at the huge rock, half expecting the werewolf to appear from within its shadow again. But the moor was as silent and secretive as ever.

"First stand?"

"Yes." Richard squatted and looked again at the book. "It killed two men and a woman here, and took more wounds. But each cut made it more ferocious. It tore one of the men apart while others were spearing it. And then it picked up the child ... "

"And?" Gal said after a pause. "Which way did it go then?"

"It picked up the child and killed it in front of everyone. It wasn't hungry anymore. Just wanted to make a point." Richard stood and started walking again, conscious of Gal following him. Is this really us? he thought. Do we really want something that'll do such a thing. There are wonders in the Memory but monsters too. Have we been doing this for so long that we've forgotten how to differentiate?

Gal walked past him, still hunched into his coat. "This way?" he said, pointing. "That way? Which way, Rich?"