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had died.
    For an uncommonly intelligent entity thus far denied understanding of where he'd come from, Abraham Sapien was as good a name as any. Although he had on occasion been known to get testy with people who called him a fish-man. Strictly speaking, he was amphibious, as at home on dry land as in water.
    And Hellboy himself? No trench coat could hide his nonconformities either--if anything, it was even more of a lost cause than with Abe--but he wore one anyway. Had to wear something. The clothes make the man, it was said, to which he might have amended that the clothes un make the demon. No matter what else the rest of the world saw when they looked at him--built like a linebacker, tough skin as red as a lobster, prehensile tail, ground-down stumps where horns should've been, and a huge stonelike right hand that could crush bricks like beer cans--they saw the coat and, well, it just looked so normal it was downright disarming. Sometimes that was all that was needed to work past the prejudice.
    Here, though, at ground zero of the Roman Catholic world, there was a two-millennium legacy of thinking long and hard about abominations and what to do with them. He'd answered their appeal, and maybe they really even needed him. But for some of them--not necessarily in this room, but surely somewhere on the grounds--he knew how he must be regarded, first and foremost: a living, breathing validation of everything they'd devoted their lives to opposing.
    Except for one little problem: How he had ended up on their side.
    Father Ranzi poured himself another coffee. "You understand about the scroll, what it is, yes?"
    "Katie briefed me."
    "You recognize the danger it poses."
    "Contradiction of two thousand years of dogma--yeah, I get the picture."
    "So then you understand why it was...shall we say...targeted."
    "Now that's where I'm having some trouble," Hellboy said. "It doesn't add up. I've seen what happened, and it seems clear to me what did it. But why here, why now? If your tests are right, that scroll's been around for over 1900 years, whether or not it's what it claims to be. The fact that it drew this kind of attention and cost seven lives, that seems to give it some kind of legitimacy...
    "But here's the red flag: For all but the last few decades, it was buried on a high plateau in the middle of a desert. Where it had already survived one inferno. Then it's discovered, it's transported, it's studied, it's stored away--thirty more years of that. And I'm supposed to believe these seraphim are only now taking notice? They had all the time in the world to burn that thing out of existence and no one would've ever known. But they didn't. Until a few nights ago. So no--I don't understand why it was targeted. But I bet somebody down here does."
    The six churchmen exchanged glances, and finally one of them stepped forward from the background. One of the two who'd been smoking earlier, he wore a sober but well-tailored black suit over a charcoal gray turtleneck sweater. He had a tautly lined face and graying hair clipped just a little longer than stubble. Long, slender hands, like the hands of a pianist. Monsignor Burke, Artaud had called him earlier.
    "A few minutes ago, I'm sure the well-fed Archbishop here didn't tell you anything you didn't already know," he said, the only American accent among the six. Upper East Coast, it sounded like. Not New York. Boston, maybe, and he'd spent a lot of time trying to get rid of it. "Something's always seething under the surface of the Vatican. But right now, there are undercurrents of some of the biggest divisions the Church has seen in decades. Now, the Church is slow to change, you know that..."
    Hellboy was eyeing Ranzi's coffee. "Millions of its members like that about it. In a world that's always changing, here's this one anchor in their lives that's resistant to change."
    And temptation got the better of him. He reached toward the thermos with his left hand, the normal one, and made a