Hellboy: Odd Jobs Read Free Page B

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