Hellboy: Unnatural Selection Read Online Free PDF Page B

discover new ways and means. This manner may continue, and it may not ... though if the humans disregard the spirits and claim their own inventions, the spirits may rise up. Mischievous will become nasty, creativity will give way to persistent deconstruction, and the humans will live to regret their ignorance and arrogance."
    "Sounds about right," Gal said. He leaned over and stared at the page Richard was examining. The parchment was almost bare but for three curving lines, each spanning a different axis. At their center was what looked like an image of the sun. It glowed. "It says all that there?" he asked.
    "In a manner of speaking."
    "Looks like a lot of lines to me."
    "That's why I read, and you send. I'm the brain, and you're the muscle." He grinned at his brother and rolled aside to escape the playful punch he knew would come.
    "Let's go, then," Gal said, standing and brushing down his trousers. "No time like the present. And we haven't sent the old man anything in a while."
    "He liked the dragons tooth," Richard said. "That was a real treat for him."
    Gal grinned as he started walking down the hillside. "And it'll be a real treat for someone else, too," he said. " Such a treat."
----
    From Egypt the feather of a phoenix, from England a dragons tooth, and now in Switzerland they sought something else entirely. They had not seen their father for four years, and yet they felt closer to him than ever.
    When they were children, he had not been there. Benedict Blake — great scientist, philosopher, explorer of arcane mysteries, environmentalist, and naturalist — had never been a great father. Their mother brought them up and protected them, and she often told them what a wonderful man their father was. But not to them. For Richard and Steven — as a boy, he had not found cause to change his name, for he had not yet been wronged — Blake was simply an absence in their lives. He lectured around the world and wrote books and articles, but he had never once spent a Sunday afternoon in their back garden playing football, drinking lemonade, and planning the long walk they would take that evening. He had never ventured into the woods with them to help them dam a stream, or grabbed a kite and run into the wind out on the moor, or sat with them on either side of him while he read a bedtime story or listened to them talk about their school day. He was a great man wrapped up in his greatness, and it squeezed out true time. They watched him waste his life when he should have been living it. And their mother, beautiful and mournful, was as sad as they.
    And then the fire, and the murder and accusations, and for the first time in their lives, their father had looked after them. They had run, and while on the run, he told them what he wanted to do. How he wanted to seek vengeance. And he gave them both something very special before sending them on their way, something that, in retrospect, did not surprise them one little bit.
    He gave them magic.
----
    The site was not especially well protected. There was a security fence, but something had burrowed beneath one section of it long ago — a fox or a dog — and Gal and Richard managed to squirm their way underneath. They paused while Richard cast a spell of haze at a couple of security cameras, waiting for a few minutes for the enchantment to take effect. When the lenses of the cameras whitened with cataracts, the brothers hurried across the open ground, coming to a standstill up against the closest hangar. They looked around, waiting for the shout or whistle that would signify their being sighted, but all was silent.
    The air was still, as if nature held its breath. Perhaps soon it would. When they had collected everything their father needed, maybe then the whole world would hold its breath. And when Benedict Blake had finished with it, the planet would start to breathe itself clean once again. That's how Richard and Gal thought of it; they were helping the earth to clear its lungs.