Hellboy, Vol. 2: The All-Seeing Eye (16 page)

The factories and warehouses were giving way to more residential housing, and Hammersmith Bridge was beginning to loom above him, when Abe saw movement on the path ahead. He focused his vision through the static of rain, trying to make sense of vague shapes and half-glimpsed details. It took him a couple of seconds to identify the shape of a running man, and then two more to identify the man himself. He was loping along, all gangly, sharp-angled limbs and clomping feet, his white Nikes glimmering in the gloom.

Abe wondered whether the guy had any more of that nasty eye power to dispatch in his direction. Hopefully not, judging by the brevity of the previous attack. If he could call up the power at will, then surely he would have used it to more devastating effect the first time? Abe’s guess was that the power had come from elsewhere, and that the guy had been designated a limited amount, perhaps just enough to defend himself with.

The tall man looked tired, but he was almost at the bridge. Abe knew that if he could keep him in sight for the next minute or so, he would catch him. However, just at that moment, the man disappeared from view. For an instant Abe thought he had been snatched away by some arcane force. But then he realized that he had merely turned right on to a walkway that sloped upwards to meet the north end of the bridge.

The turn was so abrupt that the walkway was all but invisible until you were almost upon it. As soon as he reached it, Abe swivelled on his heel, twisting without breaking stride. The guy was a couple hundred yards ahead of him, almost at the top. Even though Abe was already running as fast as he thought he could, he dug a little deeper, looking for that extra spurt of speed.

He had no idea what time it was, but he guessed it must be around one a.m. Despite the late hour, traffic still rumbled almost incessantly over the bridge, and as Abe reached the top of the walkway and emerged onto the well-lit streets of Hammersmith, he saw that there were also still plenty of people about, many presumably heading home after a night out in the bars and restaurants of London.

What was immediately evident to Abe was that the black guy was too panicked to be thinking clearly. The only reason he was still noticeable amongst the dotted groups of people was because he was the only one running. He had crossed the road and was currently pounding past a large, grimy church on the street opposite, his lanky form slipping in and out of pools of light cast by the street lamps. He was attracting curious glances as he ran by — though the attention he received was nothing compared to the attention that was suddenly focused on Abe.

It didn’t help that Abe was all but naked, having stripped down to a pair of skintight black shorts for his swim through subterranean London. Although he always hated it when people called him “the fish guy,” and hated it even more when the ignorant and the bigoted referred to him as a monster, he guessed he could kind of appreciate that to the unprepared night owls of Hammersmith it must suddenly have seemed as if the Creature from the Black Lagoon had emerged from the Thames and was now running riot through their city.

Women screamed and men swore as he ran past. Many people simply scattered before him as if a tiger had appeared in their midst. A few hardy souls made halfhearted attempts to grab him, but he evaded their grasping hands easily.

Regardless of these distractions, Abe was gaining rapidly on his quarry. The guy was now staggering rather than running, his head wagging exhaustedly from side to side.

Oblivious to the traffic, the guy suddenly veered to his right, off the pavement and onto the road. A car screeched to a halt, missing him by inches. The driver gesticulated angrily, but the guy ran on, ignoring him.

Abe looked past the man, and saw immediately where he was headed. Fifty yards away was the cavernous, brightly lit entrance to Hammersmith tube station. Abe guessed that the guy’s plan was to leap onto a train whose doors were about to close. It was a tactic he had probably seen successfully employed in a hundred movies. But Abe hoped that the guy would be disappointed. The odds of timing his getaway just right must be pretty slim.

Sure enough, the guy ran into the brightly lit station entrance. Abe followed, no more than thirty yards behind. He saw the guy scramble over the barrier, rousing a guard, who called indignantly after him.

The same guard reared back in shock as Abe appeared. “Sorry,” Abe muttered, and vaulted over the metal barrier like an Olympic hurdler. At this hour the station was all but deserted, for which Abe was grateful. He heard the tall man clattering down the metal escalator that led to the Piccadilly line trains. Abe appeared at the top just as the guy leaped the last half-dozen steps to the bottom. The guy stumbled and almost fell, but managed to regain his balance and staggered forward, into one of the side tunnels.

Abe followed grimly, knowing that the pursuit was almost at an end. But then he heard an approaching rumble, accompanied by a distant squealing and clattering. No, he thought, surely the guy wasn’t going to be
that
lucky. The train sounded as though it were mere seconds from thundering into the station.

Risking life and limb, Abe flew down the escalator and skidded into the side tunnel, bouncing off the tiled wall. Emerging onto the grime-gray platform beneath a digital display that flashed up the words ***STAND BACK***TRAIN APPROACHING***, he whipped his head left and right.

The guy was the only person on the platform — and unbelievably he was still running. In the bleaching light of the station, Abe saw the sweat glistening on his short-cropped hair, the dark wet patch on the back of his jacket, between his shoulder blades. The man was running towards the circular black mouth of the tunnel at the end of the platform. Raising his voice above the tortured squealing of the rails, Abe shouted, “Game over, my friend. There’s nowhere else to go.”

He felt a warm, stagnant breeze ripple over his skin, forced out of the tunnel by the approaching train. Lights appeared in the blackness. The bellowing of the train built to a crescendo.

The guy thumped to a stop and turned to look at Abe. His mouth was open and gasping, and sweat streamed down his face. He bent and put his hands on his knees. Abe walked towards him slowly, holding up his webbed hands. “I’m not — “ he said.

And then, without warning, the guy jumped.

He leaped off the platform a split second before the train came screaming out of the tunnel. He was still in midair when it hit him. Although he was twenty yards away, Abe felt a warm rain of the man’s blood spatter over his skin. He turned his head aside and closed his eyes briefly. Then, even as the train with its cargo of shocked passengers was still slowing down, he gave a deep sigh, turned his back, and walked tiredly away.

Chapter 7

When Hellboy came down to breakfast, Abe and Liz were already there. They were sitting on the far side of the big, empty dining room with its crisp white tablecloths and immaculate silverware, the autumn sun shining on their window table and gleaming on Abe’s pale turquoise skin. Despite turning up at the hotel at two a.m., filthy and blood spattered, Abe looked none the worse for his night’s experience. After arriving back he’d taken a shower, told Hellboy his story, drunk some tea, and gone to bed.

Now here he was five hours later, filling Liz in on the details. As Hellboy came within earshot of his colleagues’ table, he saw Liz screw up her face.”Euww!” she exclaimed.

“Guess he’s just described the guy/train interface thing, huh?” Hellboy said.

They looked round and said their good mornings. Liz poured Hellboy some coffee, then topped up Abe’s cup and her own. Hellboy pinched the handle of the little china cup between the thumb and index finger of his left hand and drained its contents in one gulp. The three of them ate fried breakfasts, and several rounds of toast and marmalade, and drank around a gallon of coffee, while discussing what they had found out so far, and their plan of attack for the day.

“Richard’s meeting me at nine thirty and we’re going to follow up the leads that Labuschagne gave us,” Liz said. Then she spread her hands and added, “If that’s okay with you, HB?”

Hellboy nodded and gave her a teasing smile. In a mock-Texan drawl, he said, “You and this Richard feller getting pretty chummy, ain’tcha, peaches?”

Liz narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re not too big for a slap, you know.”

Hellboy grinned and turned to Abe.”So I just called Kate. She’s faxing over everything she can find on the all-seeing eye. But she suggested we might also check out the British Library, see what else we can dig up.”

“And by ‘we’ I’m guessing you mean me?” said Abe dryly.

“Well ... yeah,” admitted Hellboy. “I was kinda hoping you might cover that. I’m going to head over to Scotland Yard with Reynolds. He called me twenty minutes ago to say they’ve found three more bodies ... well, torsos. Bloodless, like last time.”

“Really?” said Abe. “Where?”

“Now, see, I knew you’d ask that, so I wrote it all down and got Kate to run a check on the locations. Here’s what she came up with.”

He handed Abe several folded sheets of paper. Abe scanned through them quickly.

“Oh, now they’re just playing with us!” he exclaimed.

Hellboy nodded.

Liz looked from one to the other. “Well?” she said. “Is one of you going to tell
me
what’s going on?”

Abe brandished the sheaf of papers. “These three locations — St. George’s Church, Bloomsbury; Theatre Royal, Drury Lane; St. Clement Danes Church, Strand — are virtually on our doorstep.”

“Which means that not only do our enemies know we’re in the country, but they know where we’re staying?” said Liz.

Abe nodded.

“But I thought the first bodies were carefully placed?” said Liz. “Areas of occult significance and all that?”

“As are these,” said Abe. He drew himself into a more upright position and held Kate’s notes out in front of him, like a lecturer delivering an important paper.

“The Theatre Royal in Drury Lane, as well as being the oldest theater in London, also has a reputation as one of the most haunted in the world. Several murders have been committed there over the years, and interestingly, one of the earlier theater buildings to stand on the spot was designed by Sir Christopher Wren, who also designed St. Clement Danes Church in the Strand.”

“And what’s so special about
that
place?” asked Liz.

“Well, for one thing, it’s ancient. A Christian church has stood on that particular site for over a thousand years. Secondly,Wren had Masonic and Rosicrucian connections, and was said to be conversant with the ley system. St. Clement Danes reputedly stands on a spot where at least two ley lines cross.”

“And did Wren design the Bloomsbury Church, too?” said Liz.

“No,” said Abe, “but one of his students, Nicholas Hawksmoor, did.
He
was known by some as the ‘devil’s architect.’ “

Liz raised her eyebrows.

“Some people believed him to be a Satanist,” continued Abe, “although Kate thinks that’s probably nonsense. She says he was certainly interested in pagan symbology, though, and wove much of it into his architectural designs. Conspiracy theorists claim that his six London churches form an invisible geometry of power lines in the city, which correspond to an Egyptian hieroglyph. Others say that his churches are positioned to form a pentagram — though Kate does make the point that it was unlikely Hawksmoor actually selected the sites for his churches, which pretty much negates that theory.”

“Basically, though, you’re saying that all the places where bodies have been found have some kind of mystical or macabre connection?” said Liz.

Abe nodded.

“I still don’t get it, though,” admitted Hellboy. “I mean, London’s old.
Really
old. Like you say, some sites have had buildings standing on them for a thousand years or more. So there can’t be many places where something bad
hasn’t
happened at some time or another.”

“True,” conceded Abe, “though Kate’s research seems to suggest that the answer lies not in
what
has happened in those buildings, but in
why
particular events occurred in them.”

“Go on,” said Hellboy.

Abe flicked through the latter part of the notes again. “Kate makes the point that numerous occult texts dating back hundreds of years make reference to an ancient and malevolent source of power beneath the city of London. She speculates that the crust that contains the power source has worn thin in places, allowing the power to leak through, and that our enemies, whoever they may be, are now attempting to access it.”

“And so this leakage ... what? Attracts bad people? Or affects those who live and work on the sites, which then sometimes causes them to do bad things?” Liz asked.

“Perhaps a bit of both,” said Abe, “depending on how thin the crust is in each location, and on how susceptible certain people are to its influence.” He spread his webbed hands expressively. “I’ll take a shot in the dark here and suggest that maybe the leakage causes the veil between various planes of existence to wear thin in places too. That could account for the increasing number of supernatural incidents across the city these past few days. It could be that our enemies are using ritual sacrifice to break the crust down, which is why its effects are becoming more widespread.”