The Glass Road

Tim Lebbon

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"Hey, H.B., how's it hanging?" "Liz, nice to hear from you. Long time

no see."

"Well I miss you, too. But considering what usually happens when we get

together, I don't miss you that much."

"Sweet talker," Hellboy said.

"So what are you up to?" Liz asked.

"I'm between missions."

"Oh, to have that luxury! So you're relaxing, kicking back, catching up

on your correspondence?"

"Spending most of my time having nightmares."

"Oh." There was a long pause, as uncomfortable as a telephone silence

can be. Liz broke it. "So, did you have any pets in Hell?"

"Huh?"

She laughed, then apologized. "Sorry, it's just that of all cases, this

one's caught me off balance. Don't suppose you could ...?"

Hellboy sighed. Liz could imagine him leaning back in his chair, eyes

closed, unable as ever to resist a mystery. How could he when his

existence was the biggest mystery of them all?

"Of course. Where are you?"

"Sahara. Tell me when you can fly into Al Jawf, and I'll meet you. And

bring your shorts. It's damned hot."

"I've known hotter. I'll be in touch."

Hellboy hung up first. Liz held onto the phone and listened to the

broken connection, trying as always to hear the truth behind static's

secret whisper. Sometimes she was sure that everyone was plotting

against them. She supposed paranoia was a natural product of spending

so long in this business.

She lit a cigarette, sat back, and wiped her brow. Damn, it was hot.

The tent gave scant protection from the desert sun, and offered no

insulation from the screams. She knew what fire could do; these cries

brought back memories she had struggled to subdue for half her life.

If only there was something she could do to help.

[IMAGE]

Hellboy called the following evening to say that he'd be landing in Al

Jawf in the early hours. Liz had no real desire to be driving through

the Libyan desert at midnight, but then she'd been the one to ask for

Hellboy's help. She owed him the courtesy of a personal reception.

Besides, the only thing she really feared in the desert had yet to

manifest itself since that first time a week before. And if it did

return now — if it chose this night to gasp its fury onto more

unsuspecting victims — at least in the dark she would have ample

warning. Of all people, she knew that fire shone bright.

Hellboy stepped off the charter plane, and if he hadn't been so red —

Liz would have sworn he looked gray around the gills.

"Bad trip?"

"Nothing a few hours at flight school for the pilot wouldn't solve. I

got the distinct impression the whole journey veered on the edge of

catastrophe."

"Thanks for coming, H.B." She smiled, and he gave her the disarming

grin that changed him completely. Sometimes when he smiled like that,

she really thought he might be at peace.

"I didn't have anything better to do. HQ still thinks I'm resting up,

but I'm sure they'll find me if they need me." He looked around,

shivered. "I thought you said it was hot out here!"

"Well, you would arrive in the middle of the night! Come on, I've got a

Jeep. We'll head straight there."

"'There' being?"

Liz looked up at the big demon, her affection for him subtly tempered,

as ever,

by fear. Not of him, but of what he meant. If I really think about

where he's been ... But she did not allow herself to pursue the

thought. She had been through enough with Hellboy to know never to

judge by appearances.

"An old ruin out in the desert. It was uncovered a few weeks ago during

a major sandstorm. A team of archaeologists have been there ever since,

until last week when ..."

He smiled grimly. "That pause means something bad. So let me try to

finish. '... Until last week, when they were all horribly killed.' "

Liz nodded. "Well, most of them. It's the ones still alive I feel sorry

for. Come on, it's best you see for yourself. One of the survivors can

still talk, though there's not much sense. Hear it from him, and you'll

get none of my preconceptions. They've done me no good."

Hellboy stepped into the Jeep, its suspension groaning. He wrapped his

coat around his shoulders and settled back for the drive. Liz glanced

over at his silhouette. "It's good to see you again."

"You too, Liz," he said. As ever, a man of few words.

"It's a two-hour drive. Do me a favor and watch out for anything that

glows in the dark."

Hellboy groaned, and muttered, "This is going to be a bad one, isn't

it?"

[IMAGE]

They crossed the desert. The starlight was brilliant here — Liz was

still not used to it — and halfway through their journey she stopped

the Jeep, simply to turn off the lights and look. She had never seen so

many stars. With zero light pollution, the celestial display was

awe-inspiring, and she could make out the great swathe of the Milky Way

sweeping from horizon to horizon. Three nights ago, at the camp, she

had seen a shooting star, and had wished only for the screams from the

survivors' tent to stop.

Even Hellboy seemed awed. He stood next to her and stared skyward. They

shared the moment in comfortable silence, neither of them feeling the

need to spoil the effect with words. Time seemed to stand still, even

though what they saw was from any time but now.

Later, just before they reached the camp, Hellboy said, "It's very

beautiful here."

Liz slowed the Jeep, nodded, shrugged. She had very mixed feelings

about the place herself. "It'll be dawn soon. Starts warming up pretty

quickly, so we'll do what we can before then. Do you need a rest, or —

?"

"Hey, I'm on a break. Why would I need to rest?"

"Sarcasm doesn't suit you."

"I'm sorry, it's something I've been practicing."

"Come on, I'll show you the survivors. I'm sorry, Hellboy, but this'll

knock the humor out of you." She parked the Jeep and jumped out. The

sun was barely smudging the horizon pink, and already the temperature

had risen five degrees.

And then Liz noticed that the screaming had stopped.

One of the doctors on her team was sitting outside the survivors' tent,

smoking a cigarette and looking in their direction. He seemed

exhausted.

"Mark? No screaming?"

"Hi, Liz. Hellboy, Dr. Mark Williams, I came here with Liz a week ago

to ..." He took a final, long drag on his cigarette and then stubbed it

out on the ground. "Well, to help. It's a pity there was nothing I

could do."

"They're not all dead?" Liz said.

"All but Mumbler. And he's still doing his thing."

Liz looked at the ground, thinking of those poor, tortured bodies in

the tent, and she was glad that they were dead. To live — to survive —

damaged as they were, would have been too cruel.

"Well, let's talk to him," she said. She entered the tent, and the big

demon followed her in.

[IMAGE]

The man should not have been alive. "Holy crap," Hellboy whispered.

"Absolutely."

They called him Mumbler because he had not ceased mumbling since the

attack. Incoherent ravings mostly, but sometimes there were words to be

made out, though they were never words anyone wanted to hear.

Liz gagged, finding it difficult to breathe, and she tried hard to

crush down the memories threatening to stir. They were like wild

animals pacing beyond the security fence of her consciousness; if she

let her concentration slip for an instant, they would be in. And they

were voracious.

Mumbler had suffered extreme burns to most of his body. He lay naked on

the bed, but there was little recognizable about him. His fingers and

toes had melted away, hands and feet turned into knotty globules of

hardened flesh and protruding bone. His genitals had been scorched to

nothing, his stomach and chest eaten into by fire, and his head bore

only the crude approximations of nose, ears, and mouth. The only patch

still recognizable as skin was a swathe across his right temple, a

half-moon shape that included the eye. The other eye had been burnt to

a crisp, its remains hidden by a smear of pinkish cream. His body

shivered constantly, as if cold and craving the return of whatever had

done this to him.

The doctor scooped white cream from a tub by the bed and smeared it

thickly across Mumbler's body, cringing at the pig-like screech that

issued from the charcoal mouth. The cream turned pink almost

immediately from the continuous bleeding, and his body seemed to suck

it in as though it were his final hope.

But there was no hope. They all saw that, and Liz felt a terrible

tension building between her and Hellboy. They had been keeping Mumbler

alive because of what the man had seen, no more than that. It was

cruel, it was awful, but it was essential. That did not mean any of

them had to like it.

The doctor gave the burnt man an injection and then walked away, head

bowed.

"What did this to him?" Hellboy asked.

"Fire Dogs," Liz said. "That's what he called them, a few days ago when

he made more sense. It's almost like the fire's still eating him,

burrowing in and stealing everything he was. Now he mostly just growls

and screeches."

"What in Hell are Fire Dogs?"

"Maybe you just answered your own question."

Liz glanced at Hellboy, but Mumbler held his attention. For a demon, he

had such humanity in his eyes. Liz tried to stifle a sob, but it broke

free anyway, and she stepped out of the tent and breathed deeply of the

desert air. It stank in there; scorched flesh and death.

She glanced at the sun cresting the horizon, watched a bird fly

gracefully against its crimson stain, and the memories came crashing

in. The heat, the fires, the screams as her family died, and the

terrible, unforgivable monster that was her ego reveling in every lick

of flame.

She cursed the sky, kicked at the ground, and then Hellboy was standing

there, touching her with his normal hand. The other hung heavy by his

side, clenched as if ready for action.

"Why did they send you to this one?" he said quietly.

"I guess they thought fire and me go together."

"How sensitive of them." He held her for a while longer, letting go

just when it would have become uncomfortable. "I'm glad you called me."

"So am I, H.B."

"That dying man in there won't tell us anything. So, tell me what you

know."

"Do you mind if we go to my tent? I have some whisky there, and I need

a drink."

[IMAGE]

"The ruin I told you about is a mile south of here. Nobody seems to

know where it comes from, how old it is, or what it was. I've seen it,

and it's ... strange.

There are dozens of separate cells, and rooms that must have been for

torture."

"How do you know?"

"There are engravings. You ever been to Pompeii?"

"Nothing's ever taken me there."

"You should go one day just for your own edification. Spend one of your

breaks traveling instead of waiting for me to call you, eh? In Pompeii

there are brothels with menus carved into the walls, because a lot of

the patrons were foreign sailors. They'd peruse the menu and point out

their particular preference."

"Was there a specials board?"

"Very droll. This place out in the desert, H.B. ... it has a menu. A

menu of torture. And all the torture is by fire."

Hellboy was silent for some time. Liz drank, sighed, fanned her shirt.

It was scorching already, but Hellboy seemed untroubled. As he said,

he'd known hotter.

"I need to go there," he said.

"Of course."

"So, Mumbler and his dead friends?"

"As I said, archaeologists. Some local traders had started visiting

them, and a week ago they found them all lying in the desert, burnt.

They did what they could for them, set up a tent, went to get help."

"The traders know anything about — ?"

"They've gone. Vanished into the desert. After what they saw, you can

hardly blame them."

"And Mumbler said that Fire Dogs did this?"

"Fire Dogs up out of the ground, he said. Or that's the gist of it.

There was more, but most of it was indecipherable."

"So where did these Fire Dogs go? Did anyone else see them? You checked

the area for any geological oddities, gas pockets, anything like that?"

Liz smiled grimly at Hellboy for a few seconds, finished her drink, and

stood. The heat was already molding her clothes to her body, and there

he was in his big coat.

"Aren't you hot in that thing?"

"I don't want to get sunburnt. It's bad for the skin."

Liz laughed, a real belly laugh that held more than a taint of mania.

Nevertheless, it felt good, and she was thankful to him for that. She'd

had precious little to laugh about lately.

"I have to show you the site, H.B. There's so much more, but it's best

you see it for yourself."

"So let's go." He stood, horn stumps brushing the tent's ceiling. He

grinned at Liz, and she liked that because he meant it.

[IMAGE]

By the time they approached the ruin it was mid-morning, and the sun

had made a furnace of the desert. Even Hellboy had shrugged his coat

from his shoulders.

He showed no sign of breaking a sweat — Liz had never seen him sweating

— and he stared around at the desert as if he had been here before. Its

great expanse of packed ground, loose sand, miles and miles of dunes

with little to break the monotony except for occasional patches of

undergrowth ... none of this amazed him. She hoped it was because his

mind was already moving ahead, examining the problem at hand. She knew

that Hellboy had a heart, but his imagination had always been an enigma

to her. His sense of wonder was not human, and he never made it out to

be so.

His manner changed when the ruin came into view. He sat up straighter,

stopped his casual observation of the desert, became focused. Liz saw

that he was clenching his big fist, keeping it resting at the ready in

his lap.

"There it is," she said. "It's not all that big, just a single building

really, split into smaller rooms. No roof, just a few tumbled-down

walls. The storm was a real zinger to clear that much sand away. Must

have been buried for a long time, and the sand's preserved a lot of the

features."

"Looks pretty featureless from here," Hellboy said.

Liz brought the Jeep to a halt. Turning the engine off plunged them

into a shocking silence, punctuated only by ticking as the motor began

to cool. They sat for a few seconds as if awaiting the usual background

noise to kick in, but Liz had been here before, and she knew that there

was no usual noise. The roaring of Fire Dogs a week ago, yes, and the

screams of their victims. Now, nothing.

"Let's go nearer," Liz said. "I'll show you the engravings."

"Any language you know?"

"That would make it all too easy."

Hellboy nodded thoughtfully, heading off across the sand.

Liz had seen the ruin before, but still it made her shiver, as if her

sweat had suddenly been cooled by an invisible breeze. It was so alien,

unknowable, the engravings so mysterious that their inscrutability made

them all the more terrifying. Nothing was as frightening as not

knowing.

Hellboy stood by one wall and held out his hand, not quite touching the

surface.

"It's warm," he said.

"Sucks in the heat of the desert. There's lots of weird stuff out here.

It'll be warm tonight as well, when we're as cold as a polar bear's

ass."

"It feels too warm."

Liz looked around at the desert, watching for heat haze that might not

be natural. Mumbler had said nothing that would help her spot the Fire

Dogs' return. She thought that her own talents might aid her, and the

B.P.R.D. must have considered that as well. But the longer she spent

here, wallowing in heat, the more she considered the possibility that

the opposite could be true: when they came, she might have no idea at

all.

"The inscriptions are here," she said. "Inside the walls." She climbed

over a tumbled portion of wall and entered what was left of the

building. There was no shelter from the sun, no real sense of being cut

off at all from the desert, but she felt suddenly disoriented,

vulnerable, and exposed. It was as if with one step she had traveled

ten thousand miles.

"Hmm," Hellboy said as he followed her in. "Weird."

"What?"

"That sensation of moving away from things."

"It's just strange finding something so old in the desert, is all."

"Maybe," he said. "I feel like it could be any time now, any era. Odd.

I wonder if a plane flew over now, would we see it?"

"You're freaking me, Hellboy. Come here and see the inscriptions, then

maybe we can get out of here." She led him into a small enclosed room,

pointing out the hideous torture scenes that decorated the walls;

flaming heads, burning eyes, piles of blackened corpses. They emerged

quickly into a central area where the walls were lined with weird

hieroglyphs.

Hellboy glanced down at his feet, as if expecting the ground to open

up, and then stood next to Liz and looked at the markings.

"Do you recognize any of them?"

"You think 1 will if you don't?"

"Well ..."

He looked for a couple of minutes, running his fingers over the

carvings, clearing out hardened sand to reveal their full shape.

"It's strange," he said, trailing off, tracing the carvings again. A

couple more minutes went by. Liz stepped back from Hellboy and let him

look, searching the ruin herself for anything she might have missed her

first time here. Even standing by the section of tumbled wall, able to

see out across the desert, she still felt trapped and removed from time

and place. The Jeep looked a very long way away.

"I don't know this language," Hellboy said, "but it's speaking to me."

He had turned away from the wall and was standing at the ancient

building's center, head cocked as if listening.

"What exactly does that mean?"

"Not sure."

"There's something else," Liz said, keener than ever to get them both

out of the ruin. "The glass road."

Hellboy raised his brow, but Liz only smiled and shook her head. "This

you have to see; I can't describe it. I drove in from this direction on

purpose. Come on, it's on the other side of the ruin."

They clambered out, climbing a slope of broken stone and hardened sand,

and the sun hitting the desert tried to blind them to its wrongness.

"What in the name of...?"

"Impressive, huh?" Liz said.

The glass road started almost at their feet, a wide, uneven expanse of

melted sand, mostly blackened but with clearer patches here and there.

Its dark areas ate the sunlight, the lighter splashes blazing it back

out as if magnified by entrapment. It stretched off across the dunes, a

wound across pale skin.

"This is where we found most of the bodies," she said quietly. "The

ones that survived were beyond the edges of the road."

"You say road as if there's design in this."

Liz could have disagreed, but she was not altogether certain herself.

"The Fire Dogs did this," Hellboy said. "Hot. How hot would they have

to be?"

"Hotter than fire," Liz said. "This is concentrated. Boosted. You've

seen me at my worst. Something like that."

"So where does it go?"

"I guess it leads to the Fire Dogs." Liz knew what Hellboy was going to

say next — that was partly why she had brought him out here to see the

ruin — but the very idea still gave her a chill of fear.

"Feel like a drive?" he asked.

"Not really. But I've got nothing else planned, other than sweating."

They made their way back to the Jeep, took a drink, and then set off

along the glass road. The going was smooth to begin with, and the fact

that the hardened sand did not try to suck the wheels down made it

fast. Hellboy stared at the horizon, and Liz knew that he was

concentrating on those carvings he had run his hands over, again and

again.

I don't know this language, but it's speaking to me.

Now that Hellboy was here with her, Liz hoped she would hear nothing of

its voice herself.

[IMAGE]

If the road had a destination, it was confused. It veered east and

south, east again, then performed a gradual curve that brought it

northward. It passed between huge sand dunes or over them, never

seeming to choose the easiest route. Its surface cracked and split

beneath the Jeep's wheels, and more than once Liz thought that a tire

had been shredded. The Jeep carried two spares and temporary repair

kits, but if they lost all four tires they would be stranded. At one

point she turned off the road and started along beside it, but Hellboy

grunted and shook his head, so she took the road again. The Jeep moved

faster over its mostly solid surface.

The rough glass refracted sunlight into a million rainbows, and on

occasion Liz was all but blinded by color. Such a beautiful effect from

something so dreadful. The horizon was always close, and gorgeous

mirages hung above it to show where the toad would take them next.

"So what do we do if we find them?" she asked Hellboy at last. The heat

of the desert prickled the back of her neck, like hellish eyes boring

into her.

"Hmm," Hellboy said. He glanced at Liz, tapped his heavy fingers on the

dashboard, scratched absently at a horn stump with his other hand.

"And what does that mean?"

"It means I'm still thinking."

"About the inscriptions?"

He continued tapping, scratching, then he looked abruptly at his left

hand, as if the meaning of the carvings would be implanted in his

fingers. "These have touched ancient dust," he said. "Words and images

put there eons ago. I know a lot of languages, Liz, some of them

secret, one or two unknown to anyone else alive, now that Professor

Bruttenholm's dead. I know how they work, how they feel, and this one

is different from them all. I don't quite have it yet, but ... well, I

think I know how this one works already. I touched it with my fingers,

traced the carvings, and in doing so I translated them. I just haven't

listened to the message properly yet."

"So how do you listen?"

"I stay quiet, and concentrate."

And I drive and keep quiet, Liz thought, but she did not feel hurt.

Hellboy could have just told her to shut the hell up.

[IMAGE]

She was the first to see the smoke in the distance. She kept driving

for a while, glancing across at Hellboy to see if he'd noticed. It

seemed he had not. His eyes were closed, though she knew he was still

awake. His fist clenched and unclenched with the sound of fractured

tombstones.

The smoke was several miles distant, a dark haze against the vicious

blue sky. There was no breeze at all, so it simply hung above whatever

caused it, marking its place for all to see. As they drew closer along

the glass road, Liz knew that they would pass right under the smoke,

and as soon as they crested the next rise, they would see its source.

"Hellboy."

"I know. Cooked flesh," he said, almost casually. "And still cooking."

Liz was shocked, and not only by the smell. Her own reaction surprised

her; fear that the Fire Dogs may still be nearby, as opposed to pity

for who- or whatever they had killed. That was not like her.

Her fingertips tingled, sizzled, and she cursed and gripped the wheel

tighter. This must be getting to her more than she realized.

Hellboy sat back and closed his eyes once more.

[IMAGE]

Some of the bodies were still burning. The glass road scorched its way

through the encampment like the tire track of a giant truck. It had

blackened humps here and there, vague hints that something may have

been there before, but little more. Beside the road were burnt bodies —

human and camel — and tents. These fires were out; their intensity must

have been so great that any combustible material was quickly used up.

Further out from the road, scattered across the sand as if trying to

flee, were the burning bodies. None of them moved, but for the flicker

of flame and the rising of noxious, greasy smoke, and there were none

untouched by the Fire Dogs. Liz counted twenty bodies for sure, and

some of the congealed masses on and around the road might also once

have been people.

A camel belched blue flame as its stomach ruptured.

"I think we've found the traders," Hellboy said.

Liz did not reply. She was glad that she'd brought the Jeep to a halt

before reaching the scene. Even she could smell some of the burning

now, and taste it, and in her mind's eye she saw so much more from her

past, scenes she had tried keeping deep down, but which always reared

their heads when provoked. Guilt could do that to a girl, she guessed.

Guilt and a healthy dose of self-loathing.

Every burning body had a family. She knew that only too well.

"Let's take a look," Hellboy said.

"Do we have to?"

"Of course." He seemed surprised that she had even hinted at moving on.

"What if there are survivors?"

"Like Mumbler? I'd sooner leave them to die."

"They might be able to tell us what these things look like, how fast

they move, how they act. Did you get any of that from Mumbler?"

"No," Liz agreed.

"Then let's go. Liz, I know this is hard, but we need to know what

we're up against."

"Those inscriptions haven't told you anything yet?"

Hellboy seemed suddenly evasive, shaking his head and jumping from the

Jeep. The road crackled under his weight, snapping like a gunshot.

I guess he'll tell me when he's ready, Liz thought. But I don't like

secrets. She exited the Jeep and walked beside Hellboy.

One of the camels was still alive, barely, and Hellboy pulled out his

revolver and put a bullet in the thing's skull. It sighed as it died.

"So now what?" Liz asked. The sights were getting to her, and the

sounds of burning. Rage, guilt, and fear were twisting in her head like

a nest of snakes, and there was a hot, insistent knot in her chest,

sending tendrils of itself along bones and through veins. Her fingers

were hot. She was very scared. Not here, she thought. Not now.

Hellboy looked at her and saw that something was wrong. Perhaps he

guessed, perhaps not, but as her friend he tried not to make it

obvious. "Now we get the hell away from here," he said. "Follow the

road, see where it's taking us. And I need to

concentrate a bit more."

"So, what?" Liz asked. "What do they say?"

"Give me time," he said quietly. "We all have our secrets, Liz."

[IMAGE]

The sun was setting in the west when they saw the glow to the east. "Is

that usual in the desert?" Hellboy asked.

Liz shrugged. "I haven't seen it before."

"Weird atmospherics, maybe? Mirage?"

Liz did not reply, because Hellboy's tone of voice said what they both

knew. The Fire Dogs were ahead of them, just over the horizon. Ten

miles distant, maybe even less. And it was getting dark.

"Maybe night will be the best time to deal with them," Hellboy said.

"Deal? How? They'll burn the Jeep, I'll be reduced to a smoldering pile

of ash and you ... I don't know what'll happen to you. Roast demon."

"Liz ..." She heard an unfamiliar fear in his voice. Or maybe the fear

was her own, and she was hearing it in him to make herself feel better.

"Hellboy, tell me. I'll be straight with you first: I hate it here.

Memories I thought I had control of are haunting me. My family ... my

brother... I hate it here. Now please tell me what you know, and then

we can decide — "

"We can't stop them."

"Oh." She slowed the Jeep to a crawl, stopped, heard it settling into

the surface of the glass road. When we get really close, she thought,

the road will still be hot.

"I don't know how I know the language of those inscriptions — and I

don't want to think about how — but I traced them with my finger, and

they've spoken to me. And they're calling me home."

The word hit Liz like a stone fist. "Home."

Hellboy nodded.

"You mean ...?"

"The ruin is a portal to Hell. From what I can gather the Fire Dogs

guard it, and every now and then, when it's exposed, they come out to

hunt."

"Home?" Liz said again. Is he going to — ?

"I'm not going," Hellboy said, scaring her even more.

"So if we can't stop them, why are we following them."

Hellboy tapped his fingers on the dashboard again. Liz felt the

vibration through her feet, her legs, her butt on the seat.

"We have to lure them back," he said. "I have no idea how long they'll

roam across the desert, nor how far they'll go, before they return to

the Underworld. I don't think they've been out for a very long time.

Maybe pre-history they came out, destroyed whole populations,

civilizations. We can't afford to let them go anywhere."

"And how exactly do we do that?" But Liz knew. She had worked with

Hellboy enough to know his methods, and really, when she thought about

it, this would be the only way.

"We're bait," he said. "But once we get there, I'll have to act fast,

so I need you to drive the Jeep."

A cool finger ran down Liz's spine and nestled in her lower back.

Inside her chest it was still hot. She wished that heat could be

extinguished forever, but as she was stuck with it, at least she could

use it for good. She would never make amends, but assuaging the guilt

even a little helped her sleep at night.

"H.B., even if you didn't need me, I'd still be coming along."

"Thanks," he said, smiling. As he turned away, Liz saw something in his

expression, something that scared her still. Doubt.

They're calling me home.

[IMAGE]

Liz drove slowly. Every muscle in her body was telling her to lift her

foot and stop the Jeep, but Hellboy sat next to her, tensed and primed

for action. And ahead of them, scorching the sky and turning dusk to

day, the Fire Dogs frolicked just over the hill.

The Jeep crawled easily up the sand dune, carrying them relentlessly

toward the blazing monsters, and Liz wondered whether this would be the

last red sunset she ever saw. She had faced death so often before that

it had begun to excite some part of her, but this was different: death

by fire. Much as she often thought it was all she deserved, it was the

last thing in the world she wanted.

They crested the slope, the Jeep leveled out, and Hellboy grunted. Liz

could not even do that. She had never seen anything like it.

Before them lay a wide, shallow dip in the land, perhaps a mile across,

and it was alight. The Fire Dogs rolled from one side to the other,

colliding, rebounding, leaping into the air, burrowing into the fluid

ground, scorching it black and spitting showers of molten sand behind

them. Sparks floated in the air like flaming dust, and true flames spun

higher, a hundred mini-tornadoes of fire that flickered and flitted out

as they rose into the evening sky. There were fifteen separate Fire

Dogs, maybe twenty, each of them easily as big as the Jeep.

The Jeep's windscreen cracked from the sudden blast of heat, its metal

chassis creaked, and Liz felt the film on her eyes drying, skin

stretching, hair sizzling. Inside her chest was a ball of fire that

could never match what she saw here.

"Hellboy ..."

"They're playing," he said. And he was right. The Dogs were running at

each other, spitting fire, snapping with insubstantial jaws and

clasping on, rolling through the melted sand and separating again,

running in circles around the perimeter of the basin, and above the

roaring sounds of conflagration came something more astonishing ... the

barking of hounds.

"Turn the Jeep around," Hellboy said.

"We'll never outrun them."

"I don't think we have any choice. Our hand has been forced. Look."

Hellboy pointed with one stone finger, and Liz saw the awful truth.

Several of the Fire Dogs had come to a stop, and blazing eyes stared

their way. The barking died down, leaving only the crackle of flames.

Liz felt those eyes boring into her, and she wondered whether they saw

what she was.

Her fingers were hot on the wheel, and not only from the heat of the

Dogs. Her throat was parched, from the inside as well as without.

"Hellboy," she rasped, "something's — "

"Go!" he shouted.

The first Fire Dog had started crawling up the slope toward them, long

fiery legs hauling it up, rump raised, the classic stalking pose.

"Liz, go!"

She rammed the Jeep into reverse and floored the gas. The vehicle

bucked and groaned, and then rocketed backwards down the slope, wheels

following the glass road by some miracle. Liz turned in her seat and

swung her arm across Hellboy's shoulders.

"Don't tell me how close they are," she said, but she could already

feel the glow of heat on her neck.

Keep down, she thought, down, keep down, not now, not yet! Her fingers

cooled and saliva moistened her mouth, and in one movement she left the

glass road. The Jeep's rear wheels hit sand, momentum spun them around,

and Liz changed gear, flooring the gas again and heading off down the

bottom part of the slope.

"Nice move," Hellboy said.

She glanced in the rear-view mirror, and the ridge above and behind

them exploded. "I'm sure it impressed them."

"How far to the ruin?" he asked.

"A good forty miles."

"Hmm." Hellboy had turned in his seat, and fire reflected in his eyes.

"Floor it!"

Liz took the Jeep out across the desert.

[IMAGE]

Either they were well matched for speed, or the Fire Dogs were toying

with them. I thought only cats did that, Liz thought, but she shook her

head. No point losing it now.

The Jeep bounced along the glass road, but Liz drove hard. If they had

punctures, broke their suspension, or cracked an axle, the Dogs would

have them. But if she let up the Dogs would definitely catch them, and

she had no intention of making it easy.

Behind them, the whole desert was aflame. The Fire Dogs had spread out,

running side by side and scorching separate routes into the sand. Liz's

snazzy driving had given her and Hellboy a head start, and the Dogs

were maybe half a mile behind them, matching their speed and direction

perfectly. They had come ten miles already — maybe thirty left to go —

and Liz was thinking about what would happen when they reached the

ruin.

"Do you think the Jeep will take it?" he asked.

Liz shrugged. "I can't let up. And I can't go any faster." They hit a

ridge in the road and bounced from side to side, tires throwing them

back and forth for a few seconds before they leveled out again. "I

could always lose some ballast." She glanced across at Hellboy and

smiled.

"I've been meaning to go on a diet."

The road began to curve ahead of them, and they faced a quick decision.

"Stay to the road," Hellboy said.

"You sure?"

"The sand will slow us down too much. And they're so close that they

won't cut across the curve. They're right on our tail — they go where

we go."

Liz looked in the mirror and saw that he was right. The night brought

no darkness to the desert tonight; the Fire Dogs had made it their own.

They barked and roared, as if passing amusing comments along the line,

and then fell silent again.

"Gas is low," Liz murmured.

"Don't tell me that."

"Okay, forget it."

[IMAGE]

Thirty miles. Ten to go, maybe less. Liz's muscles were aching from the

constant pounding, her arms stiff and burning, her ankle asleep from

where it pushed the gas pedal to the floor. Something had started

rattling beneath the Jeep, an insistent banging as metal struck metal.

The temperature gauge was heading above the safe limit, and the gas

warning light had come on three miles earlier. They should reach the

ruin — should — but driving like this she was burning gas fast. She

could not slow down. If anything, the Fire Dogs were gaining on them.

She could feel the heat of their pursuit, and her own heat rose in her,

and she knew that Hellboy was aware of that.

"Can you make it?" he asked.

"I'll have to," she said, afraid that her teeth were on fire.

"Come on, Liz. Fight it. Maybe it'll be useful in a few minutes, but

not right now!"

Not right now, he had said, and Liz repeated this to herself, telling

it to her own inner demon again and again, not right now.

[IMAGE]

The ruin came into view, lit by the Jeep's headlights and the flames of

the things pursuing them. The engine stuttered to a halt, dry at last.

And Liz felt herself about to explode.

"H.B., I'm going," she said, slipping sideways in her seat and leaning

on the door latch. The roar of the Fire Dogs filled her ears and fire

blossomed around her, her own flames or those of the Dogs she did not

know, and as she tumbled from the Jeep she felt a cold hand curl around

her leg.

Fire came down upon them, filling her vision, the vehicle exploding

somewhere behind and above her, and Hellboy's voice was raised above

the cacophony, shouting out in a language she had never heard. Even

though she did not know the words, she knew the rage with which they

were spoken.

Taking them home, she thought, that's how he'll do it. He's taking them

home.

Something smashed against her ear, and she realized it was a bark, so

loud that it had felt like a fist. Hellboy's hand had gone from her leg

now — she was alone — and from the fires surrounding her a Fire Dog

emerged. Its eyes were white pits in the wall of flames, its claws

sizzling, skin crawling with Hellish designs. It barked again, and she

barked back, sending a gush of fire at its face. It shook its muzzle

and stepped away, confused, and Liz was sure she heard an uncertain

whine from its white-hot throat.

It disappeared back into the flames, as if something had grabbed it by

the tail and hauled it away from her. She was about to bark again —

that had felt good, that had felt right — when she felt herself being

pushed down into the sand. It closed around her, hot, biting into her

skin, and she went deeper and deeper.

Hold your breath, something whispered, and though Liz felt the guilt of

awful memories coming out to haunt her beyond the flames, she did not

want to die. She took a gulp, closed her eyes, and obeyed those final

words.

[IMAGE]

Hellboy brought her up. He smashed the hardened sand around her,

tugging it away from her gashed and scraped flesh, lifting her high

with his cold stone hand and carrying her into the desert. It was dawn.

To the east, natural light kissed the horizon. To the west, the

beginnings of a colossal sand storm danced in the sky.

"Are they gone?" she asked.

He nodded. "Gone home."

"How?"

"I told them."

"And they listened?"

Hellboy shrugged, nodded. "They took a little persuading, I guess. They

were bad dogs."

"So, did you have any pets in Hell?"

He was quiet for a long time, tending her wounds, using the remnants of

the medical box salvaged from the Jeep. She was cut and scraped from

when he had forced her underground and from the dogs' attack. She

drifted in and out of consciousness, but all the while she marveled at

Hellboy's gentle touch. He rested her limbs on his massive stone-like

hand and used his other to apply salve, bandages, gauze.

When she decided he had ignored or forgotten her question he looked up

at the sun, closed his eyes, and said, "I can't remember."