Hellboy, Vol. 2: The All-Seeing Eye (24 page)

Abe refolded the piece of paper and put it back in his pocket.

“A dam, a lock. I guess it amounts to pretty much the same thing,” said Hellboy.

“ ‘The blood shall have it.’ That obviously refers to sacrifice,” Richard said.

“Almost sounds too easy, though, doesn’t it?” said
Liz. “I
mean, if blood being spilled is all it takes to pick this lock, why hasn’t it been done before?”

“Perhaps because it’s too dangerous, hence the warning,” said Abe. “Or maybe it’s just that no one worked out before that London itself was the lock. It’s a pretty audacious notion, you’ve got to admit.”

“ ‘He who falls into the Devil’s Eye shall be his forever,’ “ mused Liz. “Why ‘fall,’ do you think? Why not ‘look’ or ‘stare’?”

Abe shrugged. “It could be metaphorical. Or it could be that the source of the energy, the Eye, is underground, maybe at the bottom of a pit or something.”

Cassie had been following this exchange silently, and with growing alarm. This was so far out of her comfort zone. However ,in a game attempt to contribute to the conversation, she said, “So do you think Leith and his followers fell into this Eye, despite the warning?”

Before Abe could answer, Richard said, “Maybe they didn’t see it as a warning. Maybe Leith interpreted it to mean that by opening the Eye, the devil’s power would be his to control?”

“Maybe,” Hellboy shrugged. “Not sure how much further all, of this gets us, though.” He pondered a moment, then asked, “Who was the last person to look at that pamphlet before you, Abe? Because whoever it was — “

“I already thought of that,” said Abe, “and the answer is no one. According to lending records, no one has looked at the pamphlet since the day it was bequeathed to the library.”

“Bequeathed?” said Cassie. “By whom?”

“By Maximus Leith’s landlady. As soon as it became apparent that he wasn’t coming back, she donated all his books — of which there were many — to the library.”

“Did you
see
the rest of his books?” asked Liz.

“I saw a list. Standard occult texts for the most part. I didn’t have time to examine them closely because you, Liz, called me away.”

There was no rancor in his voice, no tone of accusation; he was merely stating a fact. Their food arrived and they began to eat. Hellboy swallowed a mouthful of curry, then said, “So unless they’ve been hiding themselves away for the last eighty-odd years, it looks as if someone’s started up Leith’s organization again. Only this time with an added ingredient.”

“Muti magic,” said Liz.

Hellboy nodded. “Right. And now they’re trying to open this damn Eye up again.”

Even as he was propounding his theory, however, he was frowning, as if he didn’t quite believe it.

“Problem?” said Liz.

Hellboy shook his head. “Aw, I dunno. I guess it’s just that it still seems all messed up to me. I mean, why complicate things with this muti stuff? It doesn’t make sense.”

“You’re the expert in this area, Richard,” said Abe. “What’s your opinion?”

Richard looked thoughtful. He toyed with his fork a moment. “I think there are a couple of possibilities,” he said eventually. “One could be that the muti angle is a smoke screen, to throw the police off track. And the other could be that a group of muti practitioners are simply utilising the magic they know in an attempt to open the Eye.”

“I guess,” said Hellboy. Then he nodded more decisively. “Yeah, that makes sense.”

He was about to say more when their chat was interrupted by a commotion from the bar area. A woman was shouting, her voice shrill with fear.

“What the hell — “ Hellboy said, half turning.

“Aw, it’s just people arguing, HB,” said Liz. “The British do that when they’ve had too much to drink. It’s an old custom.”

Hellboy arched an eyebrow at her. Cassie said, “The woman’s talking about something outside.”

“I’m gonna check it out,” Hellboy said.

“I’ll come with you,” said Abe.

“Yeah, me too, I guess,” sighed Liz, putting her fork down. “Look after my lasagne for me, would you, Richard? I’ll be back in a minute.”

The three of them trooped through to the bar, Hellboy in the lead. It was immediately evident whose voice they had heard. The woman in question was propped against the bar, sipping a brandy. Martin and another man were attending to her solicitously.

What surprised Hellboy — though he didn’t know why it should — was that the woman was young and well dressed. She looked as if she had just come from a business meeting, or was on her way to one.

“What’s the problem here?” Hellboy asked.

The woman turned to see who had spoken — and almost passed out. She gave a screech and her whole body jerked, causing brandy to slop from her glass and over the bar.

Hellboy raised his hands. “Hey, lady, take it easy.”

She continued to goggle at him. Then she raised a trembling hand and all but poked him in the chest.

“You’re that ... that Hellboy person,” she said.

Hellboy grinned. “You know, it’s funny. People are always mistaking me for that guy. I think it’s the goatee.”

Liz tutted and pushed herself in front of Hellboy. “Are you all right?” she asked.

“Ask me again after another few of these,” the woman said, holding up her glass. She redirected her pointing finger towards the door. “There’s something out there.”

“What sort of something?” Hellboy asked.

“I don’t know. It opened up right in front of me.”

“What did?” asked Abe.

“A kind of crack in the air. One second it wasn’t there, and the next it was. And then it started to open, like a ... like an eye or something. And that’s when I ran.”

“An eye?” Hellboy glanced at his companions, and then the three of them were racing for the door. Hellboy barreled out of the pub — and instantly someone ran smack into the side of him. It was a black man in spectacles and a blue suit, carrying a briefcase. Hellboy was unaffected by the collision, but the man went “oof” and bounced backwards as if he had hit a wall. His spectacles and briefcase went flying.

“Sorry,” said Hellboy and bent to pick him up. The man was sitting on his backside, blinking and open mouthed, head lolling like someone in a cartoon who has been hit with a mallet. Liz retrieved the man’s spectacles and Abe picked up his briefcase. Another few people ran past — a young couple, hand in hand; a mother and her two preschool-age children — all of whom seemed too preoccupied to give Hellboy and Abe more than a startled passing glance.

“You all right, buddy?” Hellboy asked, lifting the man up and setting him on his feet. The man swayed a moment, and then puffed out a big breath and seemed to come to. He squinted at Hellboy.

“You
are
him, aren’t you?”

Hellboy looked momentarily stumped, unsure how to respond. Liz handed the man his spectacles and said, “He’s Hellboy, yes.”

“Have you come to sort this out?” the man asked, gesturing vaguely behind him.

“If I can,” Hellboy said.

“Well, if
you
can’t ...” the man trailed off, shaking his head, as if to say:
then we’re all doomed
.

Hellboy patted him on the shoulder and ran in the direction from which the man had come. More people ran past him coming the other way, most of them double-taking in midstride. Hellboy was almost at the end of Great Russell Street, Abe and Liz in tow, when he heard people screaming and shouting, sounds of panic and fear. He put on an extra spurt of speed, his hooves clacking against the paving stones, and turned right into the mad bustle of Tottenham Court Road.

The first thing he saw, beyond a crowd of horrified and fascinated rubberneckers, was a yellow car being eaten by a giant black mouth. The mouth was hovering in the air, perhaps eight feet above the ground, and the front of the car was tilted up into it, its back wheels barely touching the road. There was someone in the car — a woman. She was battering on the rear window, trying to break it with her shoe, her face twisted in panic. The bodywork of the car was buckled, like a can that was slowly being compressed. This was evidently why the woman couldn’t get out through either of the back doors.

The glass of the rear window was chipped and cracked where the woman had hit it. However, despite what had clearly been a prolonged attack, the window had remained intact, and exhaustion and panic were now weakening her blows. Four uniformed police officers were hovering around the tail end of the car, trying to placate and reassure the woman with soothing words and hand gestures. For some reason, instead of trying to break the window and haul the woman out, they were hanging back, as if reluctant to get too close. Hellboy could only imagine that they were fearful of being sucked into the maw themselves, but that didn’t stop him from being appalled at their willingness to stand by and watch the woman be consumed. Some people in the crowd were baying at the officers to do something, to rescue the woman, but their words were having no effect. Others were weeping, or covering their faces, unable to watch. Most, however, were simply gaping blank faced at the spectacle, too shocked to register any emotion at all.

Hellboy began to push his way through the crush of onlookers. “Pardon me,” he muttered,”pardon me.” People shuffled aside to let him through. Most gaped at him, but some were too dazed by the impossible drama unraveling before them to even register his presence. As he got closer to the jagged black fissure, he realized that there was a gap of around twenty feet between those people in the front row and the back of the yellow car. He thought this was odd, until he reached the front row himself and saw what was holding the cops at bay.

Some sort of blue, frothy slime was leaking from the bottom of the black crack and drooling onto the road. Where the blue slime fell, the road was blistering, splitting, steaming, as though subjected to the most intense acid. Hellboy could see a shoe in the slowly spreading pool that had melted like plastic on a hot plate. He could see a bird too, a once-fat London pigeon that was now nothing but a heap of charred bones and sizzling innards.

“How many steps to the car, do you think?” he asked Liz, who had appeared beside him.

“You’re not going to walk
through
that?” she said.

“I’m not gonna stand by and watch someone die.”

Liz looked around, searching for inspiration. One of the back tires of the car, which was touching the slime, swelled and popped, running like black treacle.

“Oh, hell,” she said, and ripped off her canvas jacket. “If you’re going to try and get across there, at least have
something
between that stuff and your feet.”

“You can have mine too,” said Abe, peeling off his flying jacket.

When they saw what he was planning, various onlookers began to offer
their
coats and jackets too. One of the police officers even unbuttoned his tunic and handed it to Hellboy with a slightly shamefaced, “Here you go, mate.”

Within a minute Hellboy was laden down with donated garments. He gave some to Liz and Abe, and kept some for himself. He strewed items on the ground in front of him as he walked towards the car, creating a makeshift carpet of denim, leather, cotton, and man-made fibers. As soon as the jackets and coats touched the blue slime they began to smolder and warp and melt. Where Hellboy’s hooves pressed down, the layers of material burned even more rapidly. Each of his footsteps was accompanied by a hiss, like the application of a hot iron on a damp shirt, and a curl of smoke around his hooves. Hellboy was halfway to the car when he ran out of garments. He half turned towards Liz, and she threw him a fresh bundle without having to be asked. A few of the flimsier items fluttered to the ground, but Hellboy caught the majority of them cleanly, and once again began to drape them on the ground before him.

In this way, aided by Liz and Abe, he reached the car in less than a minute. He gestured for the woman to move back and then he punched the glass out with his stone hand. As the safety glass shattered into tiny fragments, the crowd cheered and clapped. “Come on,” Hellboy instructed. “I’ll catch you.” Without hesitation the woman scrambled out of the back window and fell into his outstretched arms.

The applause intensified. Hellboy ignored it. He carried the woman back towards where Abe, Liz, and the four police officers were standing, gritting his teeth against the burning pain on the undersides of his hooves, where the blue corrosive stuff had seeped up through the rapidly disintegrating layers of clothing.

Abe and one of the police officers moved as close to the edge of the still-spreading pool of slime as they could, holding out their arms to take the woman from Hellboy’s grasp. They were lifting her clear when what looked like a fleshy length of pinky-red tubing came snaking out of the jagged black crack behind Hellboy. It ranged about blindly for a moment, slapping against the metal bodywork of the yellow car. Then slowly, with whatever senses it possessed, it seemed first to become aware of Hellboy, and then to fasten on him. It rose into the air, all twenty or thirty feet of it, its featureless blob of a “head” weaving from side to side like that of a king cobra. And then, with a high and hideous squealing sound, it struck out.

“
Hellboy
!” screamed Liz, her voice merging with the battle cry of the creature, but he was already spinning round.

Even so, he barely had a chance to react before the tubular thing was corkscrewing around his torso, tightening its grip with each slithering revolution.

“
Dammit
!” Hellboy shouted, and began to wrestle with the creature, trying to grab its “head,” tearing at it with his stone hand. It responded by lifting him into the air. The crowd gasped as he was lifted thirty feet, forty, and then higher still.

The creature, which was still coiling, seemingly endlessly, out of the black fissure, suddenly flexed its body and cracked like a whip. Its “head” end, which was coiled around Hellboy, snapped forward, smashing him face first into the side of a building.

Yells of panic and dismay rose from the crowd, and there was a wavelike ripple through the sea of bodies as they tried to scramble back from the sudden tumble of broken glass and shattered masonry.