Hellboy: Unnatural Selection
Read Hellboy: Unnatural Selection Online
Authors: Tim Lebbon
Unnatural Selection
By Tim Lebbon, 2006
Contents
Temple of the Sun, Heliopolis, Egypt—1976
Air Crash Investigation Center, Lausanne, Switzerland—1979
Tsilvi, Zakynthos, Greece—1997
Somewhere over the North Sea—1997
Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense Headquarters, Fairfield, Connecticut — 1997
Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic—1984
Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense Headquarters, Fairfield, Connecticut — 1997
Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense Headquarters, Fairfield, Connecticut — 1997
Somewhere below the North Sea—1997
Baltimore International Airport—1997
private airfield, Bridgeport, Connecticut—1997
Statement broadcast by major TV and radio networks across the globe—1997
Heathrow Airport, London, England—1997
Manchester Airport, England—1997
Manchester Airport, England—1997
Ministry of Defence, London—1997
Motorway approaching London—1997
Motorway approaching London—1997
The New Ark, English Channel—1997
The New Ark, English Channel—1997
Temple of the Sun, Heliopolis, Egypt — 1976Natural magic or physical magic is nothing more than
the deepest knowledge of the secrets of nature.
— DEL RIO,
DISQUISITIONES MAGICAE,
1606
T
HEY HAD BEEN DIGGING
for three days, and still the famed feather eluded them.
Three days underground, away from the sun and the heat of day, away from the darkness and the cool of night, timeless and airless and stuffy with the enclosed scents of history. They followed footprints left in the sand of subterranean passages millennia ago and compared their own feet for size. They drew their fingertips along the walls and sniffed the dust in wonder. Somewhere in each intake of breath was the skin of long-dead men and, perhaps, the sheddings of things other than men. Each time they opened their eyes after a short sleep, they were filled with awe. And every time they closed their eyes, their dreams were of greatness.
If only they could find the feather, these dreams would come true.
Richard Blake sat and consulted the ancient
Book of Ways
given to him by his father. Its author, Zahid de Lainree — doubtless a pseudonym designed merely to confuse — had been a man of mystery and obfuscation, and Richard had become adept at casting brief spells of course to wend his way through the man's writings and diagrams. If the ancient text said
left,
it sometimes meant
right;
if it said
up,
it could mean
down.
And occasionally, instruction to search in this world could hint at delving into another. This chapter, this very page, had already brought them to the secret entrance of the true Temple of the Sun, a place undiscovered by archaeologists and all manner of explorers who had torn this land apart.
The brothers knew that the Book was filled with arcane secrets, but that did not dilute their frustration.
"Gal," Richard said, "I'm reading this right, I
know
I am. I don't understand!"
Richard's twin brother, Galileo Blake — one wronged man named after another — was sitting several feet along the passage, casting his flashlight around him. The splash of light illuminated tool marks on the tunnel walls and ceilings, cracks in the bedrock, little else. "These damn tunnels are here for a purpose," Gal said. "Nobody builds tunnels from nowhere to nowhere. There's no
reason
for it."
"No reason ... " Richard said. "Perhaps that's it! Gal, maybe we've spent three days looking for a reason. We've been walking through mazes looking for the middle, but maybe there
is
no middle!"
Gal shone the flashlight directly into his brother's face and smiled when Richard cringed back. "Sometimes, Rich, you're full of shit."
"Yeah, but magic shit." Richard smiled and closed the book so he could think. After a few moments, he cast another spell of course, then opened the book again. He held the pen-light between his teeth, flicked to the chapter he had been staring at for three days, and began to read between the lines.
An hour later, they found the feather. "I told you!" Richard said. "I
told
you!"
"Yeah, yeah, nobody likes a smart-ass."
"But just look at it ... "
They had followed the lines scratched into the walls as described, choosing direction from the hidden messages of Zahid de Lainree's text, and it had taken them only another hour to find the right place. It was where the carved lines stopped. The creature that had made those lines so many years ago — its wings tucked in but still too wide for this narrow passage — must once have stood exactly where they stood now.
A sudden breath of warm air haunted the passage, a ghost memory from another world.
Ten minutes of digging unearthed the feather, as long as a man's forearm, a stunning royal purple flecked gold at its tip. Many centuries of burial had done nothing to dull its vibrancy or beauty.
And now Gal held it out before him, and they both stared. They could do little else. Here was evidence, here was proof, here was the first of many testaments to mythology they needed to find over the coming years. Their father would be waiting, lurking in exile and still mourning their murdered mother. Here, at last, in this feather from a creature that most would insist had never existed, the potential for revenge had found form.
"You send it," Richard said.
"Me?" Gals usually gruff voice was tinged with a hint of trepidation. Even fear.
"Yeah, I've been reading the book."
"That's because you're good at casting the spell of course. You can divine hidden meanings. I just see ink on a page; you see whole worlds."
Richard sighed. "I make out the theory of the Memory in Lainree's writing. You can actually
touch
it. You know you've always been better than me."
Gal sighed. "Well ... "
Neither of them could look away from the feather.
Richard took it from his brothers hands. "Father will be so pleased," he whispered.
"Did you ever doubt him?"
"Did you?"
Gal smiled, still gazing at the plume. "Never. But I think perhaps he doubted himself."
"This will put an end to that." Richard offered the feather back to his brother. There was power in that gesture of sharing, and trust.
"Yes. This is the beginning of everything." Gal placed it on the floor of the passage, and Richard stepped back to give his brother the room he needed.
Gal drew a rough shape in the sand, closed his eyes, and whispered a series of gruff, guttural words. Eyes still closed, he sought out the feather, lifted it, and placed it gently within the shape. Its spine was so hot to the touch that, at first, it felt ice-cold. Instantly the sand around Gals feet began to glow and skip, like a million tiny fleas striving to reach his outstretched hands. The glow expanded, remaining weak yet still bright enough to read by.
Then the heat truly arrived.
"Hot," Richard whispered. The passage grew warmer, his vision began to swim, and within seconds he was gasping for air, lying down and staring sideways at his kneeling brother.
"Hot!"
Each breath scorched his throat, and he wondered how his clothes had not erupted into flame.
Is this what it feels like to burn to death?
he thought.
Gal muttered louder, felt the world grow dim around him, and as the phoenix feather flamed from this world and drifted gently through another, for a second he felt that other place. He sensed the Memory, the haunt of all mythical creatures, and he burst into an involuntary outpouring of grief and rage at the sadness radiating from there. It was a forgotten place whose very name emphasized the hopelessness of its existence. And it was dark, filled with drifting forms, many of them threatening and exuding menace, but only in the way that an old man will intimidate those younger than him with age, wisdom, and knowledge. They were fearful entities he saw, but ineffectual.
Ineffectual where they were now, at least.
The light faded, the heat withdrew, and Gal fell shivering to the floor of the passageway. If his hex of transmission had been right, the phoenix feather would be with his father even now. Given time, the light of revenge would begin to bleed into that darkened void.
As he withdrew from the Memory, he felt it shimmer with an echo of hope.
His
hope. And even through his tears, he smiled.
A
BBY PARIS SAT ON THE
step of Edgar Allan Poe's grave and waited for the werewolf. The moon would be three-quarters full tonight; her own blood told her that, her own hunger. Yet she was certain that the werewolf would be here, clothed in its human form, but already planning the feast of a few days' time. Witnesses to the slayings said that the monster paid homage here after each killing. That made Abby uncomfortable, but, worried or not, she knew it was her job to try to talk it around.
That, or destroy it.
The afternoon was scorching. She sat beside Poe's grave, wearing black trousers and a black T-shirt, and she guessed she looked similar to a lot of visitors this particular graveyard attracted. At least for once she wouldn't stand out from the crowd. Traffic hustled by and stank up the air, but the iron fence seemed to have a calming effect on the noise, as if the somber atmosphere of the churchyard were thick enough to soothe it. Abby watched a big dump truck pull up at the traffic lights down the street and belch brown coughs of exhaust fumes into the air. She wished she could avoid breathing for an hour or two. Then she thought of some of those dead things she had seen on her last mission with Hellboy, and she drew in a thankful breath. Stinking air was better than no air at all.
This was her first time out on her own, and she was nervous. Tom Manning, the head of the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense, had been hesitant about sending her out for a solo job, especially as this was such a personal assignment for her. "Send a monster to catch one!" she had said perkily, but Tom had frowned, and she had seen the troubled mind ever present behind his gruff exterior. Hellboy, Liz Sherman, and Abe Sapien were all out of the country on separate missions, and the significance of this had not been lost on Abby. There was a lot of stuff going on in the world right now. Weird stuff. BPRD stuff. Tom hated sending his agents out on their own.
But she had insisted, and he had relented, and now here she was sitting on Poe's grave waiting for a werewolf. She would recognize it when she saw it. She looked in the mirror every morning, after all.
Two young men entered the graveyard sporting identical black T-shirts, bald heads, and goatees. One was taller than the other, but other than that, they were peas in a Gothic pod. They even had the same look of reverence on their faces.