“You’re going to burn him?” Bliss asked.
“Hellhound claws are poisoned with silver, which is slowly dissolving into his blood, to keep the wounds fresh, to make sure they never heal. We’re going to have to burn it from his blood. You might not want to see this.”
“I don’t want to see this,” Lawson said.
Bliss shook her head, with no hesitation. “I’m not afraid of blood.”
“Are you sure?” Arthur asked.
She rolled up her sleeves, a determined look on her face. “You’re going to need someone to help hold him down.”
The fire made a sizzling sound as it hit the silver, and Lawson shook and fought and kicked and screamed in agony, but Bliss kept his arms above his head, holding him until her palms were red and sweaty, fighting him, so that Arthur could do his job. She found Lawson’s casual disregard for his own safety appalling and heroic at the same time. “It’s working,” she said, watching each wound close and the skin turn smooth as the fire burned out.
Lawson’s face contorted in pain, but he finally stopped struggling and his wrists went slack. By the end of it her clothing was muddy with his blood and the room smelled like smoke. Arthur put his tools away. “That should take care of it,” he said, leaving the two of them alone.
Lawson turned to Bliss. “Thank you,” he croaked. “I know that wasn’t pretty.”
She tossed him his shirt and pants and looked away while he got dressed. She felt closer to him after the experience; she had seen the depths of his suffering, and she was somehow no longer afraid of him. This was a boy she could count on, she thought, someone who was strong, who could bear a burden without flinching or weakening.
“So you’re going to tell me what happened back there? How you got that hound to leave us alone?” Lawson asked.
“I don’t know.” It was a weak answer, and she could tell he wasn’t buying it. But she couldn’t afford to tell him the truth. Not yet. She could still feel the hound’s dank breath on her. She had looked straight into its crimson eyes, sure that death was upon her, and it had turned away. Who are you, Bliss Llewellyn? The hound feared you.
There was only one reason the hellhound had left them alone: it had taken her for its master. Lucifer’s dogs. And she was Lucifer’s daughter. She might have killed the spirit of her father inside her, but she was still his flesh and blood. The hound knew what she was. The hound knew she was one of them.
If Lawson knew, if any one of them knew … She knew she could never tell them. They could never know the truth about her. Lawson would kill her without question this time. She had seen what he did to hellhounds. She had seen his mouth red with the blood of the hounds he had slain.
“You don’t know,” Lawson repeated. “Tell me the truth—this didn’t start with your aunt’s kidnapping, did it?”
“No.” Bliss shook her head. Maybe even if she couldn’t tell him about her father, it was time to come clean about something else. “Meeting you wasn’t a coincidence. You were partly right… I was looking for wolves, but not for Romulus.” She bit her lip. “There’s a war going on among us … with the Silver Bloods … the same demons who are your former masters … and my people are losing. I was sent to find the wolves, to help us. My mother told me that the wolves were demon fighters and that we will need your help in order to win the war against Lucifer. I’m supposed to bring your kind back to them … to join the fight.”
“And why should we do that?” Lawson asked. So this was the part the wolves were to play, he realized; this was what Arthur had been preparing him for.
“I don’t know. I was sort of hoping you would know. My mother—she was the one who set this all up, but she didn’t tell me very much except that I had to find you.”
Lawson crinkled his forehead. “Arthur said a friend of his told him to help us … he called her Gabrielle.”
“Lawson—Gabrielle is—Gabrielle of the Angels. Allegra Van Alen. She’s my mother.”
He stared at her. “You are an archangel’s daughter.”
“In our history books, in our repository, it says the hounds turned against their masters once,” Bliss said.
“Yes. But we paid for it dearly. Lucifer punished the wolves for their disobedience. We were cast into the hellfire, and he turned us into little more than animals.” Lawson looked grim and troubled. “We were once the Praetorian Guard, keepers of the passages, but now … we are nothing but a bunch of fighting dogs.”
Bliss shook her head. “I don’t believe in the permanence of curses,” she said. “Otherwise … I would have given up long ago.” She shuddered. “What does Romulus have to do with any of this? I’ve heard of him, but not in connection with our history.”
“He was one of us, he was our leader, but he betrayed us, sold us to the demons, for power, to curry Lucifer’s favor,” Lawson said.
Bliss scratched her nose. “Yikes.”
“Yep.”
“Can I ask you something?” she said.
“Anything.” He smiled and Bliss smiled back. They looked at each other for a long time, but finally, she broke away from his intense gaze.
“Your … brothers … you guys don’t look alike.”
“You noticed.”
“Well …” Bliss laughed.
“We’re not brothers in the usual sense,” he said. “We don’t have the same parents. Wolves don’t even know their parents. We’re taken from our mothers as soon as we’re whelped. But we are brothers. We made a pact to each other. It’s like the opposite of the curse.”
“The anti-curse.” Bliss smiled. She liked the sound of that. “Lawson, the girl in the picture—the attack Malcolm mentioned—the hounds took Tala, didn’t they?”
“Yes.”
“And she was special to you.”
“Yes.”
Bliss wrung the edge of her shirt. “I understand. Even before the hounds took Aunt Jane, I lost someone too.”
His name was Dylan Ward, she thought. She had loved him at first sight, that first night at the club when everything had happened, when her life had changed. She could still see his dark hair and dark eyes illuminated by the flame he’d held out to her. It felt so long ago. Dylan, she thought, and she felt the tears well up in her eyes again. I miss you. He had been her rock and her escape through that long terrible year when she had been a prisoner in her own mind. He had helped her and she had freed him. She had loved him with all her heart and soul, but he was gone now.
“He won’t return?” Lawson asked quietly.
“No. He’s gone. He’s somewhere else now, a better place.” Bliss looked down at her empty hands. “I have to let go.”
Lawson took her hand in his. “I can’t. I know Tala is out there. I know I can find her. I know I can save her.”
“Yes, you can,” Bliss said, her eyes shining. “Because I know where she is.”
TWENTY
Arthur Beauchamp insisted on staying behind.
The four boys and Bliss were packed into his beat-up van. The old warlock looked frail but resolute in front of his cavern. The woods were quiet and all was still in the middle of the night, with no sign of the battle that had raged.
Lawson felt his wounds healing underneath his bandages, but his chest hurt for a different reason. He remembered seeing the old man at the park bench a year earlier. How scared they had been, and how relieved to find help at last, shelter, education, guidance. Arthur had been more than their guardian, he was a friend. “Come with us,” he said again.
“No, my boy, when they realize what happened, the hounds will return in greater numbers. I will hold them here for as long as I am able,” Arthur said. “Besides, I am not without reinforcements.” He removed a wand from his suit pocket. It was ebony and made of bone. Dragon bone, the warlock had explained to them once. An ancient magic, older than the underworld, made before the earth was formed. It shone in the dim light, gleaming with sparks. “I think it is time I broke my restriction.”
“Arthur�
�I can’t ask you to do this,” Lawson said.
“You did not ask me. Someone else did,” Arthur said with a wry smile. He turned to Bliss. “I owe your mother a favor. Yes, I saw the resemblance. You have her eyes.” He held up the wand, making an arc in the air. “I failed her once, long ago. In Florence, when she needed a friend. I told her I would make up for it—I told her to ask me anything, and I would do it. This was my promise. That I would keep you boys safe, and I will.”
“Goodbye, Arthur,” Bliss said. “Lawson—we should go.”
Lawson revved the engine. Malcolm waved. Edon and Rafe nodded their goodbyes.
Arthur waved his white handkerchief. “With luck, we shall cross paths again one day. Lawson, don’t forget what I told you about the passages. Now leave me to it.”
*
The hospital wasn’t far. Lawson couldn’t believe Tala had been so close. He should never have left her. Was it truly this easy? Were his dreams to be fulfilled that night?
“This is it,” Bliss said when they arrived at the four-story building at the top of the hill. Lawson let the van idle in the parking lot as he staked out the place. The hospital was dark, the lobby closed for the night, curtains drawn. There was a sleepy guard at the front entrance who didn’t seem to notice the van parked at the far end of the lot.
Lawson turned off the engine. “Rafe, Mac, you guys stay here. Edon, come with me.” It would be safer if it was just a small team, and he and Edon could handle whatever came up. He was leading them toward the back entrance when he stopped.
“What is it?” Edon whispered.
Lawson pointed to the bronze cross emblazoned on the hospital doors, and the name of the clinic: St. Bernadette’s Psychiatric Clinic. His heart began to beat wildly in his chest, bursting with hope. If Tala was alive and unharmed, if she’d managed to escape the hounds, she would have sought refuge in a place like this—a holy place that the hounds could never enter. A place she would be safe.
“Crap,” Edon swore.
“What’s with him?” asked Bliss.
“Oh nothing, he’s just a little irked he can’t go inside,” Lawson explained.
“St. Bernadette’s?” Bliss asked.
“Hallowed ground,” Lawson explained. “Off-limits to underworld scum.”
“I’ll wait outside,” Edon said. “Take it easy in there. We’ve had enough fireworks for the day.”
“How come you can come in?” Bliss asked as Lawson jiggered the back door open.
“Dunno. I just can. Discovered it by accident one day at a church soup kitchen. Rest of the boys couldn’t cross the threshold, but I snuck in smooth as butter. Maybe someone likes me up there,” he said as he pushed the door open, and then they were inside. “I cut the alarm, don’t worry.” He stopped at the foot of the stairs. “You remember where she was?”
“Room fifteen. I think it was on the third floor.”
It wasn’t. The hospital was a maze of identical hallways and rooms, and to make matters more con fusing, there were several room fifteens. None of them held Tala. There was a nurses’ station at each landing, but they managed to move around without being noticed.
“I’m sorry—everything looks the same. This is the hospital, though. Maybe they moved her,” Bliss said as she looked around nervously.
He followed her down a corridor that led away from the main part of the hospital. “This is it!” she said excitedly as they came upon a room with a guard’s stool in front of it, but there was no guard. And when Lawson opened the door, the room was empty. But he sensed a presence that felt strange and familiar at the same time. Tala?
“This was the room, right?” he asked.
“I think so,” Bliss replied.
This isn’t right. It isn’t the right scent. But maybe it has been too long … maybe being with the hounds has changed her … He couldn’t breathe. There was too much to hope for, too much at stake.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
“I’m not sure …” He paced the room one more time and then turned to Bliss. “Follow me.”
He banged the door open and darted down the hallway, brushing past a nurse so quickly that she dropped her tray. “Sorry!”
“Hey! You can’t be in here!” the nurse yelled, but he was already at the stairs. He turned back to make sure Bliss was following him. Down. She’s down the stairs. To the right.
He caught the scent again from a ventilation duct and tracked it down a long hallway, then stopped at the farthest door. “In here,” he said. He put his hand on the doorknob. It wasn’t locked. He walked inside.
There was a girl on the bed. She was hooked to a drip line and sleeping quietly. Lawson walked to her side and stared down at the sleeping girl. Her hair looked different; her skin was so pale it was translucent; she looked half-dead. What have they done to you?
Next to him, Bliss read the label on the bag of fluid attached to the girl’s arm. “She’s heavily sedated. Probably why there’s no guard anymore, no need for locks.”
Of course not, Lawson thought. No need for locks, not with that industrial-strength dope they’re feeding her. She must have really scared the life out of everyone to earn that much of a dose.
He felt Bliss put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay,” she said. “Tala’s going to be all right, we’re going to get her out of here.” He shook his head and he gripped the metal bars on the bed so tightly his knuckles were white.
“Lawson … what’s the matter?”
The girl opened her eyes then. Her bright blue eyes were the color of the sky, but her voice was mocking. “I think he’s expecting someone else,” she said.
“Ahramin,” he said. The girl in the bed was the hound who’d been at their doorstep, the same girl who had bested him for alpha.
The day of the trials, when the gates had lifted, he had expected to see Varg, his strongest opponent. Instead, a lithe figure emerged from the shadows. Ahramin. He’d stared at her, unbelieving, but there was no sympathy in her eyes. She had fought him ferociously and she had triumphed. She had sunk her teeth into his neck. Had lifted him by the hair, displayed his white throat to Romulus, would have torn it, slashed it with her teeth, from ear to ear, but the general had spared him, and Lawson had been able to live.
But Tala was right, Lawson thought. I let her win. The masters had thrown him for a loop. He could not kill her—not Ahramin, one of his own, one from his den. He had been caught off guard and been defeated. He had allowed Ahramin to live, thinking he had made the bigger sacrifice. He had been prepared to meet his death rather than take her life. How could he have foreseen that doing so would mean that one day she would unleash the forces of Hell on his pack and destroy the only home he had ever known?
TWENTY-ONE
“Who’s Ahramin?” Bliss asked.
“Tell her, Lawson. Tell her who I am. That’s what they call you now, is it? Lawson? Strange name. But then again, you were always a little different,” Ahramin said. “Nice to see you again, sorry about that house. It looked … cozy.”
Lawson clenched his jaw. He ignored her and answered Bliss. “She was one of us. Tala’s sister. But they caught her when we escaped from Hell …”
“And they turned me into one of them.” Ahramin looked at Bliss. “Hello again. So you found wolves instead of hounds, did you? Interesting. I wondered if you would return.”
Bliss thought Ahramin did look like Tala; she had the same almond-shaped blue eyes and the same fair skin, the same long face, the same slight build. But she didn’t have Tala’s round cheeks and a pretty smile. Ahri was taut, lean, and tense. She was like a lioness ready to spring. Dangerous. Untrustworthy.
“You’re a hellhound,” Bliss breathed. She should have known from the beginning, thinking of the dread that surrounded the room, the strange things that had happened to the nurses, the janitors.
“Not quite.” Ahramin’s face crumpled and for a brief moment Bliss saw the broken girl from the other day. “You’ve got to believe
me, Lawson, I’m not a hound anymore. I’m not anything. Not even a wolf. I can’t shift. I can’t do anything. When I failed to bring you to him, Romulus broke my collar.” She pulled her gown lower to show them the jagged black line around her neck, an imprint of the collar that used to be there. “He left me in that house to die, left me for dead in that fire we set for you.”
“She’s a hellhound, Lawson,” Bliss warned. “She might have been your friend once but she’s not anymore.”
“You can’t leave me here!” Ahramin cried. “You would abandon me again after everything?” she said, challenging him. “After my sacrifice?”
“Lawson—!” Bliss said, watching with horror as Lawson moved toward Ahramin and began to untie her foot restraints. “Think about it! You said so yourself—there’s no going back after the change. You don’t know what she’s capable of!”
But Lawson ignored her, although Ahramin didn’t seem to need any help—she ripped off the needles and wrenched her wrists out of their plastic shackles seemingly without effort. She nodded a thank-you to Lawson and walked out of the room, holding her hospital gown tightly closed. She walked regally, with her head held high, like a queen, the cheap cotton fabric like armor or couture. “Which way?” she asked when they came to the hallway.
“Here,” Lawson said, leading them up the back staircase. He seemed cowed somehow, okay with taking orders. Bliss didn’t know what to make of it. Maybe he was shell-shocked; maybe he was doing it only out of guilt. But there seemed to be no talking him out of it.
A nurse tried to stop them and Ahramin merely smirked. “I’m taking a walk.”
If it was so easy to walk out, why hadn’t she done it before? Bliss wondered. Why stay here? Because it was the only place she was safe from the hounds, Lawson had explained. Hallowed ground. Blessed space. Off-limits to underworld scum. There was no way Ahramin could still be a hellhound if she was allowed into St. Bernadette’s. Maybe that was why Lawson was so confident that she was on their side? Bliss hoped so.
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