Hellboy, Vol. 2: The All-Seeing Eye (11 page)

Hellboy did, though. Oh, he had
tried
to distance himself, had done his utmost to be as businesslike as possible, but the problem was, he couldn’t keep it up. Despite his fearsome exterior, he was a personable guy, and if someone treated him with friendliness and respect, then he couldn’t help but respond.

And these guys
had
been, and still were, friendly and respectful. It turned out they
admired
him. Turned out they had
volunteered
for this mission just for the chance to work with him, fer Chrissakes. If they had been a couple of gung-ho morons, maybe he could have hated them a little for that. But they weren’t; they were competent professionals. They listened to what he said and they took no chances. Apart from the fact that they had no real idea of what they could be facing here today — despite Hellboy’s best efforts to educate them — they were perfect. Their lack of true understanding was certainly not their fault. When it came to fighting monsters, Hellboy knew no amount of preparation was ever enough. The only way to find out how you would react to the hyper-reality of encountering such a creature was to meet one head on. Which was why — if Hellboy was obligated to have any backup at all — he liked being surrounded by people he could rely on, people who had done this kind of work before. The inexperienced were unpredictable. Hellboy had seen battle-hardened army veterans freeze at the sight of their first supernatural entity; on the other hand, he had seen fresh-faced rookies barely out of high school take the appearance of some colossal, slavering swamp monster in their stride.

The two guys alongside him this evening were called Louis and Sean. Louis was a tall, broad-shouldered black man in his mid-thirties, whose easygoing, unflappable manner seemed to radiate stability and assurance. Sean, ten years younger, was sparky, alert, and receptive, but highly disciplined nonetheless. Louis, a Londoner, was married, with a five-year-old son and a nine-month-old daughter. Sean was from Aberdeen, and had a girlfriend called Lucy, who was a student at London University.

All this, and more, Hellboy had discovered in the hour or so that the three of them had spent tramping through the black, filthy tunnels of the London Underground. The only other living creatures they had seen in that time had been rats and mice, scampering away from the thin white beams of the flashlights mounted along the sights of the police officers’ assault rifles. The only sounds they had heard, aside from the crunch of their own boots and the clack of Hellboy’s hooves, had been the rumble of distant trains, powering through tunnels in those sections of the system that hadn’t been shut down.

“D’ye mind if I ask ye a question, Hellboy?” Sean asked as they trudged through the darkness.

Hellboy shrugged. “Go ahead.”

“D’ye ever get scared?”

“Not of the monsters.”

“What then?” said Sean. “What scares someone like you?”

Hellboy swallowed and said, “You know what
really
scares me?”

“What?” asked Sean.

“Damn fool questions from guys who like nothing better than to poke their noses into other people’s business.”

He spoke in a mild rumble to show that his words should not be taken too harshly. Louis got it straight away and chuckled. “That told
you
, kid.”

“Aw, man, that’s a cop-out!” Sean said ruefully, but he didn’t pursue the matter. He was astute enough to realize that the subject was closed.

They came to the latest of many intersections. One thing the three of them had discovered very quickly was that the tube system beneath London’s streets was not as straightforward as it appeared on the standard map. As well as the wide, reasonably well-maintained tunnels that carried the trains, there was also a more intricate secondary system of access corridors, maintenance channels, and passageways leading to storage facilities where tools and equipment were kept. Additional to this were the tunnels that led nowhere — that were blocked off, or partly blocked off, or which had caved in. Some of these — the walls caked with soot, the ground inches deep in sludge — led to long-abandoned stations, known as “ghost stations,” of which, they had been informed before heading down here, there were around forty scattered throughout the network.

At the intersection, Louis and Sean stepped forward to flank Hellboy’s muscular form and swept their gun-mounted flashlights swiftly left and right. There wasn’t much to see — more curved, soot-blackened walls; more rails; a few dark areas up ahead that might have been alcoves or side passages.

Before Hellboy had to ask, Louis was reaching into the breast pocket of his padded jacket and taking out the map they had been given at the outset of their mission. They pored over it, Louis holding one side, Hellboy pinching the other delicately between the stubby stone fingers of his right hand. Louis traced their route with a black-gloved finger.

“We’re ... here,” he said. “We’ve covered about ... what? Four miles?” He glanced at Hellboy. “So which way now, boss?”

Hellboy glowered at the map. If he was being honest, he didn’t have a clue. This plan had seemed so simple at the outset: Come down here, find the monster, batter some answers out of it. It hadn’t occurred to him that the Underground system encompassed some two hundred and fifty-odd miles of track. As if reading his thoughts, Sean said, “Ye reckon we’ll find this beastie, Hellboy?”

Hellboy scowled. “We’ll find it.”

“Ye got special powers, is that it? Monster-detecting glands or something?”

Hellboy glanced at the young officer and raised one eyebrow. “You poking fun at me, kid?”

“No way!” Sean exclaimed, then gave a slight smile. “Well, a wee bit, mebbe. I just... I don’t see how we’re goan find this thing, that’s all.”

“We know where it was last spotted,” Hellboy said. “And we can guess that most of the time it sticks to unused tunnels, out-of-the-way places, otherwise ...”

“A damn train woulda hit it,” said Louis.

“Yeah,” said Hellboy. He glanced from left to right. “My guess is that it emerged or appeared somewhere around here, and has made its lair close by. I doubt it’ll have strayed far from its place of origin.”

“What makes ye think that?” Sean asked.

“Monsters are creatures of habit. Most of ‘em stick to particular places — haunted lakes, blasted heaths, that kinda stuff — and terrorize the crap out of the local population.”

“Until you turn up to pulverize ‘em,” said Sean.

“That’s usually the way it goes, yeah.”

“So ...” Louis said. “Which way
do
you wanna go, boss?”

“Which way takes us away from the trains?”

“Left.”

“Then we go left,” Hellboy said.

Louis folded up the map and they trudged on. The dark areas set into the wall ahead
were
tunnels. The first ended in a rusty mesh grille, stretching floor to ceiling, but the second was more promising. When Louis shone his flashlight into the opening, the light revealed a passage stretching back into darkness that was both high and wide enough to accommodate even Hellboy’s bulk.

“I’ll go first,” Hellboy said. “Stick close behind, and try to light the way ahead as much as possible. I don’t want the bastard jumping out of the dark at me.”

“Why?You scared?” Sean asked cheekily.

“Behave,” Hellboy said.

They moved forward cautiously, alert for the slightest sound or movement. The walls glistened with damp, the water having trickled along the same cracks in the brickwork for so long that white veins of deposit had formed along the channels. The ground was thick with sludge, which caked Hellboy’s hooves. As requested, Louis and Sean tried to give Hellboy as much light as possible by shining their gun-mounted flashlights through the gaps between his body and the tunnel walls on either side.

They had been moving for less than five minutes when the criss-crossing beams picked out what appeared to be a thick white worm on the ground ahead. Immediately Hellboy came to a halt, holding up his stone hand. He had seen many strange sights in his time — flying vampiric heads, giant bees with the faces of jackals, a demon that disguised itself as a camper van — and so a potential attack by giant killer worms was pretty much par for the course. He peered at the worm. It was inert, half covered in sludge, though he knew better than to assume that inactive meant harmless.

“Keep your lights trained on that thing,” he murmured. “I’m gonna check it out. We don’t know what it is, how fast it can move, or what it can do, so keep alert — and expect the unexpected.”

He stalked forward, unconsciously bunching his fists. He fully expected the thing to rise out of the sludge and fly at him any moment. He was only a couple of meters away when he realized it wasn’t a killer worm at all. The realization didn’t make him any happier.

“Crap,” he said.

“What is it, boss?” called Louis.

“Evidence that we’re on the right track,” said Hellboy. “Come take a look.”

The two armed officers squelched forward, their light beams converging on the object.

“Nasty,” said Sean quietly.

What Hellboy had thought was a worm was in fact a human arm. Up close they could see that the flesh was marbling as the blood coagulated inside it. The fingers, rigid and clawlike, were half buried in the mud.

Louis bent over to take a closer look at the severed limb. “Look at the way the bone’s splintered at the shoulder,” he said. “Looks like the poor guy’s arm was twisted right out of its socket.”

“Hmm,” Hellboy said. He liked the way the guys were keeping it together here. Okay, so Sean was a little pale, but neither of them were freaking out, or asking dumb questions, or standing and goggling in disbelief at what their prey could do.

Louis glanced at Hellboy. “Proceed with caution?” he suggested.

Hellboy gave an abrupt nod. “You got it.”

They bypassed the severed arm and moved on, a little more slowly than before. Louis and Sean tried to illuminate every meter of the tunnel as they progressed, their light beams slithering across the floor, skittering up the walls and across the ceiling. Hellboy was poised for action, his jaw set and muscles bunched, his breathing slow and regular. His tail swished from side to side and his yellow eyes were unblinking as he stalked like a gunslinger towards his own personal high noon.

Three minutes later, Louis said almost conversationally, “Whoa, guys.”

Hellboy, a meter or so in front of him, said, “I see it.”

“What?” Sean asked.

Louis’s light beam was trained on the ground ahead — black with mud, with more blackness beyond. He shifted the beam slowly from side to side, using the light to paint in a little more definition. They saw the edge of a ragged opening, a chasm stretching from one side of the tunnel to the other.

“Jesus,” breathed Sean. “Is it doon there, d’ye think?”

“Most likely place we’ve found so far,” muttered Hellboy.

They edged forward until they were standing at the edge of the chasm. Louis and Sean pointed their beams directly into the pit, but all they could see beyond the reach of the light was blackness.

“How far down does it go, I wonder?” mused Louis.

Hellboy glanced at him. “Could be all the way into hell for all I know.” He pondered a moment, then said, “I’m going in.”

“Ye’re goan climb doon there?” said Sean, eyes wide.

“Nah,” said Hellboy. “That’d take too long. I’m gonna jump.”

Louis half reached out as though to put a restraining hand on his arm, then thought better of it. Calmly, he said, “But you don’t know how far down it goes.”

“That’s part of the fun,” Hellboy said, grinning.

Still calm, Louis asked, “How far can you fall and still survive?”

Hellboy shrugged nonchalantly. “I’ve fallen out of airplanes in my time. Can’t say it doesn’t smart, but you can’t do this job without picking up a few bruises.”

Louis glanced at Sean, then he straightened up, planting his feet more firmly apart, adopting a combat stance. “Okay, boss,” he said. “What do you want us to do?”

“Wait for me here,” Hellboy said. “If I’m not back in an hour, head for the surface. If something starts to come out of the pit and it isn’t me, open fire. If you give it all you’ve got and it keeps on coming, then run like hell. You got that?”

“We’ve got it,” said Sean.

“Good luck, boss,” said Louis.

Hellboy nodded and stepped forward, planting his hooves firmly on the edge of the pit. Peering down, he murmured, “
Arrivederci
, boys.”Then he leaped into the dark.

Chapter 5

As Abe had theorized — or at least hoped — the culvert widened out after a dozen meters or so. He had been only mildly concerned as he had wriggled through the tight brick tube surrounded by nothing but blackness and the rush of water, but he still felt relieved when he suddenly found himself with room to spread his arms, raise his head, and kick his feet. He hovered a moment in the suddenly much deeper water, blinking his eyes and getting his bearings. Behind him, through the murk, he saw a solid wall, in the center of which was the black circular hole from which he had emerged.

Upon immersion in water, Abe’s body immediately and automatically began to act as a biological filtration system. Far more efficiently than most amphibians, he was able to take what he needed from the water and discard its harmful elements. Additionally he was able to assess and mostly identify the presence and volume of foreign bodies in his immediate environment. He knew that the water he was currently swimming in was from a natural source, but that it had been tainted by a degree of human and chemical effluent as it had flowed down from higher ground and found egress through the channels and conduits — some natural, some man-made — which snaked beneath the streets of London like a vast rabbit warren. Swimming in the stuff was not entirely pleasant, but neither was it unbearable, or, more importantly, hazardous to Abe’s health. It was nothing, in fact, that a warm shower and a change of clothes wouldn’t fix once he was done.