Disclaimer: Nobody you recognize is mine... I'm just taking them down off the toy shelf. No money is being exchanged, as I'm not smart enough to charge for this.

Notes: I'm not exactly happy with this chapter. It jumps around, lacking my usual flow. So, if anything gets rewritten or added to, this will be it. But in the interest of 'getting on with it', I'm posting it, and forging ahead in getting to my damn point already. Thanks for your patience and reviews. If you do review, please be brutally honest. I have a thick skin, and think much about what I'm writing. What you say helps me to get better, and I appreciate that.


Chapter 4

Mark spent a week in bed, and was grateful for the reprieve from having to constantly duck and run from his vengeful brother. So far he'd been taking off to random places, and trying his best to not have any particular destination in mind. That made it a little more difficult for Paul to pinpoint his location. He'd been back and forth across the southern states so far, and knew that leaving the country was useless. He'd tried to vanish into Copper Canyon in Mexico, and all it had done was taken them a little longer to catch up with him... In fact, it was after that incident that he'd gone back to Texas to visit his parents' graves... which in turn, had gotten him laid up in Jersey. Still being in Jersey at least gave him the time it would take for Paul and Glen to travel here.

He'd called Jacqueline a few times, but had only gotten to speak to her once. She knew that he was alive, and receiving medical treatment for injuries, but that was about it. He was somewhat paranoid about Paul finding out about her, and going to New Orleans to flush him out. So he'd kept the talk sweet and the details short. He was just happy to hear her voice and know that there was someone in this world that actually gave a shit whether he lived or died.

Mark knew full well that Jacqueline and her family could defend themselves rather easily against Paul's power, and Glen's too when he thought about it. But Mark, after all he'd been through still had a chivalrous streak in him, and would not stand by if they tried to do anything to them. Besides, they would most likely end up having to hurt Glen, and Mark didn't want that either.

He wondered how long it would be before Paul and Glen caught up to him again. The lag time between skirmishes was getting shorter and shorter... At least when he'd been crisscrossing the south west, it had been less populated, so there were less change of incidental casualties. Now that he was here, the body count would most likely climb. Because Mark knew that while his brother could control fire, he suspected that he also liked to start them as well. They would start as soon as they arrived. Paul might trigger Glen to burn down all of Manhattan when the got to this area, simply if he felt like it.

The only time he'd encountered raw power like Glen had, was perhaps in himself. But Mark knew that he could control himself... It was the untapped and possibly uncontrolled power in Glen that gave him pause. He hadn't started to fight Glen right off because he hadn't known the depth of power he had, and really still didn't. Mark was not the sort to get into a fight that he didn't know if he could win. He relied on being more knowledgeable than his opponent to help him focus his energies on the attack... And if Glen had any powers similar to his own, Mark knew that they would most likely be quite unrefined and unpredictable. It took him years to even start to put things together, and he knew that he still had much to learn.

Though with his parents' "no", that eliminated the use of force in dealing with Glen. While he didn't like the answer he'd gotten, he would try his best to respect their wishes. If only because they were right. If Glen's mind wasn't his own, then he was not responsible for his actions and did not deserve Mark's rebuke...

... But from the looks of it, Paul sure as hell did... The fat man was going to pay for what he'd done to Mark and now to Glen, and in the course of that, Mark was going to get his little brother back. Then with the two of them united, no would dare try to take advantage of them again. Mark would take Glen and go back to New Orleans and move in with his Jacqueline, and maybe start that family she'd mentioned wanting 'someday' if she was willing. They could make a decent living on their type of 'solutions', especially in a place like New Orleans. He smiled at the thought.

"What are you grinning about?" Hellboy asked as he walked into the room carrying a set of saddlebags for a motorcycle. Another man followed Hellboy, though Mark wasn't quite sure if was a man at all upon first glance. He had gray-green skin and absolutely no hair. His appearance made more bizarre by the fact that he was carrying the backpack Mark had been using for his clothes on his travels, and his boots. Then Mark picked up on his thought pattern as sentient and intelligent. Very intelligent to be precise, and Mark could see a soul behind the man's large, luminous eyes.

"The smirk is for the return of my 'necessaire'... And jeans that fit." Mark said and eyed the back pack. Hellboy and the other man chuckled.

"Mark Callaway, this is Abraham Sapien. Abe, same thing, names reversed. Abe here is another agent with the Bureau, but he was on assignment this week. On his way back, he picked up your stuff."

"Nice to meet you." Mark said, sitting up slowly and offering his hand for Abe to shake. "And thanks for the special delivery."

"Not a problem Mr. Callaway. Though it was interesting to arrange transport for that impressive motorcycle of yours." Abe said and shook his hand. He was surprised. Usually people were more put off by his appearance than Hellboy's. Hellboy looked the part of a demon, but quite often Abe assumed people saw it as a more familiar shape then his own.

"Call me Mark." The man on the bed said and broke of the brisk, hearty handshake.

"Then please call me Abe."

"Sure... Yeah the bike... That was my third priority after getting out of my life as an indentured servant and power generator." Mark said, still smirking.

"Yeah, we took a look at it... Bet she goes too." Hellboy said.

"Damn right" Mark agreed with a nod. Abe had set the backpack on the bed to shake Mark's hand and Mark was immediately into it. He removed the pale blue hospital gown, pulled on a black t-shirt, swung his legs over the side of the bed and found a pair of blue jeans that had seen better days and put them on. Socks and the boots were next and then he pulled a brush through his hair and tied it back. A bandanna and a set of sunglasses perched on his forehead later and he was feeling a lot more in control of his life. He knew his face probably still looked like it had been through a meat grinder, but at least he felt better.

"You wanna get some lunch with me and Abe, and then we'll get you set up in a proper room?" Hellboy asked.

"Uh, sure. Sounds great." Mark replied as he stood up and put the backpack over his shoulder. He didn't wince, even though it hurt. He still had too much pride to let other guys carry his stuff for him. He picked up the saddle bags and considered that it was a bit sad that all he had to show for all his power was three changes of clothes and saddlebags full of charms, small portable spell books, candles, and both a jack knife and large ceremonial knife... But he was also proud on another level that this was all he needed. That and the big wad of cash that was in the leather jacked at the bottom of the right saddlebag... That helped a lot too.

"So, you never did tell me what you were investigating in Texas." Mark said. He, Hellboy, and Abe were seated at a table in a common area, with plates of food filled to various capacities. Hellboy's being the most heaping of course.

"Goatman" Hellboy said and Mark rolled his eyes with a knowing look on his face. "You know about them?" Hellboy asked.

"Sometimes I think the South West is fucking lousy with them. I mean, hiding in the bushes and beating off watching teenagers make out? Creepy enough... However the whole 'killing aforementioned teens with a big fucking ax', that's a little extreme even for me. The fewer of them, the better I say.

"Agreed" Hellboy replied. "Do you know anything about their origin? Last I heard was a theory about an individual one who was a scientist and became his own experiment gone wrong."

"From what little I know, they are in fact a race of their own, but with mystical origins as I heard it. Though how they breed is a mystery to me. I heard stories of old timers and cowboys gone crazy with lust and loneliness... Kind of like a Wendigo. It overtakes them and they become physically what they are mentally... Actually there was a rumour flying around that La Llorona had found herself a goatman and started a new family. But I don't know anything more about it... Don't ask me how those chromosomes even start to match up."

"A new family? La Llorona? Be serious." Hellboy said.

"Hey, that's what I heard... I hear a lot of weird shit though." Mark said.

"Really, it wouldn't be the strangest coupling we've heard of." Abe mused. It was Hellboy's turn to roll his eyes and then focused his attention back on his plate. Mark had to chuckle at this situation, truly amused by the moment.

Mark spent the next few days sleeping, speaking with Professor Bruttenholm, and hanging out with Hellboy, who was some downtime at the moment. He would admit that he was getting to like "Red". He hadn't had a real friend since his home burned down all those years ago, and Hellboy had a real world practicality mixed in with a somewhat stunted sense of social decorum from lack of exposure to the 'real' world. Mark understood that immediately.

He was also taking a liking to Bruttenholm and his gentle nature, as everyone else around here seemed to. Mark answered a lot of his questions, wrote down a lot of spells, lists of 'ingredients', and descriptions of arcane rituals. Bruttenholm noticed immediately that Mark had a studiousness about him that Hellboy, while extremely intelligent, never had. And it was all the tip of the iceberg.

"I do have to admit that I've wondered why you are sharing all of this with us." Bruttenholm asked him when they were finishing up for the evening.

"Because first of all, it takes a certain amount of power to do much what I've described to you. Unless you've already got it in you to do this stuff, you simply won't be able. And second of all, it's really the ultimate thing I can do to enrage Paul... If what he does isn't so secret anymore, then people won't fear him like he wants. Others can discover their own latent power, and the market for what he does will open up... Essentially sir, I'm destroying his private monopoly by making a free market. Those who need services that only people like me can offer will still come to me. Paul's middleman gig will fade into obsolescence. So really, you're helping me as much as I'm helping you." Mark said, and then smirked. Bruttenholm nodded and returned the expression. The exited the office and headed for a late dinner.

Mark was watching the news in Hellboy's room two days after his dinner with Bruttenholm, and almost feeling normal again, when he spotted what he was looking for. "A mysterious fire ripped through the Bronx today, decimating most of an entire block of row houses and apartment buildings. Hundreds have been left homeless..."

"Shit, that's it" Mark said and got to his feet.

"What's it?" Hellboy asked.

"Paul and Glen are on their way here, and are trying to get my attention." Mark said.

"How do you know that?"

"Because most everything Glen touches ends up ablaze lately... I'm not sure if he's even aware of the destruction he's committing." Mark only paused long enough to take a breath. "Look, I've got to lead him away from here. I'll just get my shit and go. Then I've got to figure out how to get to Paul without Glen around. It would help if he hadn't fucked with my head so much when I was younger. It's all a series of booby traps and landmines where it concerns me taking action against Paul in any malevolent way." Mark headed for the door then, determined and seemingly uncaring if Hellboy followed him or not.

On some level though, he hoped Hellboy would follow him, and yet was fully prepared to deal with this on his own should he not.

"Where do you want to lead him to?" Hellboy asked as he caught up to Mark in the hallway, his long trench coat already over his right shoulder, and he was fiddling to get it over the left. Mark let out an inner sigh of relief.

"Somewhere that has as little population as possible." Mark replied. "Otherwise people are going to die for something they had no idea existed, let alone anything to do with." He was headed to the modest room with the big, comfortable bed where they'd set him up. He could still feel all the pain that went with walking this quickly. He'd healed a lot in the last couple of weeks, but nearly as much as he would have liked. Still, Mark did it because he had to. He wanted as little innocent blood on his hands as possible. It let him sleep a little easier at night.

"Would it help if I got us clearance to investigate the scene of the fire? Will there be anything of use to us there?" Hellboy asked. Mark opened the unlocked door to the room. He was a guest in unfamiliar territory, but he trusted his benefactors. Besides, the folks around here would know how hard it was to steal from a psychic.

"It would probably be a good start." Mark replied honestly. "I haven't ever gone to the scene of one of them."

"Trying to avoid the guilt?" Hellboy leaned on the door frame of the room, which held his bulk without protest. Mark paused mid stride, and sighed heavily.

"Give the man a cigar." Mark said. He turned and looked back at Hellboy, who was smirking slightly. "Look Red, I'll be straight with you as that policy seems to work best between us. For the last five years, my life has been about survival. And while I haven't done anything directly to hurt anybody else, I haven't been all that helpful to the human race either. Essentially, I became exactly like Paul... And only realized that when Glen started to come after me. All I wanted was to get by, take care of my own, and nothing more. I even tried to quit this ya know? Like it was some drug I could kick the habit of." Mark chuckled and rolled his eyes.

"I got a straight job working construction. It went along great until we found an old slave cemetery when we were digging a foundation. The entire neighbourhood started to suffer from some very disturbed, and rightly pissed off spirits."

"I read about that. Two weeks of hell for those people. Incidents like blood pouring down the walls of office buildings and screams twenty-four hours a day. Even the archeologists trying to excavate the cemetery carefully were too hassled to work... But before I could get down there, the disturbance petered out." Hellboy said. "And if I remember correctly, there were reports of someone in particular putting a stop to it all, but no one saw him after he did it, and no one could seem to remember his name or what he looked like."

"Yeah, that'd be me. I couldn't take it anymore... They were calling my damn name, Red. They said I owed it to them. But I figured after so many years living under Paul's whim, that I didn't owe anybody a goddamned thing. This only changed when I got too frustrated with their presence and acted. I set them all 'free' one day after yet another 'broken equipment caused by poltergeist activity' induced break. I went to the saddlebags on my bike, got what I needed, and then proceeded to scare the ever living shit out of everyone by absorbing the power that kept the ghosts together on this level of existence... Everybody saw it. But I was so annoyed, and half crazy with them calling my name and screaming at me, that I didn't care. I was politely asked by the onsite foreman to leave and never come back when I came out of my trance. Some of the guys thanked me as I got my shit together and left, but most looked at me like I was the devil himself walking among them." Mark started rummaging around, getting things together, and putting on his boots.

"You know, when this is all over, you should stay... Father would love to really get to know you, and what you know, on more then just a superficial level. It would certainly keep him occupied and outta my hair... And while we don't get much in the way of thanks, we do get paid at least." Hellboy said.

"For now, I just gotta get Glen to stop this insane arson kick, and then I'll think about it." Mark said.

"Great. I'm gonna talk to the right people about getting us clearance to go poke around in the ashes." Hellboy said and then left Mark to his own devices.

Mark looked over to where his humble, worn saddle bags had been dumped near the bed. He set them up on the desk in the room and started to sort though the contents.

From the right one, he pulled a beaten up leather jacket. Mark muttered a few words and gave the jacket a shake. Suddenly it was an ankle length leather coat. If he was going into 'battle' he may as well look the part. He pulled the wad of cash from the pocket and left it in the bag. Moving to the other side, he pulled out a small, carved wooden box, a palm sized leather notebook, and a sturdy old jack knife. One never knew what could arise in this sort of situation.

He also pulled out what been a gift from his Jacqueline's mother. It was a short and thick, but rather plain looking metal bar with two balls on either end. He unscrewed one of the balls and placed the curved bar through a piercing in his right eyebrow. The silver looked like mercury for a moment and remade itself into its true form, which was that of a snake swallowing its tail. The object would give him an extra 'eye' and he would be able to see through any false face or shadow that Paul might use to trick him with.

That done, he said a few prayers and requests for protection from various 'friendly' gods and attending spirits, and put on his coat after tucking the jack knife into the leather upper of his boot.

To be continued...