Hellboy: Unnatural Selection
Tim Lebbon
Natural magic or physical magic is nothing more than
the deepest knowledge of the secrets of nature.
— DEL RIO, DISQUISITIONES MAGICAE, 1606
PART ONE
Old Memories
Temple of the Sun, Heliopolis, Egypt — 1976
THEY HAD BEEN DIGGING for three days, and still the famed feather eluded them.
Three days underground, away from the sun and the heat of day, away from the darkness and the cool of night, timeless and airless and stuffy with the enclosed scents of history. They followed footprints left in the sand of subterranean passages millennia ago and compared their own feet for size. They drew their fingertips along the walls and sniffed the dust in wonder. Somewhere in each intake of breath was the skin of long-dead men and, perhaps, the sheddings of things other than men. Each time they opened their eyes after a short sleep, they were filled with awe. And every time they closed their eyes, their dreams were of greatness.
If only they could find the feather, these dreams would come true.
Richard Blake sat and consulted the ancient Book of Ways given to him by his father. Its author, Zahid de Lainree — doubtless a pseudonym designed merely to confuse — had been a man of mystery and obfuscation, and Richard had become adept at casting brief spells of course to wend his way through the man's writings and diagrams. If the ancient text said left, it sometimes meant right; if it said up, it could mean down. And occasionally, instruction to search in this world could hint at delving into another. This chapter, this very page, had already brought them to the secret entrance of the true Temple of the Sun, a place undiscovered by archaeologists and all manner of explorers who had torn this land apart.
The brothers knew that the Book was filled with arcane secrets, but that did not dilute their frustration.
"Gal," Richard said, "I'm reading this right, I know I am. I don't understand!"
Richard's twin brother, Galileo Blake — one wronged man named after another — was sitting several feet along the passage, casting his flashlight around him. The splash of light illuminated tool marks on the tunnel walls and ceilings, cracks in the bedrock, little else. "These damn tunnels are here for a purpose," Gal said. "Nobody builds tunnels from nowhere to nowhere. There's no reason for it."
"No reason ... " Richard said. "Perhaps that's it! Gal, maybe we've spent three days looking for a reason. We've been walking through mazes looking for the middle, but maybe there is no middle!"
Gal shone the flashlight directly into his brother's face and smiled when Richard cringed back. "Sometimes, Rich, you're full of shit."
"Yeah, but magic shit." Richard smiled and closed the book so he could think. After a few moments, he cast another spell of course, then opened the book again. He held the pen-light between his teeth, flicked to the chapter he had been staring at for three days, and began to read between the lines.
* * *
An hour later, they found the feather. "I told you!" Richard said. "I told you!"
"Yeah, yeah, nobody likes a smart-ass."
"But just look at it ... "
They had followed the lines scratched into the walls as described, choosing direction from the hidden messages of Zahid de Lainree's text, and it had taken them only another hour to find the right place. It was where the carved lines stopped. The creature that had made those lines so many years ago — its wings tucked in but still too wide for this narrow passage — must once have stood exactly where they stood now.
A sudden breath of warm air haunted the passage, a ghost memory from another world.