Hellboy: Odd Jobs (3 page)

and he was facing the head of Medusa straight on.

His eyes met hers involuntarily and everything in him locked up and went numb. Out of his peripheral vision he saw the headless snake

boy, Medusa seemed to like her subjects without that upper appendage, didn't she?

slide heavily across the floor until it was out of sight somewhere below. The only comforting thing he could come up with was that at least with no head or mouth the damned thing couldn't eat him.

Whether his body was turning into stone or not, Hellboy could still see, and boy that Medusa woman was one
ugly
mother. Jutting cheekbones, a bulbous nose and a mouthful of tiny, pointed teeth surrounded by stretched, cracked lips were just a few of her many attributes

not a babe Hellboy would want to kiss on a

dare, especially with the bristly tongue that jutted obscenely from between those deadly looking teeth. Her skin was as gray as the one-armed figure that held up her shield, and below a high, misshapen forehead her eyes were the only thing with any color in them: they were a deep red and shot through with flecks of black and yellow, like the gaze of some over-hungry, hellish cat.

And then, of course, there was her fabled hair.

Snakes all right, hundreds of them, and all complete with fangs and nasty little triangular heads that writhed and hissed and snapped at everything, including each other. Too bad they didn't just bite the witch that had commandeered them to be her eternal headdress.

"
You could have ruled at my side,"
Medusa said almost mournfully. Her snakes twisted and hissed louder as she talked, as though competing with their mistress' voice. "
But now
... "

If she'd had a body, Hellboy thought the Medusa would have shaken her head at him in disappointment, as if judging the behavior of a bad little boy. Instead, she stared at him, her eyes filled with malice. "
What do you
think of my subjects, Hellboy?"
she asked, as though he could actually answer.
"Not what I would have
chosen for myself, but certainly convenient. My original prey, I gazed upon them eons ago and after all this
time, they still await my bidding. Too bad they're so damaged."

The head smiled at him then, and if Hellboy had thought it was ghastly looking before, it was nothing compared to the way that hideous mouth now twisted up in happiness.
"But still they serve their purpose, as
that fool Paras found out."
Medusa laughed, the sound screaming into Hellboy's ears and making him want to cringe. God, he thought, have these other statues been like this for all these thousands of years able to

hear and see and think, able to
know,
but helpless to do anything about it?

Would the same thing happen to him now?

"
You see,"
Medusa continued,
"Paras thought he was being so intelligent, the way he uncrated me and so
diligently kept the packing material between himself and my shield. But when he lifted me from the wooden
box, it was in a place where many of my subjects were also stored
I believe you call it a museum."

Medusa chuckled.
"He was quite surprised when the stone woman across the room came to life and rushed
him. He's still there, you know, waiting for my bidding. He makes a fine statue."

Wait a minute, Hellboy thought. His gaze cut experimentally to the right, then to the left.

I can still move my eyes.

"My body still exists, Hellboy, hidden deep in a cavern on Mt. Idhi in Crete. And
you,
with your perfect
physical body and unstoppable strength, will take me there for my reunion. I need only wait a small
measure of time and then reanimate you as I have done with my more ancient subjects. You will find
yourself as obedient as they, although, unfortunately, you will lack the more ... interesting ... aspects of
your personality."

Hellboy barely heard her. He was concentrating on his eyes, rolling them around and around enough to make himself dizzy inside whatever weird stone covering had encased him. Made of stone? He wasn't afraid of that he'd always had a part of him that was stone and it still functioned just fine.

Why shouldn't the rest of him do the same thing?

The Medusa's voice had taken on a dreamy, singsong quality that did nothing to make it more pleasant, but Hellboy was focusing on himself, on making the tingle he felt when he rolled his eyes spread throughout his face and neck, then on to the rest of his muscles. "
Once my head and body are rejoined, I will take my
rightful place as the new owner of this world, the only god left who walks among mortals and has the power
to rule them. There will be no force on earth that can stop me. I have waited thousands of years for this
moment, for retribution against

"

Hellboy flexed his arms.

Whatever Medusa had been about to say died in mid-sentence as her terrible eyes widened. Hellboy grinned, pleased to feel the stretch of his mouth, the warm air in the church as it rushed into his lungs, the movement of his own tongue against the back of his teeth when he spoke.

"Hi, honey.
I'm home!
"

He heard her hiss at him just before he leapt, then the statue that was holding her turned its back to him, protecting the shield and taking the blow that Hellboy had meant for that ancient, ugly face. The entire back of it shattered and it went down, the face and whatever power of mobility it had possessed going with it; out of the corner of one eye Hellboy saw the shield roll awkwardly away and bump against the back wall, then fall face up. He started to go after it and tripped, unused to the quadrupled weight of his new stone body. He was cumbersome and slow, but at least he wasn't as fragile as the rest of Medusa's soldiers; the only thing that seemed to be truly paralyzed

as petrified as the legends claimed

was his stone hand.

Fine. It might be inconvenient, but if it wouldn't move then he'd use it as a battering ram or something.

Hellboy hauled himself upright, then promptly hit the floor again as something twined around his feet that

damned, headless snake. He started to bat it aside then realized it was a more formidable foe than he'd assumed; it quickly coiled itself around his tail and both legs, and he found himself fighting to keep it from winding its way up his chest. He might not be lunch for the thing, but Hellboy knew the big snakes the

boas and pythons

killed by asphyxiating their prey, squeezing and holding until the trapped creature simply couldn't breathe anymore.

But he couldn't get his fingers underneath it, couldn't find a hole between the snake and his own stony skin big enough to snag a grip. The other hand was next to useless

his fingers wouldn't move at all. He

scrambled around for a few more seconds, then absurdly a line from an old folk song popped into his head

"If I had a hammer, I'd hammer in the morning ... "

Hellboy hunched over and began to pound on the snake with jackhammer speed using his stone-dead hand.

He felt each blow all the way down to his teeth as it vibrated through the beast thrashing around him he

had to acknowledge that he might not like being
all
made of stone, but it had certainly increased his power.

After five more seconds the hold loosened enough for him to think he might be able to continue breathing after all, and the next quarter minute made pieces of the snake fly in all directions, a mini-explosion of crushed stone and gravel.

He came upright and threw his arms wide, roaring like an oversized gorilla as he met the fresh onslaught of stone-faced warriors that were pouring into the church, drawn, no doubt, by some sort of telepathic command from Medusa. But it was a useless effort for them

where Medusas power had turned them into a

mini-army of fighters, it had unwittingly turned Hellboy into an undefeatable one-man machine of destruction. Again and again his double-stoned fist flashed out, dwindling their already reduced numbers.

Until, finally, it was only him and Medusa's head.

Certain that more statues were likely to come pouring into the church at any moment, Hellboy bounded over to it, then yanked back instinctively when the hair-snakes contorted wildly and bit at him. For the first time he realized how wrong he'd been in assuming that the shield was also made of stone. It wasn't; instead, he found himself looking at a living head attached to a hand-hammered disc, flesh melded onto a metal circle into which had been carved a thousand glyphs

no doubt they were ancient Grecian spells geared to

destroying or continuing to imprison the head. Hellboy could never hope to decipher these markings in time to help himself, and it only took a second to realize he would never be able to break the shield ...

So he was back to that hammer thing again.

Ignoring the repulsive knots of snakes, Hellboy bent and hefted the shield. The creatures in Medusas hair attacked him viciously, but their long fangs couldn't penetrate the stone skin in which their mistress's own gaze had sheathed him. In his hands, the metal felt uncomfortably warm, even for Hellboy, and he had to fight the urge to toss it away before his job was done. Instead, he literally began to fight with it, punching and pounding and twisting, turning then trying to tear

anything
that would do some measure of damage to this

seemingly indestructible piece of godly armor.

Nothing.

"Damn it!" Hellboy roared. The head and hair still flailed at him, and this time the snakes had changed their tactics and were going for his eyes, the only part of him that was likely to still be vulnerable. In frustration he flung the shield back to the floor; this time it landed face down and Hellboy let his anger take control. He began to jump on it, up and down and all over again, each time bringing the stone-fortified weight of his not-inconsiderable body down fully in the center like a child stomping on a hated toy.

Beneath him, Medusa's enraged screams reached a crescendo that made his eardrums ache, but ... did he detect a change in that awful voice, a
weakening?
And was that a
dent
he saw growing in the middle of the shield?

Another mighty pounce, and another, and more still. Somewhere inside his head Hellboy heard a brain-splitting shriek, then the shield gave way beneath him. He dropped to floor level with a grunt and stopped, staring fixedly down at a spiderweb of cracks that began to run along the backside of the armor, threading their way in a spiral pattern until they reached the outside edge. Something dark, wet, and viscous spread from beneath the shield

gods' blood perhaps, something which ordinary man was never meant to see. As Hellboy gawked, the shield suddenly trembled and the battered, uneven surface of the metal crumbled, morphing before his eyes until it became stone, Medusa's revenge turned upon herself. Even the black puddle beneath the shield hardened and began to change, lightening until all that remained was a fine powder of stone dust.

And finally, Medusa's head was silent.

Hellboy reached tentatively for one edge and flipped it rightside up. It landed against the tiled floor with a clang so out of place inside the quiet church that it made Hellboy look around guiltily to see if he'd disturbed someone. On the floor at his feet, the shield still held the face and head of Medusa, but now it was deadened and veined with chips and holes.

Still, Hellboy didn't trust it.

Against the wall was a tall, marble cross. Hellboy bounded over and picked it up, pleased at its substantial weight, then returned to stand over the shield. It was the same as it had been a moment before Maybe.

Or maybe not. Did he see something malevolent in the dead Medusas eyes as she glared unseeingly up at him?

Again, maybe.

But he could take care of that.

As though he were staking some kind of perverted vampire, Hellboy upended the cross and drove it point-down into the center of Medusa's forehead.

And the shield shattered into a thousand pieces, and was no more.

It took nearly three days for the stone skin covering his own to finally slough away.

During that time, the flesh beneath it itched unmercifully and Hellboy found himself clawing at his body countless times while he waited for the process to complete itself. Each time he started to rant or feel his temper start to go, he would look around at this once-picturesque village in the Greek isles and remind himself that what he endured could, indeed, be worse.

Much,
much
worse.

Because with the destruction of Medusa's head had come the release and resurrection

of her victims.

All those reanimated statues were also sloughing away their stone prisons, changing back to flesh bodies which had, either in battle with Hellboy or with the passage of time, lost all or a part of themselves. Returning to life with missing limbs, heads, or huge chunks knocked from parts of their bodies, the ancient figures were incomplete abominations; if they had mouths they screamed in terror and pain but they and the strange,