Hellboy: Unnatural Selection(90)

"Hicks." Hellboy stared at the pilot. He gave him the glare. He hated doing it, but sometimes kind words just weren't enough.

"I can land on it," Hicks said. "And yes, you scare me. But all you had to do was say please."

Hellboy laughed briefly and went back into the cabin. "This is it," he said. He clenched his fist, checked his pistol, and wondered why he suddenly felt far from ready.



* * *



They landed on the wide bow of the old tanker, wondering why they had been allowed to descend uninterrupted.

It was only as the rotors wound down and the things came at them from behind the splayed hold doors that they began to understand.



* * *





The New Ark, English Channel — 1997



AS SOON AS THE CAR bumped onto the deck, Abby was out, running for the shadows, hating the stink and feel and sound of this familiar, terrible place, yet desperate to hide and escape as quickly as possible. Lost, at least she would stand a chance. And there was still one place where she thought she could find help.

"Always in a rush," a voice said. "Always so keen to leave, when there's unfinished business behind you."

Abby spun around, searching the hold for Blake. All she could see were the wrecked car and the bird, flapping its immense wings and trying to loosen its claws from the buckled metal. Elsewhere were only shadows, nudged by sunlight slanting through the open hold doors.

"You rushed away from me," Blake said. "But now you're back, and at the most opportune moment. What am I to you now, werewolf? Am I unfinished business?"

"I should have killed you that night I escaped," Abby said. "And I have a name: Abby. I'm not one of your monsters anymore."

"Of course you are," Blake said, and he stepped from the shadows. He looked ancient. Slight. Weary. And Abby had to blink, because for a second he was almost not there. "And you always will be." Blake looked up through the hold at the deep blue sky, marred here and there by loose, wispy clouds. "It'll be dusk soon ... Abby. And then night, and the full moon will be out. Ready to taste flesh?" He darted closer, his coat stroking the air.

"Stay away!" she said.

"Ready to taste human flesh again?"

"I eat cattle," she said.

"Now maybe. But not always. Don't you remember the first one, the boy from Hawaii? The rukh brought him to you, and you tore him to shreds, ate his heart, drank blood from his tattered throat. And I treated you like royalty. A whole hold of your own."

Abby closed her eyes and shook her head, trying to deny the images that Blake's words conjured. They were circling her like memories, but she tried to shove them away, make them lies. She put them on a screen and called them a film. But she had never tasted a movie or felt its skin split beneath her teeth —

"You're next!" she said, lunging at Blake.

He stepped aside and laughed. Her hands, tattooed fingers already clawed, slid from his chest and throat as though coated in oil. She pounced again, and again Blake brushed her off. She hardly felt him.

"You must be starving," Blake said. "No true flesh for so long."

"I'm a person, Blake. I have a place in the world, memories, a life." She stood back from him, spooked by the way he had felt. She squinted. Could she really see through him? Or was that simply the weird light down here, strobed by the rukh's wings as it struggled to flap itself free of the car?

"You're something I brought back!" he said, and she heard wounded pride in his voice. Good. She could use that.

"Are you so proud of everything you brought back? What about him? Is he still locked away down there?"

Blake's smile did not falter, but the humor dropped from his face.

"He's going to have you," Abby said. "And you know that, don't you? He was always going to have you in the end."

"Once the end is here, I'll no longer care," Blake said. "Not long now. They're probably dying already, those pompous bastards pumped up with their own self-importance. They have no idea what's important! Money, oil, status ... their place in the scheme of things has gone. It'll be a cleaner world, werewolf, the second blood from the first of them touches the ground."

Abby looked for a way out. She could see movement in the shadows: drones. They were small and weak, but enough of them could easily subdue her, should Blake command them to do so.