Hellboy: On Earth as It Is in Hell (8 page)

"And no guilty consciences within the ranks? Nobody broke down and ratted out the others?"

"I'd be surprised if there weren't feelings of guilt in some of them. But it seems that new recruits were indoctrinated to indulge those feelings with self-mortification of the flesh. Hair shirts, that kind of thing."

Burke wandered amid the free-hanging tools, the group's grim reminders of who they were, where they'd come from. He gave a flick to the collection of thumbscrews and watched them spin, clicking together with a disconcerting sense of dormant purpose.

"So they survived. Replenished their order from generation to generation..."

"And by the looks of it," Hellboy said, "survived for centuries after torture was abolished."

"They were never about torture in the first place. Not that they were any different from the rest about it in the early days...but if that's all they'd been about, there never would've been a secret society, because they
already
had torture at their disposal. No, these weren't the perverts. And their ultimate objectives don't seem to have varied over the centuries. They may have trafficked with lesser spirits, even evil spirits, but their highest aim has always been embodied in their name:
Opus Angelorum
...'The Work of Angels.' "

"And they don't seem to lean toward the cuddly image."

"No. None of that saccharine New Age pabulum. Avengers and slayers all the way. Divine wrath, that's what they're
really
after. The outlook is primordial."

"So were the results, based on what I saw at the Archives," Hellboy said. "Have they ever pulled off this kind of thing before?"

"Not that I know of. But this was a very high profile success. They're obviously antagonized by the implications of giving the Masada Scroll any kind of credence at all. Regardless of what it was called at any given time, the Inquisition was put in place to defend doctrines. These men tolerated no rivals to the Church, not even in thought. Is it reasonable to assume that those kind of hardliners are extinct?"

"Probably not."

"The
Opus Angelorum
is just the last remnant of those type of extremists. And after all this time, they finally let something drive them aboveground."

"Intentionally?" Hellboy asked. "Or did somebody slip up?"

Burke didn't answer, but his expression seemed to favor the latter.

"So why are we here? Why are you showing me this?"

"To introduce this group to you in a way that words alone could never depict. You've already seen their handiwork. Now take a look around at their soul. Because
somebody
needs to stamp them out. But I'm afraid that men like Father Laurenti, however much they may be opposed to the
Opus Angelorum,
are neither equipped nor prepared to do it in the way it needs to be done. And I think you know what I mean."

Hellboy was sure he'd seen shrewder looking men, but at the moment, he couldn't think of any.

"I know you don't want to meddle in Church business--fine, fine. But I don't see this as Church business. This is a Church aberration." He stepped closer, put his hand on Hellboy's shoulder. "What you need to understand about this group is that until the past few days, it was never much more than a legend. A few whispers, a handful of references in some old journals and correspondence that turned up over the centuries. That's the only way the rest of us got any insight at all into what they were. Even so, it only shed light on the past. Never anything contemporary."

"Until the past few days, you say. What happened then?"

"A close encounter of the third kind," Burke said. "We caught one of them."

S
he'd napped on the plane, but Liz was still feeling groggy and dislocated when she reached the Vatican. Start factoring in the time zones and her body really started to rebel. Here, late diners might still be tipping wine glasses and demitasse cups, but back home, she would have been in bed for hours.

A local BPRD agent had met her at Da Vinci Airport and driven her to Vatican City's North Gate, the breach in the wall that admitted visitors to the museum complex. At this time of night, it was closed to the public, but after a few minutes of identification checks and confirmation, a pair of Swiss Guards admitted her. One of them radioed someone to relay the news that she was here.

They then escorted her inside the museum's lobby, where she discovered that the fabled opulence of the Vatican extended even to places where they sold tickets. And here, not unwelcome, was a familiar face already, Kate Corrigan coming over to greet her with a quick hug.

"Are you coming with us?" Liz asked.

Kate shook her head no. "I'll be flying instead, to get to the safehouse ahead of you and help with the logistics from there. In case you haven't guessed, we're still making this up as we go."

"And the other end is...where? Pretend I'm ignorant, because I really am. H.B. wasn't big on details when he called."

Kate rolled her eyes. "Maybe I should just let him fill you in once he's down."

"Down from where?"

"You know the lantern tower on top of St. Peter's?" Kate leaned in, voice dropping to a whisper. "Looks like a nipple on a breast, but maybe that's just me." She drew back again. "Hellboy and Abe have been up there with the scroll for hours. Abe anyway. Hellboy disappeared for a while just before sunset, but he's back now. They've been waiting it out up there because they thought it was the place least likely to draw another attack like the other night."

Liz had always liked Kate, who was a decade older, give or take, and seemed a good deal looser than her academician's demeanor and no-nonsense bob of hair led many to believe. She had a definite thing for witches, historically speaking, and it was Liz's intuitive but deeply entrenched suspicion that nobody went to that much trouble to research the lives of the witches of Old Europe and New England--with neither dismissal nor judgment--unless she was a bit of a wild lass herself inside, who would very much like to command the wind.

Just the same, for a long time Liz had also found something a bit sad about Kate. Never got the sense that there was somebody special in her life--at best, just a series of not-so-special anybodies who filled the rare temporal gaps between the demands of the bureau and her books and her university position. You could see it in her eyes, though--in lieu of the wind, a longing for some kind of anchor.

Spending time around her often left Liz thinking of the future:
As much as I like her, as much as I admire her and everything she's done...I do not want to end up like her...and I'm afraid time is running out on that.

Kate then steered her to a broad-shouldered man in a black cassock, who warmly shook her free hand. Kate introduced him as Father Rogier Artaud, the survivor of the other night's attack on the Archives.

"Any relation to Antonin?" she asked.

Eyes blanking, he turned his palms up and opened his mouth as if something more should come out than a terse croak.

"French poet, dramatist?" she prompted. "He pioneered something called the theater of cruelty...?"

"Ahhh...I was born in Belgium," he said, as if that explained everything.

"I'll take that as an inconclusive no," she said.

A nice looking guy, this Rogier Artaud: one of those men who could lose half his hair across the top and look all the better for it--stronger, somehow. A nicely shaped head and a prominent pair of cheekbones went a long way.

He pointed down to the case she was holding. She'd also brought an overnight bag with essentials for what she'd gathered would be a longer return trip, but had set it aside on entering the lobby; unless plans had changed, they would also be leaving from the North Gate. This case, though, hadn't left her sight since leaving the BPRD. Even when she'd napped, she'd locked it to her leg. Overkill, probably--how far away was it going to sneak on a Boeing 767?--but paranoia dies hard.

"So that's what we all have been waiting for?" Artaud asked.

"Yup," she said. "You can take it as long as you can pry it from Hellboy's cold, dead fingers."

What she'd brought, which H.B. had first used to transport a delicate German alchemical manuscript, was a steroidal version of the attache cases that had been in use for decades to ensure that documents got from Point A to Point B without theft, loss, or pilfering. But unlike a standard case, the outside of this one was made from two layers of titanium alloy sandwiching a layer of Kevlar, and was impervious to just about anything short of an artillery shell. The inside was triple-lined and could be hermetically sealed, with a built-in power source and regulatory system able to maintain up to two weeks' worth of consistent internal temperature and humidity, without which fragile old documents could deteriorate.

And, like the cases it mimicked, this one was equipped with a handcuff. The difference was, there was only one wrist in the world that this particular cuff fit: on Hellboy's right forearm, which was as big around as a gallon can of paint and made of some rocklike substance that had been stymieing scientists since before she'd been born. Plenty of similar cases, carried by everyone from diamond merchants to cocaine dealers, had been stolen by thieves who had no qualms about hacking through the arm it was chained to. Assuming someone could manage to restrain Hellboy in the first place, they were welcome to try. Take a chainsaw to his wrist and the most they'd manage would be breaking its teeth.

When he and Abe made it down from the tower, the only way she could tell they probably hadn't had any sleep since they'd gotten here was Abe's eyes. Hellboy? Forget it. He could probably lose most of his blood and would
still
walk into a room like a four-star general fresh from calisthenics. Abe, though...his eyes were a dark aqua color and normally shiny and bright, but they lost some luster when he was weary. As far as she was aware, he never realized that she'd picked up on this, and she was content to let it lie. Maybe he didn't even realize it about himself.

They all kept one another's secrets well. Who else was going to?

They'd shown up with another Swiss Guard, who was toting what looked like a stainless steel storage drawer. Abe came over to greet her, then took the case, seeming to want to waste no time. Artaud excused himself, and he and Abe joined the Guard, and they busied themselves transferring something from the steel bin to the case.

"Thanks for coming," Hellboy said. Was there just the slightest touch of relief in his voice? Yes. There was. "Short notice, I know."

She shrugged it off. "Kinda goes with the paycheck and the room and board."

His brow, that fearsome brow, crinkled. "We need to talk."

"I figured as much. Anybody could've brought you that case. There must be a reason it had to be me."

"Yeah," he said, and once he'd told her, well, at least that explained why every few seconds he glanced up. Up the nearest stairway, up at the high windows, up at the ceiling itself. Just up. And there was a lot of
up
around here to keep track of. Hellboy, nervous? She'd yet to decide whether that was a good thing or a bad thing; whether he was better served by a dose of caution or by the blithe self-confidence that had gotten him this far, against so many odds.

"You're really putting us in the line of fire this time," she said. "Literally."

"Are you going to be okay with that?"

"Like I'd tell you even if I wasn't?"

"You know I'd want you to. You've got to know that."

She reached up and rested her hand along the side of his face. Even apart from the whiskers that bristled down the side like a half-hearted attempt at muttonchops, his face felt like no one else's that she had ever touched. It felt alive, of course, although it didn't quite feel like normal skin, either human or animal. The closest thing she could compare it to was the fibrous bark on the giant redwoods of Northern California. When she'd visited the forests in her late teens, on one of her earlier aimless sprints away from the bureau, she'd been surprised and delighted by the way these trees felt. Massive, yet strangely warm and softly yielding. You just knew these things breathed and were aware of you, in their own way.

Appropriate, then, that they would remind her of Hellboy. Because what was he if not like some big sequoia, red and towering, and likely to be standing long after everyone else in the forest had returned to dust.

"I just have to wonder if I'd do any good if they come back," she said. "Seraphim...we're in uncharted territory with this one. Are they even vulnerable to fire?"

"I don't know." At least he didn't lie. But then, he wasn't very good at it. Not around her, anyway. "I do know if those things hit us, you've got a better chance of blowing them out of the sky than I do. They throw fire, you throw fire. I'm just going by what they left behind upstairs, but yours, when you're on full-burn...? I think it's hotter, more forceful. I don't claim to know the thermodynamics of it, but I'm betting you could consume their fire with your own. Block it."

"If you're wrong, it's your barbecue. Mine too, probably."

"My guess is you'd be okay," he said. "Don't think I didn't spend some time mulling this over. But if you were to square off with one of these things, I think you'd be okay."

Maybe he was right. Obviously, whenever she torched up--accidentally or on purpose--she remained unharmed, immune to the effects of the blaze emanating from her being. The bureau had studied her relentlessly throughout her teens, dotted her with so many electrodes it was like having a rash, and one constant they'd found was that even during episodes hot enough to smelt iron ore, her skin temperature never elevated by more than a couple of degrees--no worse than a mild fever.

As near as she could discern, even in the midst of a full-body detonation, she was surrounded by a cocoon of sorts, an insulating layer of
something
that stood between flesh and fire. One of the researchers had called it an etheric version of the protective gel that movie stuntmen slathered over themselves when they did pyro stunts--staggering out of a flaming car wreck, gags like that--only far more effective. It not only kept her from burning herself, but also shielded her from external fires; they'd tested her with everything from candles to propane torches.

Holy fire was something else entirely, a complete unknown, but Liz figured her chances of surviving it had to be better than even. Just the same, she hoped she wouldn't have to find out.

One of the priests who'd been milling about inside the North Gate when she'd arrived now stepped into the museum lobby and reported that the armored car was on its way, heading down the Viale Vaticano from where it had been parked in waiting.

"Armored car?" she asked.

"Yeah," Hellboy said, as Abe brought over the attache case, sealed now. "One of the cardinals pulled a few strings with a security company that works for the Banca di Roma."

She looked up, just as Hellboy had moments ago, an instinctive impulse now that she knew the next couple of minutes might turn into a kill-or-be-killed situation. Fry-or-be-fried.

Abe latched the enormous cuff over Hellboy's wrist.

As they started for the exit, she took one last look behind her, not without regret. It had nothing to do with the danger.
Join the BPRD, travel the world, visit interesting places,
she thought.
And bug out again before you've actually had a chance to see them.

Hellboy was through the doors first, ready to absorb the brunt of another attack in case the seraphs were lying in wait, perched outside on the roof like gargoyles ready to swoop in for the kill. Tough gig, walking point under these circumstances. Fire wouldn't kill him, only hurt like a bitch for a long time. He stood in the open for several moments, tensed and ready for a fight, seeming to dare them to come for him. With his left hand he'd drawn the massive revolver he carried on his hip and, aiming it upward, extended his arm back toward them like a traffic cop's:
Wait, just waaaait...

Lingering near the doorway, Liz wondered--in that way one's mind can lock onto small things during tense moments--if he ever broke sweat. She'd known him since late childhood and couldn't think of a single time that she'd seen him sweat.

All clear? So it seemed. Hellboy gave the gun barrel a couple of twitches and the rest of them were on the move, she and Abe rushing out the museum doors--Abe, ever the gentleman, lugging her suitcase--and flanked by a pair of Swiss Guards who stepped up the pace to beat them to the outer gate. Hellboy threw his gun arm around her shoulders and she felt herself yanked off her feet, puppet girl, boot tips skimming the ground in abnormally long strides as though she were on the surface of the moon.

The North Gate swung open before them and they dashed through onto the sidewalk along the Viale Vaticano--into another land, literally, the traffic and tumult of Rome so much louder now that they were on the other side of the wall. On the street sat the armored car, rumbling and grumbling like a small tank. They made straight for the back end, where a dark-skinned security guard stood in a uniform and jacket and beret, a machine pistol slung from a shoulder strap. He swung the doors open and motioned them in.