The Dragon Pool: The Dragon Pool Read Online Free

invitation had come.
    But the professor didn't have to like it.
    He'd set his pipe down, and now he picked it up again. He relit the pipe and drew in a lungful of sweet smoke.
    "You know, you're really not supposed to smoke in here," Manning said.
    Bruttenholm tapped the folder on his desk. "Tibet it is, then."

    Hellboy always liked coming home to the BPRD headquarters. It was tucked away on a hillside in Fairfield, Connecticut, up a wooded, winding drive. The building was all glass and concrete, and yet its designer had created it to become a part of the landscape. It was built partially into the hillside and surrounded with trees and shrubs that seemed to bring life to the place. Hellboy had lived in far less pleasant circumstances. Despite the politicians and scientists who passed through its corridors every day, it still felt like home to him most of the time.
    Of course, he knew that was due in large part to the fact that Liz Sherman and Abe Sapien, his closest friends, lived there. Their world existed, like his, within that glass-and-concrete building. And, of course, the man Hellboy thought of as his father was there as well.
    On a day like today, when he was numbed by the journey from Chile to the United States, BPRD headquarters seemed particularly welcoming. He sat in the backseat of a truck and looked out the window as they emerged from the trees and the building came in sight. The engine rumbled as the vehicle labored up the hill. Liz had balled up her jacket and lay sleeping with her head upon his lap. The woman could sleep anywhere, especially if she'd recently summoned fire.
    The truck shuddered to a stop at the entrance.
    "Liz," Hellboy said, giving her a gentle shake. "We're home."
    Her eyes fluttered open. "Home," she repeated.
    The word didn't mean the same thing to her. Since the fire had first manifested in her at eleven years old, burning her life and family down around her, the BPRD had been more like self-imposed prison for her. She was not a captive, of course. She had run away many times as a child, and since she had reached adulthood and joined the Bureau as a field agent, she'd quit more than a few times. Abe and Hellboy were comfortable living in a place where they weren't constantly reminded how different they were. Liz was the opposite. She looked ordinary--even pretty--on the outside, but living at BPRD headquarters was a daily admission that she wasn't like other people, that she was a danger to them all, a freak.
    It got under her skin.
    Liz sat up, reached into the back of the truck for her duffel bag, and popped open the door. She slid out, then paused to glance back at Hellboy.
    "Going back to sleep. Thanks for watching my back."
    Hellboy nodded. "Sleep well."
    Liz shut the door and headed for the building entrance without waiting for him. As tired as she was, he wouldn't have expected it. Tonight, or maybe tomorrow, they'd all sit in his room and watch a movie and eat bad Chinese food and everything would be fine. Liz just needed some down time.
    Hellboy grabbed his own duffel and disembarked. He tapped the truck's roof with his left hand.
    "Thanks for the pickup."
    The driver waved out the window and pulled away, and the truck returned down the road, where the driver would leave it in the garage near the front gates. Hellboy shouldered his bag and went inside. By the time he stepped through the entrance and into the buzz of the Bureau offices, Liz was nowhere to be seen. Agents and researchers and coffee-carrying assistants moved through the corridors. Phones rang. Hellboy waved to several people as he strode through the midst of the BPRD's operations. It always fascinated him, the spectrum of reactions he got from people--even those he worked with on a regular basis. Some of them treated him like a celebrity, others like a monster. The ones he liked the best treated him like just another coworker, or somebody to talk movies with over a beer.
    When he entered the residential wing of the