Shades of grey

**Author's note** Thanks to those that wrote and gave me the gumption to start working on this story again. Much Love! ....I know this chapter's short, but just you wait....::::Muw-ha-ha-ha-ha::::::Oh, and if you've read the comics, you know who the first paragraph's about....



The Iron Bitch stirs in her torpor, scales and metal grinding against each other with a sound like eons crumbling. The Queen of Crossroads, the Lady of Nightmares, moans softly in the space between worlds. Something has upset her slumber, something has crept in uninvited and soured her long, slow, bloody dreams. She does not turn over, does not crack an eye, but sends her essence out into the waking world, seeking the source of her displeasure. Mortal minds, trapped in sleep, retreat instinctively from her chill probings, flitting away into deeper darkness to escape the Mother of Witches' phantom touch. Souls grow cold and despair at her passing. But hapless mortals are not her prey tonight. The further out her spirit goes, the more certain of this she becomes.....
Yellow eyes blaze to life in her dead rusting face, and she rises up at last with a name echoing in her ancient mind. Anung-Un-Rama..... The Dead Queen begins to gather herself, to move from her lair towards the earth realm, and all the hells tremble with her passing....


The perimeter guard shoulders his rifle and gazes into the night. Security is still on high alert after last week's breach and ensuing slaughter. All the guards nerves are raw and scraped, exasperated by crimson-stained nightmares and booze and more nightmares....They do not wish to be out here, alone with the just knowledge of how powerless and utterly weak they are, and a gun that does nothing but bring home that fact. The B. P. R. D. 's team may be the best of the best, but there is always better.
Moonlight on snow shines liquid silver in the darkness between the spotlights, casting up phantoms of shadow and lunar haze. The guard scans all he can see from the watch tower, expecting nothing, truly seeing nothing. His mind still lays with the horror of last week, with his murdered friends..... He sighs, the long cold night settling deep into his bones. "Maybe time to find a new job...." He mutters, not for the first time that night.
Off to his left, the silver moonlight moves. He turns immediately, bringing his gun to bear. Out from the pine trees, a huge beast seems to materialize, phantasmal one moment, solid the next....He watches in quiet horror as a lion as white as the moon strides up to the entrance gate and stands, as if awaiting admittance. It shakes its massive head, throwing sparks of moonlight from its silver mane, seeming to orient itself, gazing into the winter night. Its eyes fall upon the guard, the massive head lifts, breath fogs the air white in front of its muzzle. The lone man in the watch tower cannot think, cannot breathe....He fights the panic, trying to dig its talons into his chest, remembers to draw breath as the great cat slowly paces towards him, seeming to glide more the walk, as if it is no more substantial than the mist and cold night air that spawned it.
The lion sits, still gazing up at the man calmly, as if its appearance here from nowhere means nothing and should just be accepted as a matter of course. The cat is so close the guard can see the color of its eyes.....They are a piercing liquid blue, pale as twilight, and no emotion radiates out from them. It is like staring into a cerulean void. The cats jaws open, utter a word, and the man's brain fumbles after it like a dropped coin, catching it and turning it over and over until it makes some form of sense.
"Hellboy."


"No, not again. No fucking way...." Hellboy glares at Manning, crosses his arms and draws himself up to his full height. "I ain't going out there with another one of those things."
"It asked for you by name. It's sitting at the gate and it looks as if it intends to stay there until you do something about it. So do something about it." Tom Manning returns Hellboy's glare with equal ferocity, and Hellboy wonders again how a short, balding, tired man in a well-cut suit can manage to look so frightening.
"Have your little private army shoot it, at least try to soften it up for me." Hellboy's memory of fighting the skinchanger had not dulled in the least, and he was not eager for a repeat performance. A week did little to erase disembowelment.....
"As it has made no hostile move towards my little private army," Manning spat, voice rising. "I will not risk lives by starting a skirmish. You know better than most what these things can do....."
Hellboy's thought's flew back to Cree. She slept most days, still recovering from the aftereffects of the silver, achieving a deep torpor that he guessed was needed for full recovery. Manning had wanted the lab boys to run there unending tests on her, and to try and de-brief her about her people, the skinchangers, but Hellboy flat-out refused to allow her rest to be disturbed. Almost sixty years had passed since he had been in the lab boys' hands, and the memory still produced a shudder in the demi-demon.
"I'm not waking her up." Hellboy read the thought in the director's eyes before he said it. "She's still weak and I won't put her in more jeopardy. One near-death experience is enough...."
Manning's scowl deepened, but he let it drop and hissed; "Just go out there, Hellboy. I promise you'll have backup."
"Fine. But I'm warning you, Tom...." Hellboy put a sarcastic drawl on Manning's much hated first name, reducing the formal to a joke. "If you bring her into this, you'll deal with me.....And remember, I don't work for you anymore. This is a favor, in case you've forgotten...." Manning retreated from the baleful yellow glow of Hellboy's eyes, turning his back on his once star agent. As he walked away, he chuckled softly, coldly.
"You're blind if you think we don't know what's going on, HB....You can't protect her forever, and I doubt she'll want you to once she'll recovered sufficiently. The skinchanger is a damaged predator, but she is still a predator...." The director smiled smugly as he stalked away, knowing he had stunned Hellboy to silence. He could almost feel the freak's anger, and that pleased him....


"Well met by moonlight, Demon....." The lion made no move to enter the compound through the now open gate. It still sat on the drive, eyes half-lidded, seeming to wait for something.
Hellboy stood quiet, hand on his gun, sensing for any trace of the evil that made the short little black hairs that covered his body stand on end. His intuition, which had saved his ass more times than he could count, sent up no danger flares, no spiking need to fight or flee. The calmness of the great cat was infectious.
"You called me, I'm here. Now what?" He kept his voice gruff, counter-balancing the deep soothing rumble of the pale beast, refusing to be lulled. Just because he thought an attack wasn't immanent didn't mean he wished to be caught unawares and proven wrong.
"So you are...." The lion began to ripple, great silver tides of flesh and fur shifting, stretching, pulling.....Hellboy backed up and drew his weapon, heart beginning to beat a frantic tattoo in his chest.
"And now we must palaver, you and I...." A tall man replaced the lion, cold and beautiful as a winter dawn. His silver hair hung half-way down his back, framing his finely made face in a halo of reflected starlight. He was clad only in a grey cape and loin-cloth, exposing his leanly muscled, lithe form to the arctic night air. He stood tall and regal, back unbent, as if he was holding court in his own land and not standing half-naked in front of the bastion of humanity's greatest defenders. A silver circlet graced his regal brow, and the Demon knew without needing to be told that he faced one of the great kings of old. The skinchanger opened his eyes and for the first time, focused the full weight of those piercing orbs on Hellboy.
Hellboy had met those haunting eyes before, in a different face. What this meant hit him a second after....
"No way in hell."