goal--until opposing factions in the Vatican had no more reason to antagonize each other--was to get it back to BPRD headquarters, where the scroll could be safely stored inside the old fireproof bunker where she'd spent so many long days and nights weathering the turmoil of adolescence. The prison of her own making, she'd thought it on good days; on bad days, it was just the dungeon. Burn up enough bedrooms during accidents and bad dreams, and you get a reputation.
But for traveling back to the States, Hellboy had decided that flying was out of the question. They had to cover all that distance under the assumption that they might be attacked with the same ferocity that had befallen the Vatican Archives, by assailants to whom altitude apparently meant nothing. On the ground, they might have a fighting chance--it was, after all, the reason she was here--but in the sky they would be vulnerable to the point of suicide. After fireballs at 36,000 feet, and the inevitable crash, there wouldn't be enough of the team left to scrape up with a shovel.
Surface travel it would have to be, then. With the main objective getting the scroll out of Rome and, for its first way station, to a BPRD safehouse in England. Once there, on secure ground, they could work out a method for moving it across the ocean.
Even so, Rome to England wouldn't be an easy jaunt. A few months earlier, they might have motored north out of Italy and into France, then headed for the western coast and taken the English Channel Tunnel. Not now, though. It was mid-October, with snow already falling in the Alps, and they could ill afford to risk getting stranded on a mountain pass in the north of Italy or the south of France.
Under the circumstances, the best way out of Rome lay at the end of a twenty-mile drive southwest from the Vatican: the Mediterranean. Earlier in the day, Hellboy had arranged for a charter yacht that would be waiting for them on the other end of this armored car ride, at the docks of Ostia. It would take them west across the sea, out the Straits of Gibraltar, then up past Portugal and the tip of Spain, and ultimately to the harbor of Falmouth, on England's southwest coast. From there, they could motor to the BPRD safehouse near Bodmin, in the middle of Cornwall. Here the scroll should be secure enough for the time being in the basements, while they finalized the rest of the journey...which, with luck, Kate and the British team would already have arranged by the time they arrived.
It would take longer than flying, but posed no risk of a fiery crash. And if the worst happened and they were attacked, the saving grace along most of the journey would lie beneath them: all that water. The seraphim were going to boil an ocean dry? Not likely, Hellboy said.
"They wouldn't have to," she told him. "Just enough to turn the immediate area into a saucepan."
"I'll make sure they focus on me. I may look like a lobster, but I don't cook up like one."
She pinched the scruff of his chin between her thumb and forefinger. "Level with me, okay? If these things went blasting through the Vatican, of all places, what's to stop them from coming after us whenever and wherever they want?"
"They have their limitations. They're not all-seeing."
Now Abe stepped in: "It seems they do what they're summoned to do. No more and, judging by the other night's failure, sometimes less. As long as the men who arranged for the attack on the Archives don't know our travel route, the farther away we get, the better off we should be."
"So why not just get away from Rome and catch a flight someplace where they wouldn't know about it?"
"Because what if I'm wrong?" Hellboy said. "I'd rather be just plain wrong than wrong and stupid."
Then his mood lightened. He didn't smile, exactly, and in fact rarely did--truth be told, whenever he tried to smile like a normal person the effect was fairly ghastly--but he had this way of cocking his head to the side that was downright
But for traveling back to the States, Hellboy had decided that flying was out of the question. They had to cover all that distance under the assumption that they might be attacked with the same ferocity that had befallen the Vatican Archives, by assailants to whom altitude apparently meant nothing. On the ground, they might have a fighting chance--it was, after all, the reason she was here--but in the sky they would be vulnerable to the point of suicide. After fireballs at 36,000 feet, and the inevitable crash, there wouldn't be enough of the team left to scrape up with a shovel.
Surface travel it would have to be, then. With the main objective getting the scroll out of Rome and, for its first way station, to a BPRD safehouse in England. Once there, on secure ground, they could work out a method for moving it across the ocean.
Even so, Rome to England wouldn't be an easy jaunt. A few months earlier, they might have motored north out of Italy and into France, then headed for the western coast and taken the English Channel Tunnel. Not now, though. It was mid-October, with snow already falling in the Alps, and they could ill afford to risk getting stranded on a mountain pass in the north of Italy or the south of France.
Under the circumstances, the best way out of Rome lay at the end of a twenty-mile drive southwest from the Vatican: the Mediterranean. Earlier in the day, Hellboy had arranged for a charter yacht that would be waiting for them on the other end of this armored car ride, at the docks of Ostia. It would take them west across the sea, out the Straits of Gibraltar, then up past Portugal and the tip of Spain, and ultimately to the harbor of Falmouth, on England's southwest coast. From there, they could motor to the BPRD safehouse near Bodmin, in the middle of Cornwall. Here the scroll should be secure enough for the time being in the basements, while they finalized the rest of the journey...which, with luck, Kate and the British team would already have arranged by the time they arrived.
It would take longer than flying, but posed no risk of a fiery crash. And if the worst happened and they were attacked, the saving grace along most of the journey would lie beneath them: all that water. The seraphim were going to boil an ocean dry? Not likely, Hellboy said.
"They wouldn't have to," she told him. "Just enough to turn the immediate area into a saucepan."
"I'll make sure they focus on me. I may look like a lobster, but I don't cook up like one."
She pinched the scruff of his chin between her thumb and forefinger. "Level with me, okay? If these things went blasting through the Vatican, of all places, what's to stop them from coming after us whenever and wherever they want?"
"They have their limitations. They're not all-seeing."
Now Abe stepped in: "It seems they do what they're summoned to do. No more and, judging by the other night's failure, sometimes less. As long as the men who arranged for the attack on the Archives don't know our travel route, the farther away we get, the better off we should be."
"So why not just get away from Rome and catch a flight someplace where they wouldn't know about it?"
"Because what if I'm wrong?" Hellboy said. "I'd rather be just plain wrong than wrong and stupid."
Then his mood lightened. He didn't smile, exactly, and in fact rarely did--truth be told, whenever he tried to smile like a normal person the effect was fairly ghastly--but he had this way of cocking his head to the side that was downright
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