a soft, female voice that Absolom doubted he would ever grow entirely used to. "What message did he have for us?"
They all moved closer. The children, Annabel and Tyler, reached down with their small hands to help him up from the floor.
"Tell us, Absolom, please," Tyler demanded.
"Is the god well? Has he heard our prayers?" Annabel asked breathlessly.
"Our god is still silent," Absolom replied gravely. With a burst of anger and frustration, he tore at the wires still connected to his body, pulling away swatches of his skin with the clips.
The band gasped in unison. They clasped their hands together and bowed their heads, as if their sudden attempts at prayer would somehow reach the absent deity.
"But why?" Tyler pleaded. He fell to his knees, the others quickly following suit. "Tell us, Absolom, what has happened to our savior?"
They all raised their new faces to him, pleading, and even though they did not appear as he remembered, Absolom could still gaze deeply into their eyes and see the men and woman who had become his beloved flock. He could see their souls.
A thought occurred to him. A realization.
"Perhaps it is a test," Absolom replied, drifting toward his newest creation, the machine that had enabled him to project himself even deeper into the beyond. He reached out and cut off the power to the humming device, the subbasement falling eerily quiet.
Quiet as a church.
"It must be a test. We failed in our initial attempt to bring his blessing to the world, and he has not forgotten."
Silas Udell whined, his ears flattening against his head, tail tucked fearfully between his legs.
"What can we do?" Wickham asked, his hands nervously drifting over his female form. "Certainly he knows that was beyond our control--that the attack upon us was..."
Absolom silenced his friend with a look. "Of course he knows," he scolded, rubbing at the angry burn left by the kiss of the soldering iron on the back of his hand. "He is god--but it does not change the fact that we disappointed him. Look at the time that has been wasted--time that could have been used to bring about change, time in which each and every one of god's creatures could have been lifted up to a new level of greatness. But we failed, and our god was forced to wait. The world was forced to wait."
His disciples hung their heads in shame, and Absolom could feel the pain of knowing that they had displeased their lord and master.
"But all is not lost, brothers and sisters, for even though he does not speak, he has given us a second chance," Absolom said, a slow, euphoric smile creeping across his face.
He began to walk around the basement, feeling the desperate eyes of his flock upon him. "Secreted away from the eyes of the infidels, in our deep, dark hole beneath the ground, we shall continue to perform our sacred tasks. Faith, my brothers and sisters, is what we need if we are to achieve our goals. Faith from our hearts, faith from the hearts of others."
He directed their attention to the corner of the room, where a wooden pallet held the first of their prizes: a large rock that resembled a woman lying tightly curled in the fetal position, a paper drinking cup, one side of the rim chewed as if by rats, and, leaning against the dirt wall of the chamber, a piece of plasterboard, a brown water mark in the shape of a veiled female, head bowed in prayer, staining its center. How to collect the residual power of veneration from these objects had been but the first hurdle Absolom was forced to confront upon his return.
"These are but the start," he continued. "In time..."
"But when will it be enough?" Annabel Standish interrupted, wringing her tiny hands. "When will there be enough that he will no longer be angry?"
Absolom smiled. He was as much in the dark about their god's whereabouts as they, but he would not show it. In order for them to achieve their goal, they had to believe that all would turn out as planned, that it was only a matter of time before they were to be reunited with Qemu'el, and the world changed forever.
"Soon," he whispered, opening his arms to them.
"Very, very soon."
Chapter 4
T hey had been at the Museum of Native American Culture in Waldoboro, Maine, for just over three hours, and Hellboy was starting to get itchy.
"I don't know about this," he said to Liz, as