CHAPTER THIRTEEN

—

“Flee, now, as quickly as you can!” the head of Lady Catherine Lambert cried. “Beware the jackal, and flee. Beware the jackal, and escape Mar-Ti-Ku!”

Hellboy almost told her the advice was a little late in coming, but he figured Lady Catherine had her own problems.

“What jackal?” he asked. “And what about Hazred? I thought he was the bad guy here. But he’s gone.”

“Hazred has gone to raise the army. He will return, a sacrifice will be made, and Mar-Ti-Ku will invade our . . . your plane of existence. Your only hope is to flee before Hazred can use you! Beware the jackal!”

The head was screaming, its ravaged face streaming blood and still managing to look terrified.

“What jackal?” Hellboy asked again, frustrated. “What army?”

“The lost army!” Lady Catherine shrieked, her voice rising until Hellboy wanted to cover his ears, but he couldn’t do that without bringing the screaming head closer to him.

Then she was gone again, the head lifeless. Still, the mouth was stretched in a rictus of terror. In that moment, Hellboy realized that he hated oracles. They always gave just enough information to create fear and paranoia, but not enough to do anything constructive. With a sigh, he dumped her head back into the bag.

The sandstorm raged across the desert, its winds more powerful than any natural storm the Sahara had ever seen. In truth, the last time such a storm had carved itself across the face of Egypt had been two thousand years earlier.

Now the dunes themselves were being reshaped. All traces of the camps set up by Anastasia Bransfield, Captain Creaghan, or Colonel Shapiro were erased from the world, buried or sucked away forever into the maelstrom above.

Beneath the sand, for miles around the oasis of Ammon, something stirred. Under the very spot where Hellboy had first landed, under the camp from which Lady Catherine and her co-workers had been abducted, the lifeless forms of men who had died millennia past now drove their preserved limbs, pistoning themselves, clawing, crawling, scrabbling to the surface.

From the shroud of mystery and mythology which had buried them so long ago, fifty thousand men returned to a terrible un-life. They dragged themselves from the sand, the lost army of Cambyses.

And now they followed a new commander.

As Hellboy began to tie the bag containing Lady Catherine’s head to his belt, two guards moved in and reached for it.

“You want this?” he snapped, and held out the bag to them. “You can have it! But be careful she doesn’t rip your throat out when she gets angry!”

He was pretty sure the cavern people didn’t speak English, but they got at least the gist of what he said. Or maybe they were merely frightened of him. For when he went to tie the sack to his belt again, nobody tried to stop him.

“Well, that sounded bloody dismal,” Anastasia said grimly. “What do you suppose it was all about?”

“I don’t have any better idea than you do,” he answered. “Jackals and armies and I’m the key to Mar-Ti-Ku’s invasion plans. I just don’t know.”

They were being led past the lake now, and suddenly the procession stopped. They stood in front of a stone platform that appeared to be a stage of some kind, with a huge block of granite at the center. An altar, was Hellboy’s first guess. Had to be.

No one spoke. No one approached them. In fact, the cavern people acted as if they weren’t even there.

“I guess we’re waiting for Hazred to come back,” he said idly.

“I wish we hadn’t had to leave those poor men back in the tunnels,” Anastasia commented. “With the spiders and all.”

“Yeah, but at least they’re better off than Meaney,” Hellboy noted, and saw Anastasia shiver. Throughout the exchange, Arun said nothing. He only stared at the glowing green surface of the lake with a slowly spreading grin.

“So any idea on this jackal stuff, or the army?” Hellboy asked, wondering whether he should attempt to break them all out of there before Hazred came back. Wondering if they’d have a chance of surviving.

“Well, she said the ‘lost army,’” Anastasia answered, as if that explained it all. And, after a moment, Hellboy realized it did.

“Oh, jeez,” he whispered. “Hey, Arun, how many soldiers did Cambyses lose in the . . .”

But Arun wasn’t listening. Just as Hellboy turned to ask his question, the historian lunged past him, clawing at Anastasia’s face and breasts. He knocked off her baseball cap during his attack. Saliva poured from his mouth as if he were rabid.

“What the . . . ,” Hellboy began, reaching to pull him off ’Stasia. He grabbed Arun’s shoulder and spun him around. Arun growled, teeth bared like an animal and swiped at Hellboy with his fingers as if he had claws with which to tear flesh. His hand scraped harmlessly across Hellboy’s chest. For a moment, Hellboy just stared at him in bewilderment.

“You’ve got some serious problems, Professor,” he said finally.

Arun lunged for his throat, and Hellboy grabbed both his arms and held him in the air. Arun’s feet dangled a foot from the ground and the professor gnashed his teeth, foam sliding down his chin. Around them, the guards retreated to a respectful distance, like children in a schoolyard making room for a fight and all jockeying for a decent view.

With Arun thrashing in his grasp, Hellboy looked up at Anastasia and frowned.

“What the hell do I do with him now?” he asked.

“Don’t look at me, love,” she said, straightening her clothes and then fitting her baseball cap tightly on her head. “The man needs treatment, but first we’ve got to get out of here.”

Hellboy got his face up close to Arun’s and stared at the man’s red, lunatic eyes.

“Arun!” he shouted. “Arun! Listen to me! If you want to live, you’ve got to calm down! We can’t watch out for you and figure out . . .”

Professor Lahiri lunged forward and bit Hellboy hard on the nose.

“Damn!” Hellboy yelled, and let the man go.

Arun dropped to the ground and immediately set upon Anastasia again. This time, she was ready for him. As Hellboy watched, Arun reached for her and Anastasia grabbed her friend’s arm and used his own momentum to carry him over. She flipped him onto his back on the stone cavern floor, where he landed with an audible crack.

The madman groaned, but while in the past, such a blow might have snapped him back to normal, this time it only served to drive him further over the edge.

“Filthy slut!” Arun screamed as he crawled painfully to his knees. “Filthy slut, you’ll die for that! I’ll have you before or after, it makes no difference to me! But you’ve got to die after you’ve been defiled by that . . . that hell spawn!”

“Listen, you fruit loop,” Hellboy shouted. “If your brain hadn’t gone to the Bahamas, I’d pop your head off like you were a Pez dispenser. Now you’d best back off right now, before I start to get really aggravated.”

Arun, of course, didn’t listen. Not that Hellboy had expected him to. The once-mild professor roared like a savage animal and launched himself at Hellboy again. Hellboy cocked back his right arm and slapped Arun hard across the face with his stone hand, as if the man were merely hysterical rather than deranged. Well, Hellboy thought, maybe it was a little harder than that. Arun stretched back and up, as if he were standing on tiptoe, or perhaps an inch or so above the ground, then fell on his back on the cavern floor.

“Don’t get up,” Hellboy growled.

Arun sat up, obviously disoriented, and shook his head. Hellboy braced himself for another attack. He worried that he might have to do the man serious harm to get him to stop attacking. But if Arun came at him again, the man was going to end up unconscious. Injury be damned.

Foam bubbled from Arun’s mouth, and a trickle of blood flowed through it, striping his chin. He scrambled to his feet. Hellboy prepared to knock him out.

Someone shouted in that guttural language of the cavern people, and Hellboy understood the words, “Restrain him.” The village swordsmen grabbed at Arun’s arms, and he tossed two of them away before four or five got a good hold of him and wrestled him to the ground where he struggled, drooling and babbling like a maniac.

“Your fault!” he sneered at Anastasia. “Your fault, you slut!”

Hellboy looked at her, to see if her eyes still reflected the hurt he’d seen in them when Arun had spoken that way earlier. They did not. Anastasia was a woman of power and confidence. Once she was over the shock of his initial attack, he knew, her anger and outrage would have turned to concern.

Well, maybe the anger was still there. She did look a little pissed. He recognized the way her nostrils flared when she was angry. Even if she’d painted a smile on her face, he always knew when she was angry.

“’Stasia,” he began. “Are you all right? We’ve got to find a way . . .”

She narrowed her eyes and shook her head. It took him a moment to realize why she was shushing him. The guards had been commanded by a voice he had heard before. Even as he turned, he knew that the sorceror Hazred had reappeared.

Hellboy stood a few feet from the gently rippling surface of the green-glowing pool. Slowly, he turned to face the sorceror. Anastasia stepped to his side, and Hellboy was surprised that the guards did not move to stop her. In truth, he’d been expecting harsher treatment in general from the guards. Not that he minded, of course. But they seemed reluctant to bully their prisoners or to crowd them, other than to hold them prisoner.

Standing there, amidst homes of stone and iron, Hellboy felt even more strongly that the pool was the center of the village, rather than the cathedral, or whatever it was, that loomed just ahead of them. But the cathedral was a sight, no question about that. Its brass surface extended to the smallest detail, from window panes to the long flight of stairs that led from the altar in front of the shimmering pool up to the enormous double front doors of the building.

Hazred stood there, on a landing halfway up those bronze stairs. He wore fresh robes, and even these seemed woven from gold or perhaps bronze, themselves. It took Hellboy a moment to realize that bronze and iron might be the only metals the strange underground tribes knew how to make. Particularly if they had lived and bred — crossbred really — down there for as long as he believed.

Blue veins pulsing in the sickly green-white flesh of his forehead and cheeks, Hazred stared at his prisoners for a moment. Hellboy scowled. The man disgusted him. Then Hazred began to smile, the expression beginning at his wide, wild eyes and spreading slowly across his face.

Ah, my guests, his false-friendly, slitheringly sinister voice whispered in Hellboy’s mind. From the way they looked up, he supposed Hazred was speaking to Anastasia and Arun as well.

“Guests?” Anastasia said in astonishment. “That’s funny as a bloody heart attack, that is. Is this how you treat all your guests, mister wizard? ’Cause if so, I’ll bet you don’t get too many people visiting a second time.”

Hazred’s smile only grew broader.

We have never had “guests” before, so the question would appear to be moot, Hazred whispered in their heads, as he began to descend from his citadel down the forty or so steps to the cavern floor. We’ve only ever had prisoners before, and no, none of them has ever returned. Primarily because none of them ever left alive.

“So why are we your first guests?” Hellboy asked, doubtful. “I noticed your guards weren’t all that pushy, so what’s to stop us from just leaving?”

Hazred raised his right hand, only slightly, and the guards tightened their circle.

Perhaps guests was the wrong word, then, the sorceror sent telepathically, and his smile grew impossibly wide. Then the smile disappeared. I hope you’ll forgive my brief absence. The preparations for Mar-Ti-Ku’s return are proceeding apace, and your soldier friends have begun to take refuge from the sandstorm. In defense of our little village, I have called up our own army to combat them, Hazred thought, still not speaking aloud, assuming neither Hellboy nor Anastasia could understand his spoken word. But Hellboy could. He hoped that was his ace in the hole.

“But it isn’t really your army at all, is it, you ugly, albino son of a bitch?” Anastasia said angrily, arms crossed in defiance as Hazred continued to descend.

The sorceror didn’t pause. He merely smiled, wider than before, so that his face became a horrible rictus, almost a death grin. There was something dark in his mouth, and Hellboy didn’t want to think about what it might be. But there was also something bright that reflected the green light from the pool.

Ah, so you know of Cambyses’ folly. Excellent, the sorceror commended them. Let me tell you the story then. Our story. The tale of the people of Mar-Ti-Ku.

We lived around the oasis, above ground, for centuries. A happy people, growing fruit and breeding fish, scavenging the desert. But I was not satisfied. I left Ammon to travel the Earth, to discover all that I had never known. Yet I found that was not enough.

I wanted to know those dark and horrible things that humanity refused to see or believe. I sought all manner of arcane knowledge. Thus I learned of the ancient Sumerian magician, Mar-Ti-Ku, one of the most powerful men who ever breathed the air of Gaea. It is said that Mar-Ti-Ku, in a jealous rage over an unrequited love, sank Atlantis to the bottom of the sea. Whether that sea was in our dimension or another is a subject of much debate amongst my people.

Mar-Ti-Ku himself will not discuss it.

A great council of magicians banded together out of envy and banished Mar-Ti-Ku from our plane. But he still exists, on the other side of the veil, the oh-so-thin veil. I summoned his voice to speak with me; his eyes burned into mine from the wind itself, and from that moment forth, I was his servant, dedicated to returning him to this plane, where he will rule unto eternity.

Mar-Ti-Ku granted me immortality. For during his time in exile, he has become like unto the Elder Ones themselves.

When I returned to the oasis, my people welcomed me warmly. Time had not been kind to them. There was a blight on their gardens, a sickness among them. I promised them blessing upon blessing if they would swear allegiance to Mar-Ti-Ku. This they did.

That was five hundred, sixty-seven years before the birth of the prophet you call Christ. Forty-two years later we received a visitor, a representative of the Persian general Cambyses, the self-styled conqueror of Egypt.

Heh. As if any one man could rule Egypt, when Mar-Ti-Ku will rule the world.

We spurned this visitor. I tore his tongue from his mouth with iron tongs and sent him back to his master. Not long after, Cambyses sent his army across the desert to punish us, to destroy all those communities which remained in opposition to him. Fifty thousand men marched toward our little oasis village. There might have been five hundred of us, all told.

But Mar-Ti-Ku knew of their coming. Among them, he suspected, there might be one who would serve as a suitable vessel for him, a body he could inhabit upon crossing between the planes. For his own physical form had been destroyed millenia earlier. “Of fifty thousand,” he said to me, “surely one of them must be powerful enough to contain my essence.”

When the army was but miles from the oasis, I followed Mar-Ti-Ku’s instructions, and called the storm. A sandstorm as had never been seen before, nor since. Until today, of course. The day when Mar-Ti-Ku will finally return.

The army of Cambyses was utterly destroyed, save for seventeen men, who made it to the oasis and survived. These hearty souls became a part of our tribe, and their descendants are still with us today. All but the strongest among them, who was my master’s intended host.

Unfortunately, when it came time for Mar-Ti-Ku to enter the host, the man did not survive the ritual. Thus, Mar-Ti-Ku has waited. We, his acolytes, have waited. Our half-brothers of the shadows wait in the tunnels, and we become less human with every century that passes. But Mar-Ti-Ku shall heal us all and lead us to grace and glory, to master the world.

Now the storm has returned. The army rises at my command. Just as their bones have been in the unyielding clutch of the desert sands for all these two and one-half thousand years, so have I held their souls in my own fierce grasp. They are enslaved, a powerful weapon, yet forever they suffer the punishment for Cambyses’ audacity.

Weeks ago, when the first humans discovered the entrance to our underground village, where we fled at Mar-Ti-Ku’s instruction after Cambyses’ failed attack, we captured them, hoping one of them might be powerful enough to contain my master’s essence. They were not. Thus, they were slaughtered as a warning, or a lure. We assumed only the truly powerful and courageous would ignore the warning. We were correct.

The sorceror finally reached the bottom of the stone stairs. He paused a moment in his tale, and smiled once more, amiably, at Hellboy and Anastasia. He did not even look at Arun.

Hellboy stared at Hazred’s mouth. Could not look away. Though the man’s robes were majestic, his beard pointed to perfection, his flesh like the finest marble and his eyes clear and cold, his mouth . . . Hellboy turned away. Hazred was regal, magnificently evil, commanding in every way. Almost beautiful. But his mouth reflected his true nature. When he smiled, he instilled only pure revulsion. Most of his teeth were green and crumbling with rot, save for six or seven which had been replaced with sharply pointed bronze fangs, embedded in his gums.

When Hazred approached, the guards parting before him as if polarized, Hellboy could not suppress a shiver. He was not afraid of Hazred, unless it was for Anastasia’s safety. Rather, he was profoundly disturbed that such a man could live for so long and be so unrepentantly evil.

Mar-Ti-Ku will rejoice, Hellboy, Hazred said, and stopped before him. The man was taller even than he had first appeared, as tall as Hellboy almost. He reached out a hand and lightly stroked Hellboy’s cheek with his fingers. Hellboy slapped the hand away and offered a silent snarl in return.

Hazred stopped smiling, his expression murderous. He glanced down and his eyes widened slightly. He had noticed Hellboy’s stone hand, of course, perhaps for the first time.

“Can it be?” Hazred said, in that guttural tongue he could not have known that Hellboy understood. “The master will be more powerful even than he dreamed. He will unmake the world with the clenching of his fist.”

Hellboy’s eyes narrowed.

“What kind of crap is that?” he said. “What the hell are you babbling about?”

Hazred’s eyes widened. Hellboy could almost see his mind working, considering whether he had understood the sorceror’s words, or simply objected to his lack of understanding.

We wanted to lure the best specimen we could for Mar-Ti-Ku’s vessel of return, Hellboy. But I would never have hoped that one so powerful, so perfectly indestructible as you, would happen upon our home. Mar-Ti-Ku is ecstatic. As we are, in anticipation of his return. Even now, he is the storm, drives the storm, makes war on the army on the desert sands, with the desert sands. And I have raised the Persian dead to aid him.

“Hellboy, are you paying attention?” Anastasia asked behind him. “He wants to . . .”

“Wait!” Hellboy said, stepping forward and glaring at Hazred. “Let me get this straight. You want to evict me from my body so this Marty guy can have a place to live when he comes home?”

Indeed.

“And you talk to him pretty regularly?”

Yes.

“Then give him a message for me, will you?” Hellboy asked. “Tell him I said, ‘No vacancy!’”

Hellboy struck out at Hazred with his left hand, momentarily forgetting his circumstances, forgetting the danger to Anastasia and Arun. Not that it mattered, for his blow never fell. Hazred lifted his hands, palms flat, and Hellboy’s fist slammed into some kind of invisible wall, or force shield that protected the sorceror. It returned the force of the punch to Hellboy, and under the pressure of his own attack, he stumbled back three steps, and nearly fell to his knees.

He felt his temper rising, felt the edges of his resistance crumbling, giving way to the rage and the frustration. Hellboy prepared to attack again. His tail curled behind him in an unconscious expression of his fury.

Anastasia screamed.

Hellboy spun, his hooves clicking on the stone cavern floor, and then he froze. One of the tall, thin, mutant men held her left arm, a more normal but muscular woman held her right arm, and a third figure stood behind her with a curved, gleaming iron blade snug against her throat.

The anger drained from him instantly.

You are guests as long as you behave like guests, Hazred said in his mind, all of their minds, Hellboy figured.

For a moment, he considered going after the guards, taking the risk. But he couldn’t. Hellboy relaxed and stepped back slightly.

“What about him?” Hellboy asked, and gestured toward Arun, who was still trapped beneath the weight of several guards. At second glance, the professor appeared to be sleeping.

He is beyond our control. Your companion has begun a journey he must yet complete. But I will gladly help him.

Hazred approached Arun and without being told, the guards lifted the professor into a standing position. Angry and bleary-eyed, Arun growled at the sorceror and strained against his captors’ hold.

With a sudden thrust, Hazred dug his fist into Arun’s pants pocket, and withdrew some kind of medallion on a chain that Hellboy had never seen before. He glanced at Anastasia. She caught his look and shrugged, raised her eyebrows, to tell him she did not recognize it either.

Foolish man, Hazred told Arun, and they all heard his mental communication. The Primal Heart is a powerful charm, one of my own creation. It was left very purposefully to be found. But I credited modern man with too much sense. I expected its discoverer to wear it as such a medallion must be worn — around the neck. Already your darkest desires and emotions have surged forth, but without wearing the medallion properly, your physical form cannot comply with those desires.

Arun seemed disoriented. Hazred dangled the medallion in front of him, then slowly slid the chain down over the professor’s head. The air was charged with crackling menace, and Hellboy knew their situation was about to get worse. What was the medallion, he wondered? What did it mean?

The medallion hung against Arun’s chest, harmless. Then Hazred snaked out a long, bony finger and tapped it twice, almost as if he were trying gently to wake a sleeper.

Screeching wildly and clawing at his face, Arun fell to his knees. The professor wailed in great, heaving sobs like a terrified child and began to hyperventilate. He lay on the ground, rolling back and forth over the cold stone. There was the sudden stench of urine and a stain spread across the small man’s pants.

“What the hell did you do to him?” Hellboy demanded.

I have done nothing. Your friend is altering himself.

“Altering . . .”

“Hellboy?” Anastasia said. Her tone drew his immediate attention. He glanced at her, then down at Arun.

Who was changing.