Do I have a treat for you. Thank you all sooo much for all of the reviews. I loved them and so here you go, a very long chapter for you guys to enjoy. I loved hearing about how some of my pov switching confuses people because I make it that way on purpose. I want you guys to think and see how much you really know about the characters. ;] Haha Ok I hope you guys enjoy this. Read+Review.
When the back of the truck opened up I found Liz waiting for us. "Hey, what are you doing here?" I asked in surprise, trying to hide my eagerness to have her back on the team. "I rode with the Professor." She said, giving me a small grin. I couldn't help but smile back.
"So did Father find what he was looking for?" I asked, wondering if the warrant was even necessary. Liz nodded.
"He's looking through things right now. I'm sure he already has enough. I wonder how Rai's going to take the news. She must have known all along." Hearing Liz say her name bugged me. I grumbled a little as I followed Liz into the museum.
"That's the reason she isn't here."
Liz stopped and turned back to me. "Red… about that…" I gave Liz my full attention as she gave me a sheepish grin.
"He didn't bring her, did he?" My anger was only barely contained. It was so typical of him to bust me for having her tag along and when I was just fine with leaving her behind, he had to bring her. Shouting voices interrupted my thoughts. Liz and I started walking at a faster pace.
When we rounded the corner and made our way into the largest exhibit of the museum Abe cut us off and asked us to wait a moment. I could see passed everyone in the room and spotted the red head being restrained by several other agents. She was furiously trying to escape her captors so that she could attack the cowering man across the room. Dyke looked like he was going to be sick. The fear was evident in his features and it wasn't difficult to understand the reason. Rai looked like a rabid dog.
"Rai, please calm yourself. You promised me you would control your actions if you discovered all of your theories to be true." It was my father that had spoken. He stood near the shouting mass of men holding Rai back. She shouldn't have any strength left in her. I wondered why they needed six men to hold her back.
Rai struggled for a few more minutes before she calmed down. Five of the agents let go but the sixth, Clay, continued to hold on to her shoulders as a precaution.
"I want that bastard to rot." Her words were sharp and bitter. The deadly tone actually scared me a little.
"He will be charged for his crimes and punished accordingly." The professor said calmly, obviously disagreeing with her choice of words.
Dyke continued to sit in the corner behind four agents. He tried to compose himself but each breath he took sounded like a squeak. I started to take a step forward, ignoring Abe's protest.
"So what's the situation?" I asked, my loud voice interrupting the tension in the room. Rai's eyes flashed towards me and then quickly away. My father turned towards me. "Steven Dyke has been found guilty of several crimes against the Bureau and Dr. Marshel. He has failed to explain where he found the wooden charm piece that brought the statues to life. We also do not know the current whereabouts of the charm."
Dyke interrupted. "I already told you, that punk took the wooden amulet when he ran from the statues. I don't know what he did with it." I gave Dyke a cold glare.
"No way man. That charm thing is your business. I left it here." I spotted the 'punk' for the first time. He was a scrawny little kid with obnoxiously spiky hair and piercings. He got one look at me and suddenly didn't feel like having an attitude.
"Listen alright; I broke into the museum a few months back to pull a prank with some friends. We got caught and this guy said he wouldn't bust us if I helped him." I stopped the kid for a second.
"Why you?" The kid gave me a nervous smile.
" 'cause man, I'm the top guy when it comes to stealing. I'd do anything for my gang. Your buddy needed something stolen and I'm the best man for the job. He promised not to rat us out so I made the deal."
"What did you do then?" Another voice asked. I glanced back to my right and spotted Liz, allowing me to dive into a string of happy memories from the old days. Then I spotted Rai glaring and all my happy thoughts were gone. I realized I was smirking and dropped the smirk to be replaced by a glare in her direction. The brat rolled her eyes and looked away.
"The guy gave me the job. I had to steal the little trinket from a private collector. He was some big shot who invented something only fancy people use, so he had a really nice place. I got in no problem and grabbed the wood chip. I got back here but the back door was locked. I figured why not sneak in through the sky light. So I did. Problem was, when I was climbing down the charm thing slipped out of my pocket and landed on the floor. I panicked 'cause I thought I might have broken it. When I got down to the floor I picked it up and it was fine. That's when I heard the growling noise and when I turned around those statues were alive and they tried to take a bite outta me. I ran like hell and made it to the back door before they could get a hold of me. Thing is, I didn't have the charm when I left the building. I panicked again and I thought about going back in there and getting it but the door was locked."
Dyke was glaring daggers at the kid. The kid on the other hand seemed to be feeling a lot better now that he had a chance to give his side of the story.
"Well then, Director Dyke, would you like to tell us where the charm went?" Dyke stared at me. He wasn't going to say anything without some motivation.
"Alright then. Clay, why don't you let Rai go? I'm sure she can persuade Dyke to answer the question." Clay gave me a questioning look and then took his hands off of Rai's shoulders. Rai took a step forwards, testing her new freedom. She looked at father, silently asking for permission. When she was sure that she had it she made her way towards Dyke.
"Wait, wait!" Dyke shouted in a panic. "I'll tell you just get that freak away from me!" Obviously Dyke didn't know that Rai didn't have any access to her powers. Rai stopped only a few steps away from the man and looked at me, waiting for me to make my next move. She was cooperating with me and that at least made me feel a little better. Then again, I was just as pissed at her as she was with me.
"You were saying?" I asked Dyke. He looked at me and then at Rai. "I found it…in the exhibit of the stone statues. The other wolves were gone and I knew the only ones to call about that was the BPRD. I never would have imagined that she would show up with you people." Dyke looked pathetic as he tried to glare at Rai. We had him pinned in a corner and his agent body guards had relocated to the other side of the room.
"Why did you want the wooden amulet?" Rai asked. "I…uh…I" His stuttering irritated the hell out of me. "She asked you a question." I said roughly. Rai glanced at me but there was no 'thank you' in store for me. Dyke sighed, mentally defeated by the interrogation.
"I have lots of money, demon. That is why I was able to afford the services of gangs to steal what I am not allowed to buy. They are meant to steal..."Dyke glanced warily at Rai.
"Not kill."
He wasn't sorry it happened. He barely even cared. Rai's muscles visibly tensed. Clay stepped forward to restrain her but he knew better, so in the end he retraced that one step and continued to watch her intently.
"What's your point?" I growled. Dyke shifted his gaze to me. "Do you think I'd continue owning this property if it didn't have some underlying purpose. It doesn't bring me much income. No, it is completely worthless. I would have sold it years ago, kept all the rare artifacts for my private collection, but I found a diamond in this rough. Beneath the museum is a series of tunnels, New York is full of them. They date back to revolutionary times when traitors to the mother country needed places to hide and passage from one hideout to the next."
"Why is a series of tunnels important, you might ask? It is because the series of tunnels beneath my museum are no longer connected to the large maze of New York tunnels. They have been sealed. I stumbled upon the entrance when I had construction done in the basement for a broken water pipe. A large piece of the floor fell in and I went down to investigate the damage. The tunnel walls are sold stone bricks. They have luminescent plants that seem to be from another world. The whole thing seemed magical to me. I sent the construction team home, hoping for some time alone to think about my discovery. I spent months investigating the tunnels. I mapped out the entire section beneath this museum."
Rai sighed impatiently. "What does this have to do with anything? Your story is pointless. What did you do with the amulet?" She had a point. I was as irritated as she was and the man wasn't making any progress in his little story.
"Patience little girl." Rai literally growled at Steven Dyke. He found enough courage to ignore her.
"After months of exploring I found a dead end in a tunnel, but it was different from the tunnels that had been collapsed to seal the section off from the world. This dead end was simply a brick wall with inscriptions in various languages. The entire thing was a message that had been broken into pieces, scrambled, and translated so that it would be more difficult to decode. I spent months deciphering what the languages were and then translating and unscrambling. I have spent a total of two years on this project. At first it was a hobby then it became an obsession."
"What did the inscription say?" Liz asked.
"It was a story… about an ancient power that was sealed up long ago. The American revolutionists found it and built their structures around it. Later they must have felt it was too dangerous to be trifled with and so they had the tunnels attached to it cut off. The inscription describes a fabulous prize that is beyond any living creature's wildest dreams. Whether it was a curse or not didn't seem to matter because it came with power. I found the wooden amulet that could animate stone and all I had to do was find someone to steal it for me. That is when this whole mess started and you showed up."
"Alright, you told us the why but you still haven't mentioned WHERE you put the amulet."
This man was pissing me off. No wonder Father hated him. Liz, Abe and Rai all seemed just as frustrated as I was. We weren't getting anywhere with this. Dyke's 'secret tunnel' business worried me and Abe didn't seem too happy about it either. Anything with that kind of inscription on it was not to be taken lightly. Investigations would have to be done down below the museum and it sounded like it was going o be a pain in the ass to do.
"It's down in the tunnel. You'll never find it, don't even bother. That power cannot be contained so you can't have it." Dyke looked smug and I just glared at him.
"Trust me, we don't want it." I turned around to look at the rest of my team. "Somebody get this trash out of here." I ordered. Five agents took care of it and the rest of us prepared to do some excavating below New York.
It was done with. I may not have been able to kill Dyke but he wasn't getting off scotch free. I couldn't thank the professor enough for what he'd done. Now, I had to think about the situation at hand.
Liz was sorry for what role she had played in the fight and it made me feel like a hypocrite. I was attacking her because of Hellboy while he was attacking me because of his feelings for her. She was just wedged in between our feud without having done anything wrong to begin with. I felt some guilt start to set in but waved it away so that I could focus as the team made preparations to go below the museum.
The worst that could happen now was for me to be paired up with Hellboy on this mission. The nightmare still seemed fresh in my mind. He seemed to be acting civil now but the minute he got me alone… I didn't want to think of the possibilities.
According to Dyke, we were going to have to wander the tunnels blind, but Abe had other plans. It only took a few minutes for him to find the hiding place of Dyke's map. One glance at the piece of paper would send someone's head spinning. It was so complicated that I couldn't tell where the tunnels started and where they ended. But again Abe outshined us all and deciphered the scrambled lines in only a few minutes.
"He has not marked the location of the stone gate. From what I can see, there are eight dead ends that could be the gate. We will have to split up and find the amulet." Abe instructed.
I nodded along with everyone else. The professor advised that we should split into teams of two because that was all we had on hand. 'As long as I'm not with Hellboy, I'll be fine.' I thought.
"Alright, I shall accompany Agent Smith." Abe said, referring to the agent that always handled Abe's books in the field. Abe appointed a few more pairs and then turned to Clay, Liz, Hellboy, and I.
"I suggest that Clay and Hellboy go together." Hellboy and Clay nodded at each other, obviously not bothered by the decision. I let out a heavy sigh that earned me the group's attention.
"Liz and Rai, you will be the last team." I realized I had reacted too soon. Was it any better to be with Liz than it was to be with Hellboy? I thought about it for a second and realized it was but only slightly. Hellboy gave me a dirty look and it seemed he was biting his tongue to keep from arguing the matter.
Rai and I separated from the others after entering the tunnels. The director had been right; it was another world down here. The flashlights weren't really needed because of the rare luminescent plants growing in the cracks between bricks. I turned off my radio only five minutes after separation because, although I loved Abe like a brother, I couldn't help but find his rambling about the plants extremely boring.
"So…" I started, looking at the red head walking beside me. "So, what?" She asked bluntly, not bothering to look at me. The lights in the tunnel did one thing; they made a person's expression seem very intimidating.
"You and Hellboy… something happened?" I felt stupid after asking. Of course something happened. You don't just beat the shit out of someone without some kind of viable reason. Rai didn't look at me and her expression didn't change.
"I don't know." She said matter-of-factly. I stopped in my tracks and stared at her in bewilderment.
"You don't know? How do you not know? I mean, after everything you went through." Rai stopped walking and looked at me for the first time. Her expression was blank, completely composed, but her voice was another thing entirely.
"I've never had a best friend before." She whispered sounding sad and almost embarrassed. I stared at her, surprised. Before I could speak she shook her head and continued. "I mean, I had my father and several of the soldiers I grew up with were close….but a best friend? I haven't ever had one." I felt a strong urge to walk up to the girl and hug her.
"I'm sorry, really, I am." I took a few steps toward Rai so that I could stand by her side again. She surprised me again with a sudden laugh. "It's so stupid. He was such a jerk when I met him. When did I end up calling him my best friend? How did that asshole get so close to me?" Rai turned around and continued to walk. I walked beside her in silence. She had to talk it out and I owed it to her to stand by and listen.
"What happened?" I asked. Rai told me what happened. She explained everything that happened to her, from her first mission to the ice cream trip, and then to the nightmare she had the night before.
"I've known Hellboy for a long time. I know that he likes me more than anyone else and he's mad that I got hurt but he would never do something like that. He isn't really a monster, just a big baby." I gave Rai a reassuring smile and she smiled back. It was the first time I'd ever seen her truly smile. I'd also heard her laugh when we made jokes about some of the pranks she pulled on Hellboy. I had to admit that it felt good to laugh and smile after the past couple of stressful months.
We talked as we walked through the tunnels and completely forgot what we were supposed to be doing until we came to the end of our tunnel and found just a regular dead end.
Rai suddenly switched into agent mode and turned her radio back on. "Hey Abe this is Rai and Liz. Our tunnel is a dead end. No sign of the amulet along the way either." I looked around my feet and wondered if she had really been keeping track while we were walking. I had completely forgotten. My eyes did spot something as I shined my flashlight around the ground. Rai spotted the sound before I spotted the metal grate on the floor. Rushing water passed below our feet and the grate.
"Rai, this is Abe. We haven't reached out tunnel end yet but Clay and Hellboy reported that their tunnel is a dead end as well. They're closer to you so why don't you meet up with them and head back to the tunnel entrances."
"Abe, wait. There seems to be a system of underground waterways beneath the tunnels." Rai said into her radio.
"Waterways?" Abe asked. "Yeah Liz and I are standing right above a metal grate and we can see the water heading in the direction that we came from."
"I'll have to warn the other agents. If there is space beneath the tunnels for water then we may be at risk of a collapse in any one of these tunnels." Rai agreed with Abe's decision and ended conversation there.
"We should head back." I suggested. Rai nodded and stepped away from the metal grate. I led the way back, shinning my flash light around the floor looking to see if we might have missed the amulet. We were about ten feet from the grate when a large bang resonated through the tunnel. The ground shook and so did the tunnel walls. Rai and I froze in place and braced ourselves. One brick broke away from the ceiling and then another. Rai pulled me back before the large section of ceiling crashed down on the very spot I had been standing in.
"What was that?" Rai asked, panting slightly from the shock of the event. I shook my head and rested my hands on my knees in an attempt to calm myself after that near death experience. "You ok?" Rai asked. I looked up at her and nodded with a smile. My smile evaporated instantly when I spotted the grate. "But I don't think we will be for long."
I turned around to see what she was looking at. The cave in hadn't just closed up our tunnel, it had also broken through the floor and blocked up the water beneath it. Now the rushing water had nowhere to go but up.
"Shit!" A few more swear words came into mind but I didn't have time to dwell on them. Liz and I ran to the collapsed pile of bricks in our way. After several minutes of pushing and kicking both of us stepped back, panting, but there was no affect on the wall.
"Damn it!" Liz's outburst got my attention and I turned to see her kneeling in the now ankle deep water looking for something.
"What did you drop?" I asked, still out of breath.
"My radio ear piece." She replied, and continued to search. I shook my head and placed a hand on her shoulder.
"Don't worry about it. We can just use mine." Liz looked up at me but she wasn't reassured.
"And where is yours?" She asked, agitation creeping into her voice. I reached a hand up to my ear and realized I didn't have it.
"Damn it! Where did it go?" I dropped to my hands and knees, holding the flashlight with one hand and searching the water with the other.
"Your hand was on it when the ceiling started to collapse. You must have knocked it off or dropped it when you pulled me out of the way." Liz said.
I cursed again. Something in the pile of rocks shifted and for a moment I thought it might be rescue. We had no such luck. The rocks sealed up what little room there was for water to squeeze through them. The pressure forced more water through the grate.
"Shit, shit ,shit!" I pulled Liz back to her feet and we started to claw at the bricks again.
"Rai we can't keep doing this." Liz declared, taking a step back and looking at the cuts on her hands. I had to agree with her. It was hopeless.
I left my hands on the stones and rested my head against the wall of rubble.
"I. Was. Just. Starting. To like you." I said between breaths of air. Liz laughed half heartedly. "Yeah, me too." She replied. I released the wall and stepped back to stare at it. For a long time neither of us said anything. The water was knee deep when Liz finally broke the silence.
"Do you like him more than as just a friend?" She asked. I threw her a questioning look.
"What?"
Liz looked at me with a small smile.
"Hellboy, do you like him more than as just a friend?" Her question threw me off guard. What had Abe been telling me yesterday? I was jealous, but was it because Liz was replacing me as his friend or was it because he loved her and would never love me. I looked away from Liz for a moment and then forced myself to look at her again. I felt cold but not because of the temperature in the small space of the tunnel.
My body started to shake and moved without giving me a chance to stop it. I nodded twice and heard my own voice whisper a simple yes. I didn't know what part of my mind contained this bit of information because this was news to me.
Liz smiled at me. "He's very thick headed. I think it's hard for him to notice a good thing while he still has it." I laughed when she said it. "I guess that's true. He's always chasing after you even when you're here." We both shared a small laugh but it died away quickly.
Had I just admitted to loving Hellboy? Why would I do something like that? He teased me, picked on me, and embarrassed me. He made me cry and that was the biggest problem I had with him. The last time I experienced this much emotional trauma was after my father died. Where would I be right now if I hadn't answered that phone call in that shitty little apartment? I certainly wouldn't be in a dark whole in the ground waiting to drown, but then again who knows.
The water had filled up more of the space. Liz and I started to panic as it reached half way up our chest. There wasn't any rescue.
"You know, there's this really great ice cream shop I wish I could have gone to one more time." I said, trying to distract us from our approaching death. Liz looked at me and tried to smile but the distraction wasn't working. I was going to continue talking, for my benefit more than hers, but an important thought came to mind.
"Do you think your powers could knock down the bricks?" Liz looked at me and shook her head.
"It could end up bringing down the rest of the tunnel if it did work, but I don't think it will even put a dent in the wall." I shook my head. It wasn't like we had a lot of options.
"What do we have to lose?" I glanced at her nervously. Liz gave me the same nervous look before aiming her fist and trying to use her fire power to beat through the wall. It shook the tunnel but the wall held. I growled in irritation but it was pointless.
The water was at our necks and we were treading water to stay above the surface. My hands were on the ceiling, willing it to disappear so that we wouldn't be forced under.
"Hold on Liz." I wanted her to keep her spirits up but I should have known better. It didn't matter anymore.
Rescue would be too late. I'd never get to tell Clay how much I loved and respected him as a fatherly figure. I'd never be able to pay back the professor for all he'd done for me. I'd never get to see Dyke's trial or see him get locked away. I'd never be able to apologize to Abe for being so aggressive the other day when it wasn't even his fault. Worst of all, I'd never get a chance to tell Hellboy how I really felt.
I reached a hand out and held Liz's. "At least I we won't die alone." I didn't realize I had said it out loud until I saw Liz smile sadly at me. The water rose higher. We pressed our faces to the stone ceiling to capture the last bit of air we could. Only seconds passed before the water encompassed the last bit of air and we were swallowed up into its darkness.
I rubbed my back as I lifted myself off the ground. Clay tried to hold in his laughter but not for long. He busted up and roared with laughter. I glared at him and grumbled a few death threats before continuing to walk down the tunnel. There just had to be one raised stone in the walk way. I tripped over it and landed with a loud thud leaving Clay nothing to do but laugh like an idiot.
"Clay, come in. What was that crash?" Abe asked through Clay's radio. Clay tried to compose himself before answering but did a poor job. "Hellboy…tripped." Clay started to laugh again and I even heard a grin in Abe's voice as the blue boy replied.
"Oh…alright. I'll have to check in with the other groups to make sure there wasn't any problems caused by that shake in the tunnel." I growled and switched on my own radio.
"It wasn't that bad, Abe. Give me a break." Abe chuckled on the other end.
"I'd beg to differ, Red. A lot of the tunnels were shaken." Abe replied. I flicked the radio off and walked to the intersection where Liz and Rai split off. Clay caught up to me and started to walk down the tunnel leading to the museum entrance. I stood my ground and when he realized I wasn't going to follow him, he came back.
"What are we waiting for?" He asked. I nodded my head in the direction of the other tunnel. "Alright. Their tunnel stretched a little farther than ours so they should be a few minutes delayed." Clay explained. I shrugged my shoulders and leaned against a wall to wait. They 'should' only be a few minutes behind us. When ten minutes went by and the two didn't show I got curious.
"Abe, have you heard from the girls?" Clay asked, reading my mind. There was a second of silence and then Abe replied. "They radioed in only a minute after I talked to you last. They should be back by now."Again with the word 'should'. I don't like this.
"Abe, try to reach their radios. Clay, come on." Clay nodded and followed me as I headed down the second tunnel. My pace grew faster as I walked farther and couldn't see any sign of them. At last I was jogging down the tunnel with Clay right behind me. We stopped short when we came to a dead end.
"Did we miss them?" Clay asked. I looked at the pile of bricks and rubble. Something was wrong but I could tell what it was.
"Abe, have you found either of them?" I asked, getting more frustrated every minute. 'Leave it to Rai to get into some dangerous situation.'
"Well for one, a team found the amulet and we found the gate." I growled "Liz and Rai, Abe. Where ARE they?" I demanded. "I can't reach them at all. I checked back with the museum crew to see if the two made it back there but no one has seen them. They're somewhere in the tunnels." Abe said.
I looked at the scene in front of me and placed my left hand on the stone wall. Everything seemed the same as the dead end that Clay and I had found. "Do you think they took a wrong turn somewhere?" Clay asked, seeming just as frustrated and worried as I felt. I shrugged my shoulder and lifted my hand from the wall. Clay started to head back and I gave the wall one last glance over before turning around as well.
We had only made it about five yards when we heard a soft pounding sound. Clay and I both looked at each other questioningly. We heard the sound again, coming from behind us. We slowly turned around to look at the dead end of the tunnel. That's when I spotted the detail that seemed off to me. The stone wall, unlike the wall that Clay and I had run into in our tunnel, was clean. There wasn't any moss or luminescent plants growing in the cracks because the cracks were new. The whole wall was new.
"Shit!" I turned on my heels and raced back. When I got to the wall I wasn't sure what to do to get it out of the way. I simply pulled my right arm back and aimed high. The contact sent a loud crack echoing off the walls. I pulled back and hit it again. This time a small hole gave way and a jet of water splashed my face.
"Water?" I stared at it curiously and then true panic set in. They were drowning.
"Clay, get a medic team down here now!" I ordered before turning back to the wall. I let several more hits fly before a large section of the wall fell inward. Water sprayed outward, relieving pressure with the sudden access to new space. I grabbed bricks around the new hole and pulled them out as fast as I could. Thankfully the water became less forceful as the hole grew.
"Liz! Rai!" I shouted but I received no reply. I ripped down half of the wall before I stopped to see if the tunnel would even remain stable. The ceiling of the rest of the tunnel wouldn't hold long but for the moment it was staying still. I reached for a flashlight on my belt and shined it into the hole I had made, praying I wasn't too late. From the amount of water that was released, I guessed that I almost was.
A sudden gasp caught my attention and my flashlight landed on a patch of blood red hair. "Sparky." A large wave of relief hit me. It was replaced by a feeling of uneasiness because I wasn't quite sure how things sat with Rai and I. The red head coughed large amounts of water up and then threw up all together. I wanted to crawl through the hole and comfort her in some way but I couldn't get through it or make it larger without collapsing the whole tunnel.
"HB." She called back. Her eyes lit up when she heard me call her by the old nickname.
"Where's Liz?" I asked quickly. Rai's face dropped and she looked around, panicked. She spotted Liz farther away and crawled quickly through the knee-high water in order to get to her. "Liz… Liz!" Rai's voice cracked.
I was surprised to see Rai care so much. Didn't she try to kill her only a few nights ago? Rai placed her hands over Liz's chest and looked like she was about to perform CPR. Before she could start Liz rolled over to the side and coughed up as much water as Rai had. The minute Liz was able to sit up the two girls embraced each other. "We're alive." Liz whispered. Rai tried to laugh with her sore throat.
They hugged and laughed at how scared they had both been, completely ignoring the fact that I had saved them.
'I'll never understand women. They hate each other one day and then the next day they're best friends.'
"Alright if you two are done, I'd like to get out of here before I catch a cold. Does that sound good to you two?"
Rai and Liz exchanged a look, laughed about something, and slowly made their way towards the hole entrance. I lifted each of them out and supported them until they could walk on their own.
Rai pushed away from me the minute I tried to help her. She stumbled with each step she took and Liz tried to convince her to let me carry her but she shook her head and continued to walk alone. I pretended to not know what was going on and stepped ahead of them while listening intently to hear whether or not they needed me for something.
"Rai!" I turned back quickly when I heard Liz scream. Rai had collapsed of sheer exhaustion. The combination of this near-death experience and the wounds she still hadn't allowed to heal must have wiped her out. Liz looked up at me with pleading eyes. I tried not to focus on Liz's eyes as I knelt beside Rai and scooped her into my arms.
Liz walked beside me as we continued through the tunnel.
"We thought we were going to die down there." Liz whispered. I looked down at her. "Thank you, Red. I don't know if she'll tell you or not but she's as grateful as I am." I nodded and glance down at Rai while Liz wasn't looking at me. Rai's wet hair stuck to her face and looked funny the way some of it stuck out in weird spikes. I still owed her a good smack down for what she did to Liz. I didn't care if they had worked it out because I hadn't.
I needed Liz to stick around this time and Rai made that difficult, but I wasn't so sure I wanted Sparky gone forever. As I watched her face I knew that I couldn't lose her too. She was too much fun.
"Hellboy!" I glanced up when I heard Clay's voice and spotted a team of agents below the entrance to the tunnel complex. We met the medical team once we were above ground and I let them take Rai so that they could help her. Liz was steered away by some more medics and I walked back to the garbage truck alone so that I could think.
I cared about both of them and didn't know how to feel about any of this. If Rai and Liz were friends now, I was in for a world of hurt. With a sigh I pulled myself into the truck and found a six-pack of beer to go through until someone needed me outside.
That's right Hellboy. Drink your beer and be happy. ;] I hope you guys liked it. A lot happened and I hope I did a good job. Why not send some reviews my way to tell me. In the mean time I really need to get some writing done to make sure I stay ahead of the game and have something really good to post for you guys next time. Until then, later!