(no subject)

It's dark, and the fog is so thick that it goes well beyond atmospheric and into the kind of density that Liz has only ever seen in enormous banks on a fishing boat off the coast of New England.

She stands at the edge of the tree line, wrapped up in layers (pants, boots, leather jacket, scarf, hat, fingerless gloves -- still cold; always cold), her arms crossed.

Out back, Hellboy had said. He'd seen something in the trees; something that had unsettled him.

The fog twists trees and bushes into looming sinister shapes, slow and sinuous in the faint breeze. Liz's heart is thudding in her ears.

She has checked the bar, over and over again; she's checked the library, the garage, the security cells, the halls upstairs, the Caribbean inlet, the lakeshore, constantly feeling like someone or something is watching but unable to see anyone. She left notes with Bar and all over room 4204. She stuck her head in the door at the Bureau and then returned to Milliways with no better idea of where the hell Red is, and with her gun.

The woods are the last place she can think of that she hasn't searched.

Every time she woke from dozing half-forgotten dreams (dreams of fire; dreams of a darkness so cold and absolute that she can't remember what it feels like to exist) over the last few nights, sometimes to find the pillow smoldering under her head, she was alone.

She turns her face into her shoulder to muffle a cough, then crosses her arms again. Fire is guttering just beneath her skin, the leather of her gloves sizzling faintly. She can feel the fire, see it turning her exposed fingers translucent whenever she glances down, but her hands feel ice-cold. She watches the grasping tree branches, fog drifting, and she doesn't step into them.