Before him the river.
Miles away, Hellboy and Liz could well hold Abby's fate in their hands. He trusted them with his life — indeed, he had done so quite literally many times before — but at the same time he felt impotent here. This battle was much larger than him, and its real cause lay beyond the Thames Estuary.
Perhaps if he could reach the Anderson and persuade someone of that, the New Ark could yet be in his reach.
Abe slipped into the Thames and began to swim.
* * *
The New Ark, English Channel — 1997
THEY MOVED TOGETHER toward the open hold doors, expecting the rukh to spring up at any moment. A cool breeze smoothed the deck of the old tanker, hushing between the doors, whistling past taut wires and coiled chains. "There'll be more than those dogs," Hellboy said.
"I'm sure."
"Liz ... if we find Abby and she's changed ... "
"Lets deal with that one if it happens," she said. "For now, Blake's our main priority. Abby has to look after herself."
Hellboy nodded. "She's a big girl."
Liz smiled, reached out, and touched his arm. He smiled back, past the blood and the hanging flaps of skin, past whatever was making him nervous. Liz knew him so well; something had got to him. He was tensed up, eyes shifting left to right, and even as the rukh finally powered from the hold and hovered before them, Hellboy's expression told Liz he had been expecting something else.
She looked at the monstrous bird and knew there was far worse to come.
* * *
"I spoke with you," Leh said. "Long ago when you were here, and more recently through the Memory. That place. That cold, dark place." Its words suggested fear, but Abby could not believe that Leh would be afraid of anything.
"That was you? You said he left you. You said Blake left you and ignored you, leaving you with the things too old and terrible to summon."
The demon sat in the corner of the room, arms around its knees. It had not stopped staring at the open door. It had the appearance of a person — tall, gaunt, thin. It looked like a man, but its eyes were deeper and darker than nothing. Darker than the Memory. And there was so much more to them. There was no way Abby should look at its eyes, and no way she could turn away.
"I'm a liar," Leh said. "And lies are simply truths yet to happen."
"He knew you," Abby said.
"He knew what his foolish sons had sent him, and he knew what he was bringing forth, and he knew to shut me in here with his magic and his invocations. Weak. Old." The demon trailed away, still staring at the shade of the open door. The weak artificial light from outside was filtering in, weaker than it should have been, as though struggling against shadows that should not be here.
"You mean Blake?"
"Me." Leh smiled, an open wound in its face. "Had my time. I was ... put down." It looked away from the door at last, shivering. Stared at its hands, steepled its fingers, looked inside. "And I want to kill him because he raised me again."
"I don't know you," Abby said. "You're a liar, you said yourself. I know the Voice, the friend I had. I don't know demons."
Leh shrugged and smiled, and when it looked at her, Abby could not turn away. She fell into its eyes and lost herself in there, adrift in the Memory, floating in so much nothingness that she thought its bulk would crush her soul right from her. She opened her mouth to scream, but she was only a mind. And in the distance, an eternity away, a form so large and old that it exacted a gravity on nothing. It was terrible, and more ancient than time, and so alone that she could almost see the universe it had built in its endless imagination. Alone, it had made itself everything.
Abby screamed and turned away, and when she next opened her eyes, she was looking at the floor of the cell, the stained metal rusted into magical words and sigils. And she realized that she was alone.