The Ice Wolves (19 page)

“What . . . It wants a password?” Lisa queried.

“Could be.” Hellboy rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “What do you figure?”

“Come on—what important word would Abraham use to get to the thing he valued most?” Brad pressed. “Has to be.”

“Okay. Let's give it a shot.” Hellboy leaned in so his nose was a few inches away from the gargoyle. “Sarah,” he intoned clearly.

“ROOOAAARGH!” The gargoyle tore open its mouth and released a furious blast that flung them back head over heels to crash against the window wall.

His head ringing, Hellboy lurched to his feet. “Got any more great ideas, Brad?”

“Uh . . . no.” Brad helped Lisa up, and then, after a second's hesitation, offered his hand to his father.

“If that was the first refusal, I'm not sure I want to experience the next,” Lisa said.

Hellboy nodded. “If the password isn't something obvious, we could be here all day.”

“Frankly, I'm not sure I could survive one more of those, never mind a whole day's worth,” William said, rubbing his arms.

“Eliza Grant led us here,” Hellboy noted. “She wouldn't have done that if it was hopeless. This is just part of the puzzle. The password's got to be hidden somewhere else. Let's go back to the hall and follow the second trail.”

“Thank you,” Lisa stressed with relief. “One less minute spent down here makes me happy.”

But once they had stepped through the attic-room door, Hellboy realized everything had changed. The whispering behind the walls had reached a crescendo of insane shrieking, so loud they had to clutch their ears, and behind it all there was the deep, heavy rhythm they had heard before, like the slow pound of distant machinery. Hellboy thought instantly that it sounded like a heartbeat.

LUB. DUB. LUB. DUB.

“Let's get out of here!” he shouted.

Hellboy could sense the mood growing more intense.

Something's coming
, he thought.

He saw the others felt it too. Lisa's hand went to her mouth as she felt the rising threat mutate into the feeling of dread she had experienced before.

“Something's coming,” she said.

“Yep,” Hellboy replied. “Probably best not to think about that either.”

When they rounded onto the next landing, they were brought up sharp by the sight of the walls along the length of the corridor bowing out, like an inflating balloon. Specks of moisture glistened along the surface as though it were bleeding.

Hellboy scraped his fingers along the wall. “Hmm? Oily.”

The heartbeat grew louder, and the walls began to pulse in time.

Hellboy glanced back down the stairs they had just climbed, unsure if the threat lay at their backs or ahead. The shadows behind swelled with a life of their own, but as he looked up the next flight of stairs he saw the same effect, as if something were taking shape within the dark.

“Run!” he shouted.

The next landing passed in a blur of distortion and deafening noise; the heartbeat now sounded like they were in the middle of an enormous factory, with machines pounding all around.

As they raced up the final flight toward the hall, Hellboy felt something invisible sweep by and catch Brad square on. Flying backward, he crashed on the landing below, dazed.

“Brad!” Lisa scrambled back down the stairs to him. William hesitated for only a second and then followed.

“Dammit!” Hellboy snapped.

As Brad struggled to his feet, his head snapped back suddenly as though he had been struck, and then he was thrown roughly against the wall. He slumped down half conscious.

The lamplight began to dim. The flame flickered, grew smaller.

“Aww, no! Not again!” Hellboy said.

All around the dark pulsed and began to draw its arms tightly around them until it felt like some terrible presence was standing only inches away. The pounding continued; the shrieks behind the wall rose even louder.

“What's wrong with him?” Lisa cried desperately. Blood trickled from Brad's nose, then his ears and eyes. Involuntarily, Lisa's hand went to her own nose and came back slick and dark. William pivoted at the waist. Blood spattered on the floorboards. “What's happening?”

“We need to get out of here!” Hellboy searched for the threat, but it felt like it was everywhere, and nowhere. Hauling Brad onto his shoulders, he attempted to bound up the stairs, but a tremendous force swatted him back down. He crashed on the floor next to Lisa.

“That bastard doesn't want us to get past him,” he said. “Now I'm angry.”

Climbing to his feet, he used the opera glasses to try to see what was in the dark. But as he swept round, he was surprised to see the figure of a woman along the landing, beckoning to him frantically.

Hellboy saw Brad shake his head as he started to come to his senses. Blood streamed across his lips.

“Brad! Brad!” he called. “Eliza Grant. Long black hair, pale skin, sad eyes?”

“Ye . . . yeah,” Brad muttered.

“Come on.” Hellboy herded Brad, Lisa, and William toward the shimmering apparition only he could see. Terror contorted Eliza's face; Hellboy understood that even the ghosts were scared of what hunted them. He was sure he could hear its rasping breath at his back, even above the cacophony, and feel the awful gravity of its presence. He didn't like to run, but his first priority was to keep the others safe.

Close now
,
he thought.
Too damn close!

Eliza tore at her hair, her mouth in the O of a silent scream. She indicated a door next to her.

Hellboy didn't think twice. He tore open the door and thrust the others through it. As he stumbled after them, the door slammed behind him as if the thing at their backs had wrenched it shut in a monstrous rage.

The house was gone. They were somewhere else.

 
CHAPTER 20

—

A freezing wind blew across a desolate landscape of jumbled, protruding rocks and thick snow falling away down a slope toward a dense, dark forest which stretched out toward the horizon, where the treetops were covered in a thin silver mist. Behind them, the mountain soared up to a row of peaks disappearing into the distance beneath a sky streaked pink and yellow, slowly turning to powder blue as the sun rose. The air was crisp, clean, and fresh, unpolluted. A new day, a new world.

Lisa, Brad, and William were wracked with shivers from the cold, the blood drying quickly on their faces. Hellboy examined them in turn, but whatever had afflicted them in the house had passed.

“What was that?” Brad asked, his teeth clattering.

“I don't know,” Hellboy admitted. “Some kind of demon. Powerful. I'm guessing that's the big cheese in the house, trapped there by the Kiss. Whatever it is, it's going to be waiting for us when we get back.” He looked around at the unspoiled landscape. “Another vision. As real as the last time.”

“What's the importance of this time and place?” Lisa asked.

“It looked to me like Eliza was guiding us through this door,” Hellboy said. “She wanted us to be here for some reason. I'm wondering if the help we've been getting has come from her and Sarah, the good spirits trapped in the house.”

“But do you trust Eliza?” William asked.

“I do,” Brad said.

“Pretty place. But cold. I've really had enough of cold. Let's go.” Hellboy set out down the slope with big strides, the others struggling to keep up.

By the time they reached the trees the temperature had warmed enough to make their progress bearable. Rabbits scattered through the undergrowth ahead of them, and here and there deer grazed. The forest was ancient, trunks too thick for three men to encircle, gnarled and twisted, branches reaching out high over their heads. Glittering streams ran down from the mountainside along channels lined with bracken and lichen-encrusted rock. Every now and then they came to peaceful pools of dark water where silver fish swam among shafts of sunlight breaking through the leaf cover.

“Seems deserted,” Hellboy noted. “Gotta be something worth seein' round here.”

Eventually they broke through the trees into an area of grassland broken by granite outcroppings. Beyond, the downs fell into a deep, heavily wooded valley system where the mist still drifted.

“Look at this.” William indicated low piles of rocks almost hidden among the yellow grass. They were scattered all around the area.

“Cairns,” Hellboy said. “So there are people here somewhere.”

“What are they?” Brad asked.

“Burial mounds. Prehistoric.” Hellboy considered the evidence. “So, what? Neolithic? Paleolithic?”

“A long, long time ago,” Lisa said dreamily. “Should we look for the people who built these? Maybe they're the reason we're here. Wouldn't that be a rush!”

Hellboy motioned to a gray wolf loping out of the tree line towards them.

Brad flinched. “Is that—?”

“Just the regular variety,” Hellboy said. He watched it carefully, wondering if there was any relevance to its appearance.

As the wolf passed one of the cairns, a moss-covered rock rolled off it and bounced across the grass. The wolf watched it until it came to a halt.

“They need to build these things better,” Brad said.

“Yeah,” Hellboy said thoughtfully. Looking around, he tried to estimate how many cairns there were in the vicinity. Something had set his nerves jangling.

More rocks rolled off the cairn. A second later, a bony hand raked out of the hole left by the falling rocks and snapped around the wolf's rear leg. It fought furiously to free itself.

The cairn burst open, showering rocks all around as the occupant climbed to his feet. Looming over the wolf was little more than a skeleton, tatters of flesh hanging from the yellowing bones amid the remnants of rotted leather clothing.

“Damn!” Hellboy exclaimed. “You can't even go for a walk in the countryside without stumblin' across something that shoulda stayed dead.”

Glancing round, Hellboy saw all the other cairns start to stir, rocks falling off as the occupants dragged themselves from their resting places, in various stages of decay. The air became heavy with the sour apple stink of decomposition.

Within seconds, the wolf was torn apart, and the dead slowly returned to their homes.

“They were still until the wolf passed the first cairn,” William noted. “So, what? The skeletons stop wolves, or all trespassers?”

“The question is: why?” Hellboy mused over the scattered remains of the wolf.

“Maybe we can get some clues from them.” Lisa pointed to the tree line beyond the rolling grassland, where figures watched before moving quickly back into the shadows.

Hellboy led the way into the forest. Sprinting, he dodged low-hanging branches and ducked around trees, trying to keep sight of the attackers, who flitted like ghosts among the shadows and the shafts of sunlight.

Hellboy skidded to a halt as the forest came to an end on a ridge. Some of the ground had fallen away and snaking roots protruded above a steep, grassy incline toward another area of dense forest. Just disappearing into the trees were the attackers, dark-haired men with suntanned skin, dressed in animal hides and carrying spears and bows.

“Why did you stop?” Brad said breathlessly, skidding to a halt beside Hellboy. Lisa and William caught up a moment later.

Hellboy pointed to a thin column of smoke trailing up into the sky from the middle of the dark forest. “Looks like that's our destination. We can take our time getting there, and do it with a bit more stealth.”

They descended the steep slope and entered the next patch of forest, which was just as rich with wildlife. Hellboy kept his bearings and guided the others unerringly toward where he had seen the smoke, but the distance was deceptive, and the forest so dense it took them most of the day to reach their destination.

“Hey, these people are really defensive,” Hellboy said when they were close enough to smell the wood smoke on the breeze. Hidden in the undergrowth were sharpened sticks, angled so as to impale anyone who approached at speed. Further on they found pits dug at random intervals, disguised with a thin covering of branch and bracken.

“Maybe that's how they hunt their game,” Lisa whispered hopefully.

“This looks like a long time ago. People aren't going to be waiting for their food to come to them,” William said. “Every day would be a battle for survival.”

Hellboy decided the cairns were the outer limits of the defenses, but their devastating nature suggested a huge threat. Were the werewolves here in force too?

They continued until they stood on the edge of a small community of makeshift shelters constructed from branches and leaves among the trees. Women had emerged from some of them to greet the returning men. Other women and a small group of children scampered from the depths of the trees with hands full of forest plants. In the center of the camp, a fire was kept alive by an elderly man with long white hair.

Hellboy watched one of the men crawl into the largest shelter, built around the trunk of the biggest and oldest tree in the area. He came out a moment later, clearly troubled, and spoke in a guttural dialect to one of the guards.

“So how long are we supposed to sit here?” Brad eyed the lengthening shadows. “It'll be getting dark soon.”

“Be patient,” Hellboy chided. “They've got something on their minds.” Hellboy nodded toward the men who kept flashing uncomfortable glances into the forest in all directions. Every now and then, men would return to the camp and engage in brief, intense conversations with the one who was obviously a leader, before loping back out among the trees.

Night fell quickly, the gloom that gathered among the trees sweeping in to press hard against the small circle of light from the campfire. As each moment passed, the villagers' faces became tauter, their eyes wide and uneasy, continually searching the dark. On the perimeter of the community space, men patrolled with spears.

Then, when the dark was complete and a swollen full moon could just be glimpsed gleaming through the branches, a chilling howl rose up far off in the trees. Shudders leapt from one member of the tribe to the next, the blood draining from their faces.

“Uh-oh,” Hellboy said. “Looks like we found the connection.”

“Thanks to Eliza,” Brad said in a voice that didn't appear to be thanking her at all.

Another howl, this time much closer.

“How can it move that fast?” Lisa asked, unnerved.

“Maybe there's more than one,” Brad replied.

“Is that meant to reassure me?”

The one Hellboy had identified as the leader ran back into the large shelter, and emerged a moment later, the frustration clear on his face. The men edged to the point where the firelight started to die, their spears directed toward the impenetrable night. Standing behind them, Hellboy tried to see what was out there.

None of them were prepared for the terrifying roar blasting from the trees just a few feet away. Unable to prevent themselves, the men took several steps back, still leveling their spears, while the women shrieked and cried around the campfire, pulling their children to their breasts.

Seconds later, another roar erupted from far away to Hellboy's left. The men rushed over to defend that area.

“Fast,” Hellboy said. “It's circling.” The crack of a branch crushed underfoot, a hint of something moving, silhouetted against the greater darkness under the trees, impossibly huge. “That's a wolf?” Hellboy muttered. “It's some kinda giant.”

The beast continued to circle the camp, toying with the terrified tribe. The bellowing roar that made blood run cold echoed on all sides, sometimes only feet away from the edge of the light. With each explosion of sound, the tribespeople became more frantic and filled with dread as they awaited the inevitable.

Desperately wishing he could help, Hellboy watched as the beast used the dark to its advantage, circling swiftly, sometimes silently backtracking so the forest people could never be quite sure where it was. Occasionally the crack of a trunk or a falling tree gave away its terrifying size.

A ferocious roar echoed across the camp as the wolf lunged from the dark and snatched one of the men up in its jaws. His spear was futile, snapped and discarded.

As the screams resounded across the clearing, Hellboy caught a glimpse of the man disappearing into the trees: a broken doll, tossed indifferently. Of the wolf, there was only a cloud of darkness being enveloped by the shadows.

Sprinting across the camp, Hellboy hurled himself into the forest. He smelled the penetrating musk of the beast and the sickening iron scent of blood. Though it was too dark to perceive any more than impressions, he realized it was almost as big as a house, its eyes red lamps in the upstairs rooms. With a roar that made his ears ring, it snapped its jaw furiously so that body parts and gore rained down all around him. When it had emptied its mouth, it lunged toward the camp, revealing rows of stained teeth and the hot blast of meaty breath. Another victim was plucked from the camp before the wolf retreated rapidly. Crashing trees marked its passage, punctuated every now and then by a disappearing roar.

Hellboy's shoulders slumped. It might only have been a vision, but he felt the deaths of the two men as acutely as if he had been really there. “Wish they'd invented beer back in this time,” he muttered.

Trudging back into the circle of firelight, he found the tribe waiting desolately. Lisa, Brad, and William hurried up. Lisa had tears in her eyes. “Why do we have to see things like that?” she asked.

After a moment's thought, Hellboy decided to investigate the largest shelter. The others followed.

It was dark and smoky inside. A few hot embers glowed in one corner, casting a devilish hue over a cluttered interior of feathers, hides, and animal bones hanging all around. As they pushed through the ritual clutter, they came across a man in his forties squatting near the fire, his face streaks of ghastly colors, marked by the fruits, herbs, and clays of the forest.

“Sit,” he said.

They all jumped.

“You can see us?” Hellboy said incredulously.

“I see all the spirits that visit me, and there are many. I speak all languages that the spirits teach me.” He threw a handful of leaves onto the embers and inhaled the fragrant smoke.

“What is he? Some kind of shaman?” Lisa whispered.

The shaman waved a finger at her slowly, but said nothing. For a moment, he studied them before nodding, as if their appearance was the most normal thing.

“Shouldn't you be out there helping your people fight that beast?” Hellboy said.

“I help them here.” He gestured to a series of ritual objects—skulls, polished stones, strangely shaped pieces of wood—carefully placed near the embers.