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

tall, and looked as though it might have begun life as some wealthy Renaissance scholar's idea of an observatory...and had then been left to deteriorate at some point in the past century or two.
    Burke paid the driver for the fare, plus a bonus for him to return in forty-five minutes. They watched his taillights shoot down the street. Only when he was gone did Burke turn to a nearby building, half a block away and in marginally better repair, and lift his hand in a subtle greeting to someone unseen. It wasn't a simple wave, but rather some quick gesture that may have been an all-clear signal that he was in no trouble.
    "We're being watched?" Hellboy asked.
    "Not us so much as the osservatorio."
    "By other priests?"
    Burke gave him the tight smile. "How about we just call them believers."
    Hellboy got the general drift. Over the centuries, even priests sometimes needed things done that required a harsher set of skills.
    They paced up the walkway, past a small garden that had run riot, then died in a choked heap. Now the breeze rustled through brittle veins of dead ivy, and the husks of fallen leaves swirled at their feet.
    Though bristling with splinters, the building's door, broadly curved at the top, still looked durable. The face-level slit, ringed with iron plating and sealed with a small door, seemed to be a later addition. Burke produced a key and let them inside.
    It took a moment for Hellboy's eyes to adjust to the gloom, but when they did, what he could see of the place was what anyone might expect from the outside: peeling walls and unswept floors, old frescos cancerous with mildew. More rooms remained to be seen, but there was no reason to expect them to look any better. Near one wall was a hulking wooden staircase, twisting upward not in a smooth spiral, but in cruder, squared-off segments.
    "Don't worry," said Burke. "It's sturdier than it looks."
    They took it up past the second floor, where a glance around showed only more dirt and emptiness, then on to the third floor. It was brighter up here, the last of the day straining through tall windows, then Burke let in more light by turning an old iron crank. This forced a set of gears into groaning motion as they pulled toward opposite sides the overlapping series of panels that comprised the roof. These, at least, must have been scrupulously maintained over the years. When closed, they looked to fit together as snugly as the hull planks of a Viking long-ship.
    One slow 360-degree look around at the top floor, now open to the sky, and there was only one thing to ask: "What is this place?"
    "As of the past few days? Abandoned, I think," Burke said. "Men like Father Laurenti, who made it clear he didn't want you sticking your nose in these matters...? It's been forever that his kind has been trying to root out the group that used this place. But, whoever they are, they seem to have been warned off just in time. Spies, remember."
    Up here, it was all one capacious circular room perched upon the living quarters underneath. Hellboy had no trouble imagining the man of money and learning who might have built it centuries ago...losing himself up here, a stranger to his family, having meals sent up as he spent his days poring over charts and Copernicus, and his nights studying the stars.
    The cupola was braced inside by a network of rough-hewn beams, although to Hellboy's eye, part of it had been ripped out some time in the past to keep the central floor space open and unobstructed. In the rafters were the remnants of a pulley system, although there was no longer any sign of the observation platform it must have hoisted from the floor up to the apex of the roof.
    No, this place had long since been converted to other purposes.
    He'd felt it even before he had seen it clearly...the accumulated weight of ritual and intent. Such things left echoes when repeated over time. Just as any old building might absorb the essences of the goings-on inside it, so this place had soaked up a