The Ice Wolves (21 page)

“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 Hellboy 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.

“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 said bluntly.