Free The Ice Wolves by Mark Chadbourn

bank.
    For a while, Lisa fired questions about how the snow tied in to everything else that was happening, but when Hellboy couldn’t answer them, she only got more frustrated.
    â€œDoesn’t look like it’s going to clear any time soon,” Hellboy noted.
    â€œThe snow makes perfect cover for the wolf.” Lisa rubbed her fingertips over the windowpane and then dragged a nail that left a line. “Wow. Frost, on the inside. The cold is really reaching in.”
    â€œHand me the opera glasses.” Adjusting the binoculars, Hellboy peered out into the night, scanning slowly across the roofs until he came to a halt on the house across the square. A dark bulk hunched on the edge of the roof, close to the gutter. Refocusing, he saw the wind lift the fur, the head rotate slowly until those blazing red eyes came into view. Hellboy couldn’t shake the feeling that the wolf could see him, despite the gulf between them. With eyes that could scrutinize prey at a great distance, unflagging stamina, great strength and agility, and a ferocity untrammeled by compassion, it was a machine made for killing.
    â€œIt’s out there?” Brad asked.
    Hellboy nodded. “Keeping watch in case we leave the house.”
    â€œSo we really are trapped here,” Lisa said. “I’ve been in some shitty places over the last few months, surrounded by mines, guns targeted at me by snipers, but right now I’d rather be there than here.”
    As Hellboy half lowered the glasses, he froze, and quickly replanted them against his head, trying to find what he thought he had glimpsed.
    â€œWhat is it?” Brad asked. “Is it moving?”
    â€œThere’s another one.” On an adjoining roof, another wolf prowled along the pitch, eyes sparking in the blizzard.
    â€œTwo?” Lisa asked uneasily. She pressed against the glass, but the lamplight inside made it difficult to see anything out in the night.
    A troubling thought gripped Hellboy, and he slowly moved the opera glasses across a wide arc. A third wolf sat motionless like a gargoyle on another roof. Across the tiles nearby, two other wolves stalked. He counted seven in all: a pack. How many more were there that he couldn’t see, on the roofs next to the Grant Mansion, down at street level, prowling through the dense blizzard across the square, hiding in doorways and alleys, circling the house as they waited patiently for an opportunity to attack?
    â€œWhat can you see?” Lisa asked, still pressed against the glass.
    â€œNothing to worry about right now.” Hellboy slipped the opera glasses into his pocket.
    â€œIf it’s all clear, let’s go check that door,” Brad suggested. “The quicker we can get the job done, the quicker we can get out of here.”
    â€œWait,” Lisa began. “I think I can see movement out there—”
    The window shattered as a heavy object crashed against it. Screaming in shock, Lisa threw herself backward against Hellboy, knocking the lamp from his hand. As it turned in an arc toward the floor, he glimpsed the wolf’s head framed in the broken glass, mouth torn wide, eyes filled with a hateful intelligence. Gripping the broken gutter, one foot on the windowsill, the beast had been above their heads all the time.
    â€œWe come with the winter.” The words were caught in a rumbling growl emanating from deep in its throat. “All of us. We come with the snows.”
    And then the lamp hit the floor and the flame was extinguished, and in the engulfing darkness there was only the wind whistling through the broken window and the sound of Lisa’s scream.

  CHAPTER 7
    â€”
    When the window broke and the attic room was plunged into darkness, Lisa scrambled out of the door. The vision of the wolf burned its way into Brad’s mind, but once he was aware Lisa had left the room, he was surprised how quickly the horror faded. Realizing the thing hadn’t