The Ice Wolves

by Mark Chadbourn

  “You okay?” Hellboy helped Lisa to her feet, checking for wounds. Miraculously, there appeared to be none.

  “No!” she replied.

  “You’re alive, aren’t you?”

  His comment punctured her shock and she laughed. “Takes a while for the sensations to reach the brain.” She took a deep breath, and then remembered. “Brad . . . ?”

  Racing up a flight of stairs, they found him hanging half out of the window, attacking a wolf with the cleaver, his face stony with desperate determination. Hellboy barged past him and punched the wolf off the roof.

  Brad gaped when he saw Lisa. “I thought you were dead!” he said, taking her in his arms with such force she was shocked by the rush of emotion.

  “Hellboy saved me,” she said. “Not the smoothest rescue on record, but I’m here.”

  Peering through the swirling snow toward the ground, Hellboy heard the splinter of wood as the wolves crashed against the house. “They’re breaking in,” he said. “Come on.”

  The front door held firm, but in the sitting room one of the shutters had started to splinter, and the other bowed in alarmingly.

  “Last stand?” Brad said.

  “I’m not gonna lie . . . It’s bad,” Hellboy said. He handed his gun to Brad. “You take that window. If they come through, just keep firing.”

  “What about you?” Lisa asked.

  “I’ve got these.” Hellboy held up his fists. “They’ve served me well so far.”

  As he moved in front of the splintering shutter, he glimpsed Brad and Lisa exchanging a glance of yearning.

  A resounding crack caught his attention, and one second later the shutter shattered. Amid a hail of wood shards and a sudden blast of snow, the wolves surged forward in a snapping frenzy. Hellboy threw himself into the window to block the flow, lashing out with a constant barrage of punches. Bone crushed under his fist, and gouts of blood flew, but the wolves weren’t going to be deterred. Through the window, all he could see was a dense mass of baying wolves disappearing into the blizzard. Sooner or later he was going to be crushed by weight of numbers.

  From the corner of his eye, he glimpsed Brad standing like a sentinel, gun leveled at the bowing shutter, attention fixed—scared, but resolute. Lisa clung to his side, supporting him to the last.

  Then his world came down to just a few square feet of wide-open jaws and blazing eyes, meaty breath and the force of inhumanly powerful muscles. Fangs clamped on his arms. Claws raked his chest or ripped toward his throat.

  Somehow he managed to hold the wave back as the wolves tried to thrust through the small gap, pounding, always pounding, every time a new head appeared in his field of vision.

  Another loud crack signaled the breaking of the other shutter,

  and he knew it was all over. White-faced, Brad began to pump shots into the wolves attempting to scramble through the window, but they all knew that the minute he had to reload, the beasts would be upon him.

  In a desperate attempt to do something to protect Brad, Lisa gripped the cleaver with both hands and prepared to hack the first one that evaded the shots.

  Brad pulled the trigger once, twice, three times, each more anxiously, but there were only echoing clicks. In frustration, he threw the gun away.

  “Get out of here!” Hellboy yelled, too late.

  The wolves flooded into the sitting room. Brad thrust Lisa behind him in one last desperate act as they tore toward him.

  The first wolf was only inches from his throat when a sudden overpowering smell of incense filled the room. A split second later the wolf burst into flames.

  Another wolf ignited in a fierce blaze, and then one by one every wolf in the room ignited. Those closest to the windows saw what was happening and pressed back against the flow, but a few were driven into the room by the weight of the ranks and flared alight the moment they crossed the threshold.

  The intense heat drove Hellboy, Brad, and Lisa back to the door, but, strangely, the fire didn’t spread to the rug or any of the furnishings, nor did the thick, greasy smoke mark the ceiling. The flames turned from orange and scarlet, to gold, to white-hot, but within a few moments each blaze snuffed out. All that remained was a dusting of white ashes on the floor.

  Through the window, the howls and baying died away, and once again the wolves stood in eerily silent ranks, staring at the house.

  “What just happened?” Brad asked.

  “The protection is back,” Hellboy replied. “Somehow.”

  Outside, the blizzard became more intense. The wolves melted into the falling snow, and when the wind died down, the square was empty once again.

  “Is that it?” Lisa asked, barely daring to believe. “We survived?”

  “For now.” Hellboy peered out into the deserted, snowbound square. “Something’s screwy here.”

  The door to the drawing room swung open to reveal William, blood streaming from a cut on his temple. “We have a few hours’ grace, that’s all,” he said.

  “What happened to you?” Brad went to examine his father’s wound, but William waved him away and motioned for Hellboy to follow him.

  In the drawing room, a large candle burned in the middle of the floor, the source of the strong smell of incense. “I remembered coming across this in the house belowground,” William said. “Abraham Grant had written about it in one of his journals.”

  “It’s providing the protection,” Hellboy said.

  William nodded. “Only till it burns down. It’s a witch candle, designed to protect witches from the attacks of malignant Puritans. Once it’s gone, the protection disappears, and the house is accessible to anyone who wishes harm on the occupants.”

  “Then the wolves are back in,” Lisa noted.

  Wrinkling his nose at the sickly sweet aroma, Hellboy examined the height and width of the candle. “Should give us a few hours.”

  “To find something that you spent a year searching for,” Brad said to his father.

  “Oh, Brad, you’re so negative,” Lisa sighed.

  “Let’s get the defenses back up fast, just in case we miss the deadline,” Hellboy said.

  Locating the necessary items in the cellar, they proceeded to board up the broken windows in the attic room and the sitting room. While they hammered the last planks into place, Brad said without looking at his father, “So that’s where you ran off to when the wolves attacked.”

  “Perhaps I’m not wholly the monster you make me out to be,” William replied.

  CHAPTER 16

  —

  Brad struggled to contain the cauldron of emotion bubbling away inside him. In Iraq, he’d faced threats, and suffering and pain without once letting his feelings boil over—he told himself it was strength, that nothing had ever affected him since childhood, but now he knew how much of a lie that was. His feelings for Lisa, and the slowly coalescing memories of his nightmare in the Gulf, were both destabilizing him more and more, but it was the looming specter of the tragedy that had blighted his childhood that was troubling him most. For so long there had been the questions he couldn’t answer—what really happened to his mother? And the questions he didn’t want answered—what part, if any, had his father played in the disappearance? And he’d managed to leave them lurking in the deepest recesses of his mind, unexamined, like the ghosts in the depths of the Grant Mansion. But now they demanded his attention, shrieking in the vault of his head, leaving him in no doubt that they would never rest again until he addressed them.

  Even in the midst of the crisis, they would not leave him alone, and so while Hellboy and Lisa went through the house checking all the access points, he pulled his father to one side.

  “Dad, we might not make it through this. I need answers. Talk to me, so I can at least put my mind at rest.”

  “Do you really think that’s possible?” William replied bitterly.

  “Please tell me . . . Did you have anything to do with Mom’s disappearance?”

  “No,” William said unconvi
ncingly.

  Setting his jaw, Brad continued, “Why did you cut me off when I was a kid? Afraid I’d ask too many embarrassing questions?”

  William weighed his words for so long, Brad thought he wasn’t going to answer. Finally, he said, “Children always expect their fathers to know everything, including their own minds and hearts. But the truth is, as you will find out one day, Brad, if we all survive this, that you don’t gain great wisdom by becoming a father. You’re still the same as you always were, flailing around trying to find solutions that are just beyond your reach, filled with the same doubts and flaws, the same insecurities, struggling to pick the best way forward of the many that present themselves. A constant, daily fight to know what is the right thing to do. And failing, over and over again. We are all human. We all fail. And I failed you.”

  Brad was stunned by the restrained emotion in his father’s voice. He stared at him, agape, for a while, and then continued with a note of disbelief, “You’re saying you didn’t mean to stop loving your son. If you ever loved me at all.”

  “Oh, I loved you, Brad. Very much indeed. I loved everything we had in our family. We were very happy in those early days. Do you remember?”

  “Of course I do,” Brad snapped.

  “I was devastated when your mother went missing. Absolutely broken.” William drove home his point with every swing of his hammer, driving in the final nail. “After she disappeared, each time I looked at you, all I could see was her. All I could remember was the happy time we used to have. And it was so painful. Emotions don’t come easy to me, and it felt like I was drowning in them. I couldn’t cope. In the end, it was easier not to look at you, so I wouldn’t remember, I wouldn’t feel.”

  “You destroyed me, Dad.”

  “I know. And by doing so, I destroyed myself. I wasted the rest of my life running away from what I’d done, trying to pretend it hadn’t happened, and then when I finally accepted my responsibility for my failure, it was too late. I ran away, from seeing you again, from myself. I came here. Perhaps I came here to punish myself. You get what you deserve, Brad. And I deserve a nightmarish house filled with the ghosts of the past.”

  William’s emotions were so raw that Brad couldn’t help but be moved. He’d spent so long building up his own calluses and belief about his father’s actions, he didn’t know how to respond.

  “If you really felt that way, why didn’t you get back in touch the last three years? Do something to make amends?”

  “I know how much I’d hurt you. Getting in touch would just rub salt in the wounds. Better to keep well away so you can get on with your life.”

  “You think I could get on with my life? You didn’t understand that I’d been haunted by our relationship, wondering why my father had abandoned me when I needed him the most? You really don’t understand people, do you?”

  “I don’t understand anything. Especially not life.”

  “So why are you talking to me about this now?”

  “Because you came here, Brad. You and Lisa. It felt like I was frozen in my obsessive search for the Kiss of Winter. And then I saw you again, and how you felt about Lisa, and she about you—”

  Brad was surprised even his father could see what he had been blind to for so long.

  “You criticize me,” William continued, “but you’re trapped in your own lies, the ones you tell to yourself. Numb from life. We all need some warmth to wake up from that state, to start feeling again.” He tossed the hammer to one side. “And you woke something up inside me. I’m still not sure it’s a good thing. It hurts to feel things. It’s painful to rake over all those old memories and failures. In the end, what’s best—dead and frozen, or alive and hurting? I don’t know.”

  Lost to his thoughts, he wandered from the room. Brad remained silent, as Lisa and Hellboy walked back into the room.

  He had a feeling they’d been waiting outside for the conversation to conclude.

  “Much as I hate to disturb this Oprah moment, we’ve got a job to do,” Hellboy said. “The candle’s burning down, and it’ll be night soon. Are we gonna find this Kiss of Winter or what?”

  CHAPTER 17

  —

  For the next two hours, they searched the house from top to bottom, tracking alignments, opening and closing doors, rapping walls, and trying to make sense of how subtleties in the mirror-image houses could somehow open the path to the Kiss of Winter.

  “This is driving me crazy,” Hellboy said as he glanced through the first-floor window at the fading light. “We’re close—I can feel it in my gut. But something’s not connecting.”

  “It’s got to be something to do with the missing painting.” Brad tried to stifle his frustration. “Five in the attic room upstairs. Four in the attic room at the bottom of the house.”

  “And the missing painting is of his daughter, Sarah,” Hellboy stressed. “That fits with the whole ‘know my mind’ clue. If you know his mind, you know how much he loved Sarah. We know she was dying, and he was worried about her. So if the painting of this girl who meant the world to him isn’t around, there’s got to be a big reason.”

  “I’ve hammered all over the space between the other four paintings, till my knuckles were raw,” Brad stressed. “There’s no hidden panel or doorway. The painting is gone.”

  “Then maybe the answer is to find the painting,” Lisa said.

  “Except it’s not in the house. Not anywhere we can see.” Hellboy hated the cloying scent of the incense-fragrant candle smoke, which now appeared to be filling the entire building. “Maybe the painting isn’t here at all. Maybe some cook threw it out with the trash, and we’re just wasting our time. It could already be too late to solve the puzzle.”

  “Nothing has left the house.” William stood at the top of the stairs.

  “I wish you’d stop creeping up on us!” Brad said with irritation.

  “The house is a time capsule,” William continued. “Nothing has been thrown out. Any broken furniture, anything unwanted, was stored down in the cellar—you’ve seen that. It was known and accepted by every member of the family who lived here: everything must stay. The house must be kept exactly as it was when Abraham established it.”

  “We’ve turned over the whole cellar,” Hellboy said. “The painting’s not in there.”

  “Not wishing to state the obvious, but we’re running out of time,” Lisa said. “We can stand here talking as long as you want, but it’s not getting us any closer to finding the Kiss of Winter. It might be quiet out there now, but the wolves will be back soon enough. They’ll smell blood once that candle burns out.”

  Brad punched the wall in frustration. As he rubbed his knuckles, a notion alighted on his face. “Then we ask someone.”

  “I don’t know any more than I’ve already told you,” William said, “and I know more than anyone outside this house.”

  “But some people inside the house know more than you. The dead,” Brad said.

  “Smart kid!” Hellboy clapped Brad on the back.

  “You’re crazy!” Lisa retorted. “Ask those things that dragged me under the floorboards? Sure. Let’s get them ’round for coffee and cake!”

  “Not those. That weird experience I had in the nursery. It was Eliza Grant, and she seemed . . . lonely,” Brad continued. “There was no sense of threat there. Yeah, she raked up a whole load of unpleasant stuff from my unconscious, but I just got the impression she wanted some kind of . . . ” He shrugged, embarrassed.

  “Connection.”

  “You’re crazy,” Lisa repeated. “Yeah, she didn’t try to tear your throat out last time. There’s no saying she won’t do it next time.”

  “No,” William said firmly. “I’ve had experiences of Eliza. She is not a threat. But whether she will help is a different matter. She understood that Abraham needed to keep the Kiss of Winter hidden away from prying eyes. If she knew the secret when she was alive, she kept it to herself. Why should she reveal it now?”

  “Becaus
e I’m going to ask her nicely.” Brad eyed the nursery door uneasily. “Wish me luck.”

  “Here. You might need these.” Hellboy handed Brad the opera glasses. “Let me come with you.”

  Brad shook his head. “She might not turn up if you’re there. Besides, Eliza and me . . . we’ve got an understanding.”

  Brad hesitated outside the nursery door for a moment, and then stepped in without a backward glance, closing the door behind him.

  “I hope you haven’t sent him into trouble,” Lisa said sharply, “because I’m going to make you both pay if he doesn’t come out of there in one piece.”

  “We’re in trouble whichever way we turn,” Hellboy said. “He’s a brave kid. Give him credit.”

  “That’s easy for you to say.” Feeling apprehensive, Lisa hugged her arms around her for security. “What he went through in Iraq really messed him up.” She glanced at William. “Messed him up more. I was sure he was a suicide risk for a while. I’ve spent every week looking out for him since we left Baghdad, picking him up when he was giving up, trying to get him to buy into life again. But he was just scared of everything, terrified to go on living. It was easier to give in to it.”

  William nodded; he understood.

  Lisa glanced toward the door. “It’s weird. Since he got here, despite all we’ve been through, he’s been different. I’ve started to think he might pull through, get back to being the old Brad. Maybe even better than that. I don’t want to see all that thrown away.”

  “You’ve done a good job looking after him,” William said. “But you’ve got to let him make his own way now. He knows you’ve helped him. Now he wants to pay you back.”

  “I don’t need paying back.”

  “But he needs to do it.”

  Lisa chewed a nail as she watched the closed door. “What’s going on in there?”