Hellboy: Odd Jobs (2 page)

Be that as it may, Paras had come back from the Isle of Karpathos, and friends, family, and colleagues had listened with skepticism to his account of this latest in a series of summer trips. He had, he claimed, found a tomb buried deep in a cave on the coast of the Sea of Crete, the entrance to which had previously been only a fable, as mythical as the secret of the gods it was meant to conceal. It was in this cave that Paras discovered or so he insisted

the Shield of Athena, the same one on which the Greek legends declared was imprisoned the deadly head of Medusa.

If the ancient story of how the sight of Medusa would turn a person to stone was true, how Jayson Paras had found, packed up, and then transported the shield was a mystery, and one which would probably remain so for eternity. Now Paras was surely as dead as most of the people in the village; whatever procedures he had undertaken to keep the shield from being seen had failed and someone had discovered the crate and pried it open. The mystery, of course, was why that unfortunate adventurer and the next, and the next one after

that

hadn't simply become petrified until someone had gotten a clue about what was going on.

And ... oh yeah. There were also those pesky living statues to think about.

Well, Hellboy thought, this was just like an archaeology project. He'd never find the answers if he didn't dig around a bit.

Hunkered down to keep out of sight as much as possible, Hellboy scuttled down the side of the cliff and slipped into the ocean-swept streets of the village.

The village itself was a bewildering maze, a meandering trail of streets too narrow for conventional cars and which held an unspoiled beauty that made it the better for it. Most of the houses were whitewashed or painted in creams, pale yellows, and light gray to reflect the sun; window boxes held everything from sweetly scented flowers to pungent clumps of herbs ready to be plucked and tossed into the midday cooking pots.

That, Hellboy realized, was the first indication that something was dreadfully wrong here: instead of the expected smells of olive oil and goat cheese, baking bread and smoking fish, there was a faint smell of dust and decay beneath the surface. Even the goats had fled from whatever had invaded this village. The smell of death was constantly washed aside by the sometimes strong winds off the sea, but it always built up again, like the scent embedded in the trunk of a car where a mummified corpse had remained undiscovered for months.

The village was filled with stone bodies.

It wasn't hard to follow the trail, and the dead ones themselves unwittingly gave Hellboy the clues he needed to begin piecing together this incredible mythological disaster. Many of them were clumped on the steps leading to the village's tiny Greek Orthodox church, but whatever protection they'd expected to find had either not lent itself to the existing threat or simply not felt benevolent that day.

Hellboy stayed close to the buildings, still enjoying in spite of himself the high summer heat that reflected off the tile rooftops as he crept along. An hour of cautious exploring took him back to his starting point but revealed nothing. He began again, preparing himself for a slower, more thorough search, then his eyes narrowed and he paused just the other side of the church. Of all the frozen-stone bodies he'd seen in the village, those gathered here, at the bottom of the flight of stairs leading to the worn double doors, bothered him the most. It wasn't so much that they had sought help here and not found it that was bad enough

but that there were so
many.
Why here and not, say, in front of the weathered constabulary four blocks over?

Or maybe at the undersized but clean hospital at the other end of the village's main street?

Could it be, perhaps, that there was something ...
interesting
inside?

Time to find out.

Hellboy wrapped his hand around the door handle and pulled, was surprised to feel solid resistance. Not an ordinary door lock

that would have given under his heavy tug. No, this was as if something
held
it closed on the other side, something with a solid strength on line with Hellboy's own.

Since when did a church want to keep people
out!

Hellboy scowled and yanked harder, putting his weight into it when he felt that same resistance, then getting aggravated enough to give it his full power. The force on the other side increased, then suddenly gave way; Hellboy grunted as his body lurched backward and he tumbled down the steps, staring stupidly at what remained of the door, a chunk of ragged wood surrounding the handle, still clutched in his thick fingers. He started to automatically look toward the now gaping doorway, then remembered the dangerous legend behind the Medusa

if whatever waited for him in that doorway held the shield upon which her head had been imprisoned and Hellboy looked upon it, he could end up being made out of the same unyielding rock as had been the horse he'd destroyed on the cliffside.

Damn, Hellboy thought. This was going to be harder than he'd guessed.

He lifted one arm and slung it protectively across his eyes, then stood and lumbered back up the steps with the stone hand of his right arm held stiff in front of him like a football player, wondering how the hell he was supposed to fight something he couldn't even look at. He hit the entranceway at a dead run, then nearly fell flat when he encountered nothing to block his path. He flailed for balance then realized belatedly that in trying to stay upright he'd lowered his arm and gripped the worn wooden pews on either side of the narrow aisle. His tail swept the floor and hit something else, and when he glanced over his shoulder Hellboy saw the remains of what he assumed had been the statue trying to hold the door shut. When the wood had ripped away, the soldier figure had fallen against a stone basin containing holy water, and now its head and upper torso lay in pieces on the cold tiles of the floor. The rest of it twitched uselessly at Hellboy's feet.

The interior of the building was filled with shadows cast by the muted light bleeding through the gritty panes of the old windows. If there were electric lights, they weren't turned on; what few candles adorned the single, long room were unlit as well. Nothing moved, but Hellboy was not fooled.

More, he thought. There
have
to be more.

And indeed there were.

At the opposite end of the room was a scarred, double-wide wooden pulpit. A few rose from behind it and the rest came from between the first three rows of pews, like a hideous gray army of more than three dozen.

Obviously the oldest of what the village had to offer in adornments, and in the ten or so seconds before they attacked, Hellboy made the connection: this small island off the coast of Greece had kept its secrets well and held its own heritage apart from much of what had been pilfered and appropriated by the world's museums.

The stone statues that moved before him

depictions of nearly naked Greek gods and goddesses bearing

everything from swords and shields to mythical serpents, were the
original
sculptures, the ones that dated back far enough, perhaps, to predate the village's solely human population when the Greek gods had walked the earth.

Back to the time of Medusa.

The village was full of stone, granite, limestone, and marble figures, but most of them remained just that.

These, however

"Medusa's victims," Hellboy said. His voice came out hoarse with amazement. "Every one of you was stupid enough to look her in the face." He shook his head in disgust. "And look what it got you."

Dead or undead, apparently they didn't have vocal cords. Hellboy's comment brought no response, and certainly didn't slow the coming charge. He started to open his mouth and say something else when the first wave of Medusa's warriors hit him.

Something drove a boulder-sized fist into his side and knocked the wind out of him, then another figure bonked him hard on the head. Hellboy sucked in air and managed to block the edge of a sword headed for the bridge of his nose

it might be just rock, but it sure would've hurt had it found its target. "Hey!" he cried.

"Cut it out!"

Like they were listening.

"Well, this just sucks," Hellboy snarled as he took another teeth-rattling blow, this one on his left shoulder and nearly hard enough to make his arm go numb. "Time to
rock
and roll!"

He began to fight in earnest.

His left fist was useless against stone but his right was a fine weapon, manufactured for just this type of situation. He swung and spun, then swung again, over and over as he braced himself with his tail so the impact of his blows wouldn't knock him off his feet

the last thing he needed was to get buried under

God-knows-how-much weight if these things fell on him.

Everything in a circle around him seemed to disintegrate as he battled, rocks and pebbles whizzing through the air and pelting his face and chest. He struck out again, connecting with whatever was in his way, and something exploded before he could see what it was. With a grunt he brought his stone hand up and smacked at another figure; the shoulders of a toga-draped woman crumbled beneath the blow. Hellboy was getting tired of this and angrier by the second; in about a half a minute, he was going to lose his temper and dig something out of his belt that would lay waste to the entire building.

"Enough."

A single word, uttered by a voice that sounded like it had come from a throat lined with sandpaper and ground glass, and it all simply ...

Stopped.

Hellboy blinked stupidly at the suddenly empty spaces around him, then watched what was left of the stone soldiers back off in that same, eerie silence. The remainder of the mini-army wasn't much; three or four male statues unremarkable except for their extraordinarily handsome physiques, an equal number of female, a few more figures that could have gone either way and which bore attachments that represented creatures from Grecian mythology, including the thick, delicately sculpted body of a headless serpent.

"
Come closer ... Hellboy."

"Damn," Hellboy grumbled to himself. "I really
hate
it when they know my name."

Hellboy obeyed not because the voice commanded it but because he wanted to; keeping his eyes safely focused on the floor was easy because it was a necessity. The place was littered with rocks and stones from the fight

if he didn't watch where he was walking, he'd likely end up with something stuck in one of his hooves like the lion with the pebble between his paws in that stupid fairy tale. "This is as far as I'm going to go," Hellboy said flatly and stopped at the third pew from the front. "You want to tell me what's going on here?"

"
Isn't it obvious?
" the voice hissed. "
I've finally been releassssed.
"

The last word was long and drawn out, like the sound the tongue of a snake a very
big
snake

might

make when it flicks out to taste the air.

"Pardon me for pointing this out," Hellboy retorted. "But last I heard you were missing the bottom part of your mobility."

"But I am still powerful."

There was an almost amiable tone to the voice that made Hellboy's eyes narrow with suspicion. He wasn't about to say so, but it only took a quick look around to realize that he had to agree with the power part.

"Must be hard when you have to depend on someone else for a ride all the time," he said blandly.

"Perhaps. But there are always those willing to serve."

Hellboy glanced around, but the faces of the stone statues were just that, cold rock, totally unreadable. Were they watching him

could they tell he was considering a blind rush on the podium? Through all this, there had been no movement behind it, and Hellboy thought it was a pretty good bet that the shield with Medusas head on it had been stashed back there before the rest of her stone cronies had surged forward to fight him. If he could leap to the podium and bring his stone hand down and over, give it one good blow, the shield and

presumably the biggest problem this picturesque Grecian village had might be obliterated.

"
What about you, Hellboy? Would you serve?"
The voice of Medusa paused, as if contemplating. "
The other
gods have long gone, and they no longer concern themselves with the puny distresses of mortals. With your
special ... talents ... we could rule this pathetic world."

Hellboy looked again at the figures around him, but he was just as clueless about what was going on in their

'minds' as he had been before.

"Me rule something?" He shook his head nonchalantly, hoping that whatever attention span existed in these rock-headed warriors would be drawn by that movement and away from the minute tensing of his massive leg muscles. "Nah, I never was the management type. The only thing I want to do in that respect is

"Rule you
out!
"

Hellboy sprang.

He rolled into the wooden podium like a bowling ball and it shattered. Too late he realized how distorted sound had been in this closed-up building with its high, peaked roof. His stone fist swiped downward at empty air and then he fell, landing face-first on the floor hard enough to make his eyes water, tiles cool against the always over-warm red skin of his face. Something moved just out of view on his right side and Hellboy rolled and came to his feet in an instinctive fighting stance, leaning forward with his shoulders hunched and his fists up, hooves planted firmly a shoulder's width apart. But the only thing in front of him was the smooth backside of another statue, this one with most of her upper body, including the right half of her head, missing.

Damn. Where had Medusa's voice been coming from?

"An unfortunate choice, Hellboy,"
she said, and then the fragmented statue spun, much faster than Hellboy would have ever expected