She could remember few details of her life before Paris. There was Blake, the force in her mind and the physical presence that had nurtured her, and there was her escape from him. Plunging through the night into the ice-cold embrace of the ocean; the panicked swim; those massive things moving beneath her, deep down and yet so huge that they seemed to exert a fearful gravity, pulling her down with them. Something touched her legs more than once on that long swim, but it never held her back. Fear drove her on, fear of what Blake was and what he might one day do. Somehow she could fear him — the others did not — and that was another secret she had dwelled upon ever since. After that, there were only fleeting memories of Paris, none of them good. None, that is, until Abe Sapien touched her arm. His touch had seemed to welcome her to the world, unnatural thing that she was. And Abe had welcomed her into his life. We have like minds, he had said as she coughed the Seine water from her lungs.
But he did not know her. And deep down, she hoped that he was wrong.
* * *
She had plenty of guilt to walk off. She could pretend it was culpability at the killing of the werewolf, but that was not true. When she thought of that thing lying in the road as she put a bullet through its eye, she felt nothing. This was a deeper, sicker feeling, one that stank of betrayal. Betrayal of her friends. They had taken her in and cared for her, and she had told them nothing. She had lied. She found it strange that freedom only increased that sense of guilt.
She passed a burnt-out building and paused for a moment, wondering whether she should go inside and find somewhere to sit for the night. A man and a woman passed her and averted their eyes. She stared at them, hoping they would say something that would change her mind. But they walked on, wrapped up in their own small world. Sometimes Abby scoffed at such narrow-mindedness, but most of the time she wanted to be just like them.
Her satellite phone rang, and she sighed. That would be BPRD asking where she was. Tom, probably, the concern in his voice barely masking the worry he had about her being out on her own. She plucked the phone from her pocket.
"Hello."
"Abby? Tom. Where are you? I thought you were coming in."
"I ... I am, Tom. I'm still in Baltimore. Walking. Couple of things about the guy I killed I'm still trying to work through in my head."
"Hmm. Well, can you work them through back here? The shits really hitting the fan right now, and I could do with your help."
"What's happened?"
"Sightings," Tom said. "Lots of sightings."
"Sightings of what."
"Well ... things. Dragons. Sea serpents. Other weird stuff."
"Where?" Abby already felt a chill, the sweat on her brow cooling.
"Everywhere," Tom said. "Abby, come home. Abe's on his way back, and I'm hoping to hear from Hellboy and Liz soon. I think we're in for a busy couple of days."
Abby cut the connection and pocketed the phone without agreeing to return, hoping that Tom would take that as a yes. Dragons ... sea serpents ... other weird stuff. She closed her eyes and allowed in the memory of her dreams, and they were filled with bad things.
Blake.
And she suddenly knew that she would not be returning home.
* * *
Abby Paris remembered her dreams, and she knew that the dreams were memories in disguise. In those memories she was nameless, because she had yet to be named; she was empty, waiting to be filled with history; and she was unsettled.
Yet still she remembered herself as Abby, because to remember herself with no name was like being nothing.
* * *