Hellboy, Vol. 2: The All-Seeing Eye (19 page)

“Where you going?” one of the white guys demanded. He was tall, and muscular as a light middleweight boxer. His stance and demeanor made it evident he was the leader of the group.

Liz regarded him evenly. “We’re visiting a friend,” she said, no trace of nerves in her voice.

“Yeah? What’s his name?” said the other white kid. He was shaven headed, lean as a wolf, a trio of big rings in each ear, a stubble of beard on his pointed chin.

“Credo Olusanya,” Liz said, and added pointedly, “not that it’s any of your business.”

She noted the brief glances that ricocheted between the four guys, and wondered whether they were responding to the name or to her casual bravado.

“What you want with him?”The muscular white guy again.

“Same answer as before,” Liz said smartly.

The black guy, round faced and big shouldered, frowned as if he didn’t understand.

“Don’t get smart, bitch,” said the muscle man.

“Don’t call me a bitch,” said Liz lightly, holding his gaze.

It was the muscle man who broke the brief standoff. Shifting his glance to Richard, he said, “You. Four-eyes. How you know Credo?”

Liz sensed Richard tense beside her.
Don’t show them you’re scared
, she urged him silently.

To her relief his voice was strong and clear. “We have a mutual acquaintance,” he said.

The cappuccino guy snorted. Muscle man pulled a disdainful face. “A what?”

“He’s a friend of a friend,” Liz interpreted.

“He looks like a cop,” the other white guy said, nodding at Richard.

“Well, he’s not,” said Liz.

“Social worker then,” said the chubby guy.

“Not that either.”

“You don’t look like friends of Credo,” said the muscle man.

“Who are you, his social secretary?” asked Liz.

The muscle man narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips, as if trying to decide whether he was being made fun of.

The other white guy said, “Why don’t you get back in that car of yours before something bad happens?”

“Nothing bad is going to happen,” said Liz evenly.

“I think it is,” said the shaven-headed white guy.

“I
know
it isn’t,” said Liz.

Casually the skinhead reached into his jacket and pulled out a machete. His eyes blanked; his face tautened with viciousness.”Get out now, bitch, while you still can,” he hissed.

“Oh, you boys are so tiresome,” said Liz. She reached into
her
jacket and pulled out her gun. Pointing it unwaveringly between the kid’s eyes, she said, “We have important business with Mr. Olusanya, and you have wasted enough of our time. Now please be sensible and get out of our way.”

“You won’t use that,” said the muscle man, but he looked unsure.

“Yes I will,” said Liz with quiet but absolute conviction.

There was a short silence, then the chubby guy said petulantly, “Knew you were a cop.”

“I’m not a cop,” said Liz. “And you guys are so far out of your league it’s unbelievable.”

Another glance ricocheted between the four of them. They stood their ground for several more seconds, and then, as if he had grown bored with the encounter, the muscle man abruptly turned away. “Let’s go.”

He swaggered off. His three friends paused just long enough to eyeball Liz and Richard one last time, then trailed after him. Putting the machete in his pocket, the skinhead muttered, “Your card is marked, bitch.”

“Yeah,” said Liz, “whatever.”

She waited until the guys were out of sight before she re-holstered her gun.

“My God,” said Richard weakly.

Liz looked at him. He was shaking. “You okay?”

“I will be.” He pressed a trembling hand to his forehead.”Would you really have shot those boys?”

She shrugged. “Wouldn’t have killed them. Winged one maybe.”

“You really
do
live in a different world, don’t you?”

“You make me feel as though I should apologize for it.”

They walked up to the entrance doors of Eden House and pushed them open. By rights they should have been locked, but the locks and bolts had been pried off long ago. Beyond the doors was a dingy hallway, the graffitied walls running with damp. The floor was strewn with discarded household refuse, and the stench of rot and stale urine hung heavy in the air. Liz reached out to a light switch on her left, then noticed that nothing but bare wires hung from the ceiling where lights had once been. She sighed and said, “You feeling fit?”

“I certainly don’t want to risk the lift, if that’s what you mean,” replied Richard.

They trooped up the stairs, their footsteps echoing around them. Aside from that and the steady drip of water there was no other sound.

Credo Olusanya’s flat was on the fourth floor. The door was standing ajar.

Liz produced her gun again. “Stay behind me,” she said.

She stood on the hinge side of the door and pushed it all the way open with her foot. Beyond was a narrow hallway with a dirty blue carpet. It was featureless, as if no one lived here. She crept forward, Richard behind her; she could hear him breathing hard and fast.

To her left was a door. She pushed it open. It led into a tiny bathroom, the bath and sink layered with grime, the plug holes clogged with hair. The toilet seat was down, but the room still smelled like a sewer. Liz pulled the door closed. There was only one other — at the end of the corridor — to aim for.

She turned briefly and raised her eyebrows at Richard:
You okay?
He nodded and they moved to the second door. It had been pulled to, but it wasn’t fully closed. Holding her gun in both hands, Liz again used her foot to push the door open.

Her eyes scanned the room as the door swung inwards. It wasn’t until it was three quarters of the way open that she saw the body.

She knew from Richard’s gasp that he had seen it a split second after she did. The room was in shadow, the thin curtains closed and admitting no more than an insipid wash of daylight. However, the violence done to the man’s body was so horrific that it instantly drew the eye, like a bloodstain on a white tablecloth.

The corpse was slumped, fully clothed, in a pale gray armchair, facing them. It wore a bib of dried and crusted blood. More blood, a great deal of it, was streaked and spattered across the carpet and on the fabric of the chair itself. The victim’s head and hands had been hacked off and attached to the wall like a triptych of macabre adornments. The head was in the center, the eyes staring blankly in different directions, the mouth gaping open. Something like a tent peg or a railway spike had been driven into the open mouth, through the flesh and cartilage at the base of the skull and into the masonry beyond. The hands, nailed through their centers, were positioned either side of the head, fingers pointing downwards. Blood depended in trails from the severed appendages like black streamers. Some of the blood had been used to daub the now-familiar eye symbol on the wall.

“Somehow I don’t think Credo will be in the mood for a chat today,” Liz murmured.

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she wondered how Richard would take them. She was truly horrified by the sight of the dead man, and the grim humor was merely her way of dealing with it. Hellboy would have understood that, but Richard wasn’t Hellboy; to him, she probably sounded flippant, callous. She turned to look at him, perhaps even to apologize — and realized it was unlikely he had even registered her comment. He was slumped against the wall behind her, taking deep, gasping breaths. She was opening her mouth to ask if he was okay when she became peripherally aware of something bright and metallic flashing out of the darkness towards her.

She recoiled instinctively, taking a step back. The metal object missed her face by inches and clattered against the wall. It was a carving knife, and it had come from the shadows to the right of the seated corpse, presumably from the corner still concealed from her view by the edge of the door frame.

She went in low and fast, gun aimed at the spot where a potential assailant’s head would be. No one there — but there was an open doorway in the corner of the room, a black rectangle leading presumably to a narrow kitchen area which must run parallel with the right-hand wall of the entrance corridor, into which the attacker must have ducked. She circled round quickly to get a better angle of sight into the room. She expected to see shadowy movement, but there was nothing — and then something else flew at her from the gloom.

It was a tin, the kind that contained beans or tuna fish or fruit chunks in syrup. It shot at her head with such force that it would almost certainly have concussed her or worse if she hadn’t thrown herself to one side.

Her shoulder hit the floor at the same instant the tin smashed into the wall. Liz rolled and was on her feet in an instant. Using the wall as cover, she scooted along it until she reached the open doorway leading into the kitchen. Then she stepped around the edge of the frame, pointing her gun into the room beyond.

It was dark, but not completely black. Although the kitchen was an internal room, containing no windows, enough light was leaking through the thin curtains on the far side of the main room to give its contents a shadowy definition.

What was immediately apparent to Liz was that the room was empty and there was nowhere to hide. The kitchenette contained a sink, a cooker, a fridge, a set of drawers, a wall-mounted cupboard, and that was it. She looked from left to right in bewilderment. Was she missing something here? The top kitchen drawer was open, as was the cupboard, but unless her attacker was the size of a squirrel .there was no hiding place to be found in either of these places.

She was just beginning to lower her gun when a tin fell out of the overhead cupboard, rolled along the counter and dropped to the floor. Instantly Liz snapped her gun back up. She shook her head at her own nervousness, and was starting to relax again when the tin, which had landed on its side, gave a little shudder and flipped upright.

Liz blinked, but she had seen enough weird stuff in her life to take this in her stride. She leveled her gun at the tin and waited to see what it would do next. Without warning it suddenly flew upwards towards her head. She jerked up her gun and pulled the trigger, and the tin exploded, watery brown soup spattering in all directions.

“What’s going on?” Richard shouted from the hallway, his voice thin with fear.

“I’m okay,” Liz answered. “Just stay where you are and keep your head down.”

The words were barely out of her mouth when several objects rose from the open drawer as if lifted by invisible hands. Liz saw knives, forks, a corkscrew, even a soup ladle. They hovered in the half-light, quivering, reminding her bizarrely of birds of prey readying themselves for the killing swoop to earth. Thinking quickly, she rammed her gun back into its holster and directed her thoughts inwards, reaching down into the ferocious and untamable inferno at her core.

She hated having to use her power in such a confined space, and especially in a building that was likely filled with people, but if she was going to survive here she didn’t have much of a choice. As the items flashed through the air towards her, she unleashed the fire to meet them. The implements hurtling in her direction were reduced instantly to puddles of molten metal sizzling on the floor. More tins flew out of the overhead cupboard, and they too were transformed to spatters of metallic rain in a split second, their contents either charred to cinders or evaporated to mist.

Some instinct, primal and self-preservatory, compelled Liz to spin back round to face the main room. A lamp was flying at her, trailing its lead like a whiplashing tail. It too was incinerated, as was a portable CD player, a TV, a kettle, a suitcase, assorted crockery, and a fist-sized solid-glass paperweight. Beyond these items the carpet, wall, and curtains were burning now too, the carpet giving off a thick cloud of poisonous black smoke. Liz backed towards the door, head snapping right and left, fire still flowing out of her. It felt both glorious and terrible. As ever she experienced both a sense of delirious freedom and the utter terror of knowing she had unleashed a beast over which she had only minimal control.

A chair hurled itself towards her and became blazing spindles of matchwood. Liz stepped smartly back out of the main room, grabbing the door handle and pulling it shut as she did so. The plastic handle became toffee at her touch. She let it go before it could liquefy and fuse to her skin. Something heavy — some other item of furniture — hit the other side of the door with a shuddering thump. Liz shuddered too and, with a mighty effort, snapped the fire back in to herself. It came in a rippling gush, tingling her nerve endings, making her cry out. For an instant it seemed bigger than she was, too vast to contain.

And then it was gone. She blinked and placed one hand on top of the other. Her flesh was cool.

As always after using her gift, she felt alert, her senses temporarily heightened. She turned quickly. Richard was halfway along the corridor, pressed against the wall, gaping at her. Nimble as a cat, she padded towards him.

“Set off any alarms you can find while I call the fire brigade,” she said, pulling her phone out of her belt.

His eyes were wide with fear and awe. “Then what?” he asked.

“Then we do what we can to get everyone out of here before the whole damn building goes up.”

Chapter 8