Hellboy, Vol. 2: The All-Seeing Eye (29 page)

Abe nodded. “Aggression is good — but it needs to be channeled positively.”

“What are you, my guru?”

The fins on Abe’s neck undulated in what might have been the equivalent of a smirk. “Frequently, yes.”

They lapsed into silence again, watching the door, waiting for something to happen.

“Wonder what Liz is doing now,” Hellboy said eventually.

“Probably wishing she were sitting here, sharing the merry banter,” said Abe.

Hellboy grunted.

———

Liz, in fact, was hot and uncomfortable, and desperate to rid herself of the overcoat and balaclava. The coat was an encumbrance, but the balaclava was worse. It was itching like hell, and the trapped heat was giving her a headache. Lying on a makeshift bed of lumpy matting, surrounded by the snores, grunts, and coughs of fellow residents, the air thick with the smell of unwashed bodies, she felt as if she were suffocating.

She consoled herself with the thought that it surely wouldn’t be much longer now before
something
happened — if it was going to at all. She had no way of telling the time, but she guessed it must be somewhere around eleven. If all had gone to plan, Hellboy and Abe would be outside now, keeping watch. Liz’s job was simply to make sure that nothing occurred here which might result in their prey giving them the slip. She had already ascertained that the only likely entry and exit point from the building was the street door. There
was
a back door, but it led into a small yard which had no vehicular access and was surrounded by high walls on all sides. There was little chance that the Eye members would choose to enter or leave that way — particularly if they were transporting heavily drugged kidnap victims.

One thing Liz hadn’t been able to check was the kitchen, and that worried her. She kept thinking about how the Eye had infiltrated the buildings in which they had planted the bodies — from below, via the city’s ancient sewage system — and wondering whether they would do the same here. Maybe the building had a cellar, and maybe it was accessible from the kitchen. She had asked Duggie about it, and he had told her that he was pretty sure the building
didn’t
have a cellar. He also said he had been in the kitchen several times (as a frequent and nonviolent resident, he occasionally helped set the tables for dinner) and that there were no doors or trapdoors in there which might lead down to one.

But what if he was wrong? What if the cellar entrance was hidden? What if the Eye managed to slip in, unseen and unheard, and snatch away their victims from right under Liz’s nose?

In fact, what if they were here
right now?
What if they had already
been?
Liz went cold at the thought. She had reasoned that if the Eye were going to turn up, they would leave it until midnight at least, or maybe even the early hours, to be sure that the place was at its quietest.

But they might not. They might risk coming earlier — particularly if they were desperate to push ahead with their plan, and were worried about the police making the connection between the victims and the refuge. Since lights out, Liz had been straining for the slightest sound from outside the room, but unless any intruders started clomping about like a herd of elephants, she doubted she would hear much through the thick material of the balaclava and the surrounding chorus of sleep sounds.

She finally decided, therefore, that for the sake of her sanity she was going to have to make a move
now
. She couldn’t wait any longer and risk missing all the action. If she was spotted outside the room she’d just say she was going to the toilet. That might not wash, of course — if the food
had
been drugged, the Hipkisses would question why she wasn’t zonked out like everyone else — but she’d try it and see what happened. Judging by the evidence, she was inclined to believe that a drug of some kind had indeed been used. Despite the cacophony of snorts and snuffles and groans from all around her, she was pretty sure that everyone in the room except for her and Duggie was asleep.

She could tell he wasn’t by the tension in his body. He was lying on his back, hands meshed together over his flat belly. Now and again he would clear his throat nervously; it was the kind of sound only a conscious person would make. She rolled over and put her mouth close to his ear.

“Duggie,” she whispered, “I’m going to check things out.”

His face was a pale blurred oval in the darkness. “Do you want me to come with you?”

“No, you wait here. You’ve risked enough just by getting me in. If the kidnappers turn up, I’m planning on following them, in which case I may not see you again.”

“Okay, well ... good luck.”

“Thanks, buddy. You too.”

She rose from the floor, stifled by the clothes she was wearing. Carefully she picked her way across to the door, stepping over and around sleeping bodies in the grainy darkness. No one raised their head to look at her, or ask where she was going. Even when she accidentally stepped on someone’s leg they did nothing more than grunt and turn over.

At the door she turned back for a last look at Duggie. But in the darkness it was impossible to identify his individual form among the lumpy mass of sleeping humanity. She raised a hand regardless, then opened the door a crack and peered out. The dimly lit corridor was deserted, though from the main office down near the entrance she could hear a murmur of voices.

She slipped out of the room and closed the door quietly behind her. Her instinct was to move quickly, and to keep to what few shadows there were, but if someone stepped out of the office and saw her sneaking about, or came down the stairs to the left of the kitchen at the opposite end of the corridor, their suspicions would be instantly aroused.

Mindful of this, she moved like a lost old woman, shuffling along and making no attempt at concealment. Even so, she had a definite plan in mind. First she wanted to check out the kitchen. If the door to the room was still locked, then all well and good. Then she wanted to recce the dormitories upstairs. She had no idea whether the Eye would take their victims from there or from the closer and more convenient dining room, but with the dining room only in use today because of the unusually large influx of residents, she thought it more likely the Eye would stick to their tried-and-tested plan and access the less heavily populated dormitories.

Of course, Liz was aware that if she were found upstairs she would have little chance of bluffing it out, but that was a risk she would have to take. Hopefully she’d be able to subdue any opposition without attracting unwarranted attention, but just in case ...

She slipped across to the female toilet on the opposite side of the corridor and pushed the door open. Beyond was a grotty, smelly little room, its taps, cracked sink, and toilet bowl coated with a grime-encrusted layer of lime scale that no amount of scrubbing with disinfectant would ever shift. The wall tiles had long faded from gleaming white to a dull ivory-yellow, and the grout between them was black with damp and dirt.

Liz closed the door behind her and reached beneath her coat for the satellite phone in the pouch on her waist. Like Hellboy and Abe, she rarely had her phone switched on, for the simple reason that she didn’t want to forget about it and have the damn thing go off at inappropriate times. Of course, their tendency to go incommunicado drove Tom Manning crazy, but he wasn’t the one who frequently had to sneak about in the most inhospitable of environments, facing off against supervillains with magical powers and big bad nasties from hellish realms.

She turned the phone on now, and fast-dialed Hellboy. He answered immediately, as if he had been waiting for her call.

“What’s happening?” he said.

“Nothing so far. Just thought I’d let you know where I’m at.” Quickly she filled him in on what she had learned, and of her intentions. “So where are you and Abe?”

“Sitting right outside, staring at a closed door. It’s a thrilling pastime. You should try it.”

She smiled at his dry humor, but she could hear the frustration in his voice. “Hang in there, big guy. If I find out anything more I’ll call you.”

She expected him to say okay and end the call, but he hesitated. Before she could ask him what was wrong, he said, “It won’t change how we do things, but I guess you should know — they’ve got Cassie.”

“Damn,” Liz said quietly. “I’m sorry, HB. What happened?”

Briefly he told her about the phone call.

“Okay,” said Liz, “well, I guess that makes it doubly important that we get these bastards. Talk to you later.”

She put her phone away, listened for a moment, then opened the door of the toilet. The corridor was still deserted. She could hear nothing but the same murmur of voices she had heard before and the occasional extra-loud snort or groan from behind the door of the dining room. She walked boldly up the corridor towards the kitchen door, thinking that if anyone challenged her now she would claim she was hungry. She reached the door and tried it. It was still locked. Good. She put her ear to it and listened for a moment. Silence. Okay, now to check on the dormitories upstairs.

She ascended to the second floor, gritting her teeth at each creak of the wooden staircase. She reached the top and was making her way along the corridor towards the dormitories when a door beyond them — the door that led into the games room — abruptly opened and the tough-looking guy who had served her supper stepped out.

Liz could only assume that he had heard the stairs creaking and had come out to investigate. He was holding a copy of the
Racing Post
and from the expression on his face it was clear that he had expected to see someone he knew. This again supported the notion that the food had been drugged. Otherwise, why would the guy have been so surprised to encounter a resident?

“What the hell are you doing here?” he said, his expression changing from shock to aggression.

Liz thought quickly. She allowed her head to droop and shambled towards the man, weaving from side to side, as if she was indeed heavily drugged and fighting desperately to keep awake.

“Oi,” the man said, “where do you think you’re going?”

He marched up to Liz and grabbed her roughly by the shoulders. She felt his strong thumbs digging into the muscle below her shoulder bones, but she forced her face to remain slack. She mumbled incoherently, and rolled her head loosely forward as if she were finding it too heavy to keep upright.

“You what?” the man said aggressively. “Speak up, you daft bitch, I can’t hear you.”

He leaned towards her in an attempt to make sense of her words, whereupon she suddenly leaped forward, butting him in the face with the top of her head.

She heard his nose crunch, and then the grip on her shoulders weakened and he was staggering backwards. She looked up, to see blood pouring down his face, his eyes rolling in their sockets. Trying not to be hampered by the heavy overcoat and balaclava, she danced forward like a boxer and followed up her initial attack. She had nothing like Hellboy’s punching power, but she was fit and quick. She punched the man once, twice, three times in the face before he could even think about reacting.

His legs buckled under him, and he hit the wooden floor with a thump that she hoped hadn’t been heard downstairs. As he was gurgling blood, his hands groping feebly at the floor in an attempt to push himself upright, she whipped her automatic out from under her coat and pointed it at his face.

“Don’t make a noise and don’t try to get up,” she said. “That way we’ll both be happy.”

She wasn’t sure if he was conscious enough to register what she had said. Certainly he kept trying to lever himself up, and managed to get into a semi-sitting position before she stepped forward and kicked his arms out from under him again.

“I
said
stay down,” she muttered. “Do you understand?”

His body became still and his eyes began to blink rapidly. He focused on her with difficulty and then gave a slight nod.

“Good,” said Liz, and waved her gun in his face, like a mother showing a baby a rattle. “Now, don’t forget, I’m the one with the weapon here.”

Quickly she pulled off the balaclava, her hair crackling with static as it rose up, then tumbled down around her shoulders again. Next she shrugged off the overcoat, which she used to wind rapidly around the man’s feet. Grabbing the thick wad of material fully in her left hand and partially in her right, while still pointing the gun at the man’s prone body, she lifted his feet and dragged him over to the door of the women’s dormitory.

He was heavy, and if the floor had been carpeted instead of laid with old wooden planks worn smooth as glass by decades of passing feet, she doubted she would have been able to move him at all. Once she got going, however, his semiconscious body slid along easily, his arms even rising involuntarily above his head to trail behind him. She backed to the door, opened it awkwardly with the hand that was holding the gun, and dragged him inside.

The sound of two dozen women breathing in sleep was like the soughing of the tide. Not a single one woke, or even stirred, when Liz entered the room, dragging the man behind her.

She knew that to maintain her advantage she had to move swiftly and decisively. There was nothing to be gained in fumbling about in the dark — and so, taking a calculated risk, she reached out and switched on the room’s main light.

The bulb dangling from the center of the ceiling was not particularly bright, but it was bare, and the light seemed momentarily harsh in contrast to the darkness that had preceded it. The semiconscious man groaned and screwed up his eyes, even half raised an arm to shield them. The blood on his face looked startlingly red in the sudden light.

In comparison to the man, the sleeping women barely reacted at all. A few grunted or half moaned; a couple turned over. The most significant response came from a youngish woman with masses of tangled hair, who screwed up her face and dragged a sheet over her head.

With a silent apology Liz crossed to the nearest bed and peeled the top blanket away from its sleeping inhabitant. The blanket was made of thin, coarse material that looked as though it would rip easily. Keeping a wary eye on the man still lying on his back, dripping blood onto the floor, Liz tucked her gun back into its holster and quickly tore the blanket into strips.