chapter Fifteen
Lawson steered the car away from the butcher shop, through the busy streets of town and out to the old gravel roads. The rumble of the tires against the rock was a comforting noise, like the soft roar of ocean waves, and if he wasn't careful, it would lull him to sleep. The girl was still passed out on the backseat. Malcolm said she was fine, he'd felt her pulse, and she would wake soon enough. The youngest was sitting next to her, monitoring her progress. He'd learned her name from her identification card in her purse.
The trap had worked. Malcolm had shifted, the markings of his wolf form the closest to Lawson's, and led her inside the shop, where Lawson lay in wait. He'd sent Edon and Rafe ahead to protect Arthur, in case she came with a pack of hounds. But now Lawson hoped he hadn't done much damage. He'd meant to kill her, but when she spoke to him in the ancient language of the wolves, the words that had been lost to them since Lucifer's curse, he knew she was not an enemy. Speaking Hroll was punishable by death. So it meant that maybe, just maybe, Bliss Llewellyn was even a friend.
His mind raced. If she was not one of Romulus's trackers, what did she want? Why was she looking for them? Why had the oculus shown him her image? It slowly dawned on him - he had asked the oculus to show him Tala, but it had shown him Bliss instead. There had to be a connection between the girls. But what was it? Could Bliss lead him to Tala in some way? There had to be a reason for the oculus's answer.
It didn't help that when he looked at Bliss, it was as if his insides had turned to jelly. The oculus had masked the full effect of her beauty, and now that he didn't regard her as the enemy, he was unprepared for the reaction her presence stirred in him, and had even as he had meant to kill her in the butcher shop. Instant. Physical. Painful, even. He shook the feeling away; he had to ignore it. He wasn't that kind of wolf anymore.
"She is awake," Malcolm called from the backseat.
"Where are you taking me? Who are you guys? What have you done with my aunt Jane? What the hell is going on?" she demanded.
"Lawson said you speak Hroll. This means you can't mean us any harm. He's sorry about what happened back at the shop. I'm Malcolm, by the way," Malcolm said sweetly. "And that's my brother. Lawson."
"Pleased to meet you both," Bliss said, her tone sarcastic. "Now why don't you tell me where you're taking me?"
Lawson caught her eye in the rear-view mirror. "I'd like to, but I need to know who you are first. I don't know what to make of you. I thought you were a tracker, but you speak our tongue, which means you aren't, but if you're not a spy, then what are you? But I'm getting ahead of myself. First things first: what do you know about Tala? Where is she?"
Bliss furrowed her brow. "Tala? I don't know who that is, I've never heard of her. I told you, I'm looking for my aunt Jane."
Lawson's heart sank. He'd had a feeling it wouldn't be as simple as he'd hoped, but there was still the possibility that Bliss could lead him to Tala, even if she didn't realize it herself. He just had to figure out how. He cleared his throat. "Next question, then - what are you? You're no ordinary mortal."
"I guess not. Seeing that I used to be a vampire," she snapped.
He hadn't expected her to say that. Malcolm yelped from the backseat.
"Easy there, Mac," Lawson said, looking back at Bliss. "You're one of the Fallen." He was not pleased. The Fallen were no friends to the wolves. They had left them to their fate, to their curse. The wolves had a role to play in their story, Arthur had told him, but Lawson wanted no part in it.
"I used to be. It's a long story." She looked away.
"I've got time."
"There was ... something wrong with me. I killed myself. Or at least I killed the vampire part of me. What-ever I was ... I'm not anymore. I'm just human now."
And she expected him to believe that? He wanted to laugh. "No one's just human. Especially not the Fallen."
"Maybe you're right," she said. "But that's my story."
"Not all of it," he said. "Why were you looking for us?"
Bliss paused, and Lawson wondered if that meant she was about to lie. "I wasn't looking for you exactly," she said finally. "Like I told you already, I was looking for my aunt Jane. She's missing, and I think ... the hounds have her."
"Hounds? Why do you think that?"
"From the way she was taken."
"And how was that?"
She described the room: everything torn up, as if raked by sharp claws, the whole place - bedspreads, curtains, sheets, pillows - shredded to pieces. "There was blood everywhere, and strange claw prints on the wall."
Lawson felt the hair on his arms rise as he listened to her tale. The hounds were afoot and had taken other victims, it sounded like. But why? Who was this Bliss Llewellyn and what was her connection to the hounds? Was he still right in thinking she would lead him to Tala somehow?
"My turn to ask questions now," she said. "What are you?"
"I'm a wolf," he said proudly. "We were once the Abyssus Praetorium."
"The Praetorian Guard," she whispered. "The guards of the abyss. The keepers of time, guardians of the passages."
"You know our history." He was pleased.
"Yes I do. Lucifer's dogs. The Hounds of Hell," she whispered, her face paling.
"Never call us by that name!" Lawson roared. The car veered to the side of the road and stopped abruptly. Bliss was thrown against the front seat, and blood trickled from her forehead. She was shaking.
Lawson turned and glared at her. Malcolm cringed. "Lawson, please," his brother begged. "She doesn't know."
Bliss stared back at the two of them angrily. "Know what? Wolf, hound, all the same, isn't it?"
"No!" Lawson shook his head. "Never." He looked down at the steering wheel, at his white knuckles. "My brothers and I escaped from the pack a year ago, and we've been hiding and running ever since. We'll never be hounds, not if I can help it." He thought of Tala for a moment, wondered if those were empty words, remembered all his friends who were still left behind. "The masters turn wolf cubs into hellhounds on their eighteenth moon day. We had to run before we were turned."
"Right," Bliss said, and her tone of voice told him everything he needed to know. She didn't believe a word he'd said. That made two of them. Ex-vampire indeed. He gunned the engine and steered the car back to the road, and no one spoke until they reached the cave.