"Stop!" Liz said. Hellboy paused, glanced back at Liz. She was holding up her finger. "Hear that? Footsteps." Hellboy heard them, racing off way ahead. "Our echoes?" Liz shook her head. "Only one set. Come on." The deeper they went, the more amazed Hellboy became. "Has Blake really been here for so long?" he said. "What about fuel, food, repairs?"
"There are a hundred ports where he'd get help with no questions asked," Liz said. "We can worry about the past later, after we've sorted out the present."
"Right," Hellboy said. But as ever, it was the future that worried him the most.
So they followed the echoing footsteps, and soon, far too quickly for Hellboy to think it was luck, they saw the shape of a shuffling man ahead of them. He looked back, eyes going wide, and skirted sideways into a narrower gap between walls. Liz followed him first, Hellboy squeezing in after her.
"Nearly there," Liz said. "Blake! Stop!"
"Yeah, like he'll listen," Hellboy said. "Stop, police!" he shouted, then laughed.
"Sarcasm doesn't suit you, HB," she said.
"I'm just trying it on for size." The smile suddenly slipped from his face, and he was glad that Liz was hurrying on ahead, unable to see his expression. That's cold, Hellboy thought. That's so cold, so empty, so wrong. That's not Blake. He's mad, he has magic, but he isn't ... evil. I smell evil. Black as pitch and stinking a hundred times worse.
They emerged into a huge chamber, a place that reeked of old oil and something else, something much more distant and unearthly. "Liz," Hellboy said, "get behind me."
"Don't you start with all that macho — "
"I mean it." The fact that Liz moved quickly behind Hellboy assured him that she had seen the look on his face. "This is so much more than Blake."
At the center of the chamber, suspended from the ceiling, hung a huge vat. Gray stuff had congealed around its rim and dripped down its sides like melted wax. Whatever this thing was, it hadn't been used for a while. It made Hellboy uneasy. He didn't like the smell coming from the thing, or the sight of it, and it felt so out of place in this world. This is where he brought them through, he thought. Then he heard the old man scream, and everything began to move very quickly.
* * *
"Hellboy!" a voice said. "Long time."
"I've never met you, demon."
Leh shrugged. "Have it your own way." It was standing on the rim of the huge vat, twenty feet above the deck, and it held Benedict Blake in one hand. Hellboy could see the demons fingers clasped inside the man's throat, as if Blake were becoming transparent.
Hellboy and Liz had rounded the vat just in time to see the demon grab Blake and leap, landing on the vats rim with uncanny balance. Hellboy had seen a shape slink back into the shadows at the corner of the room, but he wasn't sure Liz had seen, and he did not want to make Abby the center of this. Not yet. Not unless he had to.
"I came here for him, not you," Hellboy said.
"Him?" The demon went to drop Blake into the vat. "He'd make a fine brew, I'm sure."
"Who are you?"
"Leh."
"Leh is dead."
"Really, Hellboy ... you know better than that. Old demons don't die, they just retire disgracefully." The demon in human form smiled, and its teeth glimmered in the vague light. "Oh, and haven't you seen Abby yet? What a girl she's grown into! Although she's a trifle hirsute, I must say. I prefer my females shaved. Saves on the fur balls." He coughed and spat, his saliva sizzling on the deck.
"What are you doing here, Leh?"
"So you admit I'm Leh?"
"I admit nothing." Word games pissed Hellboy off. He clenched his fist, wanting to punch something. The vat. Maybe that would do.
"I'm here because this idiot's charming sons found me," Leh said. "Simple, really. He brought me back, and now I'm ... well, I'm not going to tell you."
"You're going to drop Blake into the vat to open a passage to the Memory," Hellboy said.
The demon shrugged. "Good guess."
"I've had a lot of practice. Is this all your doing?"
The demon shook its head, looked around at the grubby walls and ceiling of the old oil tank. "I suppose you could just call me lucky," it said. "I've no concern at all about what this little man is doing, but he serves a purpose. And now, if you don't mind — "