Blue Bloods: Keys to the Repository

She hit the gas again and powered forward, turning the wheel, speeding wildly down the street. The windshield had cracked, making it hard to see, and she immediately crashed into a telephone pole. The windshield caved in, and the car swung sideways as it plowed into the curb. Bliss was thrown backward against the headrest. What had she done? She had gone from escape to disaster in only a few seconds. The car was demolished. She hit the gas again, but nothing happened. She tried reverse, but the engine was dead.

Then a loud thump hit the top of the car, and the roof caved in slightly. She saw a pair of boots descend from the top of the car to the hood, followed by four hairy paws. So that’s where the beast had gone. She could see it more clearly now—its silver fur, its crimson eyes. They settled in front of her, the boy and the wolf, both of them crouched on their haunches, nimble as acrobats as they stared at her through the broken windshield.

Behind them, she could see others, a group of kids slowly circling the car. How many were they? Three? Four? More? She caught a glimpse of a fierce-looking girl with wild green hair and tattoos, and several boys who looked dark and menacing. Someone was trying to pry open the rear passenger-side door. The handle rattled, but all of the doors had been smashed shut. Bliss took a deep breath and waited. “What do you want from me?”

The boy smiled. “I want you to calm down before you hurt yourself, Bliss.”

He knows my name. How does he know my name?

“I’m Lawson, by the way.”

She nodded, but her attention was elsewhere. The wolf had pushed forward, its teeth inches from her face. Spit oozed from its mouth; the odor was unbearable. Lawson coaxed the creature’s head away, so it backed off from Bliss with a whimper.

“Come on now, Scooby, lay off,” he said, giving the creature an affectionate shake.

One of the kids standing near the car—a little girl, Bliss could now see—she couldn’t have been more than eleven— tossed over a dog biscuit. The wolf caught the treat in midair and wandered away from the car, tail wagging.

“Scooby?” The wolf was his pet. Bliss tried not to look too incredulous. When her mother had sent her on this quest, she had imagined the Hounds of Hell as supernatural creatures. Beasts that were half human and half animal, something from nightmares and horror movies. Hellhound, werewolf . . . same thing, right?

“Is that what you thought? That we turned into them? At the sight of a full moon?” Lawson smirked. How did he know what she was thinking? It was as if he had heard every word. Venators could do that, of course, but she could tell he wasn’t a vampire. What was he then? And who was “we”? That group of kids around the car? Were they with him? They had to be.

Lawson threw back his head and howled. He pulled at his shirt collar in an imitation of an uncontrollable dramatic transformation. “You’re not serious are you?” he asked, looking a bit insulted. “I mean, you know there’s no such thing as werewolves, right? They were invented by some desperate screenwriter in the 1940s. We noticed you’d been following Scooby for a while and thought it was high time we finally met. Sorry if what we arranged was a little crude. The boys have a sick sense of humor. Comes from living in the wild, I guess.”

Bliss didn’t know what to say. Lawson was awfully chatty for someone who, moments ago, seemed to mean her quite a bit of harm. Her neck still pinched where he had held her.

“Sorry about your car, by the way; although you didn’t need to overreact so much. Anyway, we’ll get you another one. Or Gorg could fix it. Whatever you’d like. But we need to talk about what happened in there. How do you know our language? Nothing like that has ever happened to us before. We thought we knew every Praetorian in the district.” He studied her face closely and then plucked a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed her cheek with it. “Best we get you inside and clean up this mess before the police arrive. We don’t like to attract attention. This town might look dead, but I assure you, the small-minded sheriff is very much alive.”

He hopped off the car and easily lifted open the damaged driver’s side door. The metal was bent and twisted, but he hadn’t even broken a sweat. He wasn’t as frail as he had looked earlier, nor as skinny. Bliss wondered if he had been able to adjust his presence somehow. He was quite tall and muscular. Whatever he was—or any of his friends, for that matter—he was not quite human. But neither did he resemble the exquisite monsters from Lucifer’s memory. In any event, he was as much a mystery to her as she was to him.

“Coming?” he asked, waiting for her to step out of the car.

Bliss winced. In the heat of the moment, she hadn’t felt the pain. But now it was unbearable. “I think both my legs are broken.”

“Oh god, now I’m really sorry Malcolm talked me into such a stupid stunt. Here,” he said, bending down so that she could put her arms around his neck.