A Shadow to a Heart

Disclaimer: Hellboy characters do not belong to me, and The Sound of Music doesn't belong to me either. However, Erica is mine.

Author's Notes: This story is for my wonderful reviewers, and especially for Nightcaster who liked my poems so much. By the way, I really liked your deviant art page. Thanks for all the reviews everyone!
Sorry if this first chapter starts out a little slow, but you have to have the background so the rest of the story will make sense. And trust me, it gets better. Also, please review!PG-13 for violence/action, scary stuff, etc. in later chapters.

Chapter One: Premonitions

Erica Schwartz, fifteen, nearly sixteen years old, was walking to her bus stop on a chilly autumn morning. She breathed deeply, looking up at the trees with her storm-gray eyes. The green leaves of summer were now the flame colored leaves of autumn. A cold breeze tossed her long brown hair around, and she pushed it back behind her ears, pulling her light blue sweater closer around her, very glad she had worn jeans this morning instead of shorts. She came to the tree that marked the bus stop and stood there waiting in the wonderful early morning quiet. She loved being out in the country, everything was so beautiful, the sunrises, the snow, even foggy mornings that made her want to dance in the mist.

She knew the other high schoolers would be along soon, she knew they'd laugh at her if they knew what she was thinking. They'd laugh at her because she was different, just because she was tall, was Irish-German, and loved to read. She sighed, she was just glad she'd stopped growing when she reached 5ft. 8in., it was hard enough to find clothes for someone so tall and slender. She was one of those girls that's pretty, but that guys always ignore because she was also intelligent. They don't know what they're missing. she thought.

She looked around, no one else had shown up yet. She took her backpack off and knelt down on the ground, searching through its contents. She found the book she wanted and sat down at the base of the tree to read. It was a collection of various mythologies and information about sorcery and witchcraft in the medieval period. These were things she enjoyed reading about because she found magic to be a fascinating idea, although she had no intentions of trying or even believing entirely in it. She was almost finished a story involving The Three Fates, when the other students showed up running, the bus right behind them. One day they're going to be so late they'll miss the bus. she thought. Erica quickly closed her book and put it in her backpack, zippered it shut and stood up. The bus stopped in front of her, and she got on, the others getting on after her, puffing and out of breath

The ride on the bus wasn't very long, and Erica spent it staring out the window at the sunrise, admiring the bright colors that no one else seemed to notice. The bus stopped, and she climbed down the stairs and walked through the doors ofher high school. She made it to her locker, dropped her stuff off, got her binder and textbooks, and hurried to her Geometry class on the second floor of the building.

Some of the students were already there, talking as they got their stuff out for class. As Erica walked in, she noticed Mrs. Jones at her desk smiling oddly, as if she had some secret that she was going to announce. Seeing that look, Erica quickly sat down at her own desk and began leafing through her notes from the day before, suspicious that Mrs. Jones was about to hand out a pop quiz. After all, Mrs. Jones only got that look when she surprised them with a test.

Josh sat down next to her, plopping into his chair.

"Hey, Josh," said Erica, "you might want to look over your notes. I've got a feeling we're going to have a pop quiz."

"Yeah right." he said. "Mrs. Jones never gives pop quizzes on Wednesday, only on Fridays."

"It's your grade." said Erica, going back to studying.

The bell for first period rang, and everyone hurried to take their seats.

"Everyone take a seat, please." said Mrs. Jones, heading to the blackboard. "Take out a pencil and paper, and put all your things away, you're going to take a pop quiz. Please take the next few seconds to complain."

"Awwwww." everyone moaned in unison.

"That's enough." Mrs. Jones said. "Now get out your pencil and paper."

There was some rustling and muttered complaints as everyone in the class got out their supplies. Josh turned to look at Erica in astonishment.

"How'd you know?" he asked.

"Just lucky." said Erica, shrugging.

After school, Erica went to the auditorium to help with the school's fall play The Sound Of Music. It was the dress rehearsal, as the play was tomorrow, and she was one of the students who had volunteered to make the costumes. Currently, she was supposed to help the actresses put on their costumes.

She walked into the cheerful and somewhat hectic chaos backstage: the Tech crew was testing the lighting, the scenery was being moved and assembled, last touches were being put on the props by the high school's Art Club, and people were dashing back and forth with messages or to "go fetch this" or "go get that".

Miss Hawthorne, the Drama teacher, and also director of the play, was in the midst of it all. She spotted Erica.

"Erica! Back to the dressing rooms! They need you. And when you're finished, come out and help with assembling the scenery—" Miss Hawthorne was interrupted by another student asking where to put his cartload of props.

Erica walked back to the dressing rooms, opened the door, and was met with a mini disaster in the making. The costumes had somehow been mixed up, they had been sent to the wrong dressing rooms! (In other words, the girls had the boy's pants and shirts, and the boys had pretty dresses.) After she straightened that out, she discovered that two actresses had put on each other's costumes by mistake, so she sorted that out too. When she was finished, she moved aside to let the make-up crew take over, they had been getting very impatient while she straightened out the whole mess. Erica went backstage, where Sarah, one of her friends, saw her.

"Hi Erica! Come over here!" Sarah said. "We need help setting up the props for the First Act!"

Sarah grabbed Erica's arm and led her to the pile of props.

"Here, just help Patrick put these on the stage." Sarah said, indicating a jumble of props. "By the way, having fun?"

"You bet!" said Erica, grinning. "I just wish there were swordfights in this play like Romeo and Juliet, the play we did last year. I loved watching them!"

"Just be careful, if Miss Hawthorne sees us standing here talking she'll probably come after us with a sword!" said Sarah laughing. Then Sarah dashed off, her red hair making her stand out from the chaos as she wove her way through it.

"Come on," said Patrick, smiling, "We don't have all day, or all night for that matter!" He scooped up a small table and Erica grabbed the chairs, taking them to their designated places on the stage. "I'll go back and move the desk, it looks heavy." Patrick said, sitting down the table.

"Okay, I'll set these up." Erica said.

Just as she was finishing, she saw Mark bring another chair onto the stage, only, he didn't put it where it belonged, placing it closer to the edge of the stage.

"What're you doing?" Erica asked.

"Miss Hawthorne told me to put this here," said Mark, "she said it'll make the set look better."

"But what about Natalie?" Erica said, referring to the star actress who was playing Maria, "We've done all the practices with it in one spot, if you move it it'll just be another thing for her to watch out for."

Natalie was extremely nearsighted, so nearsighted, in fact, that without her glasses on, which she had to take off for the play, she could barley identify things four feet away from her. However, she was a brilliant actress, so she had gotten the part.

"She'll be fine," said Mark, "She can deal with it. Miss Hawthorne wouldn't have had me move it otherwise."

"But you know how nearsighted she is!" Erica insisted. "If you don't tell her you put the chair there, she'll probably trip over it and fall off the stage!"

"You're so melodramatic. She'll be fine. Besides, what's the worst that can happen?"

"I really don't want to think about that."

"Don't worry. Go help move the props." With that, he turned and walked off in the direction of the prop pile.

"Don't say I didn't warn you!" Erica yelled after him.

At last, everything was finished and in place. Miss Hawthorne called everyone together backstage for her final instructions.

"Okay everybody!" announced Miss Hawthorne. "This is our dress rehearsal, the play starts tomorrow night at seven. For now, remember your lines, do your best, and don't worry if you mess up. And break a leg!"

"Not literally, I hope." muttered someone in the crowd.

Everyone laughed, except for Erica who was thinking about Natalie and the chair on the stage. I just know something bad is going to happen. she thought. She could just picture Natalie falling off the stage and getting hurt. The thought made her stomach turn. Maybe I am being too melodramatic, she thought, I'm just nervous, that's all.

"Everybody in their places!" said Miss Hawthorne. "Costume and make up crew wait backstage to help with costume changes as we go along. Props and Scenery crews do the same, we'll have to move everything between Acts."

Despite what Erica thought, everything seemed to be going fine and according to plan. She stood offstage by the curtain, watching as they preformed. About forty minutes into the Act, the Tech crew started the music for one of the songs and the actors and actresses began dancing. Then Natalie leaped, spun around, —and tripped over the chair. With a shriek, she toppled over the edge of the stage and into the band pit. Erica's heart stopped. Oh no. she thought. Everyone around her froze, shocked. Then people started running everywhere.

After the ambulance left the school parking lot with Natalie in it, everyone grouped around Miss Hawthorne, asking millions of questions and chattering nonstop, trying to figure out what had happened, and why, and what now.

"Who would've thought she'd trip over that chair?" said Mark, looking dazed.

"I told you to tell her you put it there, but did you listen? No!" Erica said.

"You don't have to rub it in." hesaid.

"That's beside the point." said Sarah. "Will she be okay?"

"And what about the play?" asked a girl from the Tech crew.

"Is Natalie all right?" said Patrick.

"No," said Miss Hawthorne. "Her ankle's broken. She can't be in the play tomorrow."

"What? But it's tomorrow! There's no way we can find a new lead in that amount of time!" Everyone began protesting as loud as they could, with the result that no one could understand what anyone was saying.

"Quiet!" yelled Miss Hawthorne. "I'm sorry, there's nothing we can do about it. We'll just have to postpone the play until winter."

Karl Kroenen sat at his desk, surrounded by heaps of old books. He tossed another to the side with a snort of disgust, ignoring the thud as it landed in the fireplace and instantly went up in flames.

The fire was reflected on his mask as he leaned back in his chair and surveyed his darkened study, which was now in utter chaos due to his latest project. Fuming and highly irritated, he crossed his arms and thought over the events of the past hours. It just figured that at the exact moment he was going to start one of his "modifications" to himself that Ilsa had chosen to barge into his study, without knocking on the door, and then proceeded to dump this project on him saying that she and Grigory were too busy to do it themselves. Kroenen briefly thought over just what those two were too busy doing, and quickly decided he better not think about that, as it could have nasty complications. He sighed. On top of dumping the project on him, she told him that he had to find some person that the Occult was looking for, but didn't even know who it was. Only that the Occult knew that the person in question was vital to their cause, and that, whoever it was, would be able to see into the future. Ilsa had also mentioned something about an odd, crescent shaped scar on the person, be he hadn't been listening as he had still been seething about her interrupting him.

The clock on the wall chimed the hour, and he glanced up, watching as the planets rotated around the face of the clock. He briefly admired the clock, it had been a little tricky for him to make, to get it to tell the time androtate the planets correctly. Then his eyes fell on a book sitting on top of a pile under the clock. The spine of the book had no title, in its place was a single, silvery crescent shape. Just like the mark Ilsa had mentioned would be on the person they were looking for.

Intrigued, he walked over and picked it up, his gloved fingers tracing the mark on the spine. Engraved into the black leather cover was a crescent, outlined in silver. He opened the cover, and flipped through the fragile and yellowed pages, eyes darting over the foreign, spidery script on the inside. He recognized the odd script as a language that only the higher members of the Occult could read, a forbidden language containing hidden knowledge. Yes, this was what he was looking for.

He returned to his desk, carefully leafing through the pages. He scanned the pages, skipping over prophesized events that had already taken place, searching for the current year. It wasn't hard to find. The book seemed to sense his intentions, for as he turned over a page, the ink on the two pages in front of him lit up, turning the words into a fiery, hellish script. He read the two pages, then laughed out loud.

"So this is the person the Occult is so interested in!" he murmured. "A young woman! I wonder if they know how hard it's going to be to get their hands on her?"

For as the book told him, the young woman in question, was in the future. No matter, a little more research and he'd have that problem worked out as well. After all, from working on the plans for the portal generator, he was learning a lot about how to twist time.

With that, he began getting the things he needed together. He would start ripping a hole through time, tonight!