Read Hellboy: Odd Jobs for Free Online

have something for Thomas.
    To Abraham, the soft green of the hotel phone looked like a bar of soap perched on the expanse of Hellboy's blazing-red palm.
    When Abe held the phone, it disappeared against his skin, as if he were made of the same wet-looking plastic the same color and contours of the bathroom tub, sink, commode, and the bidet. Having memorized the visage of every Notre Dame gargoyle facing their windows, and unable to leave the room without wrapping himself up like the Invisible Man, Abe had taken to finding small pleasures in the textures of the room itself.
    It was a meditative art lost on his travel partner.
    "Like a fish in a fish bowl," Hellboy had chuckled when Abe had tried to share his observations earlier that morning. "We're gonna kill each other if we stay cooped up in this shoe box much longer."
    Hellboy's flat, stony hand was cupped around the phone like a monstrous soap dish, enhancing the illusion.
    His normal hand held the phone to his ear, jade within fire, as Elizabeth Sherman drove the final nail into her arguments for them to stay put in Paris another week.
    "Listen, HB, Kate's on her way over to you in a day or two," Liz concluded. "That drawing from your most recent dream kicked up some dust for her, and she believes you're onto something."
    "Pah," he scoffed. Abe recognized the slow sagging of Hellboy's shoulders: they would be staying longer, floundering in the fish bowl.
    "All right. If the Bureau can justify the expense, there must be something to all this. When's Katie arriving?"
    Abe savored the shifting of green on red, emerald plastic on flame-baked skin, as Hellboy shifted the phone to the crook of his neck and struggled with pen and pad to take down Liz's instructions.
    "Yes, I'll have her call you," he growled. "No, we're not far at all from the Palais de Justice, and the prefecture de police is right down the boulevard. Later, Liz."
    He hung up, returning the receiver to its cradle.
    There was an inexplicably delicious completion in the coupling of smooth green on green between the sinewy

    scarlet left and the hammered red right hand. Abe's gaze drifted up to Hellboy's brooding brow.
    "What the hell are you grinning at, fish face?"
    Weary from the day at the hospice and the Metro ride, Guy shuffled his way through the halls of the Faculté de Médecine. He'd already lost his way twice this evening, and hoped he was finally cleaning the right room.
    It was a storage room, of that there could be no doubt. He just hoped it was the correct one. He double-checked the number on the Directeur's note against the faded numbers on the door, and went to work.
    It had perhaps once been used for classes, but the desks and chairs were stacked against the far wall, shrouded in cobwebs and dust. The other two walls were nothing but shelves, piled high with books, boxes, files, dirt-opaqued jars and instruments, and all manner of paraphernalia.
    The high windows were blocked with crusty curtains, and partially obscured by expansive shelving that stretched from floor to ceiling. Nevertheless, the moonlight filtered through here and there, back-lighting the various beakers, scales, and specimen jars. Moonlit, the contents of some of the jars gleamed through the decades of dust that buried them, casting pale shadows and reflecting the odd glimmer of long-dead eyes, wings, teeth, fins, and embryos.
    Guy fumbled for the lights, finding the switch just as the distant ringing of a church bell deepened the gloom.
    Even with the lights on, the room seemed dark. Nevertheless, he had to start somewhere. The ceiling lights illuminated the topmost shelves best; besides, the scattered dirt and dust would settle onto everything. It just made sense to start with the uppermost levels and work his way down. Two step-ladders were braced together at the bottom of the window shelving. He separated them and propped the sturdiest of the pair alongside the shelving, and climbed as far up as he felt safe.
    In time, he