“Can I see it?” Malcolm asked shyly.
“Careful,” she said, placing it on his palm with a handkerchief.
Lawson was arguing with Marrok. “I told you last night, I’m not leaving without Ahramin. She’s part of my pack. Release her to me.”
Marrok did not look happy to hear that. “You don’t know what she did down there. She was the worst one they had, Lawson. She was vicious … cruel. She’s not the she-wolf she was. They turned her into a hound.”
“Even so, they turned her into something else when Romulus broke her collar. She’s not a hound anymore. Her eyes are blue. She cannot shift. Marrok, be reasonable.”
“She tortured us, Ulf. Not reluctantly—with glee. When they released her aboveground, she tracked us one by one. Wasn’t she the hound who found your pack?”
Lawson did not answer. Of course he remembered. The dark girl at the door, her eyes blazing with crimson hatred. “She wore a collar back then. She doesn’t now. She’s part of my pack. I speak for her.”
Marrok sighed. “There’s no other way?”
“She belongs with us. My brother will not leave her side. Without her, I lose Edon. I will need all my strength when I go to Rome.”
“I understand,” Marrok said. “I will release her to your care. But she is your responsibility now. If she betrays us, my pack will not hesitate to kill her.”
“If she betrays us,” Lawson promised, “I’ll kill her myself.”
Ahramin did not seem grateful that Lawson had pled her release. The wolves had been holding her in a wooden cage, and the bars exhaled as they clattered to the ground. She stepped over the wooden sticks. “Marrok had every right to hold me, you don’t know what I did for Romulus,” Ahramin said dully. “Why did you secure my freedom?” she asked Lawson.
“I trust you, Ahramin. You brought us to Marrok, to the free wolves, as you had promised. You say you are no longer a hound and I believe you,” he said, offering his hand to shake. “Peace?”
Her eyes flashed but she held her tongue and managed to shake his hand. Bliss hoped Lawson knew what he was doing. Ahramin made her way to Edon, who had never left her side, who had slept next to her cage all night.
“I know he only asked for my freedom because of you,” she said to him, sounding tender toward him for the first time since she had returned to the pack. She held a hand to his cheek, and Edon put a hand on top of hers. They stood there for a long time. Whatever had broken between them appeared to be mending.
As Bliss watched the two of them, she felt another stab of jealousy. It was another reminder that Dylan was gone, forever this time, and the one person who made his absence hurt a little less was obsessed with finding his own lost love. She could never compete with that, and she wouldn’t want to.
The pretty scene was broken by Malcolm’s vomiting all over his shoes. He fell to the ground and began to shake all over, his body jerking in spasms. Rafe picked him up in his arms. “It’s bad, they must be right on us,” he said.
“Into the pine trees. Now!” Lawson said as he led them into the forest, where the thicket of trees was dense and could protect them from being seen. Bliss huddled down and held her hands around her knees. “How many?” she asked.
“A whole legion, it seems like,” Lawson whispered. “Poor Mac.”
There was a rustling that slowly turned into the sound of an army approaching; Bliss got scared. She grabbed Lawson’s arm to steady herself, and he pulled her toward him, his arm around her shoulders, her head resting in the crook of his neck.
“It’s okay,” he said. “We’re going to get through this.”
Then came the sound of heavy boots, and the hounds appeared. They were fearsome and massive in the dim twilight. Their crimson-and-silver eyes shone, and their armor clanked loudly. There were hundreds of them and they roared past, heading toward the serpent mound. They kept coming—they leapt from branches and tore through the tall grasses, bounding over the low earthen mounds until they were out of sight.
“Let’s go,” Lawson said. He signaled to his brothers and the team raced through the woods and down the side of the mountain, to the serpent mound.
Marrok was waiting for them at the serpent’s mouth. Around him were nearly a hundred wolves in their animal form, clawing the ground and howling. “You sure about this?” he asked Lawson. “That was an entire legion we just let inside.”
Lawson nodded. “There will be more.” He turned to Bliss, Ahramin, and his brothers. “Ready?”
They nodded.
“Where are we going?” Ahramin asked.
“Shh—” Edon warned. “We will go where Lawson leads us.”
“Well, then, there’s no time like the present.” Lawson turned to Marrok one last time. “You will hold them here? Keep the rest from entering the passages behind us?”
“It’s our duty,” Marrok said, raising his hand in farewell. “Godspeed.”
Lawson raised his hand to salute Marrok and led his team into the passages.
TWENTY-NINE
Bliss followed Lawson into the mouth of the serpent, Ahramin and the boys following close behind. The path was narrow and dark, the air dusty. Ahramin started coughing again; Bliss felt almost like she needed to cough herself. She could hear Marrok’s wolves battling the hounds behind them, but the further they walked down the passages, the fainter the noises became. The wolves must have been doing their job well, though, because no hounds followed them.
“Stay close,” Lawson warned. “It’s only going to get darker as we move away, and there’s more than one path underground—we have to make sure we stay behind the hounds and find the actual entrance to the timeline. I don’t want to lose anyone.”
“I’ve got the scent,” Edon said.
“Me too,” said Rafe.
Bliss moved to the side and let them pass her. She ended up just ahead of Malcolm, and turned around to check on him. “How are you feeling? Still nauseous?”
“A bit,” he admitted. “But I’m used to it. I don’t follow scent as well as they do, so it’s kind of good that I have my own way of telling when they’re around, you know?”
They were now deep enough into the path that Bliss couldn’t hear the wolves at all, and she could barely see. Fortunately, Lawson had brought some matches, and every so often he’d light one to make sure everyone was nearby.
The brief flicker of each match revealed that there were occasional openings to paths stemming off the one they were on. Occasionally Lawson would veer in one direction or another, and Bliss could feel that they were heading deeper and deeper into the earth. The group walked silently for what felt like hours. How deep in the earth did the timeline start? Bliss wondered. They might as well just walk to Rome.
“Everyone, brace yourselves,” Lawson warned. “I think we’re getting close to the passages.” He explained that once they entered the timeline, they would be moving through time itself, from moment to moment, where everything happened at once, and it could be disorienting at first.
“The Praetorian Guard kept the timeline safe,” he said to Bliss as they walked down the narrow space. “Time is sacred. It must not change, and the wolves saw to that. Those who tamper with the timeline are doomed. Time must be allowed to flow, the sequence of events must remain fixed.”
Bliss nodded. “Otherwise …”
“Paradox, chaos, disorder. Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it,” Lawson said, smiling.
Bliss did not smile back. “Marrok said he didn’t know how to use the chronolog … and you’ve never traveled through time before, have you? You said the passages were closed … lost to the wolves.”
“Are you asking me if I know what I’m doing?”
“Well, yes.”
Lawson grinned. “Then the answer is no. But when do I ever?”
They walked a few more steps, and the space was suddenly flooded with light. They were no longer in the serpent mound but in the timeline itself.
Bliss s
hielded her eyes while Lawson yelled, “HERE WE GO!”
For the first few steps, Bliss couldn’t see a thing—the light was so bright it had blinded her. Then everything changed—it was as if she had stepped on a roller coaster. She could feel her stomach drop. With each step she was in a different place, a different time. It was like moving through a movie screen but with the events of the movie actually happening. It made her feel as nauseous as Malcolm seemed.
“Look to the horizon,” Lawson said. “It’s a constant—like being in the sea. It will make it easier.”
She nodded, trying to focus on the blue sky ahead. All around her, images and memories swirled, from many moments in time, not just from her life but from the history of the entire world. She could hear everyone around her, so at least they’d arrived safely, wherever they were. The light changed, slowly fading until she could see more comfortably. She saw Edon holding on to Ahramin as if she were about to fall; Rafe helped Malcolm. Lawson was at the head of the group.
“Bliss—the chronolog,” Lawson called.
She pulled the handkerchief-wrapped object out of her pocket and carefully unwrapped it. It was a beautiful object, a pocket watch, heavy and silver.
“You’ll have to do it, none of us can touch silver.”
Bliss looked at it closely. There were tiny scratches on the side that looked as if someone had tried to pry it open. She recalled Allegra’s hand reaching toward it, and Bliss did the same, pressing a hidden button on the side of the watch. A small round disc appeared in midair. It looked like a spinning globe, with lines moving around it.
“What is that?” Lawson asked.
She shrugged. “I have no idea.”
“I think maybe you need to tell it where you want to go,” Malcolm said helpfully.
“Take us to Rome,” Lawson ordered, and a passage opened before them, shining bright in the darkness.
THIRTY
The light and the passage disappeared, and when Bliss opened her eyes, she saw that she was in a small stone room with bars on the windows. “Where are we? A prison?” she asked.
“No … a monastery, I think,” Lawson said, frowning. “But we’re not in the right place or the right time. Look.”
Bliss looked out the window to a grand canal dotted with gondolas and speedboats, people rushing about on the cobblestone streets with umbrellas.
“Where are the monks?” Ahramin asked, taking a seat on a stone step.
“They’re gone, I think only the tourists are left,” Malcolm said, reading a plaque by a velvet stanchion at the end of the room. “It must be Tuesday, when the museums are closed, otherwise we’d be surrounded by them.”
“We’re close,” Bliss said, comforting Lawson. “Venice isn’t too far from Rome.”
“When I make portals … I just imagine a space in my mind … I thought it would be same here,” he said, biting his fingernail.
“These portals you create, they must be part of the passages somehow,” Bliss said.
“Maybe, I don’t know. All I know is I can picture myself somewhere else, and then a path appears in front of me. I thought using the chronolog would be that easy.”
Bliss nodded. She had an idea. When the Visitor, Lucifer, had taken over her mind and she’d been able to see his memories, she’d had no control; she couldn’t call up a memory at will. But the images she’d seen of Allegra’s memories felt different, and she wondered if maybe it was possible for her to summon them at will, if she focused hard enough. She’d have to be careful how she explained herself, though; she still wasn’t sure what would happen if Lawson ever discovered her true parentage, and now wasn’t the time to find out. She stared at the chronolog. “I think my mother had one of these once, and sometimes I can access her memories,” she said.
“How?” Lawson asked.
She shook her head. “I don’t know, all I know is I can feel her—guiding me—and I think that maybe if I concentrate, I can remember a little more, see how she used it.” She took a seat on the stone step next to Ahramin, who gave her some space. Bliss closed her eyes and focused. Tell me, she thought. Please, if you know anything, please tell me. Show me.
At first all she could see was darkness. But then the darkness blurred, and a light began to shimmer, and she saw Allegra pick up the chronolog again and open it. The disc had stopped spinning and looked more like a regular watch, but with three different hands, and the numbers at the edge of the circle were in multiples of thousands, hundreds, and tens. Layered over the whole disc and its hands was a map, and Allegra maneuvered the hands on the chronolog to certain positions.
Bliss opened her eyes. “I think I know how to do this.” She took the chronolog and pressed the button, then waited for the disc to stop spinning. “You see these hands?” She pointed them out. “One set refers to time, measured first in thousands and then hundreds of years, then decades. You have to set it like a clock—see this knob? You wind it so the hands move,” she said, adjusting it. “Now these other hands, with the images of the continents behind them? They represent longitude and latitude. The trick is to line up the time and place you want at the same time, then press another button on the side.”
“So we just have to set it to the right time and co-ordinates, then press the button and we’re there,” Malcolm said excitedly. “We can do this!”
“Not so fast,” Lawson said. “Anyone know the date? Or the coordinates?”
Malcolm’s face fell.
“We can find those things,” Rafe said. “If this is a monastery, there’s got to be a library here, with a set of encyclopedias.”
“I’ll help,” Bliss said, and followed Rafe down the stairs. They walked around the empty monastery until they reached a room at the end of the hallway that was blocked off from museum tours. “I think this is it,” Rafe said, opening the door marked BIBLIOTHECA.
The room was covered with dust and lined with bookshelves. A little typewriter sat on an antique desk. Rafe whistled, and nodded to a shelf that contained a full set of the Encyclopædia Britannica. What she wouldn’t give for the Internet right now, she thought; they’d have their questions answered in seconds.
“I’ll look up the year, you take the location. Okay?” she asked Rafe.
“Sounds good to me.”
Rafe’s job was easier, she knew—all he had to do was look up Italy and he’d find everything he needed, and he did. “The coordinates for Rome are latitude 41 degrees 54 minutes north and longitude 12 degrees 30 minutes east.” He smiled at Bliss. “Malcolm will be able to figure out how to set it if we can’t.”
Her task was trickier—she had to figure out the year of the feast in which Romulus had held the first Neptunalia, when the Sabine women were captured. Should she look up Rome? Romulus? Neptunalia? Sabine women? She finally found what she was looking for in an entry entitled “The Rape of the Sabine Women.” She realized that later scholars changed their theories about what had really happened on that day—and that “rape” had been just another word for “kidnapping,” which was why the painting had been called The Abduction of the Sabine Women when she’d seen it in the museum.
“Have you found anything?” Rafe asked.
“Almost there,” she said. The information was pretty confusing, and she wasn’t sure how trustworthy the date the encyclopedia listed was. “It says eighth century BC, but the dates are a little vague. As best as I can tell, it was 752 BC. I’d hate to be off, though—who knows where we’d end up?”
“If that’s the best information we can find, it’s better than nothing,” Rafe said.
They headed back to find the group in heated discussion. “We’re trying to figure out what Romulus has to gain by killing all of those women,” Lawson said.
“Does anyone have a theory?” asked Bliss.
“Not exactly. But I’m pretty sure it has to do with all the things that have been changing lately. It’s not just the Gates of Hell that are falling—that’s part of it, but it’s more than that,” La
wson said.
“Like what?”
“Mac, you want to take this one?” Edon said.
“The oculi being lit, the dark roads being discovered. Like Marrok said, they seem to be signs that the power of the wolves is returning, and I think Lucifer wants to go back and stop it. If the wolves get their power back, it will be harder, if not impossible, to keep turning us into hellhounds,” Malcolm said.
“The ancient wolves were immortal, right?” asked Bliss. “Romulus was a wolf, yes? Before he was a hound. One of the ancients.”
“Yes.” Lawson nodded.
“But all the wolves—like you guys—can breed. You can have pups.”
“Litters, even,” Ahramin added drily. “It’s why we’re all close in age.”
Bliss looked at them, her face flushed with excitement. “I know who the Sabines are.”
Lawson looked at her expectantly.
“Only mortals were given the gift of procreation. Vampires cannot procreate, they only reincarnate in new bodies for every cycle. But you can breed, and while you have extraordinary strength and power, you are mortal, which means the ancient wolves—the Praetorian Guard—the Romans—bred with human women. The Sabines are your human mothers.”
“And Lucifer …” Lawson said, his face growing darker.
“Wants to kill you all. He wants to stop wolves from being born. Especially one of you,” she said, looking directly at Lawson.
“What?”
“Isn’t it clear? He has to stop you from being born. Erase you from the timeline, from history. Lucifer will sacrifice his whole army for it, all his hellhounds, rather than risk the rebellion and the chance that you might live to fight for the other side.”
“What are you talking about?”
She was breathless with her own realization.
“You are Fenrir. The great wolf whom legend has foretold will free the wolves from slavery and return them to the glory of the true Praetorian Guard.”
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