Shades of grey

Authors note: I'm going to post short little bits of this story frequently, as opposed to long bits really fucked spaced out. I recently lost my beta, so any volunteers would be a godsend....As always, my e-mail is Griffith_1313@hotmail.com, for any reason at all....

No.....You are nothing!" Cree moaned in her sleep, turning away from the darkness invading her torpor.
"No, young sister....I am everything....." The Queen of crossroads smiled slowly, painfully, in her sleep, wrapping her essence around the skin-changer, seeking a hold, a purchase. "He belongs to me...The end of the world transcribes it....."
"We all have different ends of the world, you cold, dead bitch....." Even in sleep, the female skin-changer was formidable. Cree flexed her will, pushing against the fetid presence seeking entrance into her subconscious, but against the freezing might of that ancient power, her will alone was not enough. Hecate wrapped her in cold mental coils, and squeezed. Cree felt something in her give, almost burst, and then she was falling away, all defenses gone, engulfed by a plutonian void, swallowed, burned, crushed.....
"Ah, little one....Fear not. You shall return to yourself in time....And now you will serve both my purpose as well as yours....." The Queen of crossroads sighed with unknowable pleasure as she twisted the essence of the helpless skin-changer, subtly shaping things more to her need and liking. Faraway, Cree felt no pain, no emotion. Her very soul lay bared before this hideous apparition, and for all her will and grace, she could do nothing. In the deep darkness between worlds, the Skin-changer's core was warped, her very soul bent out of true. Subtly and insidiously, it was all made terribly, blackly wrong, and Cree could not even bring herself to care.....


"I have come for what is mine." The Pale King gazed serenely at the Demi-Demon, and Hellboy knew without needing to be told that this was a man used to being obeyed without question. He wasn't sure how he felt about that just yet.
"And what would that be?" He growled, keeping his gun unholstered and at the ready.
"My Son and Daughter."
Hellboy's yellow eyes widened suddenly, and he took a step back, but did not hesitate to be the bearer of ill tidings.
"Your son is dead, and your daughter came close to joining him."
"Ah. I see." Regal posture slumped slightly, long powerful fingers clenched into helpless fists at his side. "So I am too late. But I was always too late for my son.....Nor passed beyond me long ago. I came to stop him, but Cree was faster. It doesn't matter now, though....Return my daughter and the body of my heir."
Hellboy cocked an eyebrow. "You don't seem terribly broken up about the fact that one of your kids is in pieces in our basement, Buddy."
"Why should the manner of my grief matter to you, half-breed?" Cold eyes grew even colder, the pupils narrowing to feline slits.
"It doesn't, really....But you're not getting your daughter back right now. She's in bad shape and I won't move her." The black barrel of the gun rose ever higher as Hellboy felt himself tense. "And as for your son? Let me get a few hefty bags to throw him into, and I'll be glad to hand that trash over...."
The Skinchanger drew thin lips back from glistening fangs, snarling silently. "Listen well, Mongrel.....Nor was not always as you saw him....He was great once, greater than your febrile mind can grasp. Watch your cur's tongue before you find that it no longer wags in your mouth...."
"Hey, Pal....I just calls 'em as I sees 'em. You gotta problem with that, my friend here will be glad to listen to any complaints." Hellboy waggled the gun in the air and grinned, wishing he felt half as confident as he sounded.
"As much as I would enjoy teaching you some manners, more pressing matters remain. My daughter. My son. Now. I have lost much this day. Continue to push, and you will join me in sorrow."
"And just what the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"You try my patience, Demon. What I ask is not unreasonable. You would deny me my kin?"
Hellboy sighed, the urge to fight suddenly gone. He had no desire to try to hurt this man who, at the end of the day, no matter what the outcome of stubborn anger or foolish pride, would still be burying his child. Sometimes it was all too easy to lose sight of things like that.....
"Let me go see Cree. If she wants to leave, I'll help her, but if not, you collect what's left of your son and haul your ass out of here. Fine by you, Pal?"
"Half-Breed, if we had met under other circumstances, and you had conducted yourself in such a way, this would end very different indeed...." A stray breeze stirred the skin-changer's silver hair, and it seemed almost as if his skin rippled as well, the barely contained rage and pain almost forcing a shift into the monstrous form that Hellboy dreaded.
"Ya know, I don't doubt you in the slightest...." Without a backwards glance, Hellboy turned and strode off to the Bureau.


Cree sat up in her narrow hospital bed for the first time in days. She glanced around at the sterile white of her surroundings, shaking her head to clear it of some nightmare she could barely remember. "Was it something about serpents?" She whispered to herself as she began yanking out all the protruding tubes and I.V.'s from her body, then tossing them to the floor in an oddly dazed gesture. She shook her head, platinum hair flying, and wondered if she should yell for Hellboy.
"My Prince Charming....." Cree said in a strangely sibilant hiss utterly unlike her normal voice, unsure why that phrase brought a wry smile to her lips and a dark, almost ironic chuckle to her mind.
"Speak of the Devil." The meanderings of her thoughts seemed to come together as the Bureau's most famous agent strode into her room, all feelings of unease and strange workings within herself forgotten. She felt better than she had in days, and the sight of Hellboy only improved her mood.
"Good to see you up and about. How're you feeling?" Hellboy quickly gazed at the linoleum as memories of their stolen kiss raced through his head, blood rushing to his cheeks, reason for being there almost forgotten under the weight of her crystal blue eyes.
"Finally well enough to be up and about. How about requesting some clothes for me? I don't think traipsing all over the B. P. R. D. in a flimsy hospital gown is acceptable behavior." She smiled, and Hellboy could have sworn the room got brighter....
"You'd be surprised...." He trailed off, twitching his tail, then decided to plow onward in his usual blunt manner. "I don't know if this is good news or bad news, but your father is here. Tall guy, silver hair, bit of a holier than thou attitude? I almost shot him cause he.....Uh....Cree, something wrong?" Hellboy stopped as the skin-changer's face went slack, all expression slipping from it, eyes going dim and vacant for the barest of seconds.
"No...Nothing..." She recovered fast, blinking uncertainly. Hellboy watched her pupils dilate rapidly for a second, and the tiniest spark of yellow seemed to creep into them from somewhere. She blinked again and it was gone. "Head-rush, I guess....Sat up too fast...." She smiled up at him again, and for a moment He thought he felt something else watching him through her eyes....
"You father?" He prompted gently.
"Tell him to leave." The sudden ice in her voice startled him, and Hellboy unconsciously backed a step away from her bed.
"Why, I mean....I mean, I'm not defending the arrogant prick or anything, but he did come for you, and with your brother dead and all...."
"Father always shows up when he feels like it. He tries to save the day and seem the hero, but apparently his timing was off. Just make him leave....." The venom in her voice brooked no arguments.
"You sure?" Manning's words echoed back to Hellboy as he watched the recovered skin-changer lift her pink lips in a quiet snarl of promised pain.
"You can't protect her forever, and I doubt she'll want you to once she'll recovered sufficiently. The skin-changer is a damaged predator, but she is still a predator...." The light glinting off her exposed and threatening fangs brought more truth to the Director's words than Hellboy cared to think on.
"I am sure." He heard echoes of her father in that voice, the steely tone that warranted no objections, and again saw something flash in one Arctic eyes that struck him as somehow wrong. He shrugged it off, and smiled wanly.
"I'll tell him. Cree, are you feeling alright?"
With a sardonic wink, and a flash of tooth, the skin-changer grinned.
"Never better...."