The Fire Wolves

by Tim Lebbon

  “There’s truth in what she was claiming,” Hellboy said. “And I intend to find it.”

  “As you wish. But I cannot in good conscience allow you to remain here any longer.”

  “You’re not afraid of that fire wolf?”

  Adamo shrugged. “I’m an old, old man. I’ve seen many things to scare me, but at my age, something I cannot see holds little fear for me.”

  “If it returns, you’ll know it.”

  “If it was Carlotta’s curse, as you seem to believe, then it will not return, will it?”

  Hellboy stood, wiping crumbs from his coat. “The curse is your family’s, Adamo. Carlotta was simply its next victim.”

  “Take Franca with you,” Adamo said quietly. “She’s not been welcome here for years.”

  “Such sentiment,” Hellboy said, bitterness giving his voice bite. But the old man remained unmoved.

  “Goodbye, Hellboy.”

  “Arrivederci, Adamo Esposito.” Hellboy left the room, closing the door behind him and barely able to restrain his instinct to rip it from its hinges and crunch it over his knee. He took a few deeps breaths as he walked along the deserted corridor, and as he started back downstairs, he tried to formulate a plan. But he was never very good at this covert, scheming stuff.

  Damn, he thought, maybe I should have asked Liz to come after all.

  —

  The breakfast room was bustling. He hadn’t realized just how many people lived in this huge old house, but as he entered and faces turned this way, he looked around and did a quick count. He saw several Elders spotted around, including the three cheery souls he’d encountered up on the third floor. There were maybe a dozen younger men and women, ranging in age from early twenties to their fifties or sixties. He did not see Franca’s parents among them. And he counted fifteen kids, at least. They were seated around several large tables arrayed around the room, flitting to and from a breakfast bar set up along one wall. This contained fresh fruits, cereals, croissants, and a mouth-watering array of fresh pastries.

  Franca was sitting at one of the tables, and she offered him a brief smile.

  Conversation had faded as he entered. Some people, mainly the kids, stared at him. Some of the adults turned away, but some of the younger ones seemed keen to catch his eye, and as he looked around, he received several friendly nods and smiles. Love me or loathe me, I’m here, he thought, and he allowed himself a small, grim smile in return.

  “Here,” Franca said, touching the table beside her.

  “I’ve eaten,” Hellboy said. “Can we talk?”

  As Franca stood, a teenager ran into the room from a door in the far corner. He was speaking Italian at a hundred miles per hour, and the only word Hellboy managed to catch was Vesuvius.

  Most of the room stood in unison, streaming towards the door and piling through.

  “TV room,” Franca said, frowning at Hellboy, distracted. He nodded and watched her go with the others, knowing that he should see for himself what was happening. But something kept him back. Take advantage, a voice whispered in his head, and maybe that was Abe Sapien’s calm, controlled influence over him.

  The Elders around the room seemed in shock. They stared at one-another, then quickly became conscious that Hellboy was still standing in the doorway. Most of them stood and headed for the TV room, but the man and woman he’d first met on the third floor pushed past him into the hallway, not even sparing him a glance.

  They’re distracted, Abe’s voice said, and isn’t there somewhere you need to be?

  He backed into the hallway and watched the two Elders climb the stairs. For old people, they were very sprightly. Olive oil and fish, he thought. Liz always talked about the good Mediterranean diet. He walked gently across the marble floor until he stood before the great staircase, listening to doors opening and closing upstairs, and the muted grumble of many voices from two rooms away.

  Then he walked quickly around the staircase and approached the metal door. Bolted and padlocked. But that should prove no problem.

  He was crossing a line now, and he knew it. But it was a line he had not drawn himself, so it might as well not be there at all.

  Clutching the first of the padlocks in his right hand, he began to twist.

  CHAPTER 6

  —

  Amalfi

  —

  “Vesuvius is erupting!” Mario had shouted. He was another of Franca’s cousins, and he’d grown up a lot since she’d left. “It’s all over the news, and they’re talking of evacuation!”

  Franca followed the others into the TV lounge, remembering spending long cool evenings in here watching history programmes and period-piece movies. Even as a girl she’d been fascinated with the past.

  Where the hell have I seen that damned fire wolf before? she thought, jostled by her family as they all craned to see the big TV in the far corner of the room. But her thoughts trailed off when she saw the TV picture.

  The great, shattered hillside of Vesuvius took up the bottom half of the screen, and the camera was focused on a trail of smoke standing vertically from the hidden crater. It rose for perhaps a thousand feet before being caught by a breeze and dispersed into the air. The smoke was almost pure white, and it looked calm and peaceful. But what that wisp might herald imbued it with a more sinister meaning.

  Some of the kids ran around the room, jumping on and across furniture in an impromptu game of tag, and Franca’s aunt gave a terse, loud shout to quiet them. Franca was impressed with how quickly the children obeyed, dropping onto a sofa and watching to see what had gotten the adults so agitated.

  She glanced behind her for Hellboy, but he had not yet appeared.

  “Turn it up,” someone called. Her Uncle Alfonso, who had not once made eye contact with her since her return. Even her dead father’s brother could not accept the fact that she had her own life to lead.

  Someone found the remote control and raised the volume, and the bustle in the room immediately settled as the reporter’s voice came through.

  “ . . . evacuation procedure that has been put in place for such an eventuality. The first tremors were felt several weeks ago, and a team from Naples University and the Disaster Emergency Committee have been monitoring the volcano closely ever since. There are frequent rumblings, they say, but this recent tremor—and the fact that the volcano is now venting gas—is a significant step towards eruption. I repeat: there is no apparent immediate threat of Vesuvius erupting, but please be aware of regular updates on TV and radio, and if you live within the boundaries of the Vesuvius Evacuation Plan, please review and be familiar with your procedures.”

  The live feed vanished, replaced by some clever CGI of Pompeii almost two thousand years ago.

  “The most famous eruption of Mount Vesuvius destroyed the towns of Herculaneum and Pompeii in AD 79, burying much of Pompeii and preserving it for . . .” The words trailed off for Franca, her senses withdrew, and she closed her eyes and saw what she had been reaching for.

  Yes, I have seen it before!

  What that meant, she could not guess. But the idea that there was a connection between the two—the thing that had burned her yesterday, and the fresco on that excavated wall in Pompeii—sent a chill into her heart.

  She opened her eyes again. Some of the others were already drifting away, and she noticed that there were no Elders among them. Perhaps they were avoiding her.

  “Is the volcano going to erupt, Franca?” Mario asked.

  “Of course not,” she said, distracted by the familiar images of Pompeii being played across the screen.

  “I hope it does!” one of the children yelled. “Exciting! Boom!”

  “Hellboy,” she muttered. “We really need to talk.” She turned around and moved quickly through the breakfast room. Sunlight glanced from the window and into her eyes, and she squinted, heart stuttering and then racing at the thought of fire against her skin.

  Out in the hallway she paused, watching Uncle Alfonso and her aunt—his
wife, married into the family almost twenty years ago—climbing the staircase. He turned around and then away again, as if she was not even there, and she was assaulted by an overwhelming memory: she and Carlotta playing on this very marble floor, dolls scattered around the base of the stairs, and Alfonso accidentally stepping on one as he came downstairs. Franca had cried, and her uncle had scooped her into his arms and hugged her, whispering that he was sorry. Carlotta had handed over one of her own dolls as replacement, and they had played on into the evening, performing an imaginary funeral for the dead doll. Such innocent love.

  She watched her aunt and uncle disappear out of sight along the second floor corridor, then she went for the big front doors, thinking that Hellboy might have gone outside. Touching the handles, she paused.

  I’ve eaten, he had said. Can we talk? He must have eaten with Adamo, but they had not been together for very long. If the conversation was that short, it must have been because Adamo was trying to send them away again. And though she had only known Hellboy for a day, she knew he would not take kindly to such advice.

  Perhaps it had prompted him to move things on in his own way.

  She turned and walked back to the staircase, glancing up before edging into the narrow space by its side. Ahead of her, a broken padlock hung on the metal door to the basement, and it had been pushed almost shut.

  He’s in there, she thought. She had to find him, and soon. She had something to tell him. And together, they had to go to Pompeii.

  A nervous thrill sang through her as she pushed the door open. It had been a long time since she’d been in here, and the last time she’d been a little girl. Entering again as an adult, she wondered what she might find.

  —

  It was quite a hole. Hellboy was used to these underground places, and he liked to think he’d become familiar with the signs that were portents of trouble. He kept his eyes and ears open.

  The basement smelled old, dry, and musty, not used to the flow of air. There was a light switch just inside the metal door, and when he flicked it, bare bulbs turned on in the first room. He sensed the emptiness of more rooms beyond, and hoped that the light circuit was all on one loop.

  The first room was smallish, and given over mainly to storage. On the left was a metal shelving rack stacked with cardboard boxes. He could see clothes spilling from a couple, and another was home to a selection of unwanted cuddly toys and teddy bears. He found that a little sad. Plenty of kids upstairs, but he supposed they mostly wanted their own toys, not ones handed down from generations past.

  The other wall housed banks of electrical distribution boards and fuse boxes, spaghetti heaps of wires leading here and there and tied haphazardly with plastic clips. None of it looked very safe, but the power in the house seemed to work well enough.

  He moved on into the next room, ducking through the low doorway. He had to descend several steps through the thick basement wall, and he guessed he was down amongst the house’s ancient foundations now, carved into the rock of the Amalfi hillsides many centuries ago. He paused impressed, when he saw the next room, and wondering whether this had always been a wine cellar.

  The racks lined one long wall, floor to ceiling. They were half full, containing perhaps a thousand bottles or more. He was certainly no expert, but he’d wager that some of these bottles were worth quite a bit. A stack of empties piled along the facing wall was testament to the fact that these wines were here to be enjoyed, not to accumulate value, and he found that reassuring. Adamo and the other Elders might be weird and a bit up their own asses, but they liked a tipple. Olive oil, fish, and red wine, Liz would have said. These people will live until they’re two hundred.

  There was a closed door at the far end of the room. It was unlocked, and when Hellboy opened it he caught a faint whiff of dampness. He paused and sniffed again, but the scent was gone, swallowed in the aroma of dust and age that pervaded this next room. More storage, it looked like, and some of the furniture had been down here so long that it was mouldering into one unsightly mass. Perhaps some of this might have been valuable as antiques, were it cared for, but when it was brought down here it was probably at a time when it was commonplace. A dumping ground for three-legged chairs, a graveyard for cracked tables and broken beds, it was a sad place that spoke of the passage of time.

  Another door at the end, this one locked, and Hellboy did not hesitate to give it a shove. Wood splintered, and the door fell open. Beyond was a short tunnel carved into rock, and at its end a small room, its ceiling rough stone. One bare bulb hung from a wire pinned to the ceiling. At the room’s center was a table and another three-legged chair, leaning against the table so that it did not tumble. And on two walls hung rotten tapestries.

  Hellboy went to the table, but he could already see that it was empty. Its surface was covered with a thick layer of dust, at its center a clear rectangle, and from there towards its edge, an obvious drag mark. He ran his finger across the clear area and examined it; dust, but only a little. Carlotta said she’d taken the book for a morning to get those copies and then returned it, but since then someone had spirited it away. Adamo? The Elders? He suspected one or the other, or maybe both.

  Pity. But that wasn’t the only reason he’d come down here.

  Hellboy could feel the weight of the land around him, the millions of tons of rock and history exerting gravity on every molecule of his body. That weight both pulled and crushed, playing on his mind as well as his flesh, and he closed his eyes in an effort to sense what lay around him. When he looked again, he saw one of the tapestries deform before his eyes. It was a very slight effect, as though the air between him and the wall had suffered a rapid temperature change, and it made him dizzy for a couple of seconds. He couldn’t focus on the tapestry—its distance from him was uncertain and unknown—and he had to blink and clear his vision before looking again.

  “There we are,” he said. His voice was surprisingly loud in the subterranean room.

  Carlotta had said that perhaps a monk had once used this room, and she may have been right. But in truth, it could have been a bolt hole for anyone. And a bolt hole always needed more than one way in and out.

  Hellboy lifted the tapestry he’d seen move and looked into the dark space beyond. A breath of air wafted out against him, the land sighing because he had found its secret, and he closed his eyes and breathed in deeply. He could smell nothing threatening through there, but little manmade either; no rotting furniture, no boxed possessions given to the darkness.

  He dropped the tapestry again and rummaged around in his belt pockets. It took a few tries to find what he wanted: a little flashlight, the size of a pen but very powerful. Last time he used this, it had illuminated the face of a monster.

  He hoped the batteries still worked.

  Tapestry tucked aside, he shone the flashlight into the hole beyond. It was hacked through the rock, barely wide enough to fit him, and the thought of crawling through there made him shiver. The light revealed a slow bend in the tunnel, no end, and he tried not to entertain the thought that it would end in a blank wall. He knew that could not be the case; air wafted against his face, and he could feel the openness beyond. But the idea persisted, something to do with everyone’s fear of being buried alive: he would crawl in, negotiate a couple of gentle bends, then be faced with trying to crawl backwards all the way out again. And if his belt caught on a rocky protrusion? If he heard something entering the narrow tunnel behind him, saw its fiery light filling the void, felt its furnace breath on his hooves . . . ?

  “Idiot,” he muttered. “Don’t be such a wimp.” He bit the flashlight between his teeth, made sure it was angled ahead, and eased his shoulders and head into the hole.

  The going was slow, but once he started crawling, those fears began to evaporate. This wasn’t like him. The things he’d seen, the things he’d fought off and defeated, the counts of almost-certain death he’d survived, and a hole in the ground worried him?

  The tunnel curved to t
he left and dropped slightly, the slope gentle but noticeable. The stone ceiling brushed his head while his goatee touched the floor. He had to kick with his hooves to advance, and a panicky feeling started to descend again, the knowledge that if it did end suddenly, the chances of him backing up such a narrow, curved tunnel were minimal.

  “Quit it!” he said. His voice was muffled, without echo, and he paused and stared ahead. The walls of the crawl hole disappeared, and the light spread in a diffuse haze. “At last.” He shuffled forward, and when the floor disappeared from below him, and the walls from either side, he paused to take a look around. He looked down first of all, eager to ensure that if he fell he could climb up again. The floor of this buried chasm was barely two feet below the lip of the tunnel, so Hellboy eased himself out and broke his fall with outstretched hands. They encountered cool, dry rock, speckled here and there with the damp grittiness of something else.

  Then he looked up and around, and a million eyes were watching.

  He gasped, the light dropping from his mouth and bouncing from his knee. It struck the rock and spun, flicking its glare around the huge cavern and reflecting in the eyes that stared at him from ceiling and walls. There was a sense of constant, rippling movement in the cavern, and for a beat Hellboy thought that he had entered the belly of a beast, upsetting its rest and causing a quiver to lap through its gargantuan body. But then the light came to rest by his feet, and in the sphere of its influence, he saw the flutter of bats disturbed by his presence.

  Hellboy drew a few deep breaths before bending to pick up the light, feeling ridiculous.

  He took a good, slow look around. The cavern was huge, and there were thousands of bats. If there were bats that meant there had to be another way in and out, and that lessened his anxiety. But where did that anxiety come from in the first place?

  He started walking, sinking ankle-deep in bat guano. The stench was terrible, a rich ammonia stink that stung his nostrils and burnt his throat and lungs. This couldn’t be healthy.