"If not, they're soldiers with wings and aqualungs," Hellboy said. He leaned out farther, hanging on to the heavy winch that hung above the door. "Oh crap, that's not all."
"What?" Liz continued looking down at the river. Two of the boats were still traveling, the others having moored and disgorged whatever strange cargo they carried. The streets down there must be swarming with the things already, though the only movement she could make out was cars screeching to a halt, crashing into lampposts, and people fleeing their vehicles as they saw ... something. "What, HB?"
"Look," he said. "Under the river."
The shapes had been too large for her to notice without being shown. She had assumed that the shadings and coloring of the water were a result of silt beneath the surface, plant growth, the angle at which the sun hit the water and reflected from surrounding buildings. But the shapes were moving ... and silt did not do that.
"They're huge," she said.
"What are they?" Jim was lying on the floor of the Lynx, head out over the edge. He looked up, and his eyes were more haunted than ever. "What are they throwing at us now?"
"Kraken," Hellboy said. "Sea serpents. Things with tentacles. Damn, why does it always have to be tentacles?"
The shapes crept upriver, shadows beneath the water that changed in size and shape as they moved. One of them passed under a large motor cruiser, and the boat flipped up onto its side and broke in half. Something gray rose from the water, glinting oily in the sun, curled around the broken boat, and pulled the bow down beneath the disturbed surface. It passed on, leaving shapes splashing in the river behind it.
"Jim, are you in touch with anyone inside that hotel?" Liz asked.
"Not directly, but I can patch messages direct to the American embassy. They've got people inside."
"Do it. Tell them to get everyone down into the basement, if they can."
"If there is a basement," Hellboy said. "That things built right next to the river."
"There is a basement," Jim said. "That's where I spent some time when the thing was being built."
"Then they need to get down there," Liz said. "We can hope the army and police on the ground will realize that. Easier to defend, especially against those flying things."
"What the hell are the kraken going to do when they get there?" Hellboy said.
"The hotel's right next to the water," Liz said. "My guess is that they'll try to bring it down."
Jim started talking into his satellite phone, and Hellboy and Liz watched events unfolding below. There was a terrible sense of inevitability about the whole scene. The flying creatures circled the hotel, darting in now and then to take on a helicopter, dodge fire from the hotel itself, and veer away again, skimming the rooftops of surrounding buildings and battling the snipers positioned there. The things that walked — Liz could not identify them from this high up, and she was grateful for small mercies — approached the hotel, darting from cover to cover, and fresh firefights broke out south and east of the Anderson. Explosions erupted between buildings, gushing flame and smoke at the sky. Bodies fell in the streets, mutilated by things with long bodies and many legs.
Closer to the hotel there was a larger explosion as a helicopter went down. Something was wrapped around it as it fell, a creature being whipped and torn to shreds by the rotor blades. It crashed on a walkway beside the hotel, and both creature and aircraft were engulfed in flames. The smoke rose high, staining the sky.
Liz could see men running back and forth across the roof of the hotel. Machine guns spewed bullets into the sky, but they seemed to be firing wild. A dragon flew directly up the side of the building, tail smashing windows and scoring a scar in the edifice, and when it reached the roof it hung on to the parapet and poured flames at the men. Some ran, others were caught, thrashing briefly until the fire scorched them into stillness.
"They've patched me through to an SAS sergeant in the hotel," Jim said. "Seems the minister of defense has suddenly realized there's a problem, and as we're on the scene — "