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Living Stone
By : AceMaxwell
Category: G through L > Hellboy
Views: 4868 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Hellboy and I make no money off this fiction.
Chapter List
- 6
- 7
- 8
When John had waited almost twenty minutes without any sign of the jeep, he got up and headed towards the road. Buttoning his jacket over his ruined shirt as he walked, John kept a sharp eye out for anything strange. The forest was quiet, just the same as before they'd fallen into the courts. Something in the distance called his name. John shivered and pulled his jacket collar upright.

He found the jeep where they'd left it, Hellboy sitting at the wheel. The demon didn't notice him as approached, so John took a moment to open himself to Hellboy's thoughts. They were partially guarded already, but John caught his overwhelming guilt. It was powerful enough that John's guts shifted unpleasantly in response. The demon rubbed his face with his flesh hand then reached down to start the car. John hurried to the passenger side and yanked it open, startling Hellboy.

"Thought you were going to come get me," John said casually as he climbed into the car.

Instantly, the veil dropped over Hellboy's mind. The demon cleared his throat and sat up straighter in his seat, "Yeah, sorry about that."

Silence weighed heavily in the cab as Hellboy drove. The demon's stern eyes warned against trying to discuss what had passed between them. John fidgeted with anything he could get his hands on, his seatbelt, the air conditioning vents, and a small cigarette burn in the upholstery. He flipped on the radio and scanned through half a dozen static stations before turning it off again.

When he couldn't stand it anymore, John started to say, "What-"

"No."

Stunned by the abrupt brush-off, John's mouth hung open for a few moments before he could arrange his thoughts, "But can't we just-"

"Look kid, I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to think about it, so let it go," Hellboy snarled, though he sounded tired.

John sat back in his seat with a deep frown. He wondered if he'd misjudged Hellboy. Maybe the demon wasn't interested in him at all. The time he'd spend in the investigator's mind made him think otherwise. He'd enveloped John, welcomed him when he shrank away from his own failing body. What John had found in Hellboy was a powerful protectiveness and something more tender, but equally unmistakable. The Fay spell could've conjured the emotions, but John doubted it.

John unbuckled so he could turn to face Hellboy, "Okay, so do you like me or not, because right now you're a living Katy Perry song."

"What does that even mean?"

"Hot and Cold." When Hellboy cast a sidelong look at him, John sighed and mumbled, "Never mind."

"Kid-"

"I am not a child, Hellboy! Would you please try to treat me like an adult for the next twenty minutes and level with me?"

The muscles in the demon's jaw tensed and flexed as he ground his teeth together. Hellboy looked out the driver's window at the passing landscape, his fingers squeezing the steering wheel until it creaked. The woods were quickly melting into meadows and fields. John wished for the first time since he left America that there was something more interesting to look at than endless, rolling green. They wouldn't see many buildings until they were within a mile or so of their destination.

When Hellboy didn't answer him, John deflated to his side of the car. It was possible that Hellboy thought he was protecting John from what happened by avoiding it. If that was true, there wasn't much John could do to convince him otherwise. He talked anyway, hoping the demon might take something to heart, "You know, you think that you have to protect me, but nothing about this job has come close to touching how fucked up the rest of my life has been. At least this makes sense."

Hellboy glanced away from the road with a furrowed brow.

John continued, "That probably seems weird to you, but this work makes sense. The Fay, all of them, light, dark, all of them are living in the past. They want to go back to the time when humans were easy to cow and easy to control and the wild magic ran rampant. Some of them, like Grom, just wish they could go back to the way things were, and some, like this Shade woman that's resurrecting the king want to force us back into the dark ages. All of that is understandable."

John's throat tightened as his thoughts passed to his mother and he furiously wiped at his watering eyes before they could shed anything. "But what kind of sense do people make? They attack each other for no reason. If something scares them, they get as far from it as they can. Or they try to wipe it out because some built in survival mechanism says every other common sense we have should be cast aside so we can save ourselves."

John wasn't sure whether Hellboy's silence was a blessing or a curse. He didn't look over at the demon, not sure he wanted to know what kind of reaction his ramblings had caused. "I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm made for this. I may not be as big or strong as you, but you don't have to worry about me. If my history didn't prepare me to handle this sort of stuff, then nobody you ever hire will be able to handle it."

Hellboy cleared his throat, "And what exactly was your grand plan for getting out of the Glem Court on your own?"

"I was working it out when you came busting in with gun drawn," John said, a slight smile touching the corner of his mouth. "You sure made a mess out of things."

The guilt came rushing back and John immediately regretted his joke. Hellboy shifted slightly in his seat and reached over to roll down the window. Cool air flowed around them as the demon propped his arm on the windowsill. John could barely hear him over the sound of the churning wind, "You should put your seatbelt back on."

"There's nothing out here, unless you hit a sheep. I think I'll be fine."

Hellboy reverted to work, "What about this 'Shade woman'? Did you pick up on her at Dagdea's house?"

"You're never going to answer my question, are you?"

"Are you going to answer mine?"

John sighed. He could keep pushing it, withhold the information Hellboy wanted until the demon faced their intimate if not forced moment, but he knew Hellboy wouldn't appreciate it. There was one thing he had to know, "It really did happen, though… didn't it?" John had been in terrible shape, so to get up and walk away a few minutes later was unexpected.

"Yeah, it happened," Hellboy groaned, his words nearly lost in the noisy cab.

John toyed with the shredded bits of shirt hanging out from beneath his jacket, "Then why-"

"You broke through their game and got us loose. When their prey breaks out, they tend to shove it through the door so they don't have to deal with it."

"But…" John hesitated to mention the state he'd been in since Hellboy was beating himself up over it, but he needed to know why he wasn't dying when they were set free. He studied Hellboy's overcast expression and decided not to ask. The demon's remorse curled around them like a living creature, squeezing the fight out of John.

"You know the catch phrase 'What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas'?"

John nodded, one brow arched.

"Well, the Fay worlds are kind of like that. Sometimes, you go into them and it's like time is suspended here, but sometimes you go in and you come out to a different time altogether. They either healed us, or let us heal before they released us. No way to tell which, really."

Resisting the urge to reach out and comfort Hellboy, John rolled down his window too and gave the air a cross-path. He leaned out into the wind and took a deep breath. The guilt settled low in his stomach, weighing him down. John didn't know the right way to address it without Hellboy getting mad about him snooping around in his head. This was one thing John wished he could block off, but Hellboy was broadcasting. Strong emotions were hard to hide.

The only real solace he could think of was to let the demon throw himself back into their work, "When you and Dagdea were talking, her thoughts went to a woman in the middle of a bunch of stones standing on their end. It looked like the woman was in Stonehenge."

John didn't miss Hellboy's relief. His guilt faded a little, but stayed strong enough that John could still feel it. Hellboy asked, "What did she look like?"

"She was young, thin. I couldn't see her face, but she had really long, red hair."

Hellboy mulled over his answer. John could sense him chewing on an idea, though he couldn't figure out what it was without digging. Instead of prying, he focused on his lingering feeling that he'd seen the woman before. It was definitely in a different setting and he couldn't be certain without knowing what the woman's face looked like, but he recognized the hair. The realization hit John and Hellboy almost at the same time, so close that John wasn't sure who formed the thought first.

"The woman from the church!" John exclaimed.

Hellboy clarified, "Chloe."

"She must've been at the church so she could get the bones."

The jeep growled as Hellboy stepped on the gas. Greenery whipped by, the landscape becoming a blur. "But if she's the one with the bones in the standing circle, then she would have to be Fay," Hellboy mused. He glanced over at John and reminded him, "Put on your seatbelt."

John didn't acknowledge his second comment, too focused on the first, "Even if she was Fay, she would be able to move around in the church, right? They're not demons or vampires or anything, so the church wouldn't hurt them."

"But the iron box where the bones were kept would. She would have had to have a human helping her or she never would've gotten them out of the crypt." Hellboy was barely looking at the road. He fixed his eyes on John, "And if she has an accomplice, then they might know where the ceremony is taking place."

Barely visible over the rise in the road, a figure stepped out into the street. His armor seemed to absorb the light of day. The green of his skin would make it almost impossible to separate him from a field or meadow, but out in the open, he was a towering wall of spines and thorns. Sparks flew from the tip of his blade as he drew a line in the asphalt in front of him.

The jeep devoured the ground between them and the armored figure. Hellboy was still enthusiastically describing his plan on how they could use John's abilities to discover Chloe's accomplice. John was the first one to see him, but they were within a dozen yards of the man before he cried out, "Hellboy!"

Both of the demon's hands went to the wheel, yanking it hard to one side. Rubber screamed and smoked as the jeep careened around the knight. As they banked to the left, the passenger side wheels came off the pavement. The jeep corkscrewed. John gripped the door handle and part of the seat, squeezing his eyes shut as the car tumbled onto its hood, then its roof. Something warm and heavy slammed against his chest and pinned him to the seat.

Glass exploded, but the sound was muffled in John's ears. The jeep rolled over and over. Metal scraped first against cement and then against earth. Clods of dirt and grass rocketed into the air with plastic and black flecks of vehicle. Finally, the mess of bent metal slid to a stop. It rocked slowly on the roll bars that covered the cab, one wheel still spinning uselessly in the air. A triangle of glass dropped from the void that was once a back windshield.

John flinched as the weight on his chest moved and he felt gravity pulling at him. He opened his eyes to find Hellboy's stone hand gripping the front of his jacket. The jeep was upside down and the demon was the only thing keeping him from dropping out of his seat. Part of the roof was ripped away, so when John reached over his head to stabilize himself, his fingers found dirt. Hellboy carefully lowered him to the ground.

Through the narrow slit the window had become, John could see a pair of feet approaching them. He shuffled back and dug into his pocket for a small folding knife, turning his attention to Hellboy's seatbelt. There was a substantial gouge on the demon's forehead just underneath his horns, but he looked okay otherwise. While John worked at the thick strap at the demon's waist, Hellboy looked him over, checking him with his flesh hand.

"You okay, kid?" he asked, probing at the back of John's neck with calloused fingers that scratched his skin.

"You can say 'I told you so' about the fucking seatbelt later. Whatever that thing was is coming our way," John told him in a panicked rush of breath.

Hellboy tilted his head so he could see through the crushed window, saying, "Get back."

John did as he was told and Hellboy ripped the seatbelt loose with his stone hand. He slammed into the remnants of roof, rolling awkwardly in the small space so he was upright. Giving John a firm, "Stay here," he slipped out of the driver's side window.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Hellboy was still a little disoriented from getting thrown around in the accident, but he didn't let it show. Most monsters thrived on weakness, latching onto it and utilizing it until the battle was won. Though, the creature standing across from Hellboy was not a dumb, wildly aggressive beast. It was a knight.

"Not often I see your kind away from your master," Hellboy commented calmly, his fingers flexing on the smooth wood of the Samaritan's handle.

Behind him, glass crunched and it sounded as though something soft was sliding against metal. He knew without looking that John didn't listen to him. The kid was probably crawling out of the wreckage. Hellboy just hoped that he had the common sense to come out on the far side of the car. Hellboy put himself between the knight and the jeep in case John decided he was going to 'help'.

The wind picked up, playing with the horsehair plume that rose from the knight's helmet. It drifted lazily across his shoulders and face. The knight's mouth was set in a hard line, his solid white eyes squinting against the sun. He had his sword drawn and carried it with the tip pointed at the ground. As he came closer, Hellboy could see the markings on the chest plate that identified his court and loyalty. It was a wolf leaping over a serpent. The two animals were locked together in battle, each one swallowing the tail of the other. Hellboy had only seen the emblem in old texts, but he recognized it as the Shade Court.

The knight stopped a few feet from Hellboy and hissed, "The bone." He extended one gauntleted hand, the dark thorns sprouting from his fingers making it look like a cat's offering of a perch to a bird.

Hellboy had to tilt his head back to see the knight's face, "I think we both know that's not going to happen."

The knight's fingers curled closed before he dropped his fist to his side. The green Fay brought the sword up so the flat of the blade was turned to his face, saluting Hellboy. After he'd shown his respect, he took several steps back and slung the blade in a wide arc around himself.

Hellboy undid the clasp on his holster and pulled his gun free. He'd never fought a knight of either court, but he knew they approached battle with the same sort of revere that human knights used to. Violence was their whole life. They were bred, born, and raised to kill their master's enemies with honor. There would be no retreat for either of them.

While he waited for the first attack, Hellboy opened his mind for John, trying to give him a message without the knight knowing about it. He thought the words, 'Hunt through his mind, find out where that stone circle is,' and hoped that John could hear him.

Then the knight dove towards him and Hellboy put his first bullet into his shoulder. The iron round punched through the armor and flesh, coming out the far side. It didn't slow the knight's charge. His sword flicked through the air like a snake strike. Hellboy barely managed to get his stone arm in the path of the blade before it made out fountain out of his neck.

Taking a step back to avoid the next slash, Hellboy aimed his gun at the knight's chest and fired. The massive bang folded into the crunch of the Fay's bones. For a breath, Hellboy could see through the man. Nothing bled. As Hellboy watched, something inside the knight moved. The shape pulsed and throbbed at the top edge of the wound. Before Hellboy could figure out what it was, thick vines twisted together to cover the hole.

The knight brought his sword in tight and fast, aiming the thrust at Hellboy's guts. Hellboy leapt to the side. The point caught his hip and pain slammed through him. Hellboy turned his body into the blade and grabbed it with his stone hand. The metal screeched against his palm when he tried to yank it out of the Fay's grasp. The knight released the sword, only to grab the back of Hellboy's neck and slam his helm into Hellboy's head. The blow mostly glanced off his horns, but it was surprising enough to make him drop the weapon.

xxxxxxxxxxxxx

John stayed behind the destroyed jeep, watching the fight and trying to get a grip on the knight's mind. It wasn't like anything he'd tried to read before. There were decisions, thoughts, but John might as well have been staring at hundreds of lines of computer code for all the sense it made. He was working on dissecting it one piece at a time. The deeper he waded, the more lost he felt. He could see the Fay's mission, could see the bone as clearly as though he was holding it in his palm, but surrounding the bone was blood.

John pushed past the mission and sunk into the crimson ocean of death. His fingers tightened on the jeep's frame as his pulse raced. He forced the blood away and took a shuddering breath. Behind the mission was the woman they were looking for. The memory of her smiled at him, her unnaturally beautiful face tainted with malevolence.

Her voice came through to him, "Kill all those who stand against us."

John widened his vision to take in the surroundings. The stones became clear first, and then the hundreds of faces hovering like ghosts in the darkness beyond them came into focus. Teeth and glowing eyes glinted into the shadows behind the stones. John could barely make out the trees beyond the creatures, but it didn't help him determine where the circle was. Most people had tendrils of thought attached to memories. John could use those dangling attachments to determine where someone was when the memory was formed, what they were feeling when the memory was occurring, but there were no thoughts or emotions about the Fay's memory. The memory stood alone like some kind of canned movie footage.

Above the screaming, howling creatures, a voice whispered in a language John had never heard before. The tenor scraped and dragged around his head, each word wrapping itself in his subconscious. He could feel it grabbing hold of him, but he couldn't seem to block it out. The memory he was searching faded into reality. He blinked stupidly at the daylight, not sure what happened.

Hellboy and the knight continued their fight and the voice continued to chant. John winced when the demon took a hit to the temple from the knight's spiny gauntlet. His vision wavered as Hellboy stumbled back from the blow. John gripped the jeep's foot runner to try and keep himself upright. Everything spun wildly around his head. He could still hear the unpleasant smack and crunch of the fight and Hellboy's grumbled curses, but he couldn't get his eyes to focus on anything. John felt out the voice, tracing it back to the knight. Gathering his scattered wits, he shoved at the knight's mind as hard as he could. His vision cleared in time to see the Fay physically stagger under his attack.

The knight whipped around to stare at John, but Hellboy was on him the moment his attention was diverted. Slamming all of his immense weight into the Fay's middle, Hellboy knocked him off his feet and wrapped his stone hand around the giant's throat before he could recover. The knight's long fingers scrambled uselessly against Hellboy's arm. With a grimace, the demon unloaded the rest of his rounds into the knight's helmet. The gun was still smoking when the body underneath Hellboy stopped twitching.

"I really hope you got what you needed, because I don't think he's going to be very talkative now," Hellboy said as he climbed to his feet.

John didn't take his eyes away from the Fay's helmet. It was full of grass and wood and bits of leaves, like someone emptied their lawn trimmings into the metal shell. Before Hellboy could finish reloading his gun, wriggling vines sprouted from the stump of neck and started braiding together. The knight's hand twitched and flexed and slammed down into the earth.

"Hellboy, look out!"

The demon turned, but thick roots burst out of the concrete with a deafening crack. They slammed into Hellboy from below, driving through his thigh and left shoulder and lifting him high into the air. The demon's blood ran down the roots in dark rivers. Terror slipped unbidden into John like the icy draft under the door in the dead of winter. It wound around the base of his spine as he helplessly watched Hellboy struggle to free himself.

The knight got up before his head was done reforming. Blades of grass crawled across the writhing mass of vines and white fire flared to life inside the empty eye orbits. A strangled sound emerged from John as he backed away from the approaching knight. High above them, Hellboy was screaming for him to run, but there was another voice that had swarmed into his mind. It bade him to stay with authority that was linked directly with his motor cortex. John froze, his heart hammering against his sternum hard enough that he swore the bone was going to break.

"Run, John! Fuck!" Hellboy desperately shouted. The demon reached behind him for the root that was impaling him, but his heavy, stone fingers weren't touching anything but air.

John's breath came faster as the knight got closer. It was too shallow to be effective and he was getting lightheaded. His eyes were wide enough that there were whites visible all around his chocolate-colored irises and sweat gathered at his brow. As the Fay came around the jeep, John's gaze flicked to Hellboy again in the hopes that the demon was rushing over to save him. Amidst the whispers that were like shards of glass in his mind, John decided that he really did need Hellboy's protection.

The knight wrapped his hands around John's head, his fingers overlapping at the back, and lifted him from the ground. He hoisted him until John's eyes were level with his burning eye sockets. John's hands went to his wrists, but the voice rebounding around his skull kept him from pulling. The knight smiled, though his lips hadn't formed yet so it was more like a snarl.

"Be careful of who you explore, boy. While you see me, I see you," the knight whispered in the same voice that commanded John.

The knight's presence flooded John's mind. It wasn't the gentle, careful prodding that John used to get information, it was forceful and violent. John screamed as the knight wrenched apart his memories the same way a high school student would dissect a frog. A trickle of blood dripped from John's nose. Shoving through John's mental viscera, he touched dozens of old memories that flared in response to his presence. Things that were buried as deep as John could get them were dragged forward in broken fragments. His mother's terrified, screaming face, the judge that looked down at him like an executioner, the huddled shape of his roommate at the asylum, the screams of the other patients.

When John was ready to beg for mercy, ready to tell the knight whatever he wanted to know so he'd get out of his head, the knight found something. He picked up the token piece of information and, through the pounding, headache inspired haze, John could see what he was looking at. The memory played as the knight examined it. It wasn't long, just Hellboy sitting in the driver's side of the jeep, telling him that Kate had taken the bone back to the bureau with her. The knight took in a deep, hissing breath and let the memory play again, focusing in on Hellboy's mouth as the words tumbled innocently from him.

Then he was ripping through John again, looking for something about the bureau. John whimpered at the renewed pain. Blood from his nose dribbled down his lip and chin, some of it slipping inside his mouth when he cried out. He choked as the coppery taste hit the back of his throat.

Images of the bureau flashed behind his eyelids. Following that was the simple memory of John giving the cab driver directions. Even if the bone was under lock, key, and guard, John suspected that it wouldn't dissuade the knight. Chloe had told him to bring the bone back at any cost and that was exactly what he would do.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"Let him go, you son of a-" Hellboy growled.

He snapped the root that was protruding from his thigh. As his weight fell to his shoulder, he grit his teeth against his agonized yell. He worked at the last root, but it was thick and flexible and wouldn't snap. His rough stone fingers gouged off the first few layers of wood. Sap flowed as blood, making his hand sticky, but the root still would give way.

Hellboy's head snapped up as John cried out. The kid's eyes were rolled so far back that all Hellboy could see were the whites. He didn't know what the knight was doing to him, he just knew that if he didn't get to him soon, John might not make it.

Giving up on breaking the root, Hellboy brought his feet forward and braced them against the wood. He dug his hooves in and grabbed the root and pushed his body upwards. He only managed to slide a few inches, but could feel bits of the wood lodging in his skin and muscle. With a growled shout, he pushed harder. The diameter of the root got thinner the higher he managed to go, until he got to a place where it was too thin to hold him. The root shattered and Hellboy fell. He couldn't get oriented in the air, landing heavily on his side and bad shoulder. Massive pain roared through his body, but he barely felt it.

Hellboy rolled to his feet and yanked the remnant of wood out of his shoulder as he charged the knight. Flipping the sharp spine around, he jammed it up underneath the edge of the knight's armor and into his back. Hellboy hooked an arm underneath one of the knight's arms to pull the Fay farther onto the spike. Instead of fighting, the knight exploded into a cloud of buzzing insects. John's limp body dropped to the ground as the swarm flew off in every direction. Cussing, Hellboy swatted at the wasps and locusts, but could only kill a few of them.

Hellboy knelt by John and lifted the boy's head and shoulders off the ground, "Kid?" He brushed away some of the blood under John's nose, smearing it more than anything else. "John?" He couldn't hide his relief when John stirred. With a smile, Hellboy admitted, "I was afraid he'd killed you. You okay?"

"Nothing some migraine medication won't fix," John mumbled, his voice wavering slightly.

Considering how much the kid's body was trembling, Hellboy had to admire the brave face he was putting on. Whatever the knight had done to him had shaken him badly, but John seemed determined to push it behind him. And, judging by the blood, it wasn't just fear he was dealing with.

Opening his eyes was accompanied by a wince that Hellboy didn't miss. Hellboy helped him upright, moving to the left so he blocked the sun that was beating down on John's face. More than once, he'd had to hunt down and kill every light in Kate's office because she had a migraine, so he hoped it would help a little. At least the kid stopped squinting.

"He knows where the bone is."

Hellboy straightened and asked, "What?"

"He knows Kate has it," John said, turning a worried look onto Hellboy. "We have to warn her."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Most of the corner offices in the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense were taken up by conference rooms or VIPs, all except one. The only exception was the office of Dr. Kate Corrigan. Her nearly fathomless knowledge of the occult and adept field skills had earned her the office almost a year before and, though it caused a bit of a stir around the water coolers for a few weeks, most of the other agents agreed that she deserved the space.

It was late in the evening, but Kate was still bent over a large, yellowed text spread out on her desk. The book was one of several hundred tomes she'd collected since arriving at the bureau in the eighties. Wide, overburdened shelves huddled together along every wall of her office. Though they were very full, their content was impeccably organized. The books were separated by country, then by region, and then alphabetically sorted by monster, allowing Kate to find information faster than anyone with a computer could hope to.

Other than the shelves and desk, her office was sparsely furnished. There was a burnt umber couch tucked between the door to her personal bathroom and one of the bookshelves. One of its legs was broken and the stub was propped up on a brick, courtesy of Hellboy. He'd offered to buy her a new couch a dozen times, but she didn't mind the bad leg. It still served its purpose.

No one really understood why Kate's office was so bare until there was an important case. When there was a lot of research to be done, Kate was known to cover every square inch of her considerable floor space with paperwork and books. Though it probably wasn't the more organized method, it worked for her.

Kate sat up to rub some of the fatigued muscles in her back. Without looking away from her book, she grabbed the handle of her cat mug and sipped at the lukewarm coffee. Sitting in a small dish next to her lamp was the bone Hellboy had given to her. She'd studied it very carefully, but, besides discoloring at the touch of iron, there wasn't anything unusual about it. She'd encountered objects before that radiated energy and that was what she'd been expecting from a bone that supposedly belonged to the Shade King.

Since the bone yielded no answers, Kate had turned her attention to research. So far, she'd uncovered only the most basic mythos surrounding the Shade resurrection, but none of it put her at ease. The rise of the Unseelie Court was sunk in murky prophecies of world-ending proportions. The Shade King legend spoke of carnage and death on a level that was only matched by the Bubonic plague.

Kate jumped when the phone rang. For a moment, she stared at it, letting its shrill voice rise and ebb in the room. The cell vibrated across the surface of her desk until it reached her name plaque. She picked it up on the third ring, "Dr. Corrigan speaking."

"Kate," Hellboy somehow managed to sound tired and worried and relieved all in the same syllable.

"Where the hell have you been? I've been trying to get in touch with you for four days," Kate groused. "What's the point in having a satellite phone if you don't leave it on?"

Static crackled on Hellboy's end. Kate was beginning to think she'd lost the connection when Hellboy said, "Four days. I was gone for four days?"

Loss of time happened for a number of reasons, but none of them were good. Kate pulled the receiver closer to her mouth, her brow creasing, "Yes, HB. I saw you in England on Monday and it's Friday now."

"Shit. It doesn't matter right now, there's an Unseelie knight headed your way. Please tell me you have that bone locked up in the vault."

Kate's pale blue eyes flicked to the innocuous triangle of bone sitting on her desk, "No, but I'll get it there now. What can you tell me about the knight?"

As Hellboy briefed her on the details, she slammed her tome shut and grabbed the Fay bone. She ran to the door. Her fingers had only just landed on the knob when an alarm went off deep in the heart of the base. Within seconds, it spread to every room. The small red box near the roof started flashing and wailing, signaling a break in the bureau's security.

"Is that the perimeter alarm?" Hellboy asked urgently.

Kate rushed back to her desk and jerked the top-drawer open. The contents shifted violently, so she had to push aside a few sticky note pads to get to her pistol. She flicked the safety off.

"Kate?"

"It's the interior alarm. I think your knight is already here."

"Kate, you've got to get that bone down to-"

"I know what I have to do," Kate whispered as bugs poured underneath the door jam. She ducked behind her desk and leveled her gun on the edge with the barrel pointed at the door.

"I'll call Liz."

The swarm collected in the center of her room, forming a shape that was humanoid but unnaturally tall. The thrum of their wings was as loud as ocean surf.

Kate took a breath to steady herself, "She's in Wells with Abe… I have to go."

"Kate!"

She dropped the phone and started firing.

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TBC
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Living Stone	By : AceMaxwell Category: G through L > Hellboy Views: 4868 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Hellboy and I make no money off this fiction.

Living Stone