Hellboy: Odd Jobs Read Free

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,