Unnatural Selection Read online

  "If only they knew," Richard muttered.

  "Even if they did, they'd never believe. That's their problem. They pay no homage to their Memory." Gal was haunted by Memory, that place, that emptiness where so much existed that should not. Every time he went there, he wished he were the weaker one, the translator his brother had become. He wished he did not have the strength it took to dip into the Memory, because he hated that place and what it represented, and as each year passed, his rage at the ignorance that had created it grew.

  "Let's go," Richard said. "No one here. Maybe they're out to lunch?"

  The men darted across the floor of the hangar and hid amid the separated and labeled wreckage of the airliner. They could still smell the fire that had consumed the fuselage, and though much of it had been reconstructed on a framework of steel supports, the floor was still strewn with unidentified parts. Like body parts, Richard thought. Bits they can see, many more pieces they cant identify. The plane came apart like the bodies inside, and people only have themselves to blame. If they d opened their minds — if they'd given the little spirits credit for their talents — the gremlins would have never turned on humanity.

  "Over here," Gal said. Richard followed him to the tangled mess of one of the massive engines. It had been gutted by an explosion, and its mechanical guts hung out as if seeking escape. Gal traced his finger across the blackened surface of the metal, sniffed the soot, shook his head, and moved on. "Closer," he said. "Getting closer." He repeated the process here and there, and Richard joined in, touching and sniffing, looking for that trace of something that was not mechanical or electrical, something that had once had life and thought and emotion.

  They found it on the outside of a smashed door.

  The door was so twisted by fire that it had not yet been reaffixed to the body of the plane. Molded around its exposed handle, cauterized hard by the conflagration, was a layer of greenish material. Neither brother even had to touch it to know what it was. Flesh, the fat of a spirit, the trace of a gremlin.

  "There it is," Richard said, and, as ever, he was filled with wonder at what they had found. Every search started with belief and little more. And every search ended with discovery. They were doing something right, and not for the first time he wondered who, or what, might be steering them.

  "You take it, I'll send it," Gal said.

  Richard used a penknife to take a slice of the material. When he cut it, it bled.

  Gal sketched a sigil in the soot on the hangar floor. He knelt, closed his eyes, started to mutter the invocation that would open the Memory to him, and he dropped the gremlin flesh onto the sigil. The world around him receded to little more than an echo. The sigil grew warm, as if flaring with the flame of the crash once again, and the gremlin flesh sizzled and popped as it faded out of this world and into another. It passed into Memory and, as always, Gal had an instant to watch it go. He felt the depth of that place and the emptiness, the loss and the rage, and he fell back crying into the arms of his brother.

  "There," Richard said, rocking his brother back and forth. He never got used to the tears. "Come on ... you're back."

  Someone ran toward them across the hangar, shouting words the brothers could not understand, and Richard smiled at the irony. If he answered the query, his response would also be beyond understanding.

  What are you doing here? the guard was probably saying.

  Saving the world, Richard would say.

  Saving the world.

  * * *

  Tsilivi, Zakynthos, Greece — 1997

  LIZ SHERMAN WAS HOT. Her friends at the BPRD sometimes joked that she should be used to the heat — sometimes, when they thought that such joking would not hurt her too much — and she would smile and shrug and say that being used to it didn't mean she had to like it.

  She never thought they were very funny.

  No, Liz liked it cool, misty, raining. She liked it grim. She preferred it when the weather didn't seem to be doing its utmost to remind her of who she was. Her dreams did enough of that.

  Here on Zakynthos, the sun was burning the ground dry. Heat sucked moisture from the plants. What greenery there was looked pale and wan, covered in dust, and forests of dead olive trees cut funereal swaths across the rocky hillsides. Some of them seemed to be blackened, as if the tips of their branches had caught fire. Liz blinked, shook her head, and still did not believe.

  "Dimitris, are you seriously trying to tell me that a phoenix came down from the hills and ate those cattle?"

  "Yes, Miss Sherman."

  "Call me Liz." She stamped her cigarette out in the dust and leaned back against the police car. Its metal was hot to the touch. And dusty. "So did you see it yourself?"

  "No, Miss Sherman."

  "No," Liz said, shaking her head. "Well ... " She didn't know what else to say. She had seen a lot during her time at the BPRD — and she'd been through too much herself to let doubt cloud her mind. But something just didn't feel right about this, and she could not quite put her finger on what that was. She wished that Hellboy were here with her, because he had a knack for cracking mysteries like this. He'd add two and two and come up with an impossible five ... and then, likely as not, he'd take that five and kick the crap out of it until it reverted back to four. A basic approach, but one that invariably worked. Liz was thinking too much, too deeply, and she closed her eyes and tried to coax herself into viewing things under a simpler light.

  She opened her eyes again, and Dimitris was offering her another cigarette. She smiled, let him light it for her, breathed deep. Christ knows what brand he was smoking, but she welcomed the sting of the rough smoke on her throat.

  They were parked on a roadside overlooking the holiday resort of Tsilivi. To their right the sea was an inviting blue, and directly below them the long narrow beach was spotted with tourists, pale Europeans who had just arrived and the brown or red shapes of those who had been here for a week or more. The holiday makers spilled off the beach and into the sea, and Liz could hear the constant buzz of motorboats and Jet Skis bouncing from wave to wave. They drew white lines in the sea behind them, like aircraft trails in a deep blue sky.

  To the left lay Zakynthos. Tsilivi itself was a long, relatively narrow band of restaurants, hotels, bars, and holiday homes twisting and turning away from the sea, mostly following the road but spreading out here and there where builders had moved outward into the countryside. Away from there, the glaring white of other buildings dotted the landscape. Hotels that lay away from the main drag often had two or three pools and plenty of land, and farther up the hillside toward where Liz now stood were occasional farms and more salubrious holiday homes.

  Here and there the hillsides had been smudged, as though they were mistakes on a charcoal artist's masterpiece.

  Liz looked out to sea and back again, and, yes, there was a definite pattern to the marks across the landscape. They were narrow at the top and wider farther down, as if fire had tumbled from the hilltops, spreading as it went.

  "Anything could have caused those fires," she said, nodding toward a darkened stain on a neighboring hillside.

  "No, Miss Sherman. Only the phoenix."

  "You know that a phoenix is a mythical creature, Dimitris?" Dimitris smiled and raised his eyebrows, as if used to being patronized. "Oh shit, Dimitris, I'm sorry," Liz said. "I didn't mean anything by that, it sounded awful."

  "I've heard worse, Miss Sherman. Yes, I know its mythical, and yes, I know that mythical creatures don't exist. But the coelacanth was once considered mythical, and the mountain gorilla, and ... well, I know who you work for and who else works for them. The big red one. My father worked with him a long time ago, back in America in seventy-eight. Something to do with pods, I believe."

  "I haven't known him that long, but I do know how he'd react to being called a myth. And call me Liz." She took another drag on the cigarette and looked at Tsilivi through the smoke. If what Dimitris said was anything to go by, this was a view that a lot of people
could be seeing in the very near future.

  The phoenix had first appeared several days before. It had swooped down from the hills, slaughtered some cattle, and then flown away. Many people had seen it happen. A day later another visit, and this time the great birds rage-filled attack had left several goats dead and, Dimitris had said with a note of regret, completely inedible. The following days saw two attacks each, and though no one had yet been hurt, Dimitris was worried that the bird would clap its wings and incinerate a busload of tourists. Bad for business, he had said when he first met Liz at the Tsilivi police station, and even then she had detected a note of defense in his voice. Here was a man used to being condescended to, and he had developed a built-in defense of dry sarcasm.

  "So why hasn't anyone been up into the hills to look for it?"

  Dimitris averted his eyes, shuffled his feet. A cloud of dust rose and settled on his trousers. They seemed used to it. "Afraid," he said. "There are a couple of small cafés up there, and a farm, and we can't get in touch with anyone who lives there."

  "Isn't that a good reason to go up there yourself?"

  The policeman kept his eyes averted, and Liz stamped out her cigarette. Sweat dribbled down her sides, trickled into her eyes, and she cursed the heat once again.

  "He's a god of fire," Dimitris said. "He's a relative of the sun, and something has enraged him, something has driven him mad. He can clap his wings and raise fire! Those people up there are dead. Cinders. Ashes. I have a wife and child; I have no wish to mix my own ashes with theirs."

  "Don't hit me with that ancient god bullshit!" Liz said.

  Dimitris turned away, shaking his head. "You don't understand," he said.

  Now who's being condescending? Liz thought, hackles rising. Her skin burned, and not just with the sun. She was getting angry. Yeah, god of fire, she thought. Wait until he gets a load of me.

  "Dimitris, I'm sorry, but you're right, I don't understand. What I do know is, I've been called for by your superiors to help out here. I need you to take me up the mountain so that I can see for myself."

  "My wife? My child?"

  "I promise you that today will not see them without a father."

  "How can you promise that?" Dimitris took out another cigarette and popped it into the corner of his mouth.

  Liz shrugged. What the hell. She reached out, summoned a flame from her fingertip, and lit his cigarette for him.

  * * *

  "Aren't you a little too old to believe in monsters?" Liz asked.

  They were following the road around the slope of the mountain, throwing up a cloud of dust behind them. That, Liz noted grimly, seemed to be a theme of this place: dust. Grit, too, grinding between her teeth. And muck; dust damped by her sweat turned into a grimy layer that ran in rivulets beneath her clothing. Dammit, why couldn't she have been sent to Iceland to deal with a snow demon?

  "I'm old enough to be able to believe again," Dimitris said. He glanced sideways, Liz frowned, and he smiled at her. She liked that. He had a nice smile, and it made her feel good. "What I mean is, I'm old enough to be able to accept that things aren't all that they seem, and that there are mysteries in the world. I'm still talking to you after you conjured fire. Proof enough? I have accepted you and what you can do. I'm old enough to accept that. Once mysteries are revealed, they're no longer mysteries. A monster is only a monster when it can't be categorized or photographed."

  "You think science can explain everything?" she said.

  Dimitris shrugged, sending the car clunking over the gravel beside the road. "I'm sure it can say why you make fire. Somethings only supernatural if it isn't explained. Ghosts, for instance. If they really exist, then they aren't supernatural, because nature allows them to exist. See?"

  "I see exactly what you re saying," Liz said. She plucked a cigarette from his shirt pocket and lit it with her finger. "But even in the short time I've been around, I've seen things that nature does not allow. And they still exist. And nature abhors that."

  Dimitris stared wide-eyed at her cigarette. Accept it he might, but he was still amazed. And probably scared. Liz nudged his arm and pointed ahead, and the policeman turned just in time to save them from a long, long drop.

  "Eyes front," she said.

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean I don't want to end up as fish bait when you drive us off this mountain."

  "No, Miss Sherman, what do you mean when you say — "

  "Call me Liz." She rested her arm through the open window and looked up the gently sloping mountain. She'd been rude, cutting off the conversation like that. Especially as she liked Dimitris. His naïveté was appealing, and there was a certain innocence about him that actually made her jealous. Liz had been innocent once, but it had come to an abrupt end back in '73 when she burned her family to death. Ever since then, she had craved a return of innocence, but she knew that finding it again was about as likely as becoming a virgin.

  She glanced at Dimitris, but he was staring ahead with grim determination. Maybe she'd already ruined this potential friendship even before it had begun. The British had a saying for it: she'd pissed on her chips.

  The policeman drove them higher. Dust swirled through the car, the road became rougher, and he started to mutter under his breath. Liz thought he was praying, and she wished that she could, too.

  "I told you so," Dimitris said a few minutes later. He stopped the car, and Liz nodded a silent admission that, yes, he had told her.

  The building had been white once, but fire had scorched it black. Tiles had shattered from the heat, and charred roof timbers sat exposed to the sun. They were still smoking gently, as though fire were hiding in their depths just waiting for the right moment to erupt again. Masonry had cracked, one wall had tumbled to the ground, and a blackened mass lay twenty feet from the ruined building, buzzed by flies. It had no discernible human features, but Liz knew a burned corpse when she saw one.

  "You need to leave me here and go back down the mountain," she said very slowly.

  "Not now that I've come so far," Dimitris said.

  "Dimitris, you really need to go. A phoenix is no dragon; there's no reason for it to be doing this. Fire accompanies its death and rebirth."

  "You believe me? Well, then, I can't just leave — "

  "Dimitris!" Liz looked at him and saw that perhaps he did care. "Please ... I've handled worse than this. Go back down, and when I come down later, how about I buy you a drink?" She gave him her best smile, the one that made her eyes look as though they were aflame.

  "Miss Sherman, if you're sure ... ?"

  "I'm fireproof. Usually."

  Dimitris uttered a short bark of a laugh, reached out to touch her hand, and then the phoenix landed on the car and started to prove Liz right.

  Now she was hot.

  The roar of the fire was tremendous. It had come after a loud clap above them, the sound of the phoenix striking its wings together. Liz wished she had taken more time on the journey over to read up on phoenix mythology, but the drinks trolley had been stocking a good single malt, and whiskey took away her memories.

  Shit!

  Fire bathed the vehicle like a flaming waterfall, melting the tires, igniting rubber seals, warping and cracking metal, shattering glass, and the sounds were worse than the heat, rocking the car from side to side as every air pocket exploded and the metal shell split in two. They were surrounded by the flames. The stench of burning was awful, a nightmare, her nightmare, and Liz opened her mouth to scream against the memories being dredged up. But there was no air in the car, and her scream remained unborn.

  Something grasped at her arm, and she saw the skin on Dimitris' hand bubble and blister as he squeezed.

  Liz kicked open her door and rolled out into the flames.

  The fire stopped. It died out as quickly as it had come, leaving only the ruined car in its wake. Metal pinged and cracked as it continued to expand and rupture. Tires were black puddles in the dust. Glass ran. And at last, Liz found t
he air to scream.

  The phoenix sitting on the car roof looked down at her almost casually. It had curled its claws through the metal, and now it shifted its footing so that it could turn to face her head-on. It was beautiful. Coppery plumage, merging to a gorgeous deep plum color on its wing tips. Huge wings, narrow and graceful, and a long curved beak that looked as finely crafted as a musical instrument. She caught its eye, and it tilted its head to one side, as if waiting for her to speak.

  Liz stood, brushing her hands subconsciously over her smoldering clothes. The bird watched, tilted its head some more, and then it bowed three times. Damn, I wish I'd read more! she thought again, but regrets could do her no favors. She bowed three times in return, never taking her eyes from the phoenix.

  The giant bird opened its wings and stood upright on the car, calling into the blazing sky and shaking its head. Liz cringed down, expecting it to throw its wings together again. They only conjure fire to destroy themselves. At least, that was what she seemed to remember. And it was this fact that had been bugging her all day. If this really was the phoenix of myth and legend, how come it was conjuring fire at will?

  What had pissed it off?

  "We need to talk," she said. The bird looked down at her again and opened and closed its beak. Then it screeched, the sound so loud and forced that its body shook with the effort, claws squealing against metal where they had pierced the car's roof.

  Liz looked down quickly, pleased to see that Dimitris was moving. He didn't look too good ... but at least he was not dead. Yet.

  And then she had an idea. She'd always hated the saying 'Fight fire with fire', but if this thing was screeching like this to show off — as a display of power — then she, too, could play that game. So long as it didn't get the wrong idea and turn this into a mating ritual.

  "Here!" she said. "Fiery ass!" She closed her eyes, picturing Dimitris' skin melting as he had squeezed her arm, and when she looked again, her hand was clothed in flame.