The Ice Wolves

Other Hellboy books from Dark Horse Books

—

Hellboy Graphic Novels:

Seed of Destruction
(with John Byrne)

Wake the Devil

The Chained Coffin and Others

The Right Hand of Doom

Conqueror Worm

Strange Places

The Troll Witch and Others

Darkness Calls

Hellboy: Weird Tales Vol. 1

Hellboy: Weird Tales Vol. 2

Hellboy Junior

—

B.P.R.D. Graphic Novels:

Hollow Earth and Other Stories

The Soul of Venice and Other Stories

Plague of Frogs

The Dead

The Black Flame

The Universal Machine

Garden of Souls

Killing Ground

1946

The Warning

—

Novels:

Hellboy: Emerald Hell
by Tom Piccirilli

Hellboy: The All-Seeing Eye
by Mark Morris

Hellboy: The Fire Wolves
by Tim Lebbon

—

Short Story Collections:

Hellboy: Odd Jobs
(with Brian Hodge, Poppy Z. Brite, Nancy A. Collins, Gahan Wilson, and others)

Hellboy: Odder Jobs
(with Frank Darabont, Charles de Lint, Guillermo del Toro, and others)

Hellboy: Oddest Jobs
(with Joe R. Lansdale, China Miéville, Ken Bruen, Tad Williams, and others)

MARK CHADBOURN

—

Hellboy created by Mike Mignola

—

 

Dark Horse Books®

Milwaukie

HELLBOY™: THE ICE WOLVES © 2009 by Mike Mignola.

 

Dark Horse Books® and the Dark Horse logo are registered trademarks of Dark Horse Comics, Inc. All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the express written permission of Dark Horse Comics, Inc. Names, characters, places, and incidents featured in this publication either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events, institutions, or locales, without satiric intent, is coincidental.

 

Book design by Krystal Hennes

Cover design by Lia Ribacchi

Cover illustration by Duncan Fegredo with Dave Stewart

 

Published by Dark Horse Books

A division of Dark Horse Comics, Inc.

10956 SE Main Street

Milwaukie, OR 97222

 

darkhorse.com

 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

 

Chadbourn, Mark.

Hellboy : the ice wolves / Mark Chadbourn ; Hellboy created by Mike Mignola. -- 1st Dark Horse Books ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-59582-205-5

1. Hellboy (Fictitious character : Mignola)--Fiction. 2. Demonology--Fiction. I. Mignola, Michael. II. Title.

PR6053.H23H45 2009

823'.914--dc22

2009028268

 

First Dark Horse Books Edition: September 2009

ISBN 978-1-59582-205-5

ePub ISBN 978-1-62115-442-6

 

 

Printed in the United States of America

 

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Dedicated to Liz, Betsy, Joe, and Eve.

“
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
”

—
W. B. Yeats, “The Second Coming”

 
PROLOGUE

—

Breathe deeply: caught on the wind, the sour tang of blood. Listen: behind the steady rumble of modern life, the sound of ancient days and the savagery that still lurks in the lonely wilderness.

Something has woken. Turning its eyes toward the distant horizon, slowly at first, but with increasing speed, it moves.

—

Cancún, Mexico

Beneath the baking afternoon sun, the police cars race from the bumper-to-bumper airport traffic on Avenida Tulum toward the winding streets of El Centro. Blaring sirens disrupt the tranquility of the leafy roads until the four-car convoy comes to a halt outside La Casa del Sol, a whitewashed hotel the locals use for their celebrations.

Heavyset, with hooded eyes, Adulio Zaragoza strides past the officers at the door to where Osias Bustamante waits, glowering beneath his black cap, one hand on his gun for comfort. Zaragoza can already smell the blood.

“How many?” he barks.

“Forty-three.”

The number troubles Zaragoza, but he puts aside his concerns as Bustamante leads him to a large courtyard at the rear, where the swaying shadows from the trees cast shifting patterns of light and dark across the prone forms. Coming to a halt in the doorway, Zaragoza surveys the inch-deep crimson pool covering the entire courtyard.

“The wedding of Maria Jimenez and Gilbert Herrera,” Bustamante says.

Dressed in their finest clothes, the ragged bodies reflect the final moments of panic, piled near the door or at the foot of the enclosing wall. The members of a mariachi band are strewn around a low stage, their white suits splattered, their instruments shattered. Zaragoza's attention falls briefly on the bride in her sodden dress, no longer white, and he takes small comfort that her face is covered by the mantilla veil.

Yet at the center of the courtyard, the wedding feast remains pristine, the plates of chicken and beef tortillas and jugs of sangria untouched.

“Critics of the cuisine?” Zaragoza notes with a sardonic humor that he hopes will mask his unease. “They were all fleeing that area.”

“The killer was at the table when he turned on them, as the feast was announced.”

“The bride and groom would have been first to the table.”

Bustamante nods slowly. “We have not accounted for Gilbert Herrera.”

Zaragoza's forensic eye follows the single track of bloody footprints leading from the courtyard, through the hotel reception to the entrance, and then studies the incongruities of the crime scene. “The guests were killed so quickly that none of them escaped into the hotel.”

“That is correct.”

“I see no bullet wounds.”

“No—”

“Torn flesh. Broken bones. Dismembering. Disemboweling. A wild animal.”

Bustamante says nothing.

“A wild animal with the speed of a whirlwind.” Zaragoza laughs dismissively.

“There are bite marks.” Bustamante's hesitant voice gives Zaragoza pause.

Kneeling down in the doorway, Zaragoza peers at what remains of the nearest body. Even the aftermath of a machete fight between drug gangs on the waterfront never looked like this.

“A wild animal,” he repeats uneasily.

—

Dublin, Ireland

Six pints of Guinness in the Foggy Dew in Temple Bar, and Jamie Donaghy still can't take the edge off his seesawing emotions. Beside him, Carla Donlon, his girlfriend of two years, explains in her matter-of-fact, singsong voice why she had decided to sleep with Dean Brassel three nights ago while Jamie waited for her outside the Savoy Cinema.

“I was drunk,” she says. “He was drunk. And he was lonely.”

“So that homeless guy down on Wexford Street who always smells of urine stands a chance too?”

“Don't be immature, Jamie. It's not becoming.”

The banks of the Liffey had always seemed romantic to Jamie, with the strings of golden lights reflecting off the black, slow-moving water, and the salty aromas of the sea caught on the wind; now it makes him feel even worse.

As he leans over the wall to peer into the depths, he catches sight of a bundle of torn clothes drifting in the current, and then another, and another. It isn't surprising; he'd glimpsed all sorts of things washing down to the ocean: a bicycle, an umbrella, even a deer carcass once.

“So do you forgive me?” Carla asks.

He counts twenty bundles in the flow, drifting from one of the party boats moored a little way upriver, but although the lights blaze on deck, and the speakers thump-thump-thump into the night, there is no sign of life.

“Don't you even care?” Carla presses.

Before he can answer, she screams and points toward the water.

“Mary, Mother of God, you nearly gave me a heart attack,” he snaps.

But then he follows the line of her finger, and sees the trailing white hand, and the pale face drifting by, and all the other faces, and he knows the truth.

—

Nagaoka, Japan

Not long after dawn, and the station platform is already crowded with commuters waiting for their eighty-minute hop to Tokyo on the Joetsu Shinkansen. Shivering against the cold wind blowing off the Higashiyama Mountains, Isamu stands in his usual spot, briefcase tucked close to his legs like a faithful dog. Today is the day he will discover if he finally got the promotion.

Despite his anticipation, his attention is drawn by the pretty girl who always sits in his carriage. She had looked at him three times in the last week; two more times, and he thinks he might pluck up the courage to talk to her.

So engrossed is he in the sheen of her long hair that the arrival of the bullet train is just a rumble on the edge of his consciousness. He doesn't smell the wind; he doesn't hear the sounds behind it. His attention is only drawn when the screams rise up, rippling along the platform in pace with the train like the first signs of an earthquake.

As the train slides to a whispering halt, he sees all the windows of his carriage are drenched with blood, and when the doors hiss open more washes out onto the platform.

Amid the screams and the swooning and the panic, Isamu is still, his breath tight in his chest. The open door, like the mouth of some great beast, beckons.

Run
, he thinks instinctively, not knowing why.

Within the carriage, a shadow, moving.