Read The Dragon Pool: The Dragon Pool for Free Online

those who disliked her maverick nature, no one was willing to hand Mark Conrad her job just yet.
    The problem with Dr. Conrad was that he was more than willing to wait and be a sneering little wanker about it in the meantime. Handsome and slick, with his shoulder-length blond hair, he reminded her of an oily James Bond villain.
    But he was annoyingly good at his job.
    "Conrad found something?"
    Rafe glanced around at the others, blinking uncertainly. "Translated something, actually. There's some writing, but mostly it's pictographs."
    Anastasia sighed in frustration. "Out with it, Rafe. What in hell are you talking about?"
    "The temple, Dr. Bransfield," he said. "It's...well, it's not a temple. That's the thing. Professor Kyichu was right that the temple's here somewhere, or it was, once. But what we've found is not the temple. It's some kind of preparatory chamber."
    Han Kyichu moved in closer, almost cutting Ellie and Danovich out, so now it was just him, Anastasia, and Rafe in a tight circle.
    "Preparing for what?" the professor asked.
    Rafe looked pale in the moonlight. "Sacrifice, sir. Human, child sacrifice."

    The thrum of the plane's engines had lulled him to sleep, but Hellboy could not get comfortable in the chair. It had more legroom by far than a typical commercial airliner, but still was not made for someone of his size. Nothing was, really. So he tried his best to stay asleep, even though every few minutes his head bobbed, and he snapped upward, blinking muzzily. He shifted constantly in the chair, like a dog turning in circles in search of a comfortable spot. The filed-down stumps of his horns whacked the window a couple of times, so he tried to keep his head in the other direction, or his chin down on his chest. Breaking the glass at 30,000 feet was a terrible idea.
    A couple of times, he caught himself snorting loudly, and finally he forced his eyes to stay open. Hellboy blinked and took a deep breath, shaking his head. No more sleeping.
    He felt a bit of drool on his chin and wiped it away. Embarrassed, he glanced around, but nobody was paying attention. Professor Bruttenholm was in the sleeping compartment at the back of the plane. Hellboy would've been much more comfortable back there, but there wasn't room for both of them, and the professor was an old man. He slept little but needed what rest he could get.
    Aside from the flight crew, the only other people on the BPRD transport plane were Abe, the chopper pilot, Redfield, and a trio of field agents Manning had insisted on sending along. They were more brawn than investigative brain, but Manning didn't like the idea of sending only three agents and a pilot halfway around the world without any backup. One of them, the thin, pixieish blond girl was called Sarah. A weapons expert and their medic, she didn't look as though she could hurt anyone. Hellboy knew better. She was a pro. And if Sarah Rhys-Hughes vouched for the two men she sat with now, playing poker at the front of the compartment, that was enough for Hellboy. The orange-haired, thick-necked guy had the unlikely name of Meaney, and the soft-spoken, dark-skinned Londoner was called Neil.
    Across the aisle, Abe wore his CD Walkman and nodded almost imperceptibly to the music while he read. It was a paperback of a novel by John Irving aptly titled The Water-Method Man . Abe read all sorts of things, but whenever they flew, it was paperback fiction.
    The amphibious man noticed Hellboy's scrutiny and lowered his book, then slipped off his headphones. "You can't sleep?"
    Hellboy took a deep breath and let it out, settling deeper into his chair, straining his seat belt. "Can't get comfortable."
    Most people had a hard time deciphering when Abe was smiling. Hellboy understood. The same thing was true of him. If someone didn't know him, they were more likely to think he was scowling at them. With Abe, a smile was little more than a strange parting of the lips. It wasn't pretty. They knew each other well