by Tim Lebbon
Franca stepped this way and that, trying to gain a better view. The fire wolves remained close, but not so close that they burned her. And they too were watching.
The car struck Hellboy and the fire wolf head-on. The sound of the impact was sickening, and she saw a confused blur of red and yellow—flesh and flame—bouncing onto the hood and shattering through the windscreen. The car continued careering down the hillside, leaving the trail and slamming into rocks, jumping left and right, and all the while its insides were aflame. Windows shattered and fire burst out, and then the rear window misted and disintegrated, and Hellboy struck the ground behind the car. He rolled and stood unsteadily, glancing back uphill at Franca, then down again at the car that continued on without him.
There was something in his stance that Franca did not like. At first she thought it was pain, because much of his body was scorched black, and he was holding his left arm awkwardly across his chest. But then she realized that Hellboy stood like a held breath, a moment between blinks, and she knew that this was the end.
One way or another, this was the end.
The car struck a large boulder and tipped onto its side, sliding across the rough ground and throwing up sparks as it went, fire wolves still grasping its sides. And then it tipped forward, nose disappearing into the first gas-and-smoke-spewing crevasse they had passed so recently. It seemed to balance there, the exploding front tires audible even at this distance.
The Adamo fire wolf appeared at the smashed rear window, flame arms raised, and the things around Franca hissed what might have been relief.
And then the car tipped forward and disappeared completely.
“Oh, Mario,” she said, but her face was too hot for tears.
The car’s fuel tank exploded, throwing a shower of metal and upholstery high above the landscape . . . and writhing in that cloud of debris, the twisting shape of Adamo’s fire wolf.
Behind them, high up the mountainside, a staggering explosion stirred the clouds and shook the land.
Adamo landed beside the crevasse, stretching and twisting in triumph. Franca saw Hellboy’s shoulders slump. And when he glanced back at her she saw his face, and knew he had given everything he had.
The fire wolves surrounding her faded back to flesh, and Sophia grinned as she grabbed Franca’s arms.
Something came out of the crevasse. It looked like a massive spurt of blood, but it rose high, maintaining its solidity and shivering the air with heat haze: an eruption of lava, the width of the car it had swallowed and the height of twenty men.
That rising wave of lava slapped down onto Adamo faster than mere gravity would have taken it, as if the deep muscles of the land had flexed and brought it down. It crushed the fire wolf flat and swallowed his flames, dragging him back across the ground and disappearing into the crevasse with an earsplitting hiss.
Hellboy turned and glared uphill at Franca. And then he started to run.
—
Franca!
With Mario dead, and the Adamo fire wolf taken back into the heat and fury of Vesuvius, she was his only concern. Because he had no idea what would happen next. He started running towards her and the fire wolves that still surrounded her . . . but his concern was unfounded.
It’s done . . . it’s done . . . the ghost whispered, and Hellboy had never heard such relief, and such tiredness.
The fire wolves were screaming. In the guise of old people, they gripped at the ground, but there was no purchase to be had there. Pulled inexorably downward, they shouted at Hellboy, at Franca, flaming again as their true natures came to the fore once more. But no one and nothing listened to their screams. Only Vesuvius, drawing back what had been taken from it so long ago, and still furious as ever at their deception.
They disappeared into the rent in the land, the only sign of their passing a sigh of flames.
By the time he reached Franca, she was kneeling, holding her face in her hands and crying tears of relief and pain, joy and grief. Sweeping her up into his arms he kissed her forehead and hugged her tight, and even though it hurt them both to do so, she hugged him back.
“Come on,” Hellboy said. “We need to go.”
“Would Mario have been enough?” Franca asked through her tears. “He was an Esposito . . . would he have been enough?”
Always women, the ghost whispered. Always the life-bearers.
“Not on his own,” Hellboy said. And it felt like a betrayal, because for a while the ghost had made him consider the benefits of Franca’s own demise. “But because he took Adamo with him . . . that means he’ll definitely be the last.”
“I can’t believe . . .”
“Brave kid. Braver than I gave him credit for.” He winced, looked at the dreadful wounds on his arm. He was going to be sore in the morning. “Let’s get out of here.”
CHAPTER 19
—
Amalfi
—
Amalfi was alight with celebration.
It had taken Hellboy and Franca eight hours to make it back to the city, and by then it was midnight, and the glow to the north had faded away. The eruption of Vesuvius had faded and passed, perplexing the myriad volcanologists who offered their opinions on TV and the radio, but delighting everyone else. The evacuees in Amalfi had joined with the town’s inhabitants to rejoice in the danger’s passing, and the massive street party that snaked through the city seemed set to continue long into the night.
Hellboy was exhausted. And with every step he took closer to La Casa Fredda, he wondered more and more about what his intentions had been up on Vesuvius. The ghost had fallen silent for now, but he could not forget her sly suggestion that Franca should be left to her fate. However much Hellboy had denied that alternative, there had always been a part of him that . . .
But there were deep parts of him that bore many such doubts, where suspicions and fears made their home. Sometimes when he was asleep, the doors to that place were opened, and he had nightmares. And sometimes even when awake, he stood outside, rifling through those dark things he tried to keep small, and quiet. This was just one more to add to that collection.
Franca was alive, with him now, and approaching her devastated family home once again. He could spend ages thinking about what could have been, but he decided to revel in what was.
By the time they reached the big house Hellboy was barely able to walk. The burns he’d received in his various tussles with Adamo’s fire wolf needed attention, and some of them—those on his left arm and right ankle especially—seemed to have planted a seed of fire in his bones that still burned. But more than anything, he needed sleep.
They found the survivors of the Esposito family in the house, huddled in one room and mourning their dreadful loss. They had left Orso’s café and come home. The police had not yet been called, because Espositos were used to handling problems on their own. But Hellboy knew that tomorrow would be a harsh day for them all. The bodies needed removing, police would shut down the house as a crime scene, and an investigation would begin. He promised as much help as the B.P.R.D. could give them, but he felt detached from the conversations, distanced from their tears and loss.
Franca told them all that Hellboy had saved them, but he made sure they knew the truth. It had been Mario. Hellboy had just been the muscle, and in the end, it was Mario who’d had the guts to end things.
The bed in Carlotta’s room was comfortable and luxurious, and Hellboy and Franca lay there together. She fell asleep almost immediately, but enervated though he was, it took Hellboy a while to drift away. He tried to cast his mind through the land and into the roiling, boiling guts of Vesuvius, imagining what was happening down there right now, but he realized quickly that it was beyond his understanding. Something asleep had been woken, and now it slept again. For now, that was all that mattered. What the future might bring . . . ?
As with his doubts concerning his intentions with Franca, Hellboy decided it best to live with what was, not what might have been.
�
��I’ll take you back tomorrow,” he whispered.
No need, the ghost replied, and its voice was so very far away. I can find my own way.
At last, sleep found him. Cool, calm sleep.
And when he woke in the morning, all he had around his neck was an old, chipped bone. Before Franca stirred, he sat up and dropped the bone into one of his belt pouches. Then he lay there and watched the dawn.
—
“Hey, Liz.”
“H.B! So I see from the news things have calmed down over there.”
“You could say that. Yeah.” He trailed off, not really sure why he’d called Liz. He’d be back with her by the evening. He looked out over the gardens of La Casa Fredda and beyond, and dawn seemed to wash Amalfi clean.
“Bad one,” she said. They knew each other so well that she recognized his silences.
“Yeah. A lot of good people . . .” He glanced at the bed where Franca still slept. “Lot of good people died.”
“But the fire wolves are down?”
“All of them.” Hellboy sighed and stretched, wincing at the pains that sparked across his body, and the heat that still seemed embedded in his bones. It would go, he knew, given time. He hoped his next assignment would be to somewhere cold. “So, tell me about that boat.”
Liz got the message. She told him about the haunted boat, and her night on board, and what had happened to her and the others who came to see what the ruckus was all about. He listened and nodded, grunting here and there, chuckling when she told him about the poltergeist’s almost unnatural interest in her shoes. And for a while, Liz Sherman’s voice took him away from the pain and the recent past, and also diverted him from the awkward moments he knew were yet to come.
For a while.
—
Franca drove him to the airport. Commercial flights were cancelled for the day because of the dangerous build-up of dust and ash on the runways, but the B.P.R.D. had arranged for a private jet to fly him back to Connecticut. Tom Manning wanted a rapid debriefing, and while Hellboy felt frustration at the man’s overzealousness, the thought of being back home felt good.
They remained quiet on the drive, and Hellboy felt the weight of unsaid things hanging between them.
“Are you going home?” he asked at last.
“Yes. Back to Amalfi. Are you surprised?”
“Not at all,” Hellboy said, though he was a little. “I think it’ll be good for the family to—”
“What’s left of it.”
“Yeah. What’s left. So, your boyfriend? What was his name, Alex?”
Franca shrugged, frowned. “After what happened . . . I don’t know. He feels so distant. So . . . innocent of the reality of things.”
“Hey, that’s no way to think,” Hellboy said. “Don’t let what happened here make you think normal’s lost its value, somehow. Normal is good, Franca. It’s where most people live. It gives them peace, and something to build their lives on. I mainly live outside it, and take a look at me.”
Franca did look at him, but her smile was pained. “Maybe,” she said. “Maybe I’ll call him, in time.”
“You do that,” he said, and he leaned back and closed his eyes. They travelled in silence for a while, but it was a loaded silence, not a comfortable one. He knew that the airport was a long way yet.
“Hellboy . . .” Franca said at last, and he thought, Here it comes. This is what she’s been waiting to say.
“What’s on your mind?”
She gripped the wheel, sighed, and he saw the trickle of a tear mark her cheek.
“Hey.” He reached out and touched her shoulder, and Franca drifted their car to a halt beside the road.
“There are some things that don’t need saying!” Franca said. She sounded angry, but he saw the desperation beneath that. “There’s going to be investigations, and your organization will liaise with the Italian authorities, but no one here needs to know about our bloodline, do they? The fact that we’ve got fire wolf blood in our veins?”
Hellboy imagined the results of that. The subtle tests to begin with; keeping the family under observation, testing their motor skills and psychological functions. But then after that, if examinations weren’t conclusive, he knew where things could go. Genetic tests to track aging of cells. Blood make-up. Aversion to water.
There were few enough Espositos left as it was.
“Some things don’t need to go outside B.P.R.D.,” he said.
“But even there—”
“That’s my home,” Hellboy said. “It’s who I am, and they’re my friends. We’re good at keeping secrets.”
“Really?”
Hellboy chuckled. “Really. Believe me. The things I could tell you.”
Franca laughed, and he could see the terrible weight lifting from her shoulders. “Thank you,” she said, “but I think I’ve had enough of that for a while.”
Approaching Naples, Hellboy saw Vesuvius to the northeast, nothing but a gentle finger of smoke trailing from the crater now. He noticed that Franca kept her eyes fixed on the road, and he wondered whether she’d look at the volcano on the way back to Amalfi. He thought not. He hoped not.
He was going home. He was glad, but with every mile they drew closer to the airport, he felt a strange loneliness growing. He guessed he was going to miss Franca more than he’d believed.
—
At the airport she accompanied him onto the runway, waiting at the bottom of the steps leading up into the private jet. “Thank you,” she said. She moved into his embrace. They both had wounds, and she would have scars, but the worst ones would always be inside.
As Hellboy hugged her, she felt his hand press flat against her back, and sensed his held breath. Is he feeling for heat? she thought. She pulled back and looked up at him, and his smile could not have been more relaxed. Good. He didn’t find any.
“You’ve always got a holiday home in Amalfi,” she said.
“I’ve always wanted to come to Italy.” He kissed her on the forehead, then turned and started up the steps.
“Hellboy.” He looked back. “I’d have put myself in,” she said. “I was ready for that. If all else failed, I’d have jumped.”
He nodded. “Then we should both give thanks for Mario.”
Franca walked back to the terminal and watched the jet take off. She waited until it was out of sight, and then waited some more. She had to drive past Vesuvius to get back home. There was no rush.
—
TIM LEBBON is a New York Times bestselling author of over a dozen novels—including Hellboy: Unnatural Selection, Dusk, Fallen and The Map of Moments (with Christopher Golden)—several collections, and over a hundred short stories and novellas. He has won three British Fantasy Awards and a Bram Stoker Award, as well as being shortlisted for many more. Several of his novels and novellas are in development as movies on both sides of the Atlantic. Find updates at www.timlebbon.net.
