The Ice Wolves (23 page)

 
CHAPTER 25

—

At the top of the stairwell, Hellboy paused at the swing door and peered into the corridor beyond. As far as he could see, it was empty. Easing open the door, he listened intently. At first there was only silence, but as he edged out into the corridor a low snarl echoed along the walls. It was impossible to tell how close it was. Quickly, he followed the guard's instructions and reset the internal security doors on the panel next to the stairwell. There was no going back.

Cautiously, he headed in the direction of the snarl. He wished he had some ammo for his gun, or a sword. Even an ax.

There was something particularly eerie about a deserted hospital at night, even when it wasn't populated with savage beasts. The glaring strip lights were unbearably stark, the silence in a place usually filled with noise unsettling.

Hellboy edged to the corner of the corridor. As he paused, a low growl rolled down the branching corridor. Talons clicked on the vinyl floor, drawing nearer, and the rasp of hot breath grew slowly louder.

He pressed himself against the wall and waited. The snarling drew closer with each soft pad of feet, the distorted shadow reaching past the turn in the corridor. Just as Hellboy prepared to attack, the stud wall behind him exploded, propelling him across the floor into the facing wall. Another wolf was on him in a second, leaping through the gap in the ward where it had been lurking.

Hunched on his chest, it pinned him, snapping furiously for his throat. As it lunged, he gripped the wolf's neck with one hand and drove up into its jaw with the other. The beast sprawled across the floor away from him, but by that time the other wolf was attacking.

“So much for surprise,” Hellboy muttered. He rolled out of the way, thrusting himself up suddenly so his head rammed hard into the beast's jaw, and he felt the bone shatter.

The brawl had attracted the attention of the other prowling wolves; he could hear their roars drawing closer from both directions. Scrambling to his feet, he half started back along the corridor only for a pack of wolves to round the corner at the far end. Behind him, three more wolves had joined the two he had fought.

They were wary of him, he could see that. Their heads lowered as they loped forward cautiously, knowing they had strength in numbers, choosing their moment to attack as a pack.

Before they could descend on him, the Kiss of Winter cycled in power again, driving a spike of ice-cold into his side. His loud curse died in his throat as the corridor skewed into a new form with such suddenness it made his head spin. The hospital was no longer there. Instead, they stood on a snowy mountainside in the middle of a blizzard. Ahead lay a bridge across a gulf that disappeared into the snow far below; and beyond it, as the direction of the wind whipped back and forth among the high peaks, he could occasionally make out buildings that appeared vaguely Tibetan.

Hellboy cursed loudly in shock, but quickly got his bearings.

Disoriented by the lurching change, the wolves howled, turned in circles, tried to make sense of what had happened. That gave Hellboy the space he needed. Head down into the wind, he ran for the bridge. The wind threw him from side to side, coating his face with freezing snow. Behind him, the howls of the wolves thundered off the mountainside as they gave pursuit.

Skidding down rough, worn flags coated with packed snow and ice that made the going treacherous, he leapt onto the bridge. It shook fiercely under his weight, but the thick ropes held. As he ran, it bounced wildly and threatened to pitch him off. The vibrations only got worse when the wolves bounded onto the bridge behind him, their howls like sirens in the roaring wind.

Gritting his teeth, he drove himself through the blizzard to the far side of the bridge. Some kind of temple loomed up before him, almost lost in the dense snowdrifts. Lamps gleamed in the windows, but all around was dark and foreboding.

Hellboy considered running for the large wooden door until another thought struck him. Bracing himself, he put his shoulder against the wooden post that supported the bridge's guide ropes. It felt like it was set in stone, but he strained, and it began to give a little. The wolves raced onto the last stretch.

“You're really pissing me off!” he shouted at them.

With a final burst of strength, he drove the post over. The tension from the ropes whipped it out of the ground and high into the air, and the bridge flipped on its side, pitching all the wolves into the abyss. Their howls rose up long after they had disappeared into the gusting snow.

Shivering, he yelled after them, “And stay out!”

Wondering what he was going to do next, he turned toward the temple only for the whole scene to slide rapidly away. Once again he was standing in a ward at the hospital with a pile of upturned beds on either side.

“Whoa! I am
never
going to get used to that,” he said, lurching back a step.

Before he could work out where the wolves had materialized, from ahead came the sound of another beast. Running through the ward, he found it ripping at a panel of exposed wires next to a security door. Beyond it, a horde of wolves roamed, and in the center of them, standing directly in front of the door, was Carnifex. The wolf's red eyes were filled with a cold confidence that said
this battle is coming to an end, and victory is within my grasp.
Hateful eyes, promising slow death. In his hand, he gripped the Heart of Winter, glowing with the same increased power of the Kiss of Winter, and calling out to its sister with every white pulse. Carnifex's hunger for the Kiss was just as apparent.

Hellboy turned his attention to the wolf raking at the box of computerized components, and realized it could trigger the opening of the door. “You're not as dumb as you look,” he said.

At full speed, he sent the wolf sprawling along the corridor. In front of the elevator doors, they fought wildly, Hellboy's fists buckling the metal every time the wolf avoided his blow. Soon the doors hung ragged, the dark shaft reaching down to the ground floor where the elevator had been locked in place.

Hellboy threw a punch meant to propel the wolf into the dark mouth of the shaft, but at the last second, the beast ducked his blow and lithely slipped along the wall.

“Hey! Get back here!” Hellboy shouted.

The wolf bounded away and took one more swipe at the box on the wall. Before Hellboy could move, a flash of sparks sizzled in an arc, followed a second later by a resonant grinding as the disabled door was dragged open. Carnifex strode into the corridor and faced Hellboy, the rest of the wolves flooding through behind him.

“It is the Time of the Black Sun, the long era of the moon,” he growled. “Your day has passed.” He reached out his hand for Hellboy to give up the Kiss of Winter.

“No chance, fur ball!” Hellboy dived through the torn elevator doors and gripped the cable, swinging round to slow his fall as he plummeted down toward the ground floor. He crashed onto the elevator roof, and smashed straight through inside the car. The deafening roar of the wolves rushed down the shaft to him.

Tearing open the doors, he crashed into the reception, to the shock of the security guard. The wolves still waited silently outside the ER entrance.

With William behind her, Lisa ran up to Hellboy from the surgical room, crying and laughing at the same time. “He's all right! They think he's going to be fine!”

“That's great.” Hellboy glanced over his shoulder at the torn elevator-shaft door.

“What's wrong?” Lisa asked.

“The wolves will be here any minute. Dammit. There's nowhere left to go.” He pulled out the Kiss of Winter, pulsing so bright now they could barely look at it. “What am I going to do with this?” He looked around the ER before returning the quartz to the pouch. The cold had left a trail of frost across his palm.

“Let me take it,” William said quietly.

“What are you gonna do with it?”

“Take it away from here. A long way away.”

Hellboy weighed William's intention for a moment, and then asked, “Can I trust you?”

“If the wolves get their hands on it, it's all over. You'll be able to fight them more freely if you're not carrying it.”

“You didn't answer my question.”

“I wasted my life with what-was and might-have-beens. I don't want that for Brad or Lisa. I want them to have a good life. This is my chance to make amends.”

Hellboy wasn't sure what William meant, but he could see the sincerity in his face. Quickly, he dipped into the pouch and removed the Kiss of Winter. Now its inner light was blinding.

“It's getting strong,” William said. “If we can just hang on a little longer, it'll be too powerful for the wolves, surely.”

“Careful. It's cold.”

William wrapped the piece of quartz in a handkerchief and slipped it into his pocket. The pulse of light was still visible through the material.

“What are you going to do with it, William?” Lisa asked, puzzled. “Hellboy can go everywhere you can go.”

“No, he can't.” William smiled sadly. “I want to see Brad.”

“He's still out cold.”

“I know. But I need to talk to him. You'll have to tell him what I said when he wakes up.”

“You can tell him yourself.”

William smiled again, but didn't respond.

As they pushed open the surgical-room door, Hellboy said, “Make it quick. I can hear them coming.”

The howls could be heard clearly across the reception as the wolves made their way down the elevator shaft, not at the same speed that Hellboy descended, but relentlessly nonetheless.

In the surgical room, Brad lay still and pale, but there was an air of peace after the harsh activity of the medical emergency. His thoughts playing out on his face, William watched his son for a moment before taking his hand.

“I always wanted to be a good father, but I was let down by my own weaknesses,” he began. “But look at you—you've turned into a great person—better than I could have ever hoped—and you've done it all on your own. You've got a great girl here in Lisa.”

Lisa blushed.

“Just don't throw it all away by dwelling on what's gone,” William continued. “If there's one gift I can give to you, it's to live your life for now, because awful things can happen at any moment. Random, out of the blue. And they can trap you in time, and poison you, so that you can never escape their gravity. We look for answers; it's in our nature. But sometimes we're never going to find those answers.”

He bowed his head for a moment, letting the emotions rise. At the door, Hellboy listened intently for the first wolves to emerge from the elevator shaft. “William, come on,” he urged quietly.

William nodded. “I'm going away now, Brad. You won't see me again. I'd like to say no great loss, but I know how great a shadow people close to us cast over our lives, even when they're not the best, or the most loved. I don't want you dwelling on me, or thinking of what might have been. This is my gift to you, and I want you to accept it. I'm going to try to make up for all my failures. I'm going to try to find some peace for you. And even though I won't be around anymore, I'll have finally found some happiness if I can do that. And there's the key to that prison, you see. It was with me all the time, and I never saw it.” He let Brad's hand go and turned to Lisa. “Please tell him what I said.”

“I will. But I don't understand.”

“There's one other thing. In Beacon Hill, on Charles Street, there's a small coffee house. If you get out of this, take Brad there for me tomorrow.”

“William, I don't understand. Why—”

“Just do it. Please,” he said insistently.

“Okay.”

“William, it's time,” Hellboy said urgently.

“You know what I'm going to do?” William said to him.

“I have an idea.”

“It's the right thing.”

“You're a brave man,” Hellboy said. “I'm going to try to hold Carnifex and the wolves off. Leave your side of the plan till the last, just in case . . . I don't know . . . the Kiss of Winter sparks up and blows them all back to kingdom come. It'd be a shame to make a sacrifice when you didn't need to.”

William nodded.

They all shared a moment, and then Hellboy stepped out into the corridor and moved toward the elevator.

 
CHAPTER 26

—

Hellboy stood in the entrance to the corridor facing the ER reception. The handful of doctors and nurses, the security guards, and the few patients who had made it through the blizzard had barricaded themselves into the surgical room with Lisa and Brad. Hellboy knew the barricade wouldn't last long, but it would keep them safe in the short term, and he hoped that would be enough.

William had hidden himself away at the far end of the corridor. Since he had made his decision, a strange peace had come over him, Hellboy could see. It was more than resignation; it was a sense that the troubles of a lifetime were on the brink of being resolved, and that there would finally be no more struggle.

The wolves beyond the security doors were rows of statues, silent, baleful, dusted with the snow that blew all around them. They were waiting too, sensing the end was near.

“Come on, then,” Hellboy shouted.

The clatter of the first wolf dropping into the elevator cab, then a long silence. Hellboy watched the black slash in the elevator doors; it was the mouth of a beast.

“Stop playing games,” he said. “We know what's gonna happen.”

The wolf erupted from the gap, trailing saliva in a blur of flashing teeth and raking talons. Hellboy stepped up and punched it straight back into the elevator, and then hit it again when it tried to emerge.

“I can keep this up all night,” he said. “Nobody's comin' out of there.”

Another wolf scrambled into the car, and a second later both wolves attempted to thrust their way out of the door. Hellboy knocked them back in before their snouts had even stuck into reception.

“Come on—you can do better than this,” he taunted.

Shifting shadows in the gloom of the car told him both wolves had vacated the space, but he knew that wouldn't be the end of it. After a few minutes, a strangle crackling sound echoed, and then a cobweb of frost spread across the remainder of the broken doors. Sparkling in the reception lights, it grew thick rapidly. In the dark, Hellboy glimpsed a pair of red eyes glowing, and before he had time to speak, the doors shattered out and a figure bounded past him. It was Carnifex.

“Ah, nuts. Spoke too soon,” he said. He picked himself up, and rounded on the leader of the wolves, his fists bunched.

As Carnifex drew himself up to his full height, the other wolves flooded out of the elevator, forming a tight circle around Hellboy. A second later, they had released the security doors and the other wolves emerged from the snowstorm, filling the entire reception. A maelstrom of growls and snarls moved round and round Hellboy. All the wolves' eyes were on Carnifex, waiting for the signal to strike.

Slowly, he raised the Heart of Winter above his head, as he had on Storrow Drive. The growls became more savage, a tidal wave waiting to break. Hellboy could feel the numbing cold of the frozen wastes washing out from the quartz.

“Every time I come across you guys, you're just tryin' to eat people up,” Hellboy said. “What's wrong with a burger and fries, like everybody else?”

“This is not about food.” Carnifex struggled to form human words with his bestial mouth. “This is about rival species fighting for supremacy.”

“I'm usually just punching out one of you at a time. At most, five. But this . . . ” Hellboy gestured to the vast numbers reaching out into the snow-swept night. “This must be every werewolf in the world.”

“When the Kiss of Winter wanes, we are no longer individuals. We become one being, one mind. The pure essence of the First Wolf, locked inside a few weak humans all those generations ago. We spread down the male bloodlines, for that is where the heart of the beast is truly nurtured. You thought you were imprisoning us, but you have only helped us grow.”

“Seems to me if you started out with that tribe, there should be millions of you by now. Billions.”

“Too many weaken the essence. Then men become like beasts and beasts like men, and we cannot rise from the dark forest in your heads.”

“Yeah, I know some guys like that. A few too many beers down at the local bar and they're you without the fur.”

The Heart of Winter and the Kiss began to call to each other again as the power ramped up in another cycle. The walls of the hospital shimmered, became like glass, and beyond them Hellboy could see other places, other times, rolling out to the horizon, continually shifting.

“Those two magical objects sure do punch a big hole in reality,” he said. “I guess they have to be that powerful to keep things like you in check.”

“And once we have them both, and they are destroyed in our ritual, we can hunt freely again, for the first time in millennia.”

Hellboy eyed the clock over the reception desk, wondering how long he could hold out. “But there's the big hole in your plan,” he said. “A shaman told me the power cycles over the centuries. You only get to act like this, as one mind, when it hits the bottom, right? The minute the power starts cycling back up over a certain level, you've had it. You're locked back in the bodies you were given, until your great-great-great-and-a-load-of-other-greats-grandsons get another shot at it.”

The snarls grew louder, the beasts struggling to contain their urge to rip him into pieces.

“Only now, every sign shows we've passed the bottom of the cycle and the power is on its way up. You're running out of time. Hell, it must be nearly over.”

“Except now we have everything we need. And the long hunt is finally coming to an end.”

“Only I don't have the Kiss of Winter,” Hellboy noted blithely.

“It is in this building.”

“Sure. Somewhere. You got time to search the place from top to bottom? Or is it really that close?” Hellboy could see the answer in Carnifex's eyes. He hoped William was staying out of sight at the end of the corridor.

Carnifex released a low growl deep in his throat; the other wolves responded in a cacophony of howls.

“Kill me now and you'll never find it,” Hellboy said.

“Then I will tear the location from you myself!” Carnifex launched himself at Hellboy, raking across his chest with his talons and clamping his fangs deep into Hellboy's shoulder. Cursing, Hellboy fought back furiously, and within seconds the reception was a sea of wolves surging back and forth as they attempted to subdue him.

For five minutes, the battle was brutal and bloody. Locked in a tight world of fang and claw, time appeared to slow down, and as they fought, Hellboy gradually became aware of the world around him shifting.

Briefly, they were in the middle of what appeared to be a ruined Mayan temple, lush jungle pressing in tightly all around amid the suffocating heat of the midday sun. The pulsing Kiss and Heart twisted time again, and they were fighting through the shallow blue sea against the white sand beach of a Pacific atoll. In the middle of an ochre desert reaching to the silver horizon on every side, fighting as they rolled down a sand dune. In stinking Victorian sewers beneath some great city, splashing through dank water as they careered off slimy brick walls. Brawling along the center of a freeway, where massive trucks roared by on every side.

Hellboy realized the trail of the wolves and the lives the beasts had touched reached everywhere across the planet. And now his own life would be part of this panoply, appearing behind closed doors at some point in the distant future. The Kiss and Heart of Winter tied everything together.

Finally, they crashed back into the ER reception, demolishing the desk as they tore chunks out of each other. Disoriented, Hellboy couldn't prevent Carnifex pinning him down, one hand around Hellboy's throat. Carnifex paused to release a ferocious howl. The other wolves understood instantly, turning as one to move out across the hospital.

At the far end of the corridor past the surgical rooms, Hellboy saw William step out from a side corridor. “Hellboy! We can't wait any longer!” he called. Strangely calm, he came to a halt in front of the door to one of the storerooms, one hand resting easily on the handle. A halo of white light surrounded him from the gently pulsing Kiss of Winter hidden in his pocket.

Hellboy hesitated, but he knew William was right. “Go on, then! Good luck!”

Tearing open the door, William stood on the threshold for a brief moment, transfixed by what he saw beyond. It could have been the frozen wastes of Siberia, perhaps Paris two hundred years ago, the brutal realities of medieval Europe—or any place tied to any of their intricate histories. Hellboy held out hope.

Carnifex realized what William was trying to do and attempted to launch himself past Hellboy. But as he propelled himself toward the storeroom with a desperate roar, Hellboy grabbed his ankle and brought him down hard to the vinyl floor. The renewed ferocity of Carnifex's struggle revealed that he understood everything was slipping away from his grasp.

Hellboy fought just as furiously to keep Carnifex trapped on the floor and unable to move, struggling off the fiercely snapping jaws. “It's too late,” he said calmly. “You've lost.”

There was time for one brief glance toward the storeroom in the middle of the struggle. As he looked through the door, a beatific smile crossed William's lips. He glanced briefly toward Hellboy, nodded his goodbye, and stepped through, closing the door behind him.

Carnifex's deafening roar was filled with despair.

“That's right,” Hellboy said. “Old Abraham Grant hid the Kiss of Winter from you in a magical labyrinth in his house, but William's found a better hiding place: in time. A labyrinth like no other. He could be at any time, any place. You'll never find him, or the Kiss of Winter. And this time, he's got the Kiss with him—there's nothing to draw him back here.”

From Carnifex's fingers, the Heart of Winter slipped to the floor.

“The power will be back up to full charge soon, and you'll be locked back in your human forms,” Hellboy continued. “No Black Sun. No Rise of the Wolves. It's over.”

Accepting the truth, Carnifex grew still. All around, the wolves followed suit, the snarls dying in their throats, their heads dropping. They stayed like that for a long moment, and then one by one they drifted through the door and melted away into the gusting snow.

It took a while for the wolves to lope from the reception. Carnifex was the last to go. Pausing in the doorway, he looked back at Hellboy and said, “The wolf will never die. It will be here, alongside you, for all time, waiting to hunt and feed.”

“We'll live with it,” Hellboy said.

Then Carnifex too was gone, and slowly the blizzard began to die away. The storm had passed.