The Ice Wolves (4 page)

 
CHAPTER 3

—

“What is it with this weather?” Pulling up his collar, Brad eyed the dark clouds backing up over Boston. An unseasonably cold wind whipped off the Charles River as the temperature dropped rapidly. “It should be . . . what . . . seventy at this time of year?”

Lisa shouldered her camera bag. “Weather's been screwy for a few years now. All that global warming . . . going to get worse before it gets better. If it gets better.”

Hellboy followed Brad's gaze to the churning clouds, so heavy that dusk had started to fall an hour early. Lights were already sparking on the John Hancock Tower and Prudential Center, running in golden chains along the skyline. “I don't know. Something about those clouds looks weird,” he said.

Hellboy wasn't the only one to think that. As the cab pulled away into the heavy flow of traffic, passersby stopped to eye the clouds uneasily, their faces filled with an inexplicable apprehension that was not wholly to do with the weather.

The turbulent weather reflected his feelings since he had studied the information Kate passed on about the werewolf attacks. So much brutality and bloodshed happening at once, and it was escalating. Where was it all leading, he wondered?

His thoughts were interrupted by Lisa, who had fixed him with a cold eye. “When are you going to tell us what this is all about?”

Hellboy had already decided he liked her: she was tough, blunt,
uncompromising, and sparky. But he hadn't yet made his mind up about Brad, who was so detached it was hard to get a handle on him.

“You punted away all my questions on the plane,” Lisa continued, “and in the cab ride from Logan. I'm glad we dumped the cab when we got caught up in that traffic so I can finally get you face to face.” Lisa jabbed a finger into Hellboy's chest.

“Get me inside the Grant Mansion, and you'll know what I know. If we don't get in, it's better if you don't know,” Hellboy replied.

“We're not going to get in,” Brad said. “Trust me.” He headed off to a newsstand to pick up a copy of the
Herald
.

“Your boyfriend's not exactly Mr. Positive,” Hellboy noted.

“He's not my boyfriend,” Lisa snapped, eyes flashing. “He's had a tough time recently, that's all.”

“In Iraq?”

“He saw some pretty bad things. They're playing on his mind. He'll get over it.”

Hellboy watched Brad pay for the paper—the faint shake to his hand, the slight stoop as if he carried a heavy weight. “You sure?”

“I'm looking out for him.” Determined, Lisa shouldered her camera bag and walked over to talk to Brad at the newsstand.

Hellboy looked around the crowded streets. Something was wrong, although he couldn't put his finger on quite what it was. Instincts honed by decades keeping the dark at bay were jangling out of control.

“Come on,” he called. “Let's move out before it gets dark.”

Heading quickly through the darkening streets toward Beacon Hill, they came to Boston Common, almost fifty acres of grassland and trees crisscrossed by paths. A bitter wind blew across the open space, and people in T-shirts and light summer dresses scurried before it, heads down, arms wrapped around themselves.

Lisa shivered. “Looks like we're in for a hell of a storm.”

“Is that—?” Brad held up a hand into the face of the wind, then examined it. “Snow? This time of year?”

The lights had come on across the Common, and they could now see flakes caught in the gusts—just a few, but increasing rapidly.

For a long moment, they watched the falling snow in incredulity before Brad and Lisa stumbled through a list of possible causes, none of which were convincing. Troubled, they turned to Hellboy for answers, but he had none. Attempts to laugh it off died quickly, and they set off again in silence, heads down, as they struggled to come to terms with events slowly skewing away from any understanding.

Within five minutes, the Common was deserted as the snow swirled in the wind and gave everything a white coating. Halfway across the open space, Brad came to a halt, his attention drawn by the black smudge of trees in the northeast corner.

“What's up?” Hellboy asked.

“Thought I saw something,” Brad said.

Hellboy made to move on, but Lisa had joined Brad to scour the tree line.

“Out in the desert you build up a sixth sense,” Lisa told Hellboy. “All the journalists get it. Everything merges into the background in that landscape, but on some level you notice if something is out of whack, and you learn to pay attention to that feeling—it could be life or death.”

“This isn't Iraq,” Brad said dismissively. He moved on, but Hellboy noticed he kept glancing toward the trees all the time they were crossing the Common.

As they came to Beacon Street, the south-side boundary of Beacon Hill, night had moved in. Snow fell thick and fast, and a trail of footprints now marked their passage. It was already close to freezing. Their breath clouded, and they stamped their feet to keep warm as they waited to cross the honking, steaming traffic, the drivers' faces uniformly fixed with an incredulous expression. The sidewalk was already near deserted, the last few pedestrians fleeing home, slipping and sliding, some falling and cursing.

Hellboy kept an eye on Brad and Lisa. The freak weather troubled them deeply, questions they couldn't begin to answer playing out across their faces, but they were coping. Their resilience comforted Hellboy, because he had a gut instinct the strange weather was linked in some way to the werewolf business; it was too much of a coincidence.

Once they had crossed Beacon Street, they felt they'd passed through an invisible boundary into a timeless place. History lay heavy over Beacon Hill, in the Federal-style row houses, ancient elms, brick sidewalks, and the narrow, winding streets where gaslights still hissed as they had for more than a hundred years. At the summit, near where the old beacon used to sit, was the grand, gilt-domed Massachusetts State House, which capped the neighborhood's unique atmosphere.

Feeling the cold, Hellboy, Brad, and Lisa trudged into the face of a blizzard, up Charles Street, past the restaurants, classy shops, and antique joints, and when they reached the imposing façade of the Charles Street Meeting House, they turned east onto Mount Vernon Street, where some of Beacon Hill's finest buildings spoke of wealth and privilege.

The oppressive atmosphere grew even more intense as they strode into the heart of the district. Despite the gusting snow stinging his eyes and forcing his head down, Hellboy caught sight of shadowy figures moving on the edge of his vision, at times eerily insubstantial, at others solid yet disappearing in the blink of an eye. Hellboy sensed Brad and Lisa had seen them too, for they'd grown tense and silent, their gazes continually searching the side streets and shadowy doorways.

“What's going on?” Brad asked uneasily.

“I'm not hallucinating, right?” Lisa added, looking back and forth along the street.

Hellboy took the time to try to calm their rising anxieties. Reactions to the first intrusion of the supernatural into rational lives always varied, but he'd found that a quick, calm explanation worked wonders. “Don't try to think it through now,” he said. “The world's weirder than you know. I'll give you the 101 when we get to the house.”

Lisa steeled herself. “Okay. I'm going to trust you.” The unease was still there in her face, but the rigid determination that controlled it told Hellboy how she'd survived in the Gulf.

Yet he wondered if he
could
explain what was happening. Where did the spectral figures come from, and what part did they have to play in what was unfolding? Whatever the answer, it was clear that things were getting weirder by the minute.

The blizzard blew so hard, progress up Mount Vernon Street was slow. Visibility was confined to just a few feet, so that the half-glimpsed figures became even more ethereal, swallowed up by the snow as soon as they coalesced out of the swirls. Hellboy was convinced he saw frock coats and stovepipe hats, crenelated dresses and parasols, but they were gone before he could be sure.

“How much further?” Brad shouted above the wind. “This damn weather—” He came to a startled halt. He had been glancing in the window of one of the large houses, where a flat-screen TV had been showing a confused weatherman trying to explain the black cloud symbols he was indicating on the map of Boston. Now there was no TV, no electric lights. A gas lamp flickered on the wall, and the furniture was not the clean lines of modern design, but heavy Victorian wood. “What the hell?” Brad exclaimed.

They glanced at each other, and when they looked back the TV glowed once more.

“Okay, now officially scared,” Lisa said. “I'm hallucinating and going crazy, or that place just looked like it did over a century ago. Either way that's not good.” Lisa eyed Hellboy, who held up a hand. “Yeah, yeah, at the house,” she said. “I am
so
looking forward to this explanation.”

As the words left her mouth, the blizzard dropped briefly, and in its place there was an unsettling stillness as the snow muffled every sound. The few remaining cars on the street had now disappeared completely. Not a single person was left outdoors. It could have been the hours just before dawn, but there was something else which they all sensed on some level, and which they couldn't quite explain. It was the same thing everybody else in the neighborhood felt, that they had seen etched on the faces of the passersby when they left the taxi and in the rapid, homeward-bound movements of the people on the edge of Beacon Hill; something was coming, something was very near indeed, and it would be best if they were not around to encounter it.

“Wait.” Hellboy held up a hand and they came to a halt.

“I heard it,” Brad said. He looked up and down the deserted street. “Footsteps crunching in the snow.”

“So somebody else is stupid enough to be out in this. Big deal,” Lisa sniffed.

They listened to the footsteps for a few more seconds until they came to a halt. No sound of a front door opening, or a car door, or the creak of a gate; just silence. Brad turned slowly, trying to identify the location. On some level he didn't comprehend, he sensed a threat drawing near, and he saw Hellboy felt it too.

A low, rumbling growl rolled out across the quiet street. Lisa grew rigid. “What the hell was that? A dog?” she said, not believing it for a moment.

“Time to quit yakkin' and move on,” Hellboy said.

Hellboy caught movement high on the periphery of his vision. He whirled, catching sight of a dark shape silhouetted against the darker sky as it flitted across the snow-covered rooftops before disappearing over the roof pitch. Following the line of oddly elongated prints, he saw whatever was there had followed them along the length of the street.

“You know you said your instinct in Iraq could be the difference between life and death?” Hellboy drew his gun.

Lisa was caught by movement across the rooftops on the other side of the street now. The muffled sound of padding floated down. A shower of snow slipped, and it was gone.

Circling
, Hellboy thought. “Okay. Let's move. Now!” He propelled Brad and Lisa along the street. They moved quickly, glancing around fearfully.

“What is it?” Lisa asked.

Brad shielded his eyes against the glare of the streetlights off the snow. “Some kind of animal?”

“Whatever it is, it's after us, isn't it?” Lisa said. “Why?” She glanced at Hellboy and knew the truth. “It's hunting.”

As they hurried through the drifts, showers of snow fell from the roofs, keeping apace. More footsteps clattered on the tiles, no longer trying to hide.

Brad began, “At least while it's up there—”

“Don't say it,” Hellboy interrupted. He was right. When he glanced up, the rooftop was now empty, and as they passed West Cedar Street a dark shape kept to the shadows among the pools of light from the street lamps.

As quickly as it lifted, the blizzard began again, sweeping down the street at force, swirling the snow all around so their visibility retreated to a tight little world where threat could only be one step away.

“Nearly there now,” Hellboy shouted. “You're doing great.”

Through the gale, they heard long, heavy steps moving around them. Hellboy slowed, trying to identify the location of their pursuer in the blizzard.

A low growl echoed behind them.

Gun leveled, Hellboy spun, dragging Lisa and Brad behind him. He'd barely moved when the growl rumbled out again, this time not far from his left shoulder.

“It's getting ready to attack,” Lisa whispered.

“Just run,” Brad urged.

Another growl, so close Hellboy was convinced he could feel hot breath. He made to fire, but held back, afraid he would miss and plant the bullet through the window of one of the houses.