by Tim Lebbon
“But first . . .”
First it must appease Vesuvius, or the old god will rise and come in pursuit of it.
“Figures.” Hellboy tried to imagine what that would entail, whatever ancient power existed at the heart of Vesuvius rising up to chase after Adamo and his clan. “That would be bad.”
Vesuvius’ fury will be greater than ever . . . it will know of the fire wolf’s deceit, and you must put the creature back into the volcano still, alive, still raging—
“Newsflash, lady. Not ‘it,’ but ‘them.’ Twelve of them.”
In his mind, Hellboy felt the ghost voice fall silent with shock.
“Yeah, well,” he said, “stay quiet for a while. But don’t tell me the odds.”
He considered tying it away again, but thought better of it. There was a chase to come, and he might not find time to be untying knots. Unpleasant though it was, the old demon hunter would have a place in his mind for the foreseeable future.
He scanned the beach, and close to where the harbor mole stretched out into the sea, several young couples were playing an impromptu game of volleyball. They’d left their stuff on several blankets arrayed around a huge picnic hamper.
Hellboy stood and hefted Adamo up into both arms. That way he could carry him like a baby, keep an eye on the bastard’s condition, and hopefully get away with what he had planned.
As he approached the kids they paused in their game, watching wide-eyed as he clomped along the beach. He’d long since discovered that hooves weren’t the best type of feet for walking on sand, and his exhaustion was aggravated as he sank in several inches with each step.
One of the boys shouted in surprise, but tow of the girls rushed to their bags and brought out cameras.
“Hey!” Hellboy called. “My grandfather’s ill! Can I borrow one of your blankets? Poor guy’s cold.”
One of the girls shouted something in Italian, looking around at her friends and throwing the ball down in disgust. She dashed forward, flicked a blanket free of sand and stepped hesitantly towards Hellboy.
He took the blanket and dropped it across Adamo’s body, tucking it beneath his chin and making sure it covered where his fingers penetrated the flesh.
“Thanks,” he said, nodding at the girl. She was beautiful, her skin caramel-brown, bikini a mere afterthought. “Grazie!”
The girl smiled and said something he couldn’t follow, and then Hellboy turned and walked towards the road. It led along the harbor into town, and from there he’d begin his search for Franca.
Twelve?
“All the same.”
They must have followed the first, after they realized its escape. I have to think.
“Think away.” He approached the harbor’s parking lot.
No sirens, no panic, no running and screaming and shouting, and that’s a good start.
But a few minutes later, as he drew level with the road that led up through the town, the running and screaming and shouting began.
And somewhere in the cacophony, Hellboy heard his name.
CHAPTER 14
—
Amalfi
—
Halfway up the grand staircase, Franca lost hope, and felt the dregs of sanity threatening to leave her. In the hallway behind her milled the three fire wolves from outside. Above her on the second floor landing, several more were gathered at the head of the stairs, their flames combining to form an impregnable barrier. She could feel the dreadful heat of them before and behind, and when she edged to the banister and glanced over, down at the narrow walkway that led to the door to the basements, she saw another. It looked up at her with bright, unblinking eyes staring from a sea of fire. Those eyes were blank and timeless as the stars.
“Who are you all?” she cried, but their answer was to burn.
She turned slowly, afraid that any sudden movements would provoke a harsh response. Looking back towards the main doors she could see no sign of Mario, though one door had been smashed from its hinges and lay propped against the other. She could see into the gardens, and there were two definite tracks of burnt grass leading from far corners towards the entrance. No body.
Please be gone, she thought. Please escape, Mario, and tell everyone what you’ve seen.
The things seemed to be waiting, at the top of the stairs and at the bottom. So Franca waited in the middle.
“Who are you?” she shouted again, and this time an answer came. It revealed itself slowly, but with each heartbeat Franca realized that the truth had never been very far away.
One of the fire wolves below her in the hallway was the first to change. It slumped to the ground, its four legs splayed, head resting on its forepaws. The flames dancing along its back lessened, growing smaller and smaller before stuttering out in small patches. Beneath, she saw the unmistakeable shine of wet skin. The extinguished areas grew and joined, then shifted down the thing’s legs and onto its head. The body beneath shook as if flicking the flames away. It was naked and hot and wet, the moisture lifting rapidly in geysers of steam when the flesh rippled. The thing turned onto its back and snapped arms and legs out straight, a crackling napping sound indicating the presence of bones once more.
It rolled again onto hands and knees, raised its head and howled.
Great-Aunt Sophia! Franca thought, but the surprise was less than it should have been. Sophia had been one of the Elders for as long as Franca could remember, and as she glanced around at the other fire wolves—and more of them were changing now, twisting and sometimes thrashing as their flames receded to flesh—she realized how easily she had ignored the truth.
Franca sat on the stairs and watched, because there was no way for her to escape. One fire wolf remained in the hallway and one at the head of the stairs, each of them threatening agonies she could not bear to imagine. The others changed, manifesting into old, naked people who were not human. They stood uncertainly and smiled at Franca, but there was nothing pleasant about their expressions. They were unconcerned at their nakedness.
And then Great-Aunt Sophia spoke.
“Franca,” it said. “I never thought I’d see—”
“Shut up, monster!” Franca shouted, more afraid than angry. “You killed my mother!” The old woman looked briefly hurt, but then the smile returned.
“We don’t need to talk,” she said. “But there are a few things I need you to do. First, we all need clothes, so if you’d remain where you are while we dress . . . we won’t be long . . . we don’t want to miss the fun.”
“The fun of watching Hellboy kick Adamo’s ass?” she asked.
Sophia laughed as she started climbing the stairs. She said no more, but continued laughing, leading other Elders up towards the rooms they had occupied for countless years. They moved much faster than they should have, their ancient bodies still exuding the unnatural heat of their recent incarnations.
Countless questions buzzed Franca’s head, but she would not give them the satisfaction.
So she waited on that staircase for several minutes, conscious of the fire wolves above and below her promising pain were she to attempt escape. She edged over slightly so that she could look down at the doorway to the basements. It was open, its painted metal face blistered by heat. However much she concentrated, Hellboy did not walk through that door.
“He’s gone,” Sophia said. The old woman descended and sat on the stair beside her. She was dressed, though she had taken no notice of what she had shrugged on. Dressed to look human and nothing more, Franca thought.
“So where’s Adamo?” she asked.
“Gone too,” Sophia said. “Taken Hellboy down, deep as he can, and there the demon will burn for a long time.” She looked at Franca and her eyes were dark and bottomless, not the rheumy old eyes that Franca remembered.
“So now what?” Franca asked, but she had a good idea of what came next. She was terrified, and though she tried not to show it, there was a quaver in her voice and a shake in one hand.
“Now you do wh
at Carlotta would not,” Sophia said. She stood and shouted instructions at the other Elders.
Franca stood and ran down the stairs, faintness washing over her. Hellboy! she thought, but still he did not come. One of the still-blazing fire wolves flowed before her and raised itself on its hind legs, roaring at the ceiling and blistering the old paint there. Franca cried out unconsciously, lifting her hands to shield her eyes from the heat.
Hands grasped her arms, and old people who she had once known and loved marched her from La Casa Fredda.
Three of them went to fetch three of the big cars they kept in the house’s extensive garage. The men holding Franca dug their fingers into her arms, and she had to bite her tongue to stop herself crying out at the pain. There was no sign of Mario, and for that she was glad, but she could not shake the feeling of abandonment.
First chance I get, she thought. I’ll be away from them the first chance I get. She tried to calm herself, control her breathing, because she knew that time was not now. She had to let them think they had her, and had defeated her. Get in the car, curl up and cry, exude weakness just as they still bled heat. And when the time came, she would not hesitate for a second to kill them.
These were not the Elders she had known, if they had ever really existed at all.
These were monsters.
—
Hellboy stood by the buses and cars that were disgorging evacuees from closer to Vesuvius, listening to their excited chatter and wishing he could understand more Italian, and then Mario was rushing along the street towards him, his clothes singed, hair shrivelled by heat, and he was shouting.
“Hellboy! Franca! Hellboy!”
Startled people parted to let him pass, and with everything that was plastered on the news and rife in their minds, perhaps they made some link between this screaming man and the volcano to the north. And they’d be right, Hellboy thought, squeezing with his right hand but feeling no change in Adamo. The old man made no sound, seemed to feel no pain. Not good, but good to know.
“Hellboy, they have Franca, many of them, I hid and watched and they put her in a car—”
“The others?” Hellboy asked.
“Safe. I left them with—”
“Don’t tell me!” he hissed. “Not here.” He nodded down at Adamo, and Mario took a couple of steps back.
“But . . . ?” Franca’s cousin said.
“Lots to tell,” Hellboy said. “You okay?”
Mario was shaking his head, unable to take his eyes from the Esposito family patriarch.
“Mario!” Hellboy said. There were lots of people milling around now, and Hellboy knew that they’d be suspicious. To his right a policeman was guiding traffic in and trying to squeeze it all into the beach parking lot, but he had already glanced over a couple of times. How the hell do I explain this? Hellboy thought. “Mario, we need a car.”
“A car,” Mario said softly, and Hellboy didn’t like the look in his eyes. Even after what Franca had told Mario and what he must have seen—and Hellboy would ask him about that soon enough—his gaze still contained a measure of respect, and a mindless love for Adamo Esposito.
“Mario, your past is over,” Hellboy said quietly, hoping that the man could detect the intonation in the English.
Mario blinked a few times and looked at Hellboy, his face hard and shocked. Then he sighed and slumped, nodding his head. “I know,” he said. “But the past . . .”
“Is dangerous,” Hellboy finished for him. “Believe me, I know. Bad place to dwell. Do-gooders and touchy-feely types will tell you to live for the present, but I need you to help me save the future of what’s left of your family. Think you can do that?”
“Let’s walk,” Mario said, glancing around at the curious onlookers. “We’re attracting too much attention.” And that was when Hellboy knew that Mario would help.
They walked in the direction from which Mario had run, most passers-by paying more attention to Hellboy than what he carried.
“Are you hurt?” Hellboy asked quietly, and the thing in his arms shifted.
“It’s not too bad,” Mario said. “I ran, one came at me by the gates, but I got away.”
“No,” Hellboy said. He paused, looking down at Adamo’s calm, deceptive face. Had he really moved? He bore a very slight smile, but the heat Hellboy could detect with his fingers was no greater than when they’d been beneath the sea. “You didn’t escape. They let you.”
“But I ran.” He looked at Adamo’s face, and there was anger there at last. “What has he done?”
“‘He’ is an ‘it’.”
Mario paused in the square before the cathedral, looking up at the magnificent façade with tears in his eyes.
“Mario, we need a car,” Hellboy said again. “Can you get us one without having to go back up there?” He nodded back at the hillside, towards where La Casa Fredda stood dead and empty. He’d spent enough time there, seen enough bad things, and they didn’t have the time to climb that hill one more time.
“Yes, I can get a car,” Mario said. “My girlfriend lives not far from here. But where are we going? And where are those things taking Franca?”
“Vesuvius,” Hellboy said, and a shiver passed through the body in his arms. Perhaps it was fear. That pleased Hellboy.
A few people around them glanced his way when he spoke the volcano’s name, and Mario frowned, shaking his head in confusion.
“Plenty of time to talk in the car,” Hellboy said. “While you’re driving, I’ve got some questions to ask this son of a bitch. First, though, there’s somebody else I need to talk to. Lead the way, and don’t get all freaked out if it seems like I’m talking to myself.”
Mario frowned but nodded, and Hellboy followed him into a side street.
“I need to keep Adamo weak,” Hellboy whispered. “How long will he be like this?”
Water might keep him down, the old ghost said. She sounded hollow, shocked into hopelessness.
“Hey, wake up. I can do this,” Hellboy said.
You can do what I could not? she asked, anger tainting her voice.
“With your help. You were on your own, weren’t you? Back then in Pompeii, there was only you.”
And no one would believe.
“Well, I believe. But I need to know what you know.”
Such life, the ghost said, and there it was, the familiar shade of jealousy that Hellboy heard in any ghost’s voice.
“Lady, yours ended two thousand years ago.”
Mario glanced back, frowning, and Hellboy smiled and nodded, indicating that they should move on. The man looked down at Adamo. Behind the confusion in his eyes there lay hatred, and Hellboy knew that could serve them both well.
Water, the ghost said. As much as you can, that will keep it subdued. It has merged with a man, and in the human form it knows a man’s weaknesses. Ahh, weaknesses . . . .
“That’s it? A little water’s gonna keep his fire out?”
Weak as he already is, yes. But not forever.
“We need to talk more soon.” The ghost was silent. “Hey. Soon?” Still no response.
Just what I need, Hellboy thought. A petulant spirit advisor.
They walked up through the town, and outside a grocer’s Hellboy waited while Mario went in and bought as many bottles of water as he could carry in a plastic bag. He asked Hellboy what they needed it for, but Hellboy shook his head and said, “In the car.”
Soon after the shop Mario took them right, into a narrow gap between buildings that Hellboy had to negotiate sideways. Stuck between those two walls, Adamo began to shake in his arms, steam rising from his mouth and heat pulsing from him in several huge waves.
“Water bottle!” Hellboy said, and when Mario came with one Hellboy said, “In his mouth, all of it!” Mario poured, and steam billowed around them as soon as the water touched the insides of the old man’s mouth. The last few glugs from the bottle spilled down his cheeks and chin, and Hellboy saw his throat flex as he swallowed. The heat
faded, the man stilled.
“Good,” Hellboy said. “It works. Now you know why we needed the water.”
Mario looked stunned, but Hellboy recognized the expression: this was so far beyond his experience that his mind was not yet fully comprehending what he saw. For now, that was good, because it meant he could still function.
“Get the car, Mario. And if you don’t have a phone, get your girlfriend’s. I need to call a friend.”
“Who?”
“Someone alive.”
—
Mario drove, using one hand while he applied salve to burns on his neck and forearm with the other. He had been curiously quiet since leaving his girlfriend’s place, and Hellboy was happy to give him time.
Hellboy sat in the back, with Adamo’s unresponsive body strapped into the corner of the rear seat. The seatbelt would do little were he to change, but it meant that Hellboy had his hands free to use the phone. He only hoped it could make international calls.
He sat there for a while, frowning, doing his best to remember Liz Sherman’s cell phone number. He cursed when he couldn’t. Damn technology, you didn’t need to remember numbers when you had speed dial, but then when your phone took a swim and died . . .
So he dialled B.P.R.D. headquarters instead, and they patched him through to Liz. She was still in Seattle, and when she answered he could immediately hear the strain in her voice.
“Hey, Liz,” he said, “how’re the ghoulies on that yacht?”
“Hey, H.B! Huh. Sometimes people just set out to piss you off, and then they try to go even further. What is it about humans that makes us so deceitful?”
“Don’t ask me,” he said, chuckling at the old joke. But Liz seemed beyond humor.
“No one knows anyone, isn’t that the truth? We’re mysterious to all but ourselves, and even that . . . well, we both know where the weirdest stuff is.”
“Closer to home,” Hellboy said.
“Yeah.”
Hellboy saw Mario glance at him in the rearview mirror, and he offered a comforting smile. Mario did not return it. Hellboy could hardly blame him.
“So the yacht’s not haunted,” Hellboy said.
