Kicking, screaming, Liz flew up out of the water and motioned for Roger to drop her back onto Typhon.
A measure of her misplaced fear of Roger lit up like kindling inside her, and it was not rage that dried her and singed even Roger's clay hands as he set her down, but love.
A corona erupted around her and blazed hot enough to make a firebreathing monster scream. Terrible in her solar beauty, Liz Sherman knelt to lay her hands on the titans hide, and let it all out.
Like a thousand years of drought, her unbound fire seared the flesh beneath her feet, in faults and fissures, and returning it to charred stone so violently that boulders broke free and lofted like meteors to burst in the steaming sea.
She walked down Typhon's paralyzed length and stuffed a supernova down its throat. She felt the white-hot plasma race up the shaft of the tentacle to blow out its host of ogling eyes like the windows of a demolished skyscraper.
Hellboy punched his way out of a blazing socket near the penthouse, then somersaulted down the heaving length of the monster to join her. "Yowch!" he yelled. "Way to go, Liz!"
"It's not slowing down!" she shouted over the roar of her own flame. Typhon's hide was a bed of coals, but the monster's frenzied gyrations were, if anything, only more desperate. From a mating dance to a death dance.
"I couldn't find anything like a heart or a brain in it. That things an idiot." Hellboy pounded the glowing red stone like an anvil, bellowing, "You lost, damn it! Cut it out, already!"
The surface of the sea about fifty yards out bulged and broke as the gas from an underwater explosion broke free of the waves. Hellboy pinched his nose. Roger flew through the noxious fog and almost crashed, but Liz's fire gushed out over the water, turning green with the methane-rich upwelling.
It was the unmistakable miasma of a belch, suppressed and festering for millennia. And out of the thick of it, smeared with something fouler than ambergris, came someone who waved to them.
"Abe!" Hellboy's joyous roar cut through the earsplitting spasms of the defiantly undying monster.
Despite Hellboy's warnings, Abe swam toward Typhon's gasping mouth, almost pulled headfirst over its teeth in a swallow of seawater that leaked out its sundered sides in plumes of steam.
Abe caught himself on its lower lip and shouted something down the titans gullet. Hellboy could not understand it, but he thought he recognized the scholarly cadence of Abes ancient Greek.
And just like that, Typhon finally gave up the ghost.
With a shudder and a sigh that was softer and more unsettling than the cacophony of destruction he and Liz had wrought, the heaving monstrosity subsided into its natural petrified state, as whatever mad energy the deluge of blood and wine and magic had awakened in it simply and suddenly went away.
Typhon's stone carcass sank like the Titanic, and would have sucked them down after it, had Roger not snatched each of them clear of the undertow and dropped them beside the emergency raft Omar had left behind, before he ran out of fuel.
Looking at the bobbing hulks of helicopters in the smoking black-red water, Liz lit a cigarette from her watertight pack and smirked, "Best Earth Day ever."
"Be careful," Abe warned. "I'm a bit soiled, and more than a little radioactive."
"Nuts to that," Hellboy replied. Still holding his nose, he pulled Abe into the raft and said, "I'm sorry if I made that harder than it had to be. You give a monster an inch, and they think they're a ruler. What happened to you down there, anyway?"
"I was trapped." Like one dimly awakened from a dream, Abe searched for the right words. "I had ... help getting out."
"Did you cast some kind of spell on Typhon?" Roger asked.
"I didn't cast a spell." Abe smiled, but the warmth of it never reached his icy blue eyes. "I broke one."
"I'm sorry?" Roger, as always, keenly trying to understand.
"I told him that she just didn't love him anymore."
"Awww," Liz said. "That's kind of sad ..."
"Mm-hmm," said Hellboy, and left it at that.
Together, they bobbed on the current for a while, while Omar circled and lowered the ladder. Each sifting their own measure of sunshine and melancholy, in the light and shadow of still-abiding Mother Nature.
Taking her course, once again.
Someday it might end. But not today. Magnificent and terrible, life went on. The waves still waved. The sun still shone. All in all, a very beautiful day. Tomorrow, there might even be another.
* * *
End
"I told her there was no more room in the world for monsters," Abe said. Liz just looked from the begrimed amphibian to the homunculus to the wryly smiling devil with whom she shared the raft. "Yes, there is," she said.
* * *
Danny Boy
Ken Bruen
* * *
The robbery happened so fast, it was like jig time
I was behind the counter, doing my usual mundane boring job when the two guys came roaring in, screaming obscenities and waving sawn-offs though one looked like a pump
They scared the be-jaysus out of everyone which was the whole point
And they had three bags of serious cash packed and ready to roll in, I'd guess, four minutes, we were lying on the floor
Normally, sleepy midwestern towns, we have an old security guard whose toughest task is to stay awake
But recently, a young kid named Jason, due to ship out to Iraq, had been doing the job
He had long black hair, shades, and a whole attitude of gung-ho
He was itching for aggro
He got it
They'd taken his weapon but this was a kid of the movies, carried an ankle piece, he's shown it to me often enough
I didn't like him and he thought I was a nerd
He'd go
"So Danny Boy, ever feel like having a brew or doing some guy stuff?"
The robbers were at the door, the three stashed bags in their arms when Jason got on one knee, no shout of
"Freeze motherfuckers."
Nope
He just started blasting away
The first guy managed to make it out the door, the second guy, did a little dance of dance and I registered the bag of cash fly across the floor and lodge in an alcove, hidden in plain sight almost and the thought came to me
"Dare I?"
Jason had taken off after the other guy and I was on me feet, screaming
"Everybody out, move move."
They did
I had about sixty seconds
I grabbed the bag, vaulted the counter, put it in my locker and then ran out of there like all the other sheep
Cop cars were wailing in from everywhere and the second guy got blasted to hell from about six different directions and miraculously, kept driving and got away
We were all of course interviewed and offered counseling and the manager confirmed the guy had gotten away with three full bags of serious bills
I nearly wet meself
Jason was on a jagged rush and didn't seem to notice the third bag had never left the building
My whole body was shaking
Jason, being congratulated by all, finally got a moment to speak to me, said
"Shitting yourself there buddy ... right?"
The prick
I said
"That was an amazing display."
He'd been basking in praise from all and said
"No biggie, it's what men do."
I bit down on my smile, he might have the glory but me, I had the loot
You'll have gathered I'm not American, I'm working on the accent but it ain't coming in so good, its hard to shed a Mick mindset, ask any Brit, they'll endorse that Bill Clinton is a saint in Ireland, never no mind his little peccadilloes, he's good-looking, that's enough for us, reminds us of John F Kennedy and God bless him, he'd initiated a number of schemes whereby we exchanged personnel, especially in the financial sector.
So the Irish banks sent a batch of us stateside and a bevy of Americans came to
Ireland.
In my branch In Dublin, everyone wanted