The Ice Wolves

by Mark Chadbourn

  “What’s the point? He’s dead,” William said hopelessly. Tears streamed down his face.

  “There’s still a chance. I’m not giving up yet,” Hellboy said.

  “Neither am I,” Lisa said defiantly, though her eyes had a hollow, fearful expression. She glanced back into the face of the blizzard and caught sight of the advance guards of the pack loping into the entrance to the street.

  Under the covered walkway, they ran, through the electronic doors into reception, where only a couple of people waited in chairs and a doctor and nurse chatted in quiet, troubled tones at the reception desk. A security guard looked out into the snow, shock lighting on his face as he saw Hellboy and the others arrive.

  “Shut the security doors!” Hellboy barked as he skidded into the reception. The security guard began to protest until Hellboy rounded on him. “Just do it! This is an emergency!”

  Baffled, the security guard pressed the green panic button behind the desk and the electronic doors slid shut and sealed just as the first wolves loped up to the entrance. “They should have had blast shutters fitted after 9/11,” Hellboy shouted to William. “Make sure he seals off as much of the hospital as he can. If he has to keep everyone locked in the ER, then that’s what he’ll have to do. Go!”

  William ran to the security guard, who recoiled from the doors in horror as the wolves threw themselves at the reinforced doors repeatedly. The other people in reception fled, shrieking. As William tried to communicate with the guard, Hellboy placed Brad on a gurney and turned to the doctor in his green scrubs, who was already rushing to check Brad’s vitals. He was in his late twenties, with sandy hair and freckles. His badge said his name was Cooper.

  “He’s lost a lot of blood from that chest wound. Now his heart’s given out,” Hellboy said.

  As white as the snow, Lisa looked on, her hands clasped in front of her.

  “Crash cart room three!” the doctor barked to the nurse. “How long’s he been down?”

  “A few minutes, that’s all.”

  “That helps.” He eyed the wolves crashing against the glass. “What the hell—?”

  “You concentrate on saving Brad’s life. I’ll deal with them.”

  Dr. Cooper climbed astride Brad and gave him heart massage while two paramedics raced the gurney toward the ER surgical rooms. Hellboy called Lisa over and said calmly, “Go with the nurse. They’ll want Brad’s details. If they need any consent forms signed, get William. Otherwise, just give them all the support they need.”

  Pleased to have something to do, she smiled wanly. “Hellboy

  . . . thanks,” she said, and then glanced toward the swinging doors through which the gurney had just crashed. “I spent the last few years trying to convince myself we were just friends. Now I’m terrified I’m going to lose him.

  “When I was a kid, my stepdad treated me pretty badly. It made me tough. It also made me pretty crap with relationships. When you’ve been locked in a bedroom for days on end, you don’t trust people very easily. Now . . . I don’t know. Do you believe

  in redemption, Hellboy, or is that just something you get in books? Do people get saved? Get a second chance?”

  Hellboy shrugged. “The way I figure it, every day’s another second chance.”

  She gave his arm a squeeze, then headed off with the nurse toward the surgical rooms.

  Once she had gone, Hellboy allowed his grim expression to surface as he turned back toward the security doors. The floodlit square outside the entrance was filled with wolves. They pressed against the reinforced glass, lashing out in impotent rage with their talons, and he knew that by now the rest of their army would be swarming all around the hospital.

  Dazed and exhausted, William returned with the terrified security guard. “All the departments have been sealed off with internal security doors,” William said. “There’s not a lot of people still in the hospital, but there’s enough. Critical patients, the long-term ill, essential staff—they’re all being moved down to the ground floor so we can keep an eye on them easily on the monitors. We’ve closed off the ER too. We’re stuck here.”

  “You sure the wolves can’t get in?”

  William glanced back at the security guard. “If he’s right. It’s hard to get anything out of him.”

  “Yeah. Stuff like this isn’t easy to swallow.” Hellboy searched the ranks of wolves for Carnifex, but there was no sign. That worried him.

  “Now what? I thought all this would come to an end once you had the Kiss of Winter.”

  “Yeah. I suppose I should start thinking about stage two of the mission.”

  “Left it a bit late, maybe?”

  “A little pressure keeps your mind on the job.”

  Hellboy took out the Kiss of Winter and examined it. The white light washed out across the reception area; it was almost too cold to touch.

  “I figure the power of the Kiss has already started building again, just like that shaman said it would. You see what happened when it got close to the Heart of Winter on the way here? That time slipping was more extreme than anything we’d seen before. Those wolves must be getting desperate. They know they’re close to getting locked back in their box again.” There was still no sign of Carnifex in the seething mass beyond the security door. “And that’s when they’re most dangerous.”

  “Look,” William said.

  In the corner of the reception, a man in a stovepipe hat and a silver-topped cane ambled. He was there only between blinks, but there was more substance to him than the flickering images Hellboy had witnessed on Storrow Drive. Two slaves with worn clothes and humble demeanors appeared near one of the examination rooms. Fright lit up their faces as they looked around, but they were gone just as quickly.

  “It’s getting worse,” Hellboy said. “Just as long as it doesn’t start screwing with things here too much.”

  Once he was sure the doors would hold against the onslaught, Hellboy and William went to the surgical rooms. Chewing a nail anxiously, Lisa looked through the window at the activity within.

  “They’ve started Brad’s heart, but there’s a danger it might give out again,” she said gravely. “They’re giving him blood now, while they stitch up the wound.”

  Through the window, Cooper’s face was taut with a troubling note of concern. He had one eye constantly fixed on the heart monitor.

  There was another shimmer. For a split second, Hellboy was convinced he was standing in a corridor with gas lamps along the walls.

  “Whoa. This is getting weird,” he said. “You saw that?”

  Nodding, William tried the door of a storage room opposite. It opened onto the deck of a frigate on a storm-tossed sea. It was night, and lightning lit up the faces of sailors in two-hundred-year-old dress as they battled to keep their posts in the face of driving rain. William slammed the door quickly and looked to Hellboy. “That wasn’t a vision,” he said.

  “We need to get all the people here together so they’re not accidentally wandering into the past.” Concerned, Hellboy could feel events start to slip away from him. “You can do that?”

  William nodded. “You know the Kiss of Winter might be more of a danger to us in here than it is out there. Keeping it around might not be an option.”

  “You have an idea?”

  His shoulders sagged; his years were catching up with him quickly and he now looked more world weary than Hellboy had seen him. “Maybe. I need to think . . . ” He cast one eye toward Cooper and his team at work on Brad, fighting back a pang of sadness that flared briefly in his worn features, and then moved away to find the security guard.

  The insistent whine of the heart monitor pierced the air. Lisa jumped, clutched onto the door jamb. Inside the room, the screen showed a flat line. Tense, determined faces matched rapid activity, as Cooper called for the defibrillator. The nurse charged it; Cooper grabbed the paddles and watched the needle rise.

  “Oh, God, please,” Lisa whispered. Hellboy gave her shoulder a supportive squ
eeze.

  “Stand back,” Cooper ordered. He drove the paddles toward Brad’s chest, and in that instant, the entire hospital shifted in time. Hellboy and Lisa stood in the corridor of what appeared to be a hotel, looking into a room where Cooper and his team gathered around Brad on the bed. Blankly, Cooper stared at his hands, where the paddles had just been, and then quickly came to himself and started CPR.

  Everything skewed again and the hospital was back again, with a concerned William running toward them. In the surgical room, Cooper cursed loudly, demanding to know what was going on as he continued with CPR while the nurse recharged the defibrillator.

  “This is going to kill him!” Lisa said.

  “We’ve got to do something,” William began. In that instant the power went out and the hospital was plunged into darkness. It only lasted a split second before the hospital’s backup generator kicked in.

  “The Kiss of Winter’s screwing everything up,” Hellboy said. “If the power goes for good . . . ” His voice trailed off as he watched the medics at work on Brad. The screen still showed a flat line.

  William began to say something urgent, but they were interrupted by a cry from the security guard. Behind the desk, he was watching the screen showing feeds from the security cameras around the building and grounds.

  “When the power went out, the security door on the roof blew. It’s reset now, but . . . ” The guard indicated the screen, which showed wolves loping along empty corridors.

  “How many got in?” Hellboy asked.

  “Hard to tell. Ten?” His hand shook as he switched to another camera; more wolves darted by. “If they get down to this level, there’ll be carnage.” He wavered. “I ought to—”

  “Leave it to me. You make sure everybody down here stays safe. Keep them together.”

  Nodding, the security guard’s eyes flickered toward the ranks of wolves beyond the ER entrance. No longer tearing at the doors, once again they watched, unmoving, with malignant stares that made the blood run cold.

  “Why’ve they stopped?” the security guard said. “It was bad enough when they were like wild animals, but this is worse. It’s like they’re—”

  “Waiting?”

  He nodded. “What would they be waiting for?”

  “If the power goes off again. Because then those doors will fail, and they’ll be inside.”

  The guard blanched.

  Hellboy leaned over the desk to peer at the screen. “Where are those wolves?”

  “Three different locations.” He indicated on a map on the wall. “Here, here and here.”

  “Can we keep ’em locked up there?”

  “If you manually reset internal security doors. Otherwise, they’ll be down here in no time.”

  “Once I’ve reset them, how do I get back?”

  “You can’t until the doors have been released.”

  “So I’ll be trapped up there. Great.” Hellboy took the details from the guard and ran for the stairwell. He paused at the surgical-room door, where William and Lisa were transfixed by the battle for Brad’s life.

  “How’s he doing?” Hellboy asked.

  “They’ve got his heart started again, but he can’t go through much more of this punishment,” Lisa replied, blinking away tears. “You need to get the Kiss of Winter away from here. Give Brad a chance.”

  “The wolves are in. If they get down here to the ER, it’s all over for Brad too. And all of you.”

  Lisa covered her face. Unable to say anything that would make her feel better, Hellboy headed for the stairwell, relieved the upper levels were clear of potential victims.

  The moment he stepped through the door he could hear the sound of the wolves echoing across the floors above. Against his side, the Kiss of Winter had begun to throb, the cold reaching into the very heart of him. Its power was growing and spreading.

  Time was running out.

  CHAPTER 25

  —

  At the top of the stairwell, Hellboy paused at the swing door and peered into the corridor beyond. As far as he could see, it was empty. Easing open the door, he listened intently. At first there was only silence, but as he edged out into the corridor a low snarl echoed along the walls. It was impossible to tell how close it was. Quickly, he followed the guard’s instructions and reset the internal security doors on the panel next to the stairwell. There was no going back.

  Cautiously, he headed in the direction of the snarl. He wished he had some ammo for his gun, or a sword. Even an ax.

  There was something particularly eerie about a deserted hospital at night, even when it wasn’t populated with savage beasts. The glaring strip lights were unbearably stark, the silence in a place usually filled with noise unsettling.

  Hellboy edged to the corner of the corridor. As he paused, a low growl rolled down the branching corridor. Talons clicked on the vinyl floor, drawing nearer, and the rasp of hot breath grew slowly louder.

  He pressed himself against the wall and waited. The snarling drew closer with each soft pad of feet, the distorted shadow reaching past the turn in the corridor. Just as Hellboy prepared to attack, the stud wall behind him exploded, propelling him across the floor into the facing wall. Another wolf was on him in a second, leaping through the gap in the ward where it had been lurking.

  Hunched on his chest, it pinned him, snapping furiously for his throat. As it lunged, he gripped the wolf’s neck with one hand and drove up into its jaw with the other. The beast sprawled across the floor away from him, but by that time the other wolf was attacking.

  “So much for surprise,” Hellboy muttered. He rolled out of the way, thrusting himself up suddenly so his head rammed hard into the beast’s jaw, and he felt the bone shatter.

  The brawl had attracted the attention of the other prowling wolves; he could hear their roars drawing closer from both directions. Scrambling to his feet, he half started back along the corridor only for a pack of wolves to round the corner at the far end. Behind him, three more wolves had joined the two he had fought.

  They were wary of him, he could see that. Their heads lowered as they loped forward cautiously, knowing they had strength in numbers, choosing their moment to attack as a pack.

  Before they could descend on him, the Kiss of Winter cycled in power again, driving a spike of ice-cold into his side. His loud curse died in his throat as the corridor skewed into a new form with such suddenness it made his head spin. The hospital was no longer there. Instead, they stood on a snowy mountainside in the middle of a blizzard. Ahead lay a bridge across a gulf that disappeared into the snow far below; and beyond it, as the direction of the wind whipped back and forth among the high peaks, he could occasionally make out buildings that appeared vaguely Tibetan.

  Hellboy cursed loudly in shock, but quickly got his bearings.

  Disoriented by the lurching change, the wolves howled, turned in circles, tried to make sense of what had happened. That gave Hellboy the space he needed. Head down into the wind, he ran for the bridge. The wind threw him from side to side, coating his face with freezing snow. Behind him, the howls of the wolves thundered off the mountainside as they gave pursuit.

  Skidding down rough, worn flags coated with packed snow and ice that made the going treacherous, he leapt onto the bridge. It shook fiercely under his weight, but the thick ropes held. As he ran, it bounced wildly and threatened to pitch him off. The vibrations only got worse when the wolves bounded onto the bridge behind him, their howls like sirens in the roaring wind.

  Gritting his teeth, he drove himself through the blizzard to the far side of the bridge. Some kind of temple loomed up before him, almost lost in the dense snowdrifts. Lamps gleamed in the windows, but all around was dark and foreboding.

  Hellboy considered running for the large wooden door until another thought struck him. Bracing himself, he put his shoulder against the wooden post that supported the bridge’s guide ropes. It felt like it was set in stone, but he strained, and it began to give a little. The wolves raced
onto the last stretch.

  “You’re really pissing me off!” he shouted at them.

  With a final burst of strength, he drove the post over. The tension from the ropes whipped it out of the ground and high into the air, and the bridge flipped on its side, pitching all the wolves into the abyss. Their howls rose up long after they had disappeared into the gusting snow.

  Shivering, he yelled after them, “And stay out!”

  Wondering what he was going to do next, he turned toward the temple only for the whole scene to slide rapidly away. Once again he was standing in a ward at the hospital with a pile of upturned beds on either side.

  “Whoa! I am never going to get used to that,” he said, lurching back a step.

  Before he could work out where the wolves had materialized, from ahead came the sound of another beast. Running through the ward, he found it ripping at a panel of exposed wires next to a security door. Beyond it, a horde of wolves roamed, and in the center of them, standing directly in front of the door, was Carnifex. The wolf’s red eyes were filled with a cold confidence that said this battle is coming to an end, and victory is within my grasp. Hateful eyes, promising slow death. In his hand, he gripped the Heart of Winter, glowing with the same increased power of the Kiss of Winter, and calling out to its sister with every white pulse. Carnifex’s hunger for the Kiss was just as apparent.

  Hellboy turned his attention to the wolf raking at the box of computerized components, and realized it could trigger the opening of the door. “You’re not as dumb as you look,” he said.

  At full speed, he sent the wolf sprawling along the corridor. In front of the elevator doors, they fought wildly, Hellboy’s fists buckling the metal every time the wolf avoided his blow. Soon the doors hung ragged, the dark shaft reaching down to the ground floor where the elevator had been locked in place.

  Hellboy threw a punch meant to propel the wolf into the dark mouth of the shaft, but at the last second, the beast ducked his blow and lithely slipped along the wall.

  “Hey! Get back here!” Hellboy shouted.

  The wolf bounded away and took one more swipe at the box on the wall. Before Hellboy could move, a flash of sparks sizzled in an arc, followed a second later by a resonant grinding as the disabled door was dragged open. Carnifex strode into the corridor and faced Hellboy, the rest of the wolves flooding through behind him.