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The day Abraham Sapien officially joined the BPRD was not a good day.
It hadn't started out all that bad. Not except in the way where every day that had a BPRD staff meeting in it was starting out kind of bad.
Hellboy could put up with the suits when he had to. Father had explained to him a long time ago, when he was still a kid, how important it was—that if you wanted to do good things, to help people, you had to put up with a lot of bullshit.
Well, okay, Father hadn't said it like that. But that was what he'd meant, and Hellboy got it. In a way, he and the BPRD itself were a lot alike: normal stuff, stuff people could mostly get their heads around, was round, and he and the BPRD were so far past square they were goddamn pentagrams. Pentagrams drawn in goat's blood under a full moon, at that. And trying to fit a whole hell of a weird-ass peg into the nice round hole it was supposed to go in—sure, had to be frustrating. Really, it was no surprise that the higher-ups were always getting bent out of shape, always looking at Hellboy like he'd ruined their day and smelled bad besides.
Which was fine. Hellboy didn't mind people looking at him like that. He was used to it. He could sit through a meeting without kicking up a fuss about it.
But he'd be damned if he'd let anybody do it to Liz.
And this thing about starting up an annual round of agent evaluations was just the crap cherry on top of this particular shit sundae.
"—and some understandable concerns have been raised," the suit was saying, still giving Liz the stinkeye.
Liz wasn't looking back, but that was on purpose. Everything about the way she was sitting said as much, the crossed arms and the slouch and the pissed-off slant of her mouth. She usually liked staff meetings—they'd argued about it once, because Hellboy couldn't understand for the life of him why she wanted the BPRD to feel like a "normal job", whatever the hell that even meant.
But now this tool was ruining that for her. And it was going to get a lot more ruined if the blue flickers snaking up around Liz's elbows from her hands got any more noticeable.
"Is this about last week?" Hellboy demanded, loud, so the suit would look at him instead. "Because nobody proved that was Liz. And if that foodcart hadn't caught fire, it would have been a lot harder to get that swarm of frost mites to come out from underneath it—"
"And I have no doubt that the owner would have been very grateful," the suit said acidly, "if he'd had any idea that was what was happening. But as it is, the property damage was extensive, and I'm sure I don't need to remind you that the department's budget is not infinite—"
"Yeah, sure, unlike the department's supply of bullshit—"
And the suit was about to yell something back, and probably at about the same volume; it wasn't like Hellboy was the only one losing his temper. Except then Liz slammed a hand against the table and said, "Enough, Red." Which might have worked better if the varnish on the meeting-room tabletop hadn't been flammable.
So that was how it looked when Father opened the door: Liz sitting there sullen and flickering; Hellboy and the BPRD higher-up he'd promised to be polite to, on opposite sides of the table, halfway through gesturing angrily at each other, mouths open to shout; and the table almost done catching, merrily ablaze between them, blue-white, smoke just starting to rise from the corners.
Father blinked, adjusted his spectacles absently to settle them a little better on his nose, and said, "Our newest team member has arrived."
"Our newest—what?" Hellboy said.
Okay, so Father had mentioned something about it once or twice. Or maybe a few more times than that. And there might have been some official notices or something, whatever. Hellboy had probably been too busy saving lives to read them. Or too busy feeding kittens, but either way making sure he took note of every BPRD memo that ended up in his inbox wasn't exactly his highest priority.
All he knew was that Sapien didn't look like much. He was weird and pale under the department's fluorescents, faint fish-belly sheen everywhere, skinny except where he was bulbous—the weird gear strapped around his neck, the shine of wide inhuman eyes under those stupid goggles. And there was something about the way he stared, the tilt of his head, that was smug or—or knowing, somehow, in a way that made Hellboy's skin itch.
Needless to say, that sensation didn't ease up any when Father explained it wasn't just in his head.
"He can what," Hellboy said, really calmly, and took a giant step away from the fucking psychic mindreader somebody'd just brought into a room with him.
Father frowned at him. Just a little, and not angry but disappointed, because for Father disappointment was effective enough by itself. And then he opened his mouth—but it was Psychic Fishboy who spoke.
"Impressions," he said.
"Excuse me?"
Fishboy blinked. Except of course it wasn't blinking blinking, but a funny sideways flicker of some kind of—film, some weird wet inner eyelid. "I receive impressions. I can't actually read your mind, as such. I just—" He paused, and then gestured, unfurling one long narrow hand uncertainly. "Know things."
"Oh, okay," Hellboy said. "Now I feel a lot better."
Fishboy tilted his head even further. "No, you don't," he observed, and then, after another moment, "Oh, I see. That was a joke. Deliberate misstatement of known facts, emphasizing rather than concealing the untruthfulness of the content. Interesting."
This guy, jesus. Hellboy shot Father a disbelieving look, but Father wasn't looking back. He was looking at Sapien, and—smiling?
Hellboy felt something in his gut flip, slow and a little nauseating.
"The construction of the tank will be undertaken in phases," Father was saying to Sapien, "so it may seem a little small at first; but we do intend for it to open through the back wall there, into a larger environment that should be quite comfortable—"
He kept going, but Hellboy stopped listening, because the wall Father had pointed to was—wait, what was on the other side? Hellboy squinted at the ceiling and tried to place it in his head: this was the library, which meant that wall opened into—
"That's my room."
Father and Sapien both turned, blinking, owlish—Father and his glasses, Sapien and his goggles. They looked alike, Hellboy thought, even though Sapien was blue and all.
More alike than he and Father ever had.
"Oh—I thought I had mentioned it to you, a week or two ago," Father said mildly. "Yes, I'm afraid a part of your current suite will need to be converted in the process. Your rooms will be expanding in the other direction, my dear boy—you're always saying you need more space, and I thought this was the perfect opportunity for a bit of a renovation—"
"That's my room," Hellboy repeated, louder, because Father somehow didn't seem to be getting how much of a sticking point this was. And yeah, okay, maybe he'd griped about it now and then. Maybe the ceiling was a little low; maybe there was a certain persistent dampness along some of the back walls, that had a way of creeping into the stone hand if he napped in there without turning the heat up first. But it wasn't like getting Sapien's personal pool installed was going to help with that one—
"The insulation and sealant will be redone," Sapien said.
"What?"
"The insulation," Sapien repeated. "And the sealant. Around the tank, and every part of this facility adjacent to it. The dampness in your rooms is unlikely to persist, once it's completed."
Hellboy stared at him, and thought distantly that maybe this was how Liz felt, a spark catching her insides abruptly alight, right before she burst into flames. "Can't read minds, my giant red ass," he spat.
"We were talking about the walls," Sapien said, and for the first time he sounded a little uncertain. "And then I—knew. It would be an understandable concern—"
"I don't need you understanding me!" Hellboy shouted. He very carefully didn't slam his stone hand into the shelf next to him, because he knew how that would end; he'd done it before, and Father had made him clean up after, and that was about the last thing he needed right now. "I don't need you at all. We don't need you—Liz and I work together just fine, and we don't need anybody else. Understand?" And fuck, he hadn't even thought about that before, but—what if this was the suit? Trying to find somebody else to slot into Liz's place, because she was just too much trouble, a liability—
Hellboy shook the thought off before it could do more than make his gut twist up, and let himself take a step closer to Sapien, close enough to jab a finger into Sapien's cold fishy face.
"We don't need you," he bit out, "and we don't want you. You, or your mindreading, or your goddamn tank. You got that?"
And Sapien—Sapien didn't even flinch, which was annoying all by itself. He just stood there, looking at Hellboy with those wide sloping eyes. "You'd know better than I would," he said after a minute, quietly.
"You're damn right I—wait, what?" Had Sapien just sort of agreed with him? Or—
Sapien didn't answer or repeat himself or anything. He just blinked at Hellboy again, and then reached up to adjust his goggles a little. And then, before anybody could do or say anything else, the library phone rang.
Father cleared his throat and reached for it and said, "Yes?" He frowned a little, glanced at Hellboy and then at Sapien, and then said, "Yes, they're right here. Yes, I'm listening—do go on," into the phone.
"A case," Sapien said, and Hellboy was about to ask him what the fuck he knew about it and then remembered all over again that he might the fuck know plenty about it, with how close he was standing to Father and the phone, how little it seemed to take to give him one of his impressions.
"All right," Father said, still into the phone. "I'll send them along for debriefing shortly." And then he hung up, and looked at Hellboy in a steady measuring way. "A drowning, very unusual; the third this month. The BPRD has been asked to take a look."
Hellboy squeezed his eyes shut and sighed. "And you want us to take him."
"Well," Father said blandly, "it does seem a little silly not to, doesn't it? On this particular investigation, I imagine Abraham here will prove exceptionally useful."
"Yeah," Hellboy muttered. "Right."
Father touched his elbow; and Hellboy opened his eyes again, helpless, because he knew Father would want him to and he couldn't do any less for Father. "This arrangement doesn't have to be permanent, my son," Father said gently. "If Abraham doesn't work well with you and Miss Sherman, I have no doubt the BPRD will find another position that suits him. But in this particular instance, I think it would be unwise to refuse his assistance."
"But if Liz—"
"Agent Rezendez was good enough to inform me that it has already been decided that Abraham should have the opportunity to work in the field, and that this case represents a uniquely promising opportunity for—a good swimmer," Father said, diplomatic. "And Miss Sherman has already agreed."
Hellboy looked at him, and then at Sapien—who was just standing there, listening, expressionless, like none of this mattered to him at all; like whatever he was getting his impressions of right now, it wasn't the fierce unhappiness clawing at Hellboy's chest from the inside out. Hellboy clenched his fists, listened to the comforting grind of the stone one, and then blew out a breath. "Fine," he made himself say, because—because hell, he didn't have to like Sapien to admit that he might be good to have around if they were looking at drownings. One case, that was all. One case and then Hellboy could tell Father it just hadn't worked out, and Sapien could go work in some other building and read somebody else's mind, and Hellboy would never have to think about him again.
Yeah. Sure.
When Father had said "drowning", Hellboy had thought of a few things—lakes, rivers; a reservoir, or maybe sewers if they were really, really unlucky.
But the debriefing started right off with a totally different angle.
"The ocean?"
"Sort of," Rezendez allowed, before clarifying, "Long Island Sound."
They each got a copy of the file. Hellboy waited impatiently for his and then tuned out Rezendez and flipped it open. He skipped over most of the pictures; they were never as good as getting to look around the scene for real. Stuff like this left traces, in Hellboy's experience—a certain heaviness to the air, a weird unsettled feeling—and those traces said a lot more than anything you could capture in a photo.
He did spare some glances for the pictures of the actual bodies, just in case there was something useful in them. Tentacle sucker marks would sure narrow down the list of critters they might end up needing to kill to take care of this.
But he couldn't pick out anything. Not even vaguer bruising, signs of struggle, defensive wounds. Hellboy frowned down at the folder.
"You sure they didn't just drown?" he said.
When he looked up, Rezendez was giving him kind of a flat look, and—oh, Rezendez had probably still been talking, until Hellboy interrupted. Oops.
"Nobody saw anything," Rezendez said after a second, grudging, "but witnesses within earshot heard screaming. No words; not 'help' or 'I'm drowning', nothing like that. Just—screaming."
And yeah, there it was: that weird unsettled feeling, little hairs trying hard to rise along the back of Hellboy's neck.
"Yep," he said, "that sounds like our kind of gig. So what are we waiting for? Let's get this party started."
The beaches where the drownings had happened were all pretty out of the way—not the kinds of places that had lifeguards on duty. That was why there hadn't been anybody around who saw anything, after all. Which was bad news in terms of the lack of witness statements, but good news for Hellboy: they didn't have to take the big trash truck as a disguise. The department's unmarked vans were good enough.
And it was a perfect day for it, too: gray and blustery, chilly, threat of rain. Nobody'd be out here who didn't have to be.
They'd brought a few extra BPRD agents along besides the team's usual handlers, to take photos and document everything—the higher-ups were always looking for more data, something to bag and tag and slap a label on. Anything to make it easier for them to get their heads around this supernatural shit, make that pentagram of a peg look just a little rounder.
But Hellboy wasn't here because he was good at forensics. He stood off to one side and ran through the list he had in his head, everything he could think of that might hang out somewhere like this.
"So what are we thinking?" he said out loud, eyeing the dark water. Damn, that looked cold. Who'd go in there if they had a choice? Which, the drowning victims hadn't, so. That actually made sense. "Kappa?"
Liz made a face. "Maybe."
"Aw, c'mon. What?"
"They trick people," Liz said, "lure them—and then grab them. If it had been a kappa, there'd be bruises."
Hellboy sighed a little through his nose, just to let her know she'd gotten him and he knew it. And yeah, booyah, the corner of her mouth totally twitched. He sucked at this whole crime scene thing. He was way better at their emergency calls, the ones where he just needed to charge in and hit something until it died.
But Liz liked reading files, solving cases. That normal job thing again, maybe: made her feel more like a cop and less like a freak. And she was getting pretty good at it, too.
"Kelpie, then," he suggested.
"It's possible," Liz allowed, but she didn't sound certain. She was looking out at the water, too, arms wrapped tightly around herself—and there was no way she was cold, it was Liz, but she sure looked it. It was something about the waves, Hellboy thought, the way they moved; the dull reflection of sky on the surface of them, ruffled and blurred by the wind; and knowing that it was the ocean, that past the relative shallows of the sound it just kept going, down and down and down, dim endless water—
"Hmm," said Sapien, and Hellboy twitched. He hadn't realized Sapien was standing that close to them.
"You got something to add?" Hellboy forced himself to say, in a totally reasonable tone of voice.
Sapien cocked his head and blinked one of those quick wet blinks, and then said, "Agent Sherman is correct. The evidence doesn't point to either of the options you suggest. Not—conclusively."
"Right," Hellboy said, and definitely didn't grind his teeth. "And how about your impressions? Those conclusive?"
"Rarely," Sapien murmured after a moment, infuriatingly calm. And then he knelt down, one sudden fluid motion, and fanned those narrow blue fingers wide, and lowered his hand to the sand.
He stayed like that for a long minute, so still it was like he'd turned to stone—and there were plenty of things that could do that, so it wasn't an unreasonable possibility to worry about.
And then he said softly, "They were afraid."
"What? The people who drowned? Well, sure, they were drowning—"
"No," Sapien said, his voice still strange and quiet. "Their cries were audible from a distance. They were screaming before the water covered them."
And there was something weird about the way Sapien had said that—before the water covered them, as if the ocean had just risen up and killed them all on its own. But the thought only just had time to register, because Sapien was still talking.
"There was no escape," he was murmuring, and his gaze had gone strange and faraway. "There was no way out. It had them, it had them and it would not let go. They could not turn back. But they could still scream—"
"Hey," Liz said carefully, and Hellboy shook himself; damn, what was wrong with him? He felt weird, slow—he was closer to Sapien than Liz was, but she got to Sapien first, ducking down and reaching for Sapien's wrist, and he just stood there and watched himself watch her do it. "Hey, Abe," she repeated, and touched the back of Sapien's hand, and Sapien blinked twice, quick, and came back from wherever he'd gone.
"Thank you," he said gravely, and stood up again. He looked fine, almost—same bland expression on that fishy face as always, same steady look in those big sloping eyes—except for how hard he swallowed, and the way he was curling and uncurling his fingers. Like he wanted to wipe his hand clean, except what was lingering on it wasn't something that wiped off.
"Well, that sure cleared things up," Hellboy heard himself say, and then grimaced. Liz gave him a dirty look, and he didn't argue, because he'd earned it. There was not liking Sapien, and then there was being a jerk when the guy had clearly just had a rough couple of minutes.
But Sapien didn't say as much. He didn't even glare. He looked at Hellboy calmly for a second, and then he said, mild, "Perhaps if I took a closer look."
Half a dozen flowing steps and he was in the water—and then he dived and was gone.
Because, of course, he didn't need equipment; he didn't need anything.
"Yeah, okay," Hellboy told the ocean loudly, "fine, you might useful. Sometimes."
The ocean didn't answer. But Hellboy thought its silence came off as a little smug.
It was maybe half an hour before Sapien came back up. Plenty of time for the rest of the agents swarming the beach to take all the readings they needed and then some.
Hellboy almost felt bad about the zing of petty satisfaction it gave him when Sapien broke the surface, calm and empty-handed—because if he'd found whatever critter this was, he'd probably have been a little more urgent about it, and if he'd found something else useful, surely he'd have brought it up for them to check out.
But Liz said, "Got anything?" anyway, and Sapien eeled up out of the water and tilted his head.
"Possibly," he said. "I can't say for certain what it was, but it left—traces. I could feel the place where it had been."
Like they didn't already know where it had been, Hellboy thought sourly. What with the whole "trail of drowned corpses" thing.
But when they got back to the department building, Father seemed pleased. Apparently the geeks upstairs had run some kind of analysis, dug up a screwup with one body's time of death that put all three a lot closer together. A pattern meant predictability—and maybe also meant that if they just got Sapien back into the water a little before somebody else was due to drown, he could probably point them in the right direction.
"Great," Hellboy said. "Fantastic. Congratulations to Sapien," and then he went off to check his kit and give the Samaritan a really, really thorough cleaning.
It was soothing, going over it all and ticking boxes: holy water, etched crosses, iron, silver, salt. Hellboy checked the contents of each shell, one at a time, and idly turned over the idea of making a few more additions. It was a pretty good spread, but there were some things out there that were only hurt by wood. Oak, maybe. Seasoned. That kind of thing tended to make a difference.
He was about halfway through when he realized Liz was there—had come in, at some point, and he hadn't even noticed. He just blinked and looked up, and she was leaning against the wall by the library door, arms crossed.
And then she smiled at him, warm little curve of her mouth, and he swallowed and did his best to ignore the helpless thump of his heart.
"Hey, Red," she said quietly.
He looked away, flipped a shell twice in his hand and then packed it neatly away again. "Hey, Liz."
She was quiet for a moment. But that didn't mean she was done, Hellboy thought; and yeah, after one long beat, she said, "You really don't like him?"
"He's—fine," Hellboy said grudgingly, because—
Because, hell, he was. He hadn't been rude, hadn't been snide, no matter how many excuses Hellboy had given him. He was quiet, attentive, patient; and maybe his impressions were going to turn out to be no use after all, with this case, but they didn't know for sure one way or the other. Not yet.
"Oh, Red," Liz said, and Hellboy stared down at the Good Samaritan and listened to the sound of her footsteps crossing the room, felt the near-tropical warmth of her settling next to him, and didn't look up.
"What? He's fine. It's—fine."
"He's not that bad," Liz said, as if Hellboy hadn't spoken at all. "He does understand, you know—what's bothering you." She hesitated for a second, and then added, "He has to, really. He can't stop."
As if that wasn't the worst part of the whole thing. Hellboy hated talking about his feelings, which was why he mostly didn't do it. He hated even thinking about them. But he did it anyway, sometimes. For Father, and for Liz. He made the effort, and they knew him well enough to see it for what it was, and that made it mean something.
But Sapien—Sapien just had it all right there, laid out in front of him. Hellboy couldn't choose whether or not to give it to him, couldn't decide to tell him things and have it matter. And that freaked him out all on its own, sure, but it was like it made everything else mean less, too. Everything he wanted to tell Liz, or Father—every grinding scraping effort he made to open himself up for them—and now it felt like none of that even counted for anything, when Sapien knew it all first anyway.
"He can't stop," Liz said again, and put her hand over the back of Hellboy's where it was resting on the Samaritan. He felt the prickle of heat, sparks catching, a second before the flame was visible—blue, like always, curling up between Liz's fingers and then dipping curiously down, licking gently around Hellboy's knuckles. "It's like the fire, Red. He can't help it."
And of course she had to say it like that. Because Hellboy had no patience for people who acted like the fire was a problem, like there was anything wrong with Liz because of it. And yeah, all right, maybe there was sort of a parallel. Liz had been easy for him, because she was Liz; but it hadn't hurt that he was fireproof. Sapien, though—Sapien could fuck him up, and there wasn't anything he could do about it. And that was a hell of a lot scarier.
"Just give him a chance," Liz added. She curled her hand around Hellboy's a little tighter for a second, flames jumping higher; and then she stood, pausing partway up to brush a kiss against his cheek, and left.
He sat and stared at his hand for a while, thinking about fire. About all the different ways people could destroy each other, and how it felt when people acted like just because you could fuck them up, you would. And then he picked up another shell and peered down into it, and tried not to think about anything at all.
It didn't exactly surprise him when Sapien showed up like half an hour later. Maybe it was just coincidence, sure. Or maybe Liz had gone and talked to Sapien, too.
Either way, Hellboy was paying attention this time: he heard Sapien coming, and he knew the minute Sapien stepped into the library.
He didn't say anything about Hellboy's choice of location. Then again, he'd probably gotten an impression already, how Hellboy hated being interrupted and how many other agents were always going in and out of the armory; how much he enjoyed watching the kittens play with Samaritan's shells in his room, at least until he couldn't find half of them when he needed them because they'd been rolled away somewhere under the furniture—
"They really are very vague," Sapien said.
Hellboy raised an eyebrow at him.
"The impressions, I mean—"
"Yeah, I know what you meant," Hellboy muttered.
"Unless I touch things," Sapien added, and then pointedly clasped his hands behind his back.
Hellboy found himself a half-second from smiling. That had sounded almost sharp, coming from Sapien, who'd been so calm and polite the rest of the time. A little like the way he'd looked on the beach, just for a second, after he'd said Perhaps if I took a closer look so blandly.
Maybe they were going to be friends after all.
"May I ask what you're doing?"
"Sure—'s important to check your equipment before tracking down murdering supernatural creatures of the night," Hellboy explained, idly sighting along the Samaritan's barrel. Not that anything was likely to be out of whack, but the reassurance was nice. "Doesn't do much good to do it afterward."
Sapien eyed the shells, the grab-bag of stuff inside the breakable casing. "But how can you be sure which equipment is necessary? We don't even know what sort of creature we're dealing with."
"Nope," Hellboy agreed, placid. "But we don't wait and see around here. We do that, more people die. So we don't do that."
Sapien was quiet for a moment, digesting that. And then he said, "Then—what do we do?"
"We wing it," Hellboy said, and threw a shell at Sapien, who brought his hands out from behind his back at last to catch it, reflexive. Maybe—maybe touching it would help him see. Give him an impression, all the things they'd already found ways to stop, research or strength or sheer dumb luck, even when they were outnumbered and outgunned, even when there were always more things waiting in the shadows.
And something about the way Sapien looked right then, Samaritan shell suspended between those narrow graceful fingers, wide eyes and uncertain stare and that goofy way he cocked his head—
Something made it abruptly easy for Hellboy to clear his throat and say, "Look. Look, Sapien—uh, Abraham. Before, when I was yelling at you. I didn't mean it, about the tank."
"About the tank," Sapien repeated carefully, blinking.
"Yeah. You should—a guy should get to have a really big water tank, if he wants one. Plenty of room. It's not a problem." Hellboy coughed again, and looked away. "And the other stuff, too, it was—I was just pissed off. Sorry."
Sapien didn't say anything. For so long Hellboy almost thought he might have left—but he looked up to check and Sapien was still there, looking back at him, mouth quirked the barest degree at one corner.
"Yes," he said. "I know."
Hellboy made a face at him. "Then why the hell'd you make me—"
"I wanted to be sure you knew it, too," Sapien said coolly, and then, thoughtful, "And it was nice to hear it get said."
Hellboy thought about that for a second: all the stuff Sapien knew without it getting said, and whether maybe people who were around him a lot stopped bothering—just assumed he'd pick things up and left it at that. "Yeah, well," he said aloud. "Don't make a big thing out of it."
"I wouldn't dream of it," Sapien said, grave, and then paused. "Though I'm not entirely sure I do dream, in any case."
"Wow, you really are a freak," Hellboy told him, shaking his head. "Now give me that shell back," and when Sapien did it, reaching out to set the casing in Hellboy's palm, he made sure he didn't so much as twitch away from the brush of Sapien's fingertips.
They were called back together in the morning—apparently the geeks doing analysis had turned up two other batches of drownings following a similar pattern.
"Eighty-eight years ago," Agent Rezendez explained, "and possibly also a hundred and forty-nine years ago. We're not entirely sure why, though it might have to do with an unusual celestial alignment—" and that was about where Hellboy stopped listening. He propped himself up against the table and let his mind wander, with one ear still on Rezendez in case he shut up about stars and said, This is how you kill it.
Which didn't quite happen. But apparently comparing the previous incidents with the three deaths they were already looking at had narrowed down the potential locations for the next drowning. So at least Hellboy wasn't going to have to spend all day in the van, driving back and forth along the edge of the sound, with Sapien getting out to grope the sand every now and then. They had an actual critical area to focus on.
A perimeter was set up a good mile out, and civilians cleared from the vicinity—which was important, this time around, because it was a much nicer day out.
Or at least it seemed like it was, right up until Hellboy stepped in the water.
He didn't exactly mean to. Sapien was doing his thing, hand outstretched just over the surface of the water, head angled like he was listening for something. Liz was watching him, mouth pinched flat—worried, Hellboy thought, after how Sapien had reacted to the impressions of the drownings the other day.
And Hellboy was standing there, idly hefting the Samaritan's comforting weight, trying to remember how many cans of cat food he had left and decide whether to send Rezendez out to do a little shopping. He looked out across the water, squinting, and it occurred to him—briefly, an impression skimming his actual thoughts without even really turning into words—that the sky looked different: dull, flat and clouded over. But it had been clear on the drive. Huh.
And then Liz said sharply, "Red. Red, what are you doing?" and Hellboy looked down and realized he was up to his knees in the water.
He sucked in a breath, startled by the sudden awareness that he was—he was wet, the water had filled his boots already. Wet and powerfully goddamn cold, and he didn't want to be standing in the ocean, so why the fuck was he?
But he stared down at his own feet, bulky black outline of his boots wavering through the water, and they didn't turn around. They didn't turn around and walk him back out of the sound like he wanted them to.
He looked out across the water in front of him, and suddenly he knew why. And fuck, this must have been it, exactly what those other three poor bastards had felt—because there was something down there. Something was wrong with the bay, with the whole bank of the sound: the waves were gray, flinty, and beyond that darker still—black, the brief calm spaces in between them gleaming like obsidian, and he needed to go down there.
He needed to. It was—he couldn't stop being perfectly well aware that the sea was up to his waist now, that if he kept going he'd drown too, but he couldn't stop. The contradiction of it was beyond words, impossible to get his head around. And this, he thought dimly, was why they'd all just screamed themselves hoarse: because they couldn't have cried for help, they hadn't wanted help, but at the same time they'd known perfectly well, clear cold horror, that they were going to die.
"Red, what the hell," Liz was saying, behind him, and Hellboy almost started yelling himself except he heard Sapien move.
"Don't, Liz," Sapien said, and yes, yes, he was the best—he was Hellboy's favorite person in the world, at least for the next ten minutes until Hellboy drowned himself like a lemming.
"What—"
"Look at the water," Sapien said, low and urgent.
And Hellboy'd already been looking, but now he could see it, too. All the blackness, it was—it wasn't the water. It was something in the water, moving, a slow cold shadow, and behind it there was another, another. And below them—
Below them, there was something else. And Hellboy couldn't quite tell what it was just yet, but if he didn't figure out how to back himself the hell out of the water, he was going to.
One of those black shadows snaked past Hellboy's elbow, and he shuddered hard—not because he was scared, just pure reaction to the temperature, because whatever that thing was, it was making the water around it fucking frigid. The sound of a splash behind him made his gut clench up, and he couldn't even turn his goddamn head to look, all of him still seized by motion that wasn't his own.
But then Liz said loudly, "Yeah, right," and there was a sizzle, a rush of blistering air. Some kind of sound that wasn't a sound, or—no, wait, Hellboy was feeling it. That was what was weird about it: it was coming through the water. Shadow-thing didn't like Liz, and it really didn't like the way she was making the sea boil.
You got this, Hellboy wanted to say. But it wouldn't come out; he was clenching his jaw way too tightly already, trying not to yell his way down like everybody else. The water was up to his shoulder, now. Another helpless step, and he went down a little shelf in the bank and all at once it was up to his chin.
"Red!" he heard Liz shout, and then "Abe, Abe, quick—" and then he took another step and his ears went under, and he could barely hear anything at all.
He wasn't even that far down yet, but he looked up and the surface seemed impossibly far, dim swirling light somewhere over him. He had the vague suspicion that this wasn't really Long Island Sound anymore; sand stretched out in front of him a little further, but then abruptly gave way to weird black stone, gleaming and perfectly flat, and at the edges of his vision, there was a strange rippling effect.
He remembered, dimly, what Rezendez had said—something about celestial alignments. A portal, then, or a fissure. Opened every now and then, just long enough to make a gateway to whatever the fuck this was.
Because he could see it better, from here. Up top, looking down, it had just been sort of a vague dark shape, something clearly larger and deeper in the water than the shadow-things, but that was about it. And now—
Now, he could see how the black stone led away from him, a causeway, sharp dropoffs to either side, and ran straight up to the base of what he could only guess was some kind of temple.
A temple of fuckin' nightmares, to be specific. Everything about it made his skin want to crawl off him—the forbidding angles of it, nothing that was any kind of sane real-world geometry, the misshapen black spires stretching up through the water. It glinted here and there in a way that should have made it look polished; but all Hellboy could think of was bone, wet and shuddering, jutting out where it shouldn't. There was a light somewhere inside, shining through the temple doorway, dim and silvery-white. The only light, he thought distantly. Down here, in the cold dark water, the shadowy silence: the only light in the whole fucking world was there ahead of him.
And that was the thing that was pulling on him. He couldn't stop staring at it. Everything was frigid and still and dark, except for that single shining light, and he had to go to it.
He had to go to it, except there was no way he was going to get that far. He could tell he was running out of air, feel his lungs constricting in his chest right before a whole cloud of bubbles wheezed out through his nose—and shit, shit, there wasn't anything to replace it, he was going to give in and open his mouth and breathe in nothing but seawater, he was never going to get to that light—
Something was happening behind him. He wished like hell he could just fucking turn around and see what it was, but he couldn't. Some kind of disturbance; and then the water roiled around him, and everything briefly shone blue.
Because the temple wasn't the only light, Hellboy thought distantly. Because something was blazing bright, somewhere up behind him.
Liz.
For a split second, he was getting pulled in two different directions. Whatever part of his head the shadow-things had their hooks in, that part was horrified, disgusted. To disturb the cold black depths, the perfect stillness of the temple's deep old shadows—it was unspeakable, incomprehensible. The water was shivering around him with their cries, the force of their rage and fear.
But the rest of him wanted to punch the air and shout, because good fucking going, Liz! Boil the whole goddamn sea away; leave 'em flopping on the sand like beached fish.
And that broke it open, somehow. He was himself again. He blinked for a second in surprise, and then kicked and pushed and turned himself in the water, still clutching the Samaritan; and he might be able to swim better if he let it go, but—
But, hell, what was the point? His vision was already getting dim around the edges, a little sparkly, and he didn't think that was the edge of the rift he was seeing anymore. His boots, his coat—the stone hand. He wasn't going to be able to get all the way back up there with the air he had left.
After everything else that should have killed him—what a stupid way to die, he had time to think. And then the water swirled again, somewhere not too far away, and hands, forearms, linked up around Hellboy's chest and pulled. Blue, and narrow, and weirdly graceful—Abe.
Hellboy squeezed his eyes shut, clutched the Samaritan, and put every ounce of concentration he had left into not fucking opening his mouth. His lungs were burning, his whole chest knotted up tight with the effort of keeping himself from sucking down seawater. How far down were they? He knew he was heavy, and Abe was basically a stick—but the water had to be helping, lessening the weight. Just one more second, he told himself, just don't breathe in for one more second; and then all at once they broke the surface with a splash, and he could hear again! There was air! He hadn't even dropped the Samaritan.
"Abe! Abe—oh, god, is he okay?"
"I'm fine," Hellboy shouted, glorying in the fact that he could shout; and then he coughed a bunch, which was pretty goddamn glorious too. "I'm fine—aw, geez, my boot," because Abe had pulled him up so fast one of them had popped right off. Always a pain in the ass, getting new ones in the right size.
His other boot hit sand a second later, and then Abe let go—and it was like a hot tub up here, the water still seething with heat in a ragged arc around where Liz had been burning. Hellboy sloshed a few ungainly steps with his one sock foot, making a face, and Liz laughed unsteadily and then, with a flicker of blue, went out.
"You're really okay?" she said.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," Hellboy said, and squeezed her hand carefully when she held it out. "It's all good." He cast a glance over his shoulder at the water—which was cloudy, all stirred up, but the right color again; none of that blackness, that deep shadow. "I don't think they liked your little fireworks display much."
"Good," Liz said, and squeezed back hard.
Abe cleared his throat. "I think it would be best to make sure," he said, and Hellboy turned to see him making as though to dive again and grabbed his wrist before he could.
"Whoa, hey, wait—you sure you want to go back down there?"
Abe blinked sideways at him. "They seemed unable to compel me," he said, and then his tone turned thoughtful. "It's possible that my—abilities make it more difficult. Or that they assume any fellow sea creature is already one of their number. Hard to say."
"Well, okay," Hellboy said, and then couldn't stop himself from blurting, "Be careful. And—thanks, Abe."
Abe looked at him, and then at his hand—which was still wrapped around Abe's wrist, and—oh, right. He had to know what Hellboy was feeling already.
But it had to be nice to hear it get said.
"Of course," Abe said quietly, smiling just a little, and then he turned and dove back down into the water, with only the barest splash to show where he'd been.
After a thorough swim, Abe was able to confirm that the rift or fissure or whatever it was had closed itself up again, with everything that was supposed to be on the other side on the other side. Maybe the shadows had done it, wanting to get the hell away from Liz as fast as they could. Or maybe it was only ever open long enough to drag one person down, and it would be opening again tomorrow.
The BPRD didn't like to leave these things to chance, either way. Eighty-eight years ago there had been a dozen drownings, not three. So they'd be monitoring the shoreline until they knew for sure whether it was going to come back.
Hellboy nodded along to all this, idly admiring the gleam of the brand-new and distinctly uninflammable plexiglass briefing room table. He let himself wander off into thinking about the Samaritan—which was probably okay, it had been designed to handle salt water in case the shells cracked, but it was still going to need one hell of a cleaning.
And then somebody said, "—and there's been a request that Agent Sapien be made available to the Artifact Recovery Division."
Hellboy straightened up in his chair, which made it creak a little in protest. "Temporarily," he said.
Everybody looked at him. Rezendez sighed through his nose and said, "Well, that depends on Agent Sapien. If Artifact Recovery seems like a good fit, then perhaps—"
"That what you want?" Hellboy said, looking at Abe.
"If Artifact Recovery feels my skills will be of use," Abe said after a moment, "then I am, of course, happy to assist."
"Yeah?"
"Certainly," Abe said, and then flicked those big dark eyes from Hellboy to Liz and back again. "But I—doubt I'll be inclined to make such an arrangement permanent."
"There you go," Hellboy said grandly, and gave Rezendez a nice wide shit-eating grin. "Temporarily. But he's coming right back afterward, because he's on my team now. Got that?"
And Abe sat there blinking his sideways blinks, and then smiled just a little. "Unless, of course, Artifact Recovery is willing to make room for a larger tank."
"Hey!"