The Ice Wolves (3 page)

Frost crunched underfoot as Hellboy edged along the corridor. Ice glimmered in Kate's hair, and she convulsed so much that Hellboy feared she was on the brink of fainting.

Rounding the turn in the corridor, they came up sharp. At the far end stood a man, eyes cloaked in shadow, skin as white as the frozen walls, head slightly bowed and to one side. He wore a dark suit and scuffed shoes that glittered with ice particles.

“Daniel?” Kate said, her teeth chattering.

His voice, as insubstantial as the breeze: “Kate.”

Kate made to go to him, but Hellboy held her back. “He's not looking so good.”

Tears stung Kate's eyes. “Daniel, what's wrong?”

“I've come to warn you.” He spoke louder, his voice as cold and hard as the frozen wastes. “This is difficult . . . I can't stay much longer.”

“Warn me about what?”

“Winter comes.”

Kate looked to Hellboy, who had lowered his gun to his side. “He's . . . he's a ghost?”

“Something like that.”

“They have the Heart of Winter. They used my life to seal the pact that would activate it, and now I'm trapped here, in this awful white world, without any warmth, forever.”

“What's the Heart of Winter?” Hellboy asked.

Daniel turned his hollow eyes to Hellboy. “An artifact locked away in the collection in Prague. A spell given form.” He gave a shudder. “I can't stay here. I have to go back to the cold . . . always to the cold. Kate . . . get away from here. They need to find the Heart's sister, the Kiss of Winter. They're coming now! Go! Or else you'll be joining me in the dark . . . in the cold . . . ”

As the voice faded, the shadows at the end of the corridor folded around Daniel Pleasance until he disappeared from view.

“Daniel!” Kate called.

Hellboy held her tighter. “There's nothing you can do. He's long gone.”

Kate blinked away a tear and tried to search for any sign of her friend, but there were only the lights from the campus reflecting off the frost. The temperature was already rising sharply. “I can't believe he's dead.”

Hellboy watched the shock bloom in her eyes and took her shoulders to steady her. “One thing I've learned is to listen to warnings like that,” he said gently. “We need to get out of here.”

Breathing deeply, Kate suppressed her grief and forced herself to focus on practical matters. “He was talking about the wolves, wasn't he?” she asked.

“Yeah. I'm sorry—I know he was a good friend.”

A clatter on the roof tiles above their heads made them start. Before Hellboy could move, Kate broke away from him and raced back to her office. Cursing, Hellboy went after her, but she returned a second later clutching the unopened box.

“This is why they're coming!” she said. “There's something in here about the Kiss of Winter; I remember.”

Tiles clattered off the roof and crashed to the ground two stories below.

“Come on!” Hellboy urged. He grabbed Kate's hand and they ran down the stairs and out into the campus where the night was reassuringly warm. Gun drawn, Hellboy prowled the area, but there was no sign of any pursuers. The roof of the folklore department was clear, with only a few broken tiles to mark the passing of whatever had been there.

“You need to get back to HQ. You'll be safe there,” he said, keeping watch.

“They're not after me, they're after this.” Kate dumped the box on the trunk of her car, and rifled through it, throwing papers out haphazardly. Finally she pulled out a thick folder with “Winter's Kiss” scrawled on the front in her loopy handwriting.

“It was mentioned in one of the werewolf trials. When I was researching the book, I had no idea what it was—I still don't. But shortly before I joined the Bureau, I came across this.”

She handed Hellboy a clipping from an amateurishly produced magazine. Scanning it quickly, he said, “The Grant Mansion?”

“The most haunted house in America, or so the tabloids like to call it. More importantly, the biggest store of occult artifacts on this side of the Atlantic.”

“It says here the house is rumored to hold the Kiss of Winter, a powerful magical item, except no one knows exactly what it looks like, or what it does. The Grant Mansion's in Boston, right?”

“Beacon Hill. Daniel was in my office having coffee when I clipped that piece and put it in the file. I never mentioned where the Kiss of Winter was, just that I thought I'd found it, and it'd be a good research trip to chase it up once I had a few free days. Which I never did.”

“It must have stuck in his head. Until the wolves got it out. That makes you a target—”

A nearby tree branch bowed and swished as if a large weight had leapt from it.

Kate cursed under her breath.

Holstering his gun, Hellboy watched a shadow flit into the darkness on the edge of the campus. “It overheard.”

“You think? You and your big mouth.”

“Hey, you were the one who decided to go through your top-secret research out in the open, on the back of your car.”

“It wasn't top secret!” she snapped, then caught herself. “So, now what?”

“Now I go to Boston. Get into the house, find the Kiss of Winter, and stop the wolves getting their paws on it.”

Kate shifted uncomfortably. “Yeah. It's not actually going to be that simple.”

—

From the apartment window in the neat brick row house, Brad Lynch looked out over Baltimore's Upper Fells Point, but all he saw was greasy black smoke, and sand, and blood. Instead of the brassy blare of mariachi music from the next apartment, all he could hear was the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer. He'd been months out of Iraq, but he knew a part of him would never leave.

Still in his twenties, Brad's face carried the toughness of his long line of blue-collar Boston Irish stock, and he'd always considered himself a two-fisted kind of guy who could cope with anything life threw at him. That was kind of funny now, in a bitter, self-loathing way.

Glancing at his framed photos lining the walls, he saw only lies, not the images that had gained him recognition in publications around the globe. Proud soldiers silhouetted against the blue sky, children playing in the rubble of their home. None of the images rolling out continually across his unconscious. The German engineer chopped to bits by insurgents. The limbless kids eking out what they laughingly called a life after the bomb outside the mosque. The mass grave in the sand outside Fallujah.

Even in the stew of life on the street there was no respite, where the old-timers swapped stories and told jokes—the Italians and the Poles, the Irish, the Greeks and the Lithuanians. All Brad saw was Shia and Sunni at each other's throats.

Iraq confirmed the one thing he'd always feared: the past never leaves you alone.

Lisa Mafrici came out of the bathroom, her long black hair wrapped up under a towel. Italian by way of Britain, Lisa was the best photojournalist Brad knew. They'd teamed up in the early days, bribing a taxi driver to take them out to the no-man's land where the warlords fought on a daily basis, and that was how it carried on. They never talked about it; it just was. Their skills and ideas complemented each other's, and their admiration was mutual. In every dangerous situation, she never flinched, cool as anything but without any of Brad's recklessness. She really did cope with everything life threw at her.

There'd always seemed the possibility that their relationship would grow beyond friendship, but it had become frozen, like his emotions, locked in time by a single event. He'd never asked her how she felt. He guessed he was afraid of the answer.

“You want to go out and get breakfast?” she asked.

“Not hungry.”

“I want to thank you for the loan of your couch while I'm passing through, Brad, but I have to say, you really are a rude, unpleasant asshole.”

“What?”

“This whole brooding thing? I get it. You've seen some terrible things—we all have. But you can't let it eat up your life.”

“Why not?” Bitterly, he slapped his portfolio off the coffee table and sent sheets of negatives scattering across the floor.

Lisa sighed. “If you've got the time, there's a whole bunch of clichés you need to study. Life goes on. Life's what you make it. You've only got one shot. Bottom line: there's a lot of misery in the world, and it's up to us to make it better.”

“Up to us? You and me? Right. I'll go off and be Gandhi or something.”

“Yeah, it's better to sit here moping, right?” Lisa sat next to him and gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze. He found it affecting; in all their time together, there had hardly been any physical contact. They were buddies on the road, watching each other's backs; that was how they played it.

“I'm fine,” he said.

“You've got posttraumatic stress or something. You need to talk this out.”

“Thanks, but I'm just having a bad day. It won't get any worse.”

A loud knock at the door interrupted them. When he answered it, Brad was stunned for a moment.

“Yeah, I get that a lot,” Hellboy said. “Can I come in?”

Pushing past Brad before he could answer, Hellboy strode into the lounge, where Lisa surveyed him for a second before vaulting the sofa and rushing toward her bag. “Wait! Let me get my camera!”

“A mug like mine will break your lens,” Hellboy said. “Besides, I'm camera shy.”

Lisa skidded to a halt, sullenly, still casting one eye toward her camera bag. “I saw you on CNN once.”

“You were in Africa,” Brad continued.

“I've been all over.” Hellboy strode over to Brad and sized him up. “If you're Brad Lynch, I need your help.”

“You need
his
help?” Lisa said incredulously.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Brad sniffed. “What can I do?”

“It's about your father—”

Brad held up a hand to silence Hellboy. “Let me stop you there. I haven't spoken to my dad in three years. I don't want to speak to him. He doesn't want to speak to me. We don't hate each other. We just . . . ” He shrugged, searched for the right words. “Think it's better if we don't get within twenty miles of each other.”

Lisa leaned in to Brad and whispered, “Just hear the guy out, all right?”

While Hellboy inspected the framed photos lining the walls, Lisa fetched them all coffee. “Some talent,” Hellboy said.

“Thanks. Not much use at anything else, but I always had an eye for an image.”

“You only need one skill to make a go of it in the world.”

“Tell that to my dad. He never got the whole photojournalist thing. I mean, he was happy I was making a living, seeing the world, but he always thought it was a stopgap until I did something serious. Your father like that?”

“I never knew him.”

“Dad thinks men need to be making things. Houses, factories, bridges. Not observing them. He's an engineer. Made a pretty big fortune with his business, then sold it off and retired early.”

Lisa came in with the coffee. “I wouldn't mind meeting your dad, either.”

“You'd be disappointed.”

Still weighing how much to say, Hellboy took his coffee over to the sofa. “A year ago, after William Lynch . . . your father . . . sold his business, he bought an old Greek Revival house in Boston. The Grant Mansion on Beacon Hill.”

“Yeah? That's a bit out of Dad's comfort zone. I never thought he'd leave the old neighborhood.”

“Wow. A mansion,” Lisa said wryly. “You've been hiding your good breeding pretty well.”

“I never knew,” Brad said sharply. “I told you—we haven't talked for three years.”

“I need to get inside that house,” Hellboy continued. “Somewhere in it there's an important artifact. Very important. And it could save a lot of lives.”

“Tried knocking on the door?” Lisa said tartly. “Always works for me.”

“Turns out Brad's dad has become something of a recluse over the last year. Never answers the door. No phone. Food gets delivered and deposited through a hatch next to the servants' entrance. I tried everything. He's got that place sealed up like a fortress.”

“And you thought I could help?” Brad laughed.

“Got a few friends to track down William's relatives. Turns out you're the only living one. I need you, Brad.”

“Even if I wanted to help, he's not going to pay any attention to me. I'll be stuck out on the sidewalk, same as you. Begging and pleading won't work with Dad. If he wants to be alone, that's what he gets. Dad always gets what he wants.”

“You say this thing in the house could save people's lives?” Lisa watched Hellboy intently, judging his trustworthiness.

“Lots of lives.”

Making her decision, she nodded and turned to Brad. “You can't stay in this place for the rest of your life. Let's go to Boston.”

“You don't know him, Lisa. It's a waste of time.”

“What kind of attitude is that?” she said sharply. “In Baghdad, we tried everything.”

“This isn't Baghdad. It's colder.” Brad sighed. He could never turn her down, however much he dreaded seeing his father and all the terrible things it was going to dredge up. The past wouldn't leave him alone; he'd accepted that now. Maybe it was time to stop running. “You're not going to give up, are you?”

“You know me very well, Brad. I've made my mind up. Now unless you want me to slap you around a bit for good measure, we're on our way to Boston.”