The Fire Wolves

by Tim Lebbon

  The decision he made next was pure instinct. He grabbed Franca with his left and stood, pushing at the fire demon-with his right. And keeping himself between the two, he leaned against the parapet . . . and tipped over.

  —

  The fall was a strangely calm, almost beautiful moment. The breeze ruffled the thing’s flame-fur and whispered past Franca’s ears, but other than that all was silence. They fell within an expanse of light from the fire wolf, and the river below them was illuminated as they approached, and then struck.

  She had time to draw in a huge breath before water enveloped them, and the current pulled her under.

  The coldness took her breath away and she sucked in water. She’d landed against Hellboy and he’d broken her fall somewhat, but then he let go of her, and Franca found herself drifting free. She opened her eyes but what she saw confused her more: the water appeared to be on fire all around, and she had no idea which way to swim. So she let the current carry her for a few seconds, kicking hard and breaking surface at last. She coughed and spluttered, then gasped in lungs full of air, relieved that it was cool.

  “Son of a—!” she heard behind her, and she managed to turn while she was drifting and look back towards the bridge. Hellboy had surfaced as well, and around him the river bubbled and steamed, spat and surged. It was lit from beneath, and Hellboy was a shadow against the light. He brought his big hand down again and again on the surface of the river, and in the splashed water Franca saw sickly rainbows.

  He looked across at her and nodded at the bank.

  Franca started paddling backwards, going with the river’s flow and drifting in towards its edge, and she never took her eyes off Hellboy. There was something primal about the fight she was witnessing, as if it had been under way for all eternity. Hellboy punched and the steaming waters splashed, and Franca thought that perhaps his conflict would never end.

  But she was wrong. As she felt rocks beneath her back and legs, Hellboy stood taller in the water, lifting his big hand up towards the starry sky. Water hissed and poured from his grip, but there was something else there as well, something gray and limp with weak flame sparking across its surface. That’s fire when it isn’t burning, she thought, the idea preposterous but patently true.

  “That’s it for you,” Hellboy said, and then he went to plunge beneath the surface one more time.

  His hand and arm exploded in flames. He shouted in surprise and pain, flipping backwards into the water, but the fire had already parted from him, leaping across the surface of the river and leaving ripples of steam in its wake. It hit the shore thirty yards upriver from Franca, and when it glanced her way she saw its eyes, emphasized even more by the weaker flames surrounding them. The fire wolf left a trail of steam and smoke as it scrabbled at the steep sides of the gorge, pulling itself up the low cliff and standing briefly on its upper lip.

  It looked down at the two of them: Hellboy up to his chest in the water; Franca wet and cold on the bank. And in the few seconds before it turned and vanished into the night, its flames grew brighter, and hot with the promise of more pain to come.

  —

  Hellboy splashed across to her, and by then she was starting to shiver from the shock and cold. He was grimacing, stretching his left arm out from his body and examining the scorch marks that tattered his coat sleeve and still steamed on his skin. He was soaked through, but the heat of these wounds kept this part of him dry.

  The car was still burning up on the bridge, and soon it would attract the attention of the police. We have to get back up there! she wanted to shout, but when she opened her mouth to speak, nothing emerged. Her teeth were rattling, her jaw shaking as she tried to form words, and she let Hellboy gather her in his arms and squeeze her tight to his chest. She became aware once again of what an oddity he was: he smelled different from any man she had ever been this close to, and there was a confidence and strength in his arms that belied what he had just been through. He growled something—she could not quite hear the words against the flow of the river and the beat of her heart—and she took immense comfort from the sound of his voice.

  “It was looking . . . looking at me,” she said. “It wanted me.”

  “And I got in its way.”

  “Thank you,” she said, silently berating herself for not saying that before. He just saved my life.

  “It didn’t get Carlotta, so I figure it wants you in her place.”

  “But I’m twenty-five.”

  She felt Hellboy shrug. “Who’s to say eighteen is the only age it wants? Maybe somebody else makes those rules.”

  She knew whom he meant, but the reality of it was painful to consider. There was a safety about family that she had carried with her even after fleeing, a sense that the Espositos were a tight, solid unit, and their influence still touched her though she had removed herself from their immediate sphere. Family was important. So thinking of Adamo in this way . . .

  “I’ve got a lot of questions for that old man,” Hellboy said.

  “How do we get to Amalfi now?”

  “Well . . .” he said, trailing off.

  Franca pulled back from him and looked up into his face, seeing the discomfort there, and something else as well. It looked like frustration.

  “You beat it, Hellboy,” she said. “You saved my life!”

  “I only sent it away,” he muttered. “And things like that always come back. Believe me, I know.”

  “Then we need to get to Adamo,” she said. “Find out what he knows.”

  “You’re sure you want to be there?” he asked.

  Franca laughed, an unconscious, reflexive action. “Right now, I want to be wherever you are!” The big man smiled at that, but as he turned away and she followed, Franca could not help feeling like a burden.

  “Back up to the road,” he said. “Gotta get rid of that car, then start using our thumbs.”

  “We’re going to hitch a ride to Amalfi?”

  “Not we,” he said, glancing back at her. “You. Really, would you give me a ride in the dead of night?”

  They climbed back up to the road, Hellboy going first, and Franca could sense the tension in him. He was ready for action, if any should come his way. Twice now he’d been burnt, and . . . But it would do no good dwelling on things such as that. He was on her side, and that was all that mattered.

  Terrified though she was of him. Disturbed by his appearance, his tail, his hooves, those things on his head. Perturbed though she was by the things he spoke of, the histories he alluded to. He was an enigma, but right now, his mystery was starting to feel like her only protection.

  Franca thought of Alex, and how far away he felt from all this. She had not spoken with him in two days, and in truth, she did not feel the need. He was so remote from what was happening, what could she really say? If she truly loved him, that love was something that existed in the true, safe world of pavement cafes, evening meals and nights of passion. To speak to him now, she thought, would be like speaking to a child. She knew, and had seen, so much more.

  She wondered whether things would ever be the same again.

  Franca stood a dozens steps back as Hellboy shoved the still-burning car to the edge of the bridge, leaning against its buckled metal wing as he strained and turned it on its side. The concrete parapet crumbled slightly, and with a roar Hellboy gave the vehicle one final, hard push. It tumbled through the dark, a burning mass mimicking the fire wolf that had fallen with them scant minutes before, and splashed steaming into the river. In seconds, with hissing and the cracks of ruptured metal, the flames had been extinguished.

  Hellboy motioned her to him, and together they crossed the bridge and started walking towards Amalfi.

  Ten minutes later a car approached. Hellboy slipped from the road and hid amongst rocky shadows, while Franca stood with her hand out and thumb up. The car—a big four-wheel drive—powered past, and then the splash of red brake lights blooded the road.

  “A ride,” Franca called acro
ss to Hellboy.

  “Great,” he said. “Can’t wait ’til they get a load of me.”

  CHAPTER 9

  —

  Pompeii/Amalfi

  —

  What a mess this was turning into.

  Hellboy had already tried his phone, but the soaking had ruined it. He wanted to talk with Liz, get her take on things, and maybe ask Kate Corrigan to see if she could pull up some research on what he was dealing with here. She was an expert in European folklore and mysteries, and the fieldwork he’d persuaded her to undertake had made her indispensable. He could think of no precedent other than those fire dogs in Africa, certainly not in the cases he’d dealt with for the B.P.R.D. And those things had been . . . different. They’d sown destruction, but in an aimless, useless manner. This thing had purpose, and if Adamo was as involved as Hellboy suspected, then there was human influence behind these monstrous actions.

  That was always when things turned bad. Drooling, roaring, tentacled things he could deal with. It was people who were often revealed as the greatest monsters.

  He really needed to speak with the old demon hunter, but right now wasn’t the best time. Franca was shivering in the seat next to him, and if he started talking to the bone tied around his neck . . . well, they needed this ride. Last image he wanted to give out was crazy.

  The little girl leaned forward and looked at him again, giggling behind her hands. Hellboy could not help chuckling, and that got the girl giggling again. Sweet little thing. Franca sat in the middle, and the girl had all but ignored the woman’s presence ever since they’d climbed into the vehicle. She only had eyes for Hellboy.

  So did her parents. The father kept checking him out in the rearview mirror, offering a tentative half-smile that Hellboy knew so well. It said, You’re that famous one from America, but it also spoke of its owner’s previously-held doubts about whether he really existed. Well, now the guy knew. Hellboy smiled back.

  The mother had turned around in the passenger seat, talking to Franca in rapid-fire Italian but spending more time looking at Hellboy. He’d done his best to put them all at ease when he’d climbed in after Franca, but they had their little girl to think of, and he could understand their caution. Good for them. You’ve got to look after what you love.

  He hoped the guy hadn’t caught sight of the cannon in his holster as he’d climbed in. He doubted it; darkness hung heavy over these hills, and the roads were unlit.

  Hellboy covered his face with his hands, then pulled them quickly away again. “Boo!” The girl squealed in delight, and Hellboy laughed softly.

  The mother smiled at him, and he leaned back and closed his eyes.

  There was a sense of urgency bearing down upon him, a pressure inside his skull that he could do little to relieve. Amalfi was maybe an hour away, and there was no way he could get there any faster. And all the while, the thought pressed home: The whole family is in danger. If the sick contract between Adamo Esposito and the fire wolf had been broken, then what was to prevent the fire wolf from destroying all living evidence of its existence, and then moving on?

  Me, Hellboy thought. But he was also aware that if that did happen, he was the one to blame. If it had taken that one girl, everyone would have been safe for another couple, even a few decades. But I drove the thing away and Carlotta took her own life . . . He shook his head, frowning, trying to dislodge the guilt that had instilled itself within. He could not blame himself for positive action. There was nothing else he could have done.

  “Boo!” a voice said. Hellboy opened his eyes and looked past Franca at the little girl. Who was to say this family wouldn’t be next? He smiled and played her game back at her, and only then noticed that Franca was no longer talking to the woman in the front seat. She was muttering into a mobile phone she must have borrowed, and Hellboy realized what a fool he’d been. It should have been the first thing he’d thought of upon entering the Jeep.

  Franca snapped the phone shut and handed it back to the woman with a nod of thanks.

  “Well?” Hellboy said.

  “All’s well,” she said. “I spoke with my cousin Mario and told him to get those who will leave out of the house. It’s night, and Adamo always posts a couple of security guards. And the dogs. But hopefully they’ll get out, and they’ll meet up in an all-night café I know in town.”

  “Did you tell him anything else?”

  “How could I?” she asked, her eyes wide and innocent. And Hellboy realized her predicament. Suddenly returning to the family, how could she start rumors about fire-demons, and their family patriarch holding some hellish contract with something monstrous?

  “So how did you get them to agree?”

  “I said it was about what killed Carlotta.”

  “But she killed herself.”

  “That’s what we know, and what everyone else thinks. But the suspicion worked well.”

  “Lady, you want a job with the B.P.R.D. when this is all over?” Hellboy asked, but Franca did not reply. She looked between the two adults and out through the windscreen at the road ahead. And he understood that she could not yet even comprehend this being over. She had no idea what was to come next, and she was utterly terrified. Clinging on by her nails, he thought, and he clasped her hand.

  For a heartbeat she tried to pull away. But then she relaxed, and when he looked again she was resting her head against his shoulder.

  The little kid had also nodded off to sleep. Hellboy wondered where these people had come from, where they were going in the middle of the night, but then he heard mention of Vesuvius on the subdued radio, and he understood. Evacuees. The volcano’s anger was reaching far.

  He closed his eyes again, but could not rest. He touched the bone and sensed the spirit’s frustration. Soon, he thought. On the canvas of his eyelids there played out nightmare scenarios that he could not entertain: this innocent mother and father dead, their little girl carried back toward Pompeii and Vesuvius beyond, all the potential of her young life snuffed out in a superheated instant.

  So Hellboy sat in the back seat and stared at the dark landscape slipping by, watching for the telltale glow of something terrible approaching.

  They arrived in Amalfi just as dawn was painting the eastern sky with familiar, dreadful colors. The people dropped them off at the harbor and continued their journey along the coastal road. The little girl knelt in the back seat and waved, and Hellboy waved back, smiling. Be safe, he thought.

  “This way,” Franca said. She headed up into the small city, past the grand steps of the cathedral and the few people out on the streets at this hour: a street sweeper, a fruit seller trundling his cart towards the beach, and several men unloading a truck outside a restaurant. Hellboy’s hooves clacked on the stone paving, and a couple of men glanced their way. They stared, and Hellboy stared back. “Mind your business,” he said, but even if the men heard they did not appear to understand.

  Franca turned left and passed through a narrow, twisting alley. La Casa Fredda was in this direction, high up on the hillside, but she turned north again, following the route of the valley until the alley opened into a small, attractive square. Even in the burgeoning dawn, the flowers here gave off an incredible array of colors and scents, spilling from several huge planters around the square and hanging curtains of growth from window boxes.

  “Mario!” Franca called, and Hellboy heard the delight in her voice. She dashed across to where there was a spread of tables and chairs behind the largest planter, hugging the man as he came to meet her. A few lights were on in the building behind the seating area, and Hellboy could see the shadows of people moving out into the dawn. There were maybe eight there, and he recognized most of them from his brief time at La Casa Fredda. A couple of kids ran out too, already lively and alert even this early. They saw Hellboy and stopped, then brought their heads together and muttered behind their hands, giggling. Hellboy smiled and felt a lightness lift his mood. Seemed he was a real kid charmer today.

  “M
ario, you know Hellboy. He has something to tell you all.”

  “About Carlotta?” Mario asked. “About why she killed herself?” His English was very good and Hellboy felt an instant of selfish dread: inside, he’d been hoping that Franca would have to translate for him.

  “Yes,” Hellboy said. “And about Adamo Esposito.”

  “What about Adamo?” a woman asked. The others were crowded behind Mario now, unsettled and still grieving, and Hellboy hated what he had to say next. But he was quite certain, and he had a duty to these people. Whatever nefarious arrangement had existed between Adamo and the fire wolf from Vesuvius had gone up in smoke, and he could not be certain that the thing would not now kill them all.

  “He’s brought grief to your family,” Hellboy said. “I don’t know all the details yet, but he’s perpetuating something that—”

  “Adamo loves us all,” the woman said. Mario made no move to deny that. The others nodded, and Hellboy realized that most of them spoke enough English to follow this. A well-educated family, one of the oldest and proudest in Amalfi, and here he was . . .

  “I’m not questioning that,” he said. “But it doesn’t mean he’s incapable of what I’m suggesting.”

  “So what is that, Hellboy?” Mario asked. And the way he uttered his name made something clear to Hellboy: Adamo had already spoken to them all. Whatever Hellboy said about the fire wolf—however much Franca backed him up, told them what she had seen, what had happened to them—it was Hellboy who had become this family’s demon.

  “Right,” he said, nodding. He looked at each of them one to the next, and he could see the fear in their eyes. Fear of him. It was only after he had arrived that Carlotta had died, after all. And a few words from their patriarch, the man they loved and who loved them, and seeds of suspicion were planted, guilt was assured. “Right,” he said again, nodding. “Franca, I don’t think we can gain anything here.” She glanced back at him, and he hoped she got the message. Not here, he thought, but maybe up at the house.