The Ice Wolves

by Mark Chadbourn

  “We’ve still got that thing downstairs to get through,” Hellboy said, turning his attention to William. “You got any more occult gizmos in here that might help?”

  “I don’t know,” William said. “I’ll think—”

  “Look here,” Lisa called. She was at the door to the drawing room.

  Crowding around her, they saw the candle had burned almost to the ground, with only an inch of stub remaining in a pool of soft wax. “I wondered how long we’d been gone,” she said. “There’s no time left at all.”

  “Then we need to move fast,” Hellboy said. “We’ve still got a chance. The shaman said the Kiss’s power waxes and wanes like the moon. The wolves got free when it powered right down—it just wasn’t strong enough to keep them inside their hosts. All we’ve got to do is wait for it to start charging up again and the wolves will be locked away for another few hundred years.”

  “Except we don’t know how long till it starts waxing,” Lisa replied.

  In the hall, they hesitated briefly at the sounds rising up through the floor from the lower levels, and then Hellboy pressed the opera glasses to his eyes to reveal the blue trail and bounded up the stairs two at a time. The others tried to keep up.

  Plaintive whispering echoed from the dark at the ends of the landings, but Hellboy didn’t slow his pace as he followed the intricate ritual path to the attic-room door. Inside, it was unbearably cold. Frost gleamed on the walls in the lamplight, and icicles hung from the bottom of the window ledge. Their breath formed clouds and they thrust their hands deep into pockets to keep warm.

  Looking out of the window, Hellboy saw the wolves had returned. Across the roofs all around, and in ranks in the square, they waited, sentinel-like, watching the house. The opera glasses revealed Carnifex standing on the edge of the roof opposite, defiantly looking directly into the attic room.

  Hellboy turned his attention to the row of paintings on the opposite wall. The blue trail ended at the one of Sarah. Carefully, he lifted the portrait off the hook to reveal the gleaming sapphire rectangle beneath. Within seconds, the gargoyle head pushed out of the plaster. Everyone took a step back.

  After a moment, Lisa asked, “Why isn’t it asking for the password?”

  Hellboy considered this, then said, “What is the word?”

  “As above, so below,” the gargoyle responded.

  “Is it saying that’s the password?” Brad queried.

  “I don’t think so.” Hellboy considered the gargoyle’s response for a second, and then said, “How about this? The house is a mirror image above and below ground, and we have to do the same. It takes two people to finish the ritual, one in front of each gargoyle. As above, so below, get it? Once that happens, you can get the password up here, and take it down to the attic room belowground.” He paused. “Maybe.”

  “While following the ritual path,” William added.

  “Looks like it.”

  “Wait a minute,” Lisa said. “You’re telling me we’ve got to split up? With that thing down there? Or up here? Or wherever the hell it is.”

  “We haven’t got a choice,” Brad said gently. “We’ve got to help.”

  “The best bet is for me to escort you downstairs, then come back up here,” Hellboy said. “At least that way you only have to make one journey through the house.”

  “What if that thing comes for us while we’re in that room alone?” William asked.

  “I’ll be as quick as I can,” Hellboy replied. They understood his meaning: they were on their own until then.

  At the top of the stairs, Hellboy said, “Don’t stop for anything.” And with that, he led the way. In the aboveground portion of the house, the most they experienced were unnatural noises behind the walls, areas where a foul smell hung, and numerous cold spots. But once they had passed through the cellar, the haunting became more intense. Their names were whispered by half-remembered voices, people who had died long ago, loved ones or bitter enemies, seductive and threatening. Unseen hands grasped at their clothes so they thought they had snagged them on nails, but when they stopped and turned, the material fell loose. Lights glimmered away in the dark, appearing to coalesce into faces they thought they recognized; they didn’t wait to look. Blood dripped on them from the ceiling, gone the moment they examined the stains.

  “Keep going,” Hellboy urged as they ran. “Don’t let them distract you.”

  The deeper they progressed, the more the shrieking behind the walls grew louder. Behind it was the steady thoom-thoom-thoom of the beat, driving spikes into the pit of their stomachs.

  On the lowest level, Hellboy sensed the malign presence begin to take shape, and drove the others on faster. They crashed into the lower attic room and he slammed the door behind him while he caught his breath.

  “Okay,” he said, “on the bright side, it’s warmer down here.”

  “Just hurry. And look after yourself.” Lisa kissed him on the cheek.

  “Hey. Save that for the big guy.”

  She glanced at Brad, blushed, looked away.

  “I’ll be back before you know it.” He darted through the door and heard them slam it tightly behind him as he bounded up the stairs.

  As the flights passed under his feet, he felt the presence drawing itself toward him, but he kept his head down and drove on, through the lower hall to the cellar, and then into the house proper. In the drawing room, he saw the candle was now little more than a wick in a puddle, the flame guttering beneath a thickening trail of fragrant smoke. In the glass cases, all of the stuffed animals appeared to have expressions of great terror, recoiling from some unseen attacker with bared teeth and wide eyes.

  “Spooky,” he muttered.

  Then he was through the sitting room, into the hall, and bounding up the stairs two at a time. He ignored all the distractions of whispered voices and clattered into the attic room just as a series of tremendous roars rose up from the square, shaking the panes of the window.

  “Uh-oh,” he said. “Guess it’s hit the fan.”

  The wolves thundered against the front door and the shutters, rending and tearing, trying to smash their way in through sheer weight of numbers. From overhead came the sound of heavy treads loping across the roof tiles.

  “One chance to get this right,” he said, standing before the space where the portrait of Sarah had hung. “Why does it always come down to a last-minute thing? Just once I’d like to take my time.”

  With the opera glasses, he followed the blue trail and positioned himself directly before the glowing rectangle. The footsteps on the roof drew nearer.

  “Come on, come on,” he muttered.

  The gargoyle forced its way out of the plaster.

  “What is the word?” Hellboy asked.

  “Lazarus.”

  “Of course it is. Bingo.”

  A fall of snow outside, a clatter, and then a thud on the window ledge. As Hellboy turned to see the wolf staring back at him, the window shattered and it thrust its way into the room. It lasted about a second before his fist smashed into its face and propelled it back through the shattered frame. Two more wolves dropped onto the ledge as he vacated the room. Pausing for a second, he snapped off the handle as the wolves crashed against the other side of the door.

  “Take your time,” he said.

  Wondering how long he had before the army of wolves broke in and overran the house, he gripped the opera glasses firmly against his eyes and tried to follow the ritual path at speed. It wasn’t easy, and after careening into walls a couple of times, he was forced to take it slower.

  Stumbling down the stairs, he paused briefly in the hallway to listen to the furious noise and the creaking of the oak as the door strained against its hinges. In the sitting room, the planks he had hammered over the broken shutters were already coming loose.

  Thundering through the drawing room and kitchen, he careered down the stairs into the cellar only to find his way blocked by the porcine apparition of Piggly Grant, eyeless in t
he dark, hands grasping ahead of him.

  “It waits for you below,” it said with a faint sibilance. “And once you have been drawn into the dark, I will seek out that lovely young thing. She can stay with me here forever.”

  Hellboy didn’t slow. “Shut up! And! Get out of the way!” He plowed through a pile of furniture, damaged paintings, rolls of carpet, and paint pots, sending the entire pile onto Piggly Grant. Not waiting to see what effect it had, he bowled down the steps into the lower kitchen. Faint, snickering laughter followed him through the dark.

  Keeping one eye on the blue trail and one on any potential threat, Hellboy wound through the dining room and sitting room and into the hall. Though separated by several feet of earth and stone, the tumult at the front door still echoed loudly.

  Pausing briefly at the top of the stairs, he stared into the sucking darkness below and then descended. He took the first two flights much slower. Amid the steady heartbeat sound and the shrieks and cries in the walls, he knew what lay ahead, and he wasn’t going to let it sneak up on him.

  As he stepped onto the landing above the final flight of stairs, the sense of dread began to gather around him. Deep in the dark at the end of the landing, small lights twinkled and disappeared; there appeared to be movement, black against black. Concerned whatever was there might attack his back as he went down, he hesitated, only to be caught by surprise. It had all been a distraction—the true threat lay below. It swept up out of the shadows before he could face it full on.

  From the corner of his eye, he glimpsed a face in the center of an amorphous cloud, features distorted, not even slightly human, with eyes that were blacker still than the cloud that surrounded them, as black as the pit. It enveloped him, wrapping tighter with each second, but it was the potent emotions that made Hellboy reel: despair, fear, hatred, so intense it felt like he was being physically assaulted. They seeped into his thoughts, trying to poison him and drag him down into a black negativity that would eventually consume him.

  “Dammit! Get offa me!” he shouted, flailing at the swirling cloud.

  The presence pressed in tighter until Hellboy was suffocating from the black emotions. It sapped the energy from his limbs and flooded his mind with hopeless images; he heard whispers of despair more effective than any physical blow.

  “You’re not a ghost.” Hellboy tried to focus his mind to keep the psychic attack at bay. “You were never human. What are you?”

  The thing redoubled its efforts, flinging Hellboy around like a leaf in a storm.

  “Son of a—! This is gonna take all night.”

  And he had no time at all. Any minute the wolves would be flooding into the house, heading to the lower attic room where the others waited. Finally, he got a glimpse of the true presence at the heart of the cloud. As the shape of it briefly took form, recognition struck him.

  “I know you! Eurynomus, you little corpseeater! Missing from hell for all this time. So this is where you’ve been!”

  Eurynomus recoiled briefly now that his true name was known, but Hellboy knew it wouldn’t be long before he renewed his attack. He was one of the most powerful of the legions of hell, capable of attacking on both a psychic and physical level, and his strength would have been slowly growing as he fed on all the death prevalent in the Grant Mansion over the years. Even knowing his true name would not be much of a defense.

  Before he could consider a retreat, Eurynomus swept forward again, enclosing Hellboy in a dense black cloud of despair that sapped his strength and his resistance.

  “Dammit!” he shouted, lashing out to little avail.

  As he struggled, a cold hand closed on his, tugging him inexorably, and a moment later he was falling out of the dark, raging cloud onto the stairs. He couldn’t see anything, but instinctively he knew. Placing the opera glasses to his eyes, he saw the pale, sad face of Eliza Grant.

  “Go,” she said. “Help the others. Help that young man. Sarah will still be here to aid you.”

  He saw the yearning in her face and knew. “Eurynomus isn’t going to be happy that you helped me. You can’t stay here.”

  “Let me.” Her voice faltered as she glanced toward the darkness now whirling back toward them. “Let me do something that is good. I have had enough pain, and it will give me comfort to know that, at the end, I had value.”

  Before Hellboy could respond, she stepped into the dark cloud and was gone. A second later, a furious roar erupted from Eurynomus.

  “I hope you find your peace, Eliza,” he said before racing down the stairs along the last of the trail. He had been right: for all the evil in the house, there had been good too—Eliza and Sarah, the invisible hands, subtly guiding him towards the answer in a way that would not have drawn the attention of Eurynomus. He’d probably been happy in the house with his own private hell to rule. Down there, he would suffer like everyone else, however powerful he was.

  He hammered on the attic door, and the others let him in.

  “Thank God,” Lisa said. “We heard that noise out there and thought that thing had got you.”

  “It did. But thanks to Eliza, I’m here.”

  Brad flinched. “Yeah?”

  “Later.” Hellboy went to the gap in the paintings and waited for the gargoyle to emerge.

  “What is the word?” it said.

  “Lazarus.”

  “You may enter.”

  With a grinding noise, a door opened in the wall.

  A tremendous crash echoed far above them, followed by a relentless howling.

  Hellboy swore under his breath. “The wolves are in.”

  CHAPTER 22

  —

  Before they had even stepped across the threshold, it felt like the house was coming down around their ears. The walls and ceilings shook with the thunder of hundreds of feet surging through the upper stories; streams of dust and fragments of plaster fell from the joints; and then, rising above it, came a cacophony of snapping, snarling, baying, howling, and roaring merging into one blood-chilling voice that invoked the primal fear of the uncontrollable savagery of the bestial world. So great was the sound that even the pounding of the mighty heart and the shrieking of the spirits ceased.

  Lisa was ashen. “Oh, my God,” she breathed.

  The torrent rushed through the house, growing ever louder as it neared, until they could barely hear each other speak.

  “Move!” Hellboy bellowed. He propelled them through the doorway and attempted to drag it shut behind him, but it wouldn’t close completely. “They’re going to find us once they calm down and start searching,” he added. “We need to find the Kiss of Winter quickly.”

  “That’s all well and good,” William replied. “But what do we do when we have it?”

  Hellboy didn’t have an answer.

  They were in an ancient, brick-lined tunnel amid an intense smell of cold damp and great age. Water dripped from the ceiling to splash in puddles on the hard-packed earth floor, and salt encrusted the walls. Hellboy took the lamp that Brad had been holding and led the way quickly. The deeper they progressed into the tunnel, the more the storm of the wolves diminished until it became just a distant background drone.

  “Looks like all those rumors about secret tunnels under Beacon Hill are true,” Hellboy said.

  “Let’s hope that the other rumors aren’t,” William noted. “Like the one about the race of ghouls that live deep in the most ancient parts of the tunnel network, feeding on the dead.”

  “I’ve had enough ghost stories to last me a lifetime,” Lisa said. “Let’s just concentrate on the here and now.”

  They came to a halt at a junction with tunnels branching off on either side. Hellboy raised the lamp to check in both directions, but there were no distinguishing features. “Which way now?”

  “We haven’t got time to start wandering around down here!” Brad stressed.

  “Brad, stay calm,” William said. “We’ll get out of this if we work together.”

  Brad quieted, but Hellbo
y could see the strain was starting to tell on all their faces. As he hesitated, he felt a gentle touch on his hand, although no one was near him. The opera glasses revealed Sarah, pale-faced and frightened.

  “The tunnels remain part of the house, under the spell of the Kiss of Winter,” she whispered. Hellboy looked around, but no one else appeared to have heard her. “For now I can guide you, but very soon my influence will fade, as I will fade.” She smiled wanly. “I put my faith in you.”

  “We’re grateful for your help,” he whispered.

  “Who are you talking to?” Lisa asked.

  Hellboy explained as Sarah guided them left and along the tunnel for a little way, but true to her word, her image in the opera glasses became fractured and began to break up. She gave Hellboy one last, hopeful look and then she was gone.

  “We’re on our own,” he said quietly.

  Soon they came to another junction, this time with three more tunnels branching off.

  “It’s a maze,” Lisa said desperately.

  “There’s a logic to these,” Hellboy said. “Put your left hand against a wall and keep walking. Or is it your right hand?”

  A low, desolate howl echoed dimly through the dark.

  “Was that in the tunnels or still in the house?” Brad asked.

  “I don’t feel like waiting to find out,” Hellboy said.

  They chose one of the tunnels, but they hadn’t gone far along it when their way was blocked by a wall of rubble.

  “Ceiling collapse,” Hellboy said.

  “What if that’s the only way to the Kiss of Winter?” Lisa ran an anxious hand through her hair.

  “You are so negative. Come on.” Hellboy led them back to the junction, where they selected another tunnel. Within a minute they came to another junction, and a minute later another, and five minutes after that they were completely lost.

  “This is starting to get irritating,” Hellboy snapped.

  From far behind them in the tunnel complex came the sound of a howl, followed swiftly by another, and then a sequence of roars as the wolves picked up the scent.