Hellboy: Unnatural Selection(71)

A dream came back to her, sudden and hard. She was alone in the dark, except that the darkness itself was not barren and neutral as it should have been. But neither was it alive. It watched her without eyes, listened without ears, and spoke without breath, and though she could not recall the words that had been whispered to her, she knew that they were all bad.

Awake now, an unbearable sense of unease had settled over her. She looked out at the aircraft's wing and hoped it would not break off. She looked down to the ground a mile below and hoped the landing gear would lock down correctly. Her dreams had always affected her intensely, and mostly she put it down to having been born of a memory herself. She supposed dreaming was her way of thinking back to the time before Blake had brought her into this world, her own memory of the Memory. Her recent brief foray back there had revealed that great, conscious darkness to her once more.

But this dream was different. It had felt intentional, not random, as if something had come into her mind to present it, instead of her mind presenting itself. She shivered and closed her eyes.

Full moon tonight, she thought. I've set myself free to murder. She hated thinking about what would happen when she changed. She had all but ignored it since fleeing Baltimore, dismissed the thought with some vague idea of locking herself away or being able to hunt animals, not people. But she could sense the blood flowing around her, smell the meat, and even through the staleness of the confined atmosphere, the smells were good. Her mouth watered. She hated that, but she could not control it.

"Stupid bitch," the man next to her said, staring after the flight attendant. He flipped out his phone again and switched it on.

"That can interfere with communications," Abby said.

The man looked at her, smiled, and pressed the phone to his ear.

Abby narrowed her eyes. She saw a vein pulsing at the man's throat, a tic in his left eye, and she could smell his wet flesh beneath his rank body odor. She thought he would probably taste tough and insipid — a lifetime of discontent would do that to a person — but still she grinned, and growled, and the man turned away and slipped his phone back into his pocket.

Abby closed her eyes. Her bones and muscles were beginning to ache. Just let me find him before I change, she thought. After that ... I don't care. Blake needed stopping years ago, and I failed in that. This time I'll do the right thing.



* * *



The plane touched down and eventually disgorged its disgruntled passengers. Abby immediately noticed the way the ground crew kept looking away from the passengers, out the tunnel windows, and up at the sky. They were nervous. No, they were terrified. They were trying to hide it, but everything about the way they stood, silent and twitchy, told her that they really did not wish to be here. At the junction of the tunnel and the arrivals terminal she paused and looked out the window. The sky was clear, the afternoon sun shining down on the busy airport ... and there were army vehicles flitting between buildings, disgorging soldiers who carried heavy machine guns and rocket launchers.

Abby walked into the arrivals terminal. It was silent. Hundreds of people stood clumped around TV monitors, and those who had just arrived soon joined the silent throng. It spooked her seeing so many people doing nothing, saying nothing, simply watching the screen. But even from a distance she could see flames smeared yellow and orange across one of the screens, and immediately she thought, Heathrow.

"What is it?" she asked a young man, his eyes wide, face slack with disbelief.

"Dragons just destroyed Heathrow," he said without stopping. He was walking from TV to TV, as if viewing different channels could alter the truth.

Abby did not stay long. She had seen one of the dragons in the New Ark, and she had no wish to watch them raining fire and destruction down on innocent people. "You bastard," she muttered as she left the terminal. Whatever cause Blake claims as his own, there's no justification for this.

She had to get there. Hire a car, drive to London, because the hints she had received from that awful, ancient entity in the infinity of the Memory had seemed to be right. London was where things were beginning to happen, and she knew that Blake would be there soon.

She would meet him. Father and daughter reunited. But this child had nothing but hate in her heart for her father. Hate and fear and a growing desire to kill him and eat of his flesh.



* * *



Abby breathed a sigh of relief as she pulled out from the Avis parking lot and found her way onto England's motorways. She supposed the world had far greater problems to contend with right now, but she had still been expecting the BPRD to put out information about her, telling airport authorities that she was ... what? A monster? A runaway werewolf? A danger to herself and everyone around her, come full moon?