Hellboy: Unnatural Selection(75)

"Oh, shit," Richard whispered.

"I second that," Gal said.

The flames were pure white. They rose only a few inches from the black mass in the pit, flitting here and there, dying down and rising somewhere else. They looked cold. Smooth plumes of smoke rose above them, swirling in the disturbed air of the underground cavern and painting ghosts in the torchlight. Shining his flashlight up, Richard could see how the ceiling of the chamber had been blackened by centuries of smoke. Directly above the smoldering demon, the ceiling was so black that it looked like a hole in reality itself. Maybe that's where Leh went, Richard thought. Perhaps that's how it fled into the Memory, even though its body is still here.

"I'm going to look," Gal said. He moved forward. Richard raised his hand but did not touch his brother. He suddenly felt very much alone down here, less involved, more a product of his own thoughts and experiences than ever before. For a long time he and Gal had been one unit; now he was a man on his own.

Someone who could make his own choices.

"Rich, come and see this," Gal said. He only whispered, but the cavern caught his voice, bending it into echoes that stayed there for several seconds.

Richard walked forward and stood next to his brother. He looked down. The demon was blackened by two millennia of flames, yet its form was still apparent, curled into a fetal position within the pit, head covered by its long-fingered hands, legs drawn up, feet curled inward and folded over each other.

Richard let out a held breath, and dizziness faded away.

"That's a demon," he said. "We've found a demon."

"Leh."

He spoke its name! Richard thought. But nothing happened. The white flames died down on the demon's shoulder and sprang up again on its arm and hip, flickering across its leathery skin like rapidly growing frost.

"Are you ready?" Gal said.

No. Not ready. I'm not ready to do this.

"Rich? Ready? Open the book. Read those words."

"I'm not sure I want to."

"That doesn't matter."

"Whose fires am I putting out if I utter these words?" Richard said. "Leh was put down by Christ himself. Whose flames will I be extinguishing?"

"If the fire can be extinguished, then surely there's a reason for that?" Gal said.

Richard did not know. Slowly, without taking his eyes from the demon, he slipped the rucksack from his shoulder and pulled out the Book of Ways. He closed his eyes for a few seconds and cast a spell of course, dizzied with the effort. Then he opened his eyes again and started reading de Lainree's words.

The flames flickered, touched with a breath for the first time in almost two thousand years.



* * *



Richard fell back exhausted, and Gal took over. He used his pocketknife to chip off a portion of the carbonized demon, hissing as he burned himself. He blew on his fingers and stared at them for a few seconds, as if expecting something to sprout from his skin.

Richard held his breath, then sighed again as his brother continued.

He knelt close to the firepit — a firepit no longer — and drew the required shapes on the ground with a lump of chalk from his rucksack. He glanced back at Richard, expression unreadable, and then started a quiet chanting. The echoes of his words stumbled over each other.

The air in the chamber began to move, and Richard hoped it was because of an evening breeze in the Jerusalem streets above them.

Gal's chanting grew louder, and he swayed on his knees, leaning down to the left, the right, then forward over the chunk of burned demon he was trying to send. His clothes, loose on his thin frame, shivered as his muscles tensed and untensed, and Richard could see sweat dripping from his brother's nose and chin.

"It's going," Gal said.

Richard crawled back against the wall of the circular chamber. He heard a sigh — his brother, or a breeze coming along the tunnel from the drainage ditch, or something else entirely. A wavering white flame sprang up on Gal's right shoulder, smoke rising from his jacket as the fire ate into it, and Richard almost shouted a warning to his brother. Almost. Because then the shape Gal was hunkered within was scoured from the floor of the chamber by a blast of air, and the blackened shard of demon disappeared.

"It's gone," Gal said, and he fell onto his face.

Richard stood and hurried to his brother, terrified of what he would see, certain that the white flame would have found a new home in Gals fresh flesh and that he would lie there burning for a thousand years. But the flame had disappeared, and though Gals eyes had closed, he was still breathing, fast but regular.