The snake can discern the strange temperature of the color.

The hawk can see you.

So can the vultures.

And me.

I moved carefully now. Slowly, making my own boulderlike body become just another rock in this garden of rock as I made my way up toward the oasis.

And I left the trail.

It's axiomatic in the desert a" you leave the trail, you die. Every year out here, two or three hikers do it and don't make it back. They run out of water, the heat gets to their brains and they become disoriented. What look like easy, shallow canyons become narrow death traps. They can find their way in; they can't find their way out. Sometimes it's years before their bodies are found. If they're found, if they're not consumed first by the foxes, coyotes, and lions a" big ones a" that live out here.

That's what the snake was trying to tell me.

It's one thing to go up a canyon. Another thing to come back down.

Yeah.

But I went off the trail and up, making a wide loop to the right to blend in against the rocks of the cliff face and to get up above the oasis. They'd be looking down the canyon for any threat. They'd never think it would come from above. The terrain above the oasis is impassable.

For a human being.

Now I knew why they sent me. Your garden-variety Homo sapiens couldn't have made it. Neither up the canyon or down. He'd have been spotted and shot down before he got halfway up. Simply not built to do that.

It took me three long hours. Three hours of heat, thirst, heart-straining effort and pain to make the long loop away from the trail and then back again, above the oasis. I followed the sound of water, and if you don't think that's ironic in the desert, well, you don't know irony. But that's what I did a" I could hear the stream of water as it sluiced through tiny cracks in the rocks and tumbled off cliffs and boulders, and the sound was my guide.

I'll admit it, by the time I got above that damn oasis I was hurting. I was just to the top, out of breath, gasping for even this baked air and stretched out flat on a rock above the stream, when the hawk landed in a creosote bush beside me and laughed.

It was a red-tailed hawk, big and beautiful.

"There are four of them," it said.

"Why are you helping me?"

Suspicion is an evolutionary trait in my business. Develop it or become extinct. Beautiful or not, I had no reason to trust this hawk. Well, I trusted its eye, I didn't trust its heart. I certainly don't trust beauty. Maybe it's envy rather than suspicion.

"A suitcase bomb?" it said. "Radiation kills hawks, too." Got it.

"You're going to die," the hawk said.

"Says who?" I asked.

"The vultures," the hawk said, tilting its head upward. "They're impatient. Hungry. It's been a slow day, and you'd make a large feed."

"Tell them I have a tastier meal in mind for them."

"They'll be glad to hear it," the hawk said. Then, "Two AKs, a MAC-10, one Uzi. Two of them are asleep, one's getting water, the other is on lookout."

"Looking down," I said.

"That's right." It looked at me carefully, curiously, and then it asked the question it had on its mind. "What are you? I haven't seen a thing like you before."

No one has, I thought.

What am I?

Good goddamn question.

"I'm a desert species," I said, for lack of a better answer. Time was an issue, and I wasn't in the mood for explanation or introspection. Time for that after the job was done. Yeah, you're kidding yourself, I thought a" there's never time for that.

The hawk said, "You're not of the desert."

"No?"

It shook its head and then flew off.

It didn't like being lied to.

Can't say I blamed it; neither do I.

I got busy and started to scuttle down the stream until I came to a flat shelf of rock behind some Indian tobacco brush. I laid out flat a" well, as flat as I can get a" and peered through the bush, down into the palm oasis.

The hawk had been telling the truth.

Four of them.

They had come across the border in the desert, left the truck down near Ocotillo Wells and hiked in. Were waiting in the canyon for the chopper that would come in that night. They would meet it down in the flats and from there ...

Radiation kills hawks, too.

I knew they were going to be tough. Good fighters, hardened in the mountains of Afghanistan and the Kashmir. But they hadn't seen or heard me. Their instincts were honed for other kinds of predators a" helicopters and drones a" death from the sky. The two sleepers were still asleep on a long rock that slanted above a pool, where the one getting water had filled the canteens and was now just bathing in the little pool. The lookout sat in the shade at the lower edge of the oasis a" he was looking out down the canyon, away from me.

The suitcase sat by his hip, the small camo net thrown over it inadequately for the purpose of disguise. The bright midday sun exposed it for what it was a" shiny, metal, modern, and lethal. An indiscriminate mass murderer that I'd been sent to fetch like some kind of mutant golden retriever after an equally mutant stick.

Stealth or speed a" the basic choice of the evolutionary engineer. Every predator is equipped with greater or fewer quantities of those qualities, and I knew that if I was going to get that suitcase, I was going to need both. First, the stealth to get into range, and then the burst of speed to close the deal.

Starting with stealth, I slid off the rock, becoming one with the water a" Zen Hellboy. I landed in a pool of water, crawled to the edge and did the same with the next little waterfall, and the next, until I reached the palm trees. Suddenly I was in another world. It seemed almost impossible, to be so quickly out of the harsh sun and baked rock into a realm of deep cool shade, running streams, and little waterfalls.

No wonder the ancient people cherished this place, their paintings even now evident on the gray rock faces above the little pools.

Water is sacred.

Water is life.

I pushed through some palms into a little grotto, slid down one of the waterfalls and stood stock still, like a rock, my hooves planted at the bottom of the pool, my head behind the falling water. Tiny frogs, green and blue, clung to the moss by my face. I looked at them, my eyes begging them to be quiet.

I cant really tell you if they nodded their agreement. I thought they did. Anyway, they were smart enough to keep their mouths shut.

The bather looked almost innocent. Naked as Adam, he sat in the pool and splashed the cool, clean water on his face. The third time he did it I was on him. Grabbed him by the neck and shook him until he blacked out. I left him at the water's edge.

Now came the speed portion of the show. I dashed up the slanting rock and hit the first sleeper before he could wake up. The second sleeper reached for his AK but I got to it first and tossed it, the rifle clattering down the rock, metal scraping on stone. Then I tossed him.

Bullets smacked the rock around my head as the lookout came charging toward me, firing his MAC-10 from the hip. The frogs jumped off into the water. I dove right after them, but the water was shallow and provided little cover. I could feel the rounds zipping into the pool beside me and then I got my hooves under me, pushed, and drove up and out of the water.

He panicked.

Hell, I'd panic too if I'd never seen me before. There are times I catch my image in the mirror, or a store window, and ...

Never mind.

Anyway, I was a species he'd never seen and he panicked and ran and that was all I needed. I didn't enjoy running him down, even though I knew the immense evil he was here to perpetrate. There was something nasty about it, something atavistic, primordial, if you will; a battle for a nuclear weapon reduced to a chase of one species by another.

He couldn't win.

It wasn't a matter of will, or skill. It was just physical a" I had the superior construction for this. He outpaced me at first, but then he came against a boulder and that was that. He tried to climb it, but I was on him even as he had a desperate, futile hand-grip on the top.

I swung my hammer fist.

The hawk cried.

I looked up and saw it land in a palm tree. Then I saw the vultures tightening their circle, dropping in a spiral, descending for that promised meal that meant another day of life.

Bon appetit, I thought.

The water tasted good. I knelt beside a pool and drank myself full. It was clear and cold and clean. After I drank my fill I jumped into the water and washed myself clean.

Well, not dean.

The suitcase was lying in the shade under a palm. I picked it up and started down the canyon. Good golden retriever. Good Hellboy.

They came from the sky. I should have known it, foreseen it, sensed it, but I heard their cry and then looked back to the oasis and the men were gone, their crumpled bodies lifted up and changed into the super-sized vultures that were now starting into their dives, sharp beaks and razor talons aimed for my eyes. Of course they morphed, I thought. It was the desert. You change, you evolve, or you go extinct.

I broke into a run down the canyon, balancing myself against a fall that would be fatal. If I went down they'd be on me. Hell, even if I stayed on my feet they'd be on me.

The hawk saved me.

It plunged from the sky in a headlong dive into the first vulture, a clash that exploded in a mushroom cloud of feathers, and then a mutual death spiral as, locked together, they spun and plummeted to the ground. The other three just gave it up a" it took the heart right out of them. Soon they were just specks in the sky.

I kept moving, wanted to get out of the canyon before they recovered their morale and decided to take another shot. The sun pounded on my head like a hammer and wedge, as if it was trying to split my skull in half, leave me here with the scattered mineral detritus of the Pleistocene temper tantrum. It hurt like hell, but this was Hellhole Canyon and I was Hellboy, so what the hell could I expect? I wasn't going to let it stop me.

Ditto the snake.

It met me on the way down in the same spot it stopped me on my way up. This time it was spread out, relaxed, absorbing the heat it would need to survive the frigid desert night.

"Surprised to see me?" I asked.

"No," it said. Then, "A little, maybe."

Its strike came out of nowhere. I never had a chance to move. It struck me in the leg, then looked up in surprise and horror when its fangs didn't penetrate.

Part of me wanted to step on it, crush it under my weight. Or pick it up and fling it, send it helicoptering against a rock, make it a blood smudge like a painting. The worse part of me wanted to do that, the better part of me decided that there had been enough a" more than enough a" death for one day.

I stepped over it and walked down the canyon.

I guess you could say I'd evolved.

Bigger, maybe.

A Room of One's Own.

China Mieville.

"Don't you ever wish it could be different?" Liz Sherman sat with her knees up on her bed, like a teenager waiting for a phone call. "Nope," Hellboy said. "Sure, if you didn't sometimes think about that stuff you wouldn't be human ..." He paused as if for an unheard laugh track. "There's stuff all of us would like. Wish you could have a few days off. Wish you had a few more damn choices than 'Shoot at the giant caterpillar' and/or 'Bash the werewolf biting your ass.' Sure, might be nice, but none of us gets much in the way of choice, you got to make do, got to have your breakfast and smile."

Liz stared at him. She waved her hand at her B.P.R.D. quarters.

"The walls," she said. "Beige. This decor. Don't you ever wish it could be different?"

"I knew you meant that," Hellboy said. "I was kidding."

"Sure." Liz stood and swiped her fingers at the paint. "Who picks these colors? You're never tempted to do stuff to yours, make it more homey?"

"I did."

"When you got rid of the Babar the Elephant wallpaper? It took you forty-some years, and you only did it because me and Abe were calling you Zephir the monkey."

"And now it's how I like it."

"Yeah?" Liz turned, hands on hips. "What color are your walls?" Seconds of silence. "You don't know what color your own room is."

"That's how I like it."

Liz shook her head. "I'm bored of home being an office catalog. I've got plans." She turned in the center of the room, looking slowly at every aspect.

Back outside his own rooms, Hellboy paused and scratched his chin.

"Brown," he said. "Gray? Brown."

"What are you doing?"