The thought of betrayal crossed his mind, and that made him uncomfortable. But then he kept thinking back to the dead werewolf, brains leaking onto a morgue trolley, and that was not the action of someone keen to be going home.
She knows, he thought. Somehow she knows where he is, and she's going to him. Tempted as he was to stop Abby and question her, he had decided that allowing her to pursue her own course could be the best tactic. If she led him to Blake, he could contact Hellboy, call in the cavalry. If not, then he could still pick her up. Either way, Abe was determined not to lose her.
Abby drove fast. Abe glanced at his dashboard clock. It was almost two in the afternoon. London was maybe three hours from here, and this evening there would be a full moon.
Full moon ...
The idea of what Abby would become sent a shiver down Abe's spine. The potential for what she could do come moonrise was another reason he should be picking her up right now. He was taking a huge risk She was a sweet girl, Abby. But she was also a monster.
He had seen her changing many times. There was a room at BPRD Headquarters that they had used several times before to contain ... things. When they first suspected what Abby might be — that first full moon, when her shape began to change and her mind turned to violence and blood — he and Hellboy had locked her in that room and observed what happened. The change was very fast and very thorough. One minute she was Abby, a young girl still scarred by whatever had happened to her, still shadowing Abe as though he had saved her from a fate worse than death, not just death itself. The next minute she was a wolf. A big wolf, fur patchy and exposed skin pale, but a wolf for sure. Scraps of her clothing had hung on the beasts shoulders and thighs. Blood had pooled on the floor beneath it, leaking from every orifice. And in its face, as it turned to the reinforced window they watched through, Abe had seen Abby's tortured eyes.
It had thrashed around the room, breaking bones and scraping long gouges in the walls, until Hellboy opened the door and shot it with a heavy tranquilizer.
She had been in there for three days.
Their mistake during her first change was not to feed her. As the full moon waned she had transformed back, the reversion much slower than the initial change. She was much thinner and weaker than she had been before the change and had lost far more weight than should have been possible in three days. It was as if her werewolf incarnation consumed much faster, swallowing her own body when there was no fresh meat to be had, and that had almost killed her.
Next time the change approached, she went in voluntarily. They watched the transformation and immediately introduced several small deer into the room.
For a few minutes the werewolf had glared at the terrified creatures as if transfixed. They were huddled in one corner, hardly moving, staring anywhere but at the creature Abby had become. Abe had started to think that it would refuse the food. But then it had lunged, and blood splashed the window from the inside, and when it finished an hour later, there were only scraps of fur and bones spread across the blood-slicked room.
They got through a herd of twenty deer in those three long nights.
Coming out again, Abby was strong and powerful, her naked skin gleaming with health, unabashed at her nudity. Dried blood was crusted beneath her fingernails, and her chin was black with it. Her eyes glimmered with satisfaction, and when she looked at Abe and Hellboy, she smiled.
That had been the pattern for the next several years. Abby had cost BPRD a fortune in cattle, but Abe insisted that they were saving her. She grew stronger, and the Abby he knew between full moons developed more of a personality, a confidence, and even a history. She was making her own life hour by hour, day by day, and he and the others at BPRD were doing their very best to help her.