The light from the doorway faded as something passed the bulb outside, then brightened again.
"No!" Abby said. "He's not yours. He's mine!" She stood and walked toward the door, and for a terrible moment she sensed something of what Leh must have felt for so long: isolation, imprisonment, an awful elasticity to the air that prevented her from reaching the door. Then something sputtered out in the air around her, a mysterious charge dissipating in the presence of her animal heat, and she exited into the corridor.
"Leh!" she called, because she knew she could not pursue in secret. "Leh, he's mine. Blake's mine!"
"He'll always be mine in the end," the shadows said. Abby ran, but however fast she moved, Leh was far ahead.
One thing at least: the demon seemed to know where it was going.
Abby was happy to follow.
* * *
The rukh rose from the hold. Hellboy leaped, swiped its turning beak aside, grabbed the feathers of its neck, and fell back down with it. The hold swallowed them both, and shadows cooled his wounded skin. The bird screeched as Hellboy drove his fist into its throat, dipping its head to try and get at him with its beak. But Hellboy had judged the leap perfectly, and he was now well within the bird's fighting circle, able to punch and tear at its throat without any fear of retribution from its cruel mouth.
Its claws, though. He soon found that the bird could easily twist its claws.
They had landed on the remains of Abby's car, crushing it down into the deck. Explode! Hellboy thought, but of course that only happened in movies. As he concentrated on pummelling the creature's throat and sending it back to the Memory where it belonged, he did not see the claw reaching up for him. But he felt it, curling into the flesh of his thigh and meeting in the middle.
"Damn crap shit!" Hellboy screamed. He was tired of being hurt. He wanted to sit down with a beer and a cigarette and kick back, relax, have nothing to worry about for a few minutes. This just was not fun. Fifty miles away the leaders of the world were maybe even now being wiped out by cryptids, and here he was fighting a giant bird instead of beating the life out of the mad mastermind of all this weirdness.
Sometimes he wished weirdness would take a break. Maybe he should just chase thieves and murderers, a much more understandable class of villain.
"Hellboy!" Liz shouted. Looking up, Hellboy could see her head and shoulders silhouetted against the fading daylight. "Close your eyes!"
Cooking again, Hellboy thought, and he squeezed his eyes shut. A blast of heat, a scream from the rukh, the stench of singed feathers, and the claws ripped from his body as the bird retreated to a shadowy corner of the hold.
Hellboy rolled from the ruined car's hood and slumped to the floor, slipping in his own blood. That was never a good sign. He shook his head, felt around in his coat pocket for a cigarette stub, and when he found one, his fingers closed around it like an old friend. The rukh squealed in the corner, and he told it to shut up.
"You OK, HB?"
"Just dandy, Liz." He looked around the hold, hidden in shadow though much of it was, and tried to imagine what had happened to Abby down here. What had held her. Where she had gone. He glanced up again, and past the shape of Liz's head he could see the ghost of the moon forming in the dusky sky. "Abby won't be Abby for much longer," he said. "And the longer we leave Blake, the worse all this could turn out. Time's running out, Liz, and we need to move on. Jump. I'll catch you."
Liz launched herself into space. Hellboy held out his arms to catch her. Such trust, he thought, And that's why we'll win. He caught Liz and gave her a kiss on the forehead. "Bet Blake doesn't have anyone who'd catch him," he said.
"My hero."
Liz and Hellboy ran from the hold, leaving the squealing rukh behind them. The pain in the bird's voice set them on edge, but they hoped to be able to silence it soon.
If were right about all this, Hellboy thought. If Blake really is the center of things. If not ... hello, new world order.
* * *