Some lights were still working. They cast strange shadows in such turbulent waters. Several times Abe thought something was swimming right at him, but it always resolved itself into nothing more than another surge, another gush of fuel-tainted water being forced along passageways by the pressures of sinking. He forged on, smelling blood here and there and trying to follow its trail. He lost it, found it again, went deeper. The ship was turning as it sank, and he was almost deafened by the sounds of metal twisting and breaking apart. The thumps of distant explosions crushed him against bulkheads. Doors swung open and blocked his way. Something soft and warm grabbed at him, and he kicked out, feeling his feet connect with a slippery thing. By the time he'd turned around, whatever had reached for him had vanished into the chaotic shadows.
He went deeper, sometimes swimming, sometimes rushing through trapped air pockets, always dodging destruction. He looked for Abby. But he found nothing.
The broken ship was way below the surface now, and he could feel pressures building without and within. The sounds of buckling metal grew almost unbearable. And he thought, Perhaps there's still time.
* * *
They waited while the ship sank, waited some more until Abe finally surfaced, then they winched him up.
"Did you find her?" Liz asked.
"No," Abe said. "But that doesn't mean she's dead." He sat wrapped in a blanket and stared out over the sea. Hellboy sat next to him, scanning the assorted floating wreckage silvered by the full moon. None of it moved except to the rhythm of the waves.
* * *
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil — 1997
"WHEN WE GOT BACK TO London, we landed right beside what was left of the Anderson Hotel. The SAS were leading the politicians out onto the forecourt and loading them into helicopters. Couple of the presidents saw me and panicked, but I think most of them knew who I was. Big red guy. Easy to identify. But with some of the things they'd seen that day, I'm not surprised I unnerved them. To most people I'm just not natural.
"We reckon that just about the time Abby killed Blake, the cryptids broke off their attack. Went from trained kill-creatures to ... well, animals. Some of the more vicious ones kept going, but it was much more random. Lots of them escaped into London and caused chaos on the streets, in the Tube, and beyond. Lots of people died. Even after it was all over and Blake was dead, lots of people died." Hellboy took a long draw on his cigarette and let the smoke out slowly, watching the shapes it made. Occasionally he thought he saw things in there, but most of the time he guessed he was imagining it all.
"But you saved so many more," Amelia said.
Hellboy raised his eyebrows. "We did? I'm not sure. I'm not entirely sure we did much at all. It was Abby who killed Blake in the end. If it weren't for her, Leh would have sent him into the Memory and maybe opened it up. And who knows what else would have come through then?"
"Do you know, Hellboy?"
He puffed again on the cigarette, watched the smoke, saw something writhing in there until someone opened the bar door and the breeze blew it away. "I have a few ideas," he said.
"And what of his sons? You saw nothing of them?"
"Nothing on the New Ark at least," Hellboy said. "But I think they're out there somewhere. Always have been. Kate Corrigan is the authority on Blake and de Lainree's Book of Ways, and she reckons there's no way Blake could just conjure the cryptids. He must have had some trace, some physical evidence of their existence, to bring them up out of the Memory. She thinks his sons had the book, not him, and they were out there finding the evidence for him."
"What sort of evidence? DNA?"
Hellboy shrugged. "Maybe that's the science part of it, at least."
Amelia finished her beer and ordered two more. "I saw it all on TV," she said. "It looked like a movie. The coverage of the attack was so complete that a lot of people I know still think it really was a movie."
"Good," Hellboy said. "It'll help them sleep at night." The new beers came, and they drank in silence.
"So," Amelia said after a while. "Abe?"
Hellboy sighed and shrugged. "Blames himself, of course. But me ... I think it was inevitable from the start. Abby is one of those people who has a course set in life, and there's nothing anyone can do about it."
"I never feel like that," Amelia said. "Life's what you make it. Living to fate's song ... that must be awful."
Hellboy drained the new bottle of beer to avoid looking at Amelia. Yeah, he thought. Tell me about it.
* * *