Hellboy: On Earth as It Is in Hell by Brian Hodge

Author:Brian Hodge [Hodge, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, General, Media Tie-In, Fiction
ISBN: 9781416524113
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2005-08-14T14:30:00+00:00

Chapter 15

As the days passed, Laurenti wondered if they both weren't captives here, he and the man in the cage. No progress--now on his tenth day behind bars in the old shell of a private zoo, Domenico Verdi had yet to provide any useful information on the Opus Angelorum. Their identities, where they might be found, what they might be scheming, attempting. If they'd ever had a contingency plan for what to do in case one of their numbers had been found out. Verdi was still without remorse, without repentance...and without any apparent desire to be free.

Laurenti had dwelled on his ominous words of a week ago--I've already found my deliverers. I think maybe you'll meet them soon enough. Dwelled on them a little too heavily, perhaps. It seemed certain that Verdi had meant the seraphim, implying that another attack was imminent.

But as each sunset came and each night gave way to another dawn with nothing happening, apprehension slowly subsided. If no retaliation had yet come from Verdi's unknown collaborators, maybe it never would. For a time, Laurenti feared that Verdi might be planning on initiating it himself. The rites that they'd successfully used to call down the seraphs were unknown to him, but Laurenti could think of no reason why one man couldn't do it instead of a group.

He'd gone to visit the osservatorio again, to examine the signs and sigils that had been used to accomplish the summoning. He could make little sense of them--they looked so jumbled, with layers upon layers--and he came away convinced that they were of such complexity that it seemed unlikely a man could remember them exactly, to recreate them verbatim...at least under these conditions. All the same, he made sure that Verdi's cell was kept free of things he could use for writing.

As well, if the stains on the old wood of the osservatorio's top floor were what they appeared to be, blood was a part of these rites. Perhaps not a sacrificial death--he found it difficult to believe that even they would tread this far into the forbidden--but nonetheless, blood was life, blood was energy, and its release was known to charge many a ceremonial stage.

So, after they'd shared wine last week, no more glassware went through the bars, and Laurenti made doubly sure to keep anything else sharp out of reach as well. No razors, not even with safety blades, and Verdi sprouted a coarse beard that began to mask the pits and pocks of his face.

So too had Laurenti dwelled on Verdi's reaction to his assertion that the scroll was beyond Rome and therefore safe: I doubt that very much, he'd said. Once they are out in the world, things like this have a way of attracting attention no matter where they go.

An accurate but otherwise innocent assumption, or had he known something like this was imminent? Laurenti was inclined to believe the former, that he truly knew none of this; that, as the BPRD and nearly all his

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