The Ice Wolves

by Mark Chadbourn

  “No doubt about it now,” Hellboy said.

  With renewed purpose, they raced along the tunnels, trying to keep away from the echoes of the wolves’ pursuit, until William brought them to a halt. Head bowed and hands on his knees as he caught his breath, he said, “I can’t carry on at this pace. You have to leave me behind.”

  “No!” Brad said defiantly. “You’re coming with me, even if I have to carry you.”

  “Listen to your son, William. We’re not going to leave you here,” Hellboy added.

  “This isn’t fair!” They were shocked to see tears in William’s eyes. “I need to make amends, don’t you see? You’re going to die, without a chance to get the things you deserve. The things I hoped for you when you were born.” He choked back his emotion.

  “You think some mindless sacrifice will make amends?” Brad said sharply. “If that’s the case, you haven’t changed at all.”

  William bowed his head.

  “I don’t want you dead,” Brad continued. “I want . . . Are you even listening to me?”

  William had dropped to his knees and was moving his hand slowly in front of him. “Here. Can you feel this?”

  Lisa and Hellboy joined him. “Yes!” Lisa responded excitedly. “A blast of cold air.”

  “Very cold air,” Hellboy added. “That says to me, the Kiss of Winter. If we can follow this current—”

  A howl echoed off the bricks, unnervingly close.

  “If we can follow this current very, very fast,” Hellboy continued, “it should lead us right to it.”

  Keeping low, they hurried along the tunnel, searching around at

  junctions until they found the icy breeze and continuing to trace it back. Soon they noticed the cold was getting more intense and easier to follow.

  Their hearts fell when they came to a dead end. “No!” Lisa said. “It’s not fair!”

  “Doesn’t make sense,” Hellboy said. “The air current’s got to be coming from somewhere.”

  He searched around until he found a gap at the base of one of the walls, which they had missed in the dark. The cold blew out of it sharply.

  “You’re crazy,” Lisa said. “Crawl in there? It’s barely big enough for you to get your shoulders in. And who’s to say it doesn’t get narrower? We could get jammed down there, unable to crawl back. You want to die like that?”

  “I don’t want to die at all,” Hellboy said.

  “Or the wolves could crawl in after us, and eat us while we’re trying to wriggle through . . . or . . . or . . . Oh, come on! Who’s going first?”

  “I don’t think I can do it,” Brad said quietly. His hands shaking, he stared at the hole, recalling the intensity of his claustrophobic experience under the debris after the bomb blast in the marketplace.

  “Yes, you can,” Lisa said. She took his hands and held them till the involuntary trembling subsided. “I’ll be with you. Together we’ve got through everything you’ve faced. This isn’t going to be any different.”

  “I . . . I . . . ” he stuttered.

  “You can do this, Brad,” William insisted. “We’ll all be along with you.”

  Looking from William to Lisa, Brad wrestled with his inner demons. The howls echoed again, closer this time.

  “Okay,” he said.

  Hellboy dropped to his knees and thrust his shoulders into the hole. It was a tight fit, but amid a hail of grunts and curses, he forced his way in. The others wriggled in after, Lisa first, then Brad with some cajoling, and finally William.

  Pushing the lamp ahead of him, Hellboy dragged himself forward, his back scraping on the earth above, which showered down all around. On more than one occasion, he was convinced the load above was caving in, and he had to wait until the fall of soil had subsided.

  They appeared to be in a much older tunnel that had been—from the marks on the walls—dug out by hand, with much of the lower part of the tunnel filled in over the years. He struggled into a section that appeared to have been used for burials at some point. Bones protruded from either side and rubbed against him as he crawled over them.

  An upper torso, still clad in the remnants of clothes, almost barred his way. As he shoved it to one side, it turned its skull and whispered, “You’ll be down here with us soon.”

  “Screw,” Hellboy replied.

  Further on, the bones took a disturbing turn, the heads unnaturally elongated, the limbs strangely squat.

  “You all right back there?” he called.

  “Yes,” Lisa lied.

  “Nearly there now, Brad,” Hellboy shouted back. “I’m pretty sure I can see the way out.”

  Brad’s ragged breathing rasped through the dark, but it was quickly drowned out by a frantic scrabbling further back, followed by a deep, throaty snarl.

  “The wolves are in here!” William shouted. “Move!”

  Hellboy dragged himself at a furious pace, with the sounds of the others’ frantic calls at his back. After a minute, he was relieved to find the crawlspace opening out a little so he could move quicker, and soon after, a cold white light began to leak in.

  “I can see the way out,” he shouted back. “Hang on!”

  “They’re nearly on me!” William called. His voice was almost lost beneath frenzied snapping and snarling.

  Hellboy burst out into a large brick chamber flooded with white light from the Kiss of Winter, which rested on a stone plinth in the center of the floor. Beyond it, a flight of steps led up.

  Hellboy hauled Lisa out, then Brad, who thrust Hellboy to one side so he could drag his father from the hole. They could hear the wolves mere feet behind.

  “You all right?” Brad asked anxiously.

  “Yes, yes,” William said. “Don’t worry about me.” But there was a gleam of warmth in his face at Brad’s concern.

  Snatching up the piece of quartz, Hellboy juggled with it for a second. “Ow, ow, cold!” He thrust it into the pouch at his belt. “Okay, let’s get outta here.”

  As he ran for the steps, three wolves burst from the crawlspace one after the other. The brick chamber echoed with the sound of their roars. Brad and William were only a step behind Hellboy, but Lisa lagged, exhausted.

  One of the wolves leapt the entire length of the chamber in a single bound, crashing to the ground next to Lisa and tearing her from Brad’s grasp. Dragging her back to the center of the room, its mouth tore wide above her throat.

  “No!” Brad exclaimed. Without a thought for his own safety, he threw himself at the wolf, smashing it against the stone plinth. Lisa wriggled free, and as the other two wolves attacked, Hellboy jumped back into the fray.

  “You’re crazy!” William shouted at him.

  “Yeah. I’ve heard that before.”

  Hellboy and the wolves rolled around the room in a savage battle, the beasts snapping and snarling as Hellboy lashed out repeatedly.

  “No! More! Biting!” he shouted as he shattered the jaw of one and then turned his attention to the other.

  In the center of the room, the third wolf raked Brad across the chest with its talons, tearing through his clothes and the flesh beneath. Brad went down amid a spurt of blood and Lisa’s shrieks. She scrambled forward, but the beast sent her flying with a backhand swipe.

  As the wolf hunched down over Brad, ready to feed, William ran forward. Straining his aged muscles, he lifted the top of the stone plinth over his head and brought it down with a wheeze of pain. It crashed into the back of the wolf’s skull, smashing it open on the floor.

  Hellboy dispatched the remaining wolf with a one-two to the gut and head, and then ran over to where William and Lisa clustered around Brad. Lisa was crying, and William’s face was drawn and ashen. He wiped a stray tear away with the back of his hand.

  “How is he?” Hellboy asked. But as he leaned over the prone form he saw his answer. Brad was unconscious, his chest torn open and blood leaking at an alarming rate through his clothes and onto the stone flags.

  “He’s dying,” William sa
id bluntly.

  CHAPTER 23

  —

  Racing up the stone steps from the brick chamber with Brad in his arms, Hellboy came to a large wooden trapdoor that didn’t look like it had been opened in centuries. It resisted all of William’s and Lisa’s desperate attempts to shift it, until Hellboy laid Brad on the steps and put his shoulder to the ancient wood. Straining, the trapdoor eventually burst open amid a shower of clods of turf.

  Their breath billowing in clouds, they climbed out into the freezing night. Thick snow lay heavily across a flat area surrounded by clumps of trees and illuminated by a row of lamps. A frozen lake glittered nearby.

  “Where the heck is this?” Hellboy barked. “The Common?”

  “Next to the lagoon,” William said. All around the city’s lights blazed, but Beacon Hill rose up ahead of them in complete darkness. “Massachusetts General is on the other side of the hill, across Cambridge Street.”

  Lisa and William both looked at Brad, thinking the same thing. His blood splashed on the pristine snow.

  “We’ll get him there in time,” Hellboy growled.

  The snow was more than two feet deep, and every lurching step seemed to take an age, but the roads were all blocked and no traffic moved anywhere. It felt strange to be out in the open after so long cooped up in the gloomy Grant Mansion. Although it was awash with light, the city was like a ghost town, and in its unbearable stillness it was easy to believe that everyone was dead, slaughtered by the wolves on their way to Beacon Hill. There probably hadn’t been such quiet—no voices, no vehicle noises—in more than a century.

  “This is taking too long!” Lisa’s voice cracked with desperation.

  William checked Brad’s pulse. “Still hanging on,” he said flatly, before adjusting the torn shirt they had bound across the wound. It was now sodden, but it had staunched the flow a little. “But he’s so cold. He’s going to get hypothermia if we don’t get him into the warm soon.”

  “Brad’s tough,” Hellboy said. “And the cold’s actually helping to slow the blood flow—”

  The words died on his lips as a loud, chilling howl rolled out across the rooftops of Beacon Hill.

  “Jeez. I shoulda seen that coming,” Hellboy muttered.

  Lisa looked fearfully toward the dark bulk of the hill. “Surely they’re still at the house. They can’t know we’re here.”

  “I’ve got a horrible feeling they can sense the Kiss of Winter. Or maybe there’s some link with the Heart, I don’t know,” Hellboy said.

  “No, not now.” Lisa stifled a sob.

  “They’ve got to find us first,” Hellboy replied, “an’ if we keep moving—”

  Another howl rose up, and then another, until Beacon Hill rang with the bestial rage of the wolves.

  “Aw, hell. Let’s go.” He tried to break into a run, cursing as the snow turned his attempts into a cartoon gait.

  The going became easier once they’d made it off the common and onto Beacon Street, where the houses and shops had minimized the drifting on the north sidewalk.

  “Okay, which way?” Hellboy asked anxiously.

  “Unless you want to cut through Beacon Hill . . . ” William began.

  “Which we don’t.”

  “The quickest way is probably along Storrow Drive by the river. It’s a good, clear road. No dark alleys, or side streets, or doorways,

  no rooftops where the wolves can drop on us. You’re probably talking ten, fifteen minutes to Longfellow Bridge and then Mass. General is just a short hop from there.”

  “What if they’ve evacuated the hospital because of the weather?” Lisa asked.

  “Then we’ll see which of us makes the best surgeon.” Hellboy felt a pang of guilt when he saw Lisa’s face fall. “Sorry. Look, I figure the hospital is the last place they’re going to evacuate. In this storm, there’s got to be people in trouble all over the place. They’ll be ready to help.”

  As they rounded onto Storrow Drive, they turned straight into a furious, icy wind blasting across the river. The deserted road stretched out straight as a die, a dividing line between the brightly lit modern world and the ancient world of shadows that clustered over Beacon Hill. A trail of abandoned vehicles sloughed at different angles into the snow here and there.

  Although their instincts wanted to drive them to the line of burning streetlights along the western edge of the road, next to the river, they would have been easily seen as the only objects moving on the brightly lit white background. Instead, Hellboy chose to hide in the dark that ran along the foot of Beacon Hill.

  They fell silent. Only their labored breathing marked their passing. In contrast, the sound of the wolves scouring the sedate, historic streets of Beacon Hill echoed down to them. Hellboy could tell the army of wolves was moving methodically back and forth across the district, sensing their prey was near. It wouldn’t be long before they reached the foot of the hill.

  Nestling Brad in the crook of one arm, Hellboy drew his gun in anticipation.

  “How much ammo have you got left?” Lisa whispered.

  “Six slugs,” Hellboy replied. “And I’m gonna make every one count.” Still gripping the gun, he hooked Brad back over his arm and continued to run.

  Every time they came to a street, they paused and peered around the corner to check they wouldn’t be seen before dashing across. At Chestnut, no movement was visible up the long, dark stretch. At Mount Vernon Street, they could just glimpse flitting gray shapes moving across the junction with River Street further up the slope. But when they reached Pinckney Street, the wolves were close enough to see them.

  “Now what?” William asked.

  “We’re gonna have to take our chances,” Hellboy replied. “Watch the rhythms of their search, and then get set to run.”

  They waited as the wolves darted in and out of doorways, the vast mass of the beasts roaming further up Beacon Hill, drawing nearer all the time. When William signaled, they raced across the street and into the shadows beyond.

  “That was lucky,” Hellboy said.

  As the words left his lips, they saw movement ahead. A lone figure wandered out of Revere Street and turned to face them. It was Carnifex. His red eyes glowed like hot coals as he raised one hand above his head. In it was the Heart of Winter, glowing with the same white light they had experienced in the brick chamber. Hellboy felt a deep chill growing in his side, next to where the Kiss of Winter was stored, and within a second, the snow began to fall, slowly at first, but then with increasing intensity as the wind grew stronger. Within a minute, a blizzard raged across the area and visibility dropped. Carnifex put his head back and released a long howl that had a disturbing note of triumph.

  Up in the dark on their right there came the sound of thunder, as the wolves moved as one down Beacon Hill toward Storrow Drive.

  As they struggled against the wind and the thick snow, all around the streets began to warp, the buildings shifting between their ancient past and their modern incarnations. Ghostly figures in historic dress took on substance before becoming smoky and indistinct once more. Horses and carts left track marks in the snow that disappeared suddenly as they faded into the blizzard. The time twisting of the Heart and the Kiss united left them feeling queasy and unable to tell what was real and what was not.

  Carnifex stood his ground. He knew it was already too late for them.

  As they raced out into the middle of the road, the wolves began to emerge from the dark of Beacon Hill behind them, howling with uncontrollable blood lust.

  “Can’t you just shoot the bastard?” Lisa said fiercely as they closed on Carnifex.

  “Good idea.” Hellboy fired once and hit Carnifex directly in the center of the chest. He went down hard, but picked himself up a second later and stood defiantly once more. Hellboy repeated three more times with the same effect. He cursed loudly. “That isn’t getting us anywhere.”

  Surging closer, the wolves snapped at their heels, while ahead one loped out of Charles River Square
, attempting to head them off. Hellboy waited until it got close and then fired straight into its face. The skull exploded and the beast flipped backward to crash onto an abandoned car.

  “One bullet left,” William said breathlessly.

  “You’ve been counting.”

  Carnifex waited, still holding the Heart of Winter aloft. There was a hint of dark glee in his bestial face.

  “When I give the word, dive down behind that car up ahead,” Hellboy said.

  Lisa and William exchanged a brief, puzzled glance, but didn’t question Hellboy’s request. Behind them, the wolves were only feet away, the meaty smell of them heavy in the air.

  “Now!” Hellboy shouted.

  As Lisa and William dived beneath the rear of the sedan, Hellboy whirled and fired at a gas tanker slued half onto the sidewalk. It went up like a bomb, a wave of flame washing across the street where the wolves ran. Hellboy and Brad landed in the snow next to Lisa and William, who were transfixed by the conflagration.

  Thick black smoke swirled along the street in the gale, engulfing the burning wolves and Carnifex, but they could hear other wolves sweeping down from Beacon Hill to take the place of the fallen.

  “Get behind me,” Hellboy said, as he kept low on the other side of the stream of abandoned vehicles. Once he had confirmed that Brad was still breathing, he broke into a run under cover of the smoke.

  They could hear the frustrated roars of Carnifex as they left Storrow Drive behind them and dived into the underpass, heading toward Charles Street and the hospital.

  “I guess that’s one way of making your last bullet count,” Lisa said.

  William’s attention was drawn by Brad. Frantically, he grasped Brad’s hand as they ran and checked for a pulse. Hellboy saw the result on William’s face.

  “We’ve lost him,” he said.

  CHAPTER 24

  —

  The wolves had started to close in again as they raced along Fruit Street toward the entrance to the emergency room. The snow banked up in high walls on either side where it had been repeatedly cleared, but the ambulances were all backed up, unable to get out into the city at large.