Hellboy: Unnatural Selection(56)

Liz continued swirling. The ice had almost melted. "She's strange."

Hellboy looked at Liz until she glanced up to meet his eyes. "You're not?" he said.

"You know what I mean, HB. There's something about her. Something hidden. She's never fully submitted herself to the BPRD, not like you, or even me. Hell, you're strange enough, but at least you admit it, you know it, and you'd happily do your best to make that less so."

"You really think so?" Hellboy said. "I thought the ladies liked an enigma."

"Well, some do."

"Then I'll retain my air of mystery, thank you very much. I'm actually an accountant from New York who collects beer mats and stamps in his spare time. I just paint myself red. It's all the rage nowadays."

"Yeah. Right." Liz finished her drink, reclined the chair, and sighed. "So ... Benedict Blake."

"I dunno, Liz. Kate's rarely wrong, and she has a mind like a damn encyclopedia. But if this is all about revenge, it seems a bit — "

"Extreme?"

"Well, yeah. If his wife really was killed in a state-sanctioned hit, whys he suddenly killing thousands of innocent people?"

"Maybe he isn't. Maybe he brought these things up out of the Memory for his own reasons, and now they've escaped and are causing all their own chaos. He could have had a base somewhere — South America, in the jungles — and the mythological animals broke out, and now they're going to change the world, and he can't do anything about it."

Hellboy stared out the window at clouds catching the sun. The ground had disappeared from view, and they could have been anywhere. Below them, hidden, the world was continuing on its own way for now. They were removed from it for the next few hours, and he was glad for that, but he was also nervous. When they broke through the clouds again on their way to land, he had no idea how much the world below would have changed. "This is just so big," he said.

"So visible," Liz said.

"Yeah. I'm used to fighting monsters in subterranean caverns or old tumbled-down places of worship. I'm never on the TV. Now my ass kicking by a dragon is probably prime-time the world over. That's not good."

"It's almost as if it's intentional."

Hellboy nodded. Intentional. That's what he had been thinking. Fate, he'd been thinking a lot on that too. And what were they doing now, if not dancing to the tune of everything that had happened? That was another reason for him to feel nervous, and why he'd checked the aircraft so thoroughly before they took off. "I guess events this big just can't be controlled, and you're rolled along with them," he said.

"Like Abby," Liz said. She took out a cigarette and flicked a flame from her thumb. The smoke curled up and set off a subtle, polite alarm somewhere in the cockpit. A heavy curtain was pulled aside, a man peered through and disappeared again, and the alarm was turned off. "Look at that," Liz said, drawing deeply on her cigarette. "They're used to dealing with freaks."

"Don't be so hard on yourself, Liz," Hellboy said. "At least people don't think you wear goggles on your forehead."

Liz laughed, and Hellboy liked the way that made him feel. Sometimes he thought if she were more level-headed, he'd maybe care for her less, but that was an uncomfortable idea, so he shoved it away. It was Liz the woman he loved as a friend, not Liz the firestarter. That was just a small part of the larger package.

He sat back and closed his eyes, but sleep, as ever, would not come. Instead he started turning over the facts in his mind, searching as hard as he could for the aspect of all that was happening that made him the most uncomfortable.

He'd been beaten by the dragon. That was hard, but it was hardly the first time. He had scars and aches to display other times something had got the better of him ... but he'd always won out in the end. Maybe that was it; maybe he felt unsettled by unfinished business. Wherever the dragon was now, it had an appointment with his fist.

His defeat had been shown on TV. That was bad, and unusual, and it opened up a whole can of worms for the BPRD. But although it had set him on edge, he was pretty sure it wasn't what was upsetting him right now. There were things going on in the world that were demanding much more attention, and it would be arrogant of him to believe that the sight of the dragon kicking his ass had any real significance at the moment. The film of the ocean liner had proved that.

So Hellboy swung back to fate yet again, and control, and the fact that he felt as though he'd been steered into this course of action. They all had. Even Kate Corrigan's recollection of Benedict Blake and his mad ideas had seemed so inevitable, so well timed, that Hellboy could not help but wonder just how involved Blake might be with all this. Was he the kingpin? Or just another backer? Did the mad old guy even know what he was doing?