The Fire Wolves

by Tim Lebbon

  “This one?” Mario asked. A big four-wheel drive approached them, but Hellboy shook his head.

  “Needs to be faster.”

  They walked on, Hellboy holding the pistol within the folds of his coat. He would not be surprised if Adamo sent a couple of fire wolves back to make sure he and Mario did not pursue too quickly, and while the pistol had little effect against them, it would still put holes in a car.

  “This one,” Mario said, sounding more sure of himself. A big Mazda swept around the corner behind them.

  “Faster,” Hellboy said. The car passed them, and he caught the driver’s curious glance. As the Mazda disappeared up the incline, Hellboy tried rearranging his burnt coat so that it hung better, brushing creases from the sleeves.

  The road curved around the side of the steep hill, switching back on itself and climbing higher. The traffic coming from the other direction was growing heavier, and he could see that many people were bringing as much as they could with them. They obviously expected the volcano to blow, and he could almost taste the excitement they left in the air after passing by. Kids waved at him, and he wondered what they thought he was. He waved back and their smiles did not falter. At least that made him feel good.

  Mario’s attack . . . that had done something to Hellboy. For a while, maybe he’d even been wallowing in self pity, and there were only a few things he hated more.

  Fire wolves. That was one.

  He heard a sound behind him, like the purr of a tiger amplified a thousand times, and he turned around.

  “Oh,” he said, “that one.” A bright red Ferrari turned a corner below them and powered up the incline, seeming to glide on ice. Hellboy stepped into the road and raised his gun, finger resting across the trigger guard.

  “Have you ever been in one of those?” Mario said. “They’re small inside. You’ll be crushed, even if you manage to fit. You’re too heavy for it.”

  The driver’s mouth fell open as he slammed on the brakes.

  “Yeah,” Hellboy said, “but it’s my color.”

  —

  Moving again, the Ferrari eating up the road, Mario at the wheel, Hellboy had time to consider what might come next. And his imaginings were not good.

  Mario had been right—the car was more cramped than he’d expected. Once inside, he could not move his legs, and his right arm was pressed up against the door, motionless and dead-looking. He flexed the fingers and watched them move, and it was as if they belonged to someone else.

  But the car was fast. Mario drove as if the Devil himself was on their tail, and never once did Hellboy have to suggest that they speed up. The man knew what was at stake here . . . but Hellboy wondered whether he had considered the “alternative,” as the ghost had called it.

  Mario threw the car around another hairpin bend, apparently unconcerned at the amount of traffic coming from the opposite direction. Wheels spun, tires screamed against the hot road, and he bit his lip, concentrating on not swerving them off the road. He was sweating, and Hellboy could see the concentration on his face. Perhaps Mario had been waiting to drive a car like this all his life, but there was not an ounce of enjoyment in his expression right now. He was deadly serious, and Hellboy did not want to do anything to distract him.

  “Here we are,” Mario said. The road ahead curved up slowly to the right, and when Hellboy looked from his window he saw the sea so far below and behind them that it seemed like a memory. They were leaving the long, climbing, twisting coastal road at last. “All good fast roads from here to Vesuvius,” Mario said. “Thirty miles. And most of the traffic is coming this way, not going towards the volcano.”

  “Which is why we’ll likely be stopped when we get closer,” Hellboy said.

  “If there are roadblocks, the fire wolves will go straight through, won’t they?”

  “Hope so. That way we’ll be able to track their route.”

  Mario nursed the car into the center of the two northbound lanes, only edging towards the side to pass a slower vehicle.

  “So do you have a plan?” Mario asked quietly.

  “Of sorts. You sure they’ll be coming this way?”

  “It’s the fastest way to Vesuvius. And their priority is getting there fast, yes?”

  “Hope so.” Hellboy shifted in his seat, feeling pins and needles cutting into his legs. Ferraris were obviously not designed for hooves.

  “So?” Mario asked.

  “It’s Adamo and the other two we’ll likely catch up with first. We need Adamo. I need to take him down, get him to Vesuvius and give him back to the volcano.”

  “You’re sure that will stop the others?”

  “Hey, you. Will it?” Hellboy asked.

  I’ve been considering that, the ghost said. I think it will do more than stop them. Once the ancient thing in the volcano has Adamo, it will know the truth of how it has been deceived over the millennia, and it will drag the others in after him.

  “You know this, or you’re guessing?”

  I feel it.

  “Who do you keep talking to?” Mario asked.

  “Kid, you don’t wanna know. But yeah, I think it’ll stop them. Adamo’s the key . . . he always has been.”

  Hellboy sighed, played with some dashboard buttons, distracted. The wiper fluid squirted.

  “But?”

  “It’s tight. They get there with Franca before we do . . . .”

  “Oh,” Mario said.

  “Yeah, oh.”

  “No, I mean . . . look.” He slowed slightly, dropping just below a hundred miles per hour. Ahead of them a big, black car rode the centerline, a trail of steam hanging in the air behind it. “Broke their radiator when they shoved us from the road.”

  “Ram them,” Hellboy said.

  “But we’re going—”

  “It’s not as if we can just wave them over,” Hellboy said. “Ram them off the road, and then help me.”

  “Help you how?”

  “Find some water.”

  Mario eased back on the gas some more, dropping further behind the car. “About two miles,” he said.

  “Right.” Hellboy did not ask what was two miles away, but he took the couple of minutes it took them to travel that distance to prepare himself. No more doubts. No more giving in.

  No alternative.

  —

  “Hold on,” Mario said.

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Mario pressed down on the gas, taking the Ferrari out into the fast lane and swishing past the several cars that had overtaken them in the past couple of minutes. It seemed that people felt good overtaking a Ferrari, and Hellboy could not help but smile at the annoyed expressions he saw as they powered along the road.

  “It’s a canal,” Mario said. “It runs beneath the road. If I hit them exactly right . . .”

  Hellboy realized how hard Mario was concentrating. His hands were fisted around the wheel, sweat beaded on his forehead despite the air conditioning, and he frowned hard as he focused on the road ahead.

  It was only at the last moment that the car ahead of them veered across the road. Mario had brought them up so quickly that the driver hadn’t had a chance to spot them, and the automatic reaction was to veer towards the edge of the road . . . which was just what Mario intended.

  As the cars connected, Hellboy looked at Adamo in the rear of the other car and gave him the finger.

  It was only a gentle touch, but the impact speed was huge. The Ferrari skewed across the road into the central barrier, and though Mario fought with the steering wheel it jumped from his hands, jarring as the wheels took over. The car went into a spin.

  Hellboy closed his eyes and tried to hold down his vomit. He hated being thrown around like this; much nicer to walk everywhere.

  It was over in seconds. Even before the car came to a stop and levelled on its suspension, Hellboy was shouldering the door open.

  “Mario?”

  “Go, I’m fine!”

  Where am I? I feel sick.


  “Shut it, you.” Hellboy ran back towards the bridge, trailing clouds of dust that had risen beside the road to track the course of the fire wolves’ car. Other cars skidded to a stop beyond the bridge, and Hellboy held up his hand, fingers splayed, hoping that they’d pay attention.

  He reached the bridge and looked over . . . and he could have laughed out loud. There was very little of the car visible. It had left the road, smashed through a metal barrier, taken down several fences, crushed a wandering goat against a wall, leaving a smear of blood and pelt, and then ended up nose-first in the canal that Mario had remembered so accurately. Steam drifted above the car, and bubbles broke the water’s still-violent surface.

  Hellboy didn’t want to waste any time. He balanced on the parapet and then jumped, landing with feet wide on the car’s slightly-sloping roof.

  Someone was trying to force a door open. Hellboy shoved it closed.

  The windscreen smashed and arms reached out. Hellboy stamped on them.

  When two doors opened at once he lay flat on the roof, kicking down with his hooves and feeling them strike something soft, and smashed down on the other door with his right hand. He felt something give way, and he hoped that one was Adamo.

  Mario appeared on the bridge above him, and Hellboy nodded.

  It only took a couple of minutes. With the car almost completely submerged, the struggles were frantic and brutal, and Hellboy felt every impact transmitted up through the car roof and into his chest and stomach. He enjoyed the sensations, knowing that they marked the end for two of the fire wolves, at least.

  From above, Mario started shouting at people in Italian. Hellboy hoped he was telling them to stay away. Anyone looking down and seeing this big red man forcing three old people to remain in the car to drown . . . well, he had no liking of where that could take them.

  “Come on, come on!” he muttered.

  At last the struggling seemed to end, and Hellboy slowly knelt on the car’s roof. He glanced up for Mario, but he was out of sight, hopefully keeping the crowds back.

  “They can drown,” he said.

  Good . . . . good . . . but not him. He will only die in the flames of Vesuvius.

  A car door started opening. It moved slowly against the water, and the thin, gray arm that pushed it looked ready to be washed away by the water.

  Hellboy leaned over and grabbed the arm. It was cold, bearing not a trace of heat. He pulled, and Adamo drifted from the car, his eyes dull, mouth hanging slack in a vacant expression he could not possible feign.

  “Hi,” Hellboy said. The old man did not respond. He dragged Adamo onto the car roof and knelt on his back, then leaned over and dipped his head into the water. His vision was blurred and the water silty, but he could just make out the other two shapes in the car, arms held wide, floating in complete unity with the water. No more struggles, no more fighting from these old fire wolves.

  He knelt up again, shaking the water from his face. Beneath him, Adamo groaned.

  “Two more down,” Hellboy growled into the old man’s ear. “You old bastard, you’re going to feed a hungry volcano.”

  I almost have you, the ghost whispered to itself.

  “Hellboy!” Mario called down.

  Hellboy looked up, shading his eyes against the sun. “It’s all good down here!” he said.

  “We really need to leave,” Mario said.

  “Trouble?”

  “Come up and look.”

  Hellboy stepped from the car’s submerged hood onto the canal’s concrete edging, dragging Adamo after him. The old man felt dead, but Hellboy had seen the flicker of an eyelid, felt the pulse of warmth deep within his chest. Even hurting this bad, the old patriarch was sly.

  Mario met him at the top of the bank, glancing at Adamo and then nodding over Hellboy’s shoulder.

  Hellboy looked north. Above the horizon, driving up through the clouds, a billowing column of smoke rose high into the air. Lightning played around its head. And at its base, behind the horizon but illuminating the clouds, fire.

  CHAPTER 17

  —

  The Road to Vesuvius

  —

  The fire wolves were terrified. The closer they drove to Vesuvius, the quieter they became, and when they saw the billowing clouds of smoke and gas illuminated from within by fire and lightning, Sophia caught her breath.

  Franca tried her best not to look as if she was examining them, but she was certain. They were petrified. Fire trickled from Sophia’s tear ducts, and her skin looked pale and cool. Her eyes were wide. They reflected nothing.

  Franca turned her head casually and looked from her window again. She could see the column of smoke and dust in the distance, but also the rows of cars and trucks fleeing from the volcano. The mood here did not seem quite so light; fewer people smiled, and she could hear the impatient, useless screams of horns as the traffic stopped and started. A few people faced her way, obviously wondering at these two big cars driving towards the volcano, not away from it. For a beat Franca thought of looking for a police car, and then bashing the window and screaming for help, hoping that the policemen would be looking at just the right time to see her. But even if they did see, and did manage to catch up, she knew what the results of such an action would be. This close to salvation, she was certain that the fire wolves would not hesitate in exposing themselves to the public.

  “We’ll start meeting roadblocks soon,” the driver said. That was Uncle Calvo, an old man who had once walked Franca down to Amalfi beach and helped her dig for crabs. They had found three, and he had insisted that they be given back to the water. They’re too young to eat, he had said. It’s best to wait until they’re older and more mature. So they had let the crabs go and watched them scampering down the beach, seeking the water now that their underground hiding places had been discovered. She wondered whether Calvo had been the one to kill her mother.

  “The others will deal with them,” Sophia said, nodding at the car ahead of them.

  “Right,” Franca said. “You’ve killed your family, what are a few police added to that?”

  “They had to die,” Sophia said. “It’s a shame, but a necessity now that we’re found out.”

  “They’re not all dead,” she said gleefully.

  “I know. But the days are long, Franca, and the nights are longer. The others will be found.”

  Franca caught her breath, trying not to cry out at her foolishness. She’d been nurturing thoughts of self-sacrifice, but whatever she did—fight or submit—the others would still be doomed. Wherever Mario had hidden them all away would be found by the fire wolves, especially in the confusion that would be rife in Amalfi with hundreds, perhaps thousands of evacuees staying there.

  “You can let them go,” she said. “Once the volcano has me, you can flee.”

  “From Vesuvius? We can never go far, girl. Why do you think we live so close even after two thousand years?” Sophia sighed, and it sounded almost pleasurable. “The best thing about escape is living beneath our former jailer’s nose.”

  “But they don’t have to die!” she said, turning to face Sophia.

  “If they don’t know of us, they know Adamo, and that’s enough,” Sophia said, and Franca realized how pointless it was trying to appeal to this woman. She’s not human, she thought. She’s a monster that for now just happens to be wearing her human skin.

  Perhaps it was time to go another route.

  “It looks hungry for you all,” she said, leaning between the front seats. Uncle Calvo glanced back at her, but the woman in the front passenger seat—Franca had always known her as Eve—seemed enrapt by the incredible sky before them. Almost the whole horizon was now swallowed by the eruption.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sophia said unconvincingly.

  “You think you can go so close without Vesuvius knowing you’re here?” she said. “Fools.”

  Sophia grabbed her hair and jerked her back. The sudden violence startled Fran
ca, and she let out a brief, high squeal. The older woman pushed her back against the seat and then leaned over before her, face only inches away from hers. Franca could feel the unnatural heat of her breath.

  “Don’t think we can’t burn you a little before we get there,” Sophia said. She held up her hand and nursed a tongue of fire in her palm. It seemed to grow and shrink in time with her breathing.

  “Why would you do that?” Franca asked. She was pressing her head back into the seat, yet still she could feel the heat against her face.

  Sophia was breathing heavier now, and for the first time Franca had a true appreciation of the fire beneath the flesh. The old woman seemed uncomfortable in her false clothing. And now that the need to hide away was not so urgent, it would take little for her to strip it away and reveal her true self.

  “You told me you weren’t evil,” Franca whispered.

  “Sophia,” Calvo said. His voice was flat, but still the old woman eased back and let Franca sit up.

  “Don’t test me,” Sophia said. “You have no control here, Franca. You have no advantage. So you can see our fear? Good. The fear makes us strong. It feeds us, and gives us edge. So . . . don’t test me.”

  Franca slid across next to the window again, and in the queues on the other carriageway she saw several police cars. She watched them flit by, and a couple of faces watched her as well. She did not quite manage a smile, but neither did she give any sign of alarm.

  I’m lost, she thought, struggling to prevent the tears. But she could sense the fire wolves’ fear, and though it might give them edge, it also meant that there was something for them to be afraid of.

  So long as the fire wolves were scared, she still had hope.

  Where are you, Hellboy? Don’t abandon me, don’t leave me.

  —

  Hellboy stood on the bridge over the canal. Several people who had stopped after seeing the accident cheered when he climbed up with Adamo, and Hellboy nodded and held the old man close to him. But then a couple of bystanders looked down into the canal, frowning at the roof of the car drowned down there, and when they glanced up again there was suspicion in their eyes.