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.”

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