chapter Nineteen
PART THREE
I change shapes just to hide in this place But I'm still, I'm still an animal.
Mike Snow, "Animal"
Chapter Nineteen
"She spoke the sacred language," Lawson said. "I didn't recognize it at first, it had been so long since I'd heard the language of the masters."
"You seem to have a great talent for languages," Edon said drily.
Bliss shrugged and tossed away the knife, dark with the hound's blood. She wasn't going to answer their questions.
They stood in a tense circle until Arthur came out of the darkness. The old man was breathing heavily, and he had a cut on his forehead where the hound had hit him, but he was all right. He nodded at the group. "You got them all? Good." He nodded to Lawson. "We'll have to do something about that wound or you'll bleed out," he said, motioning to the gaping wound in Lawson's belly.
"It's not that bad," Lawson said.
Bliss grimaced, noticing for the first time the Swiss-cheese pattern of wounds that littered his torso. His shirt was steeped in blood.
Lawson began to protest, but Arthur would hear none of it. "Malcolm, collect the healing ointments. Rafe, Edon, reinforce the wards around the cave." The boys left for their tasks.
"What do you need, Arthur?" Bliss asked.
"Help me get his clothes off first. I'll get some warm compresses," Arthur said, leaving them together.
"You don't have to stay," Lawson said. "I can take off my own clothes."
"It's fine," Bliss said. "Nothing I haven't seen before," she snapped.
"You might be surprised," he said.
She pulled off his shirt a little roughly, and the fabric scraped the open wounds.
"Ouch!" he yelped before he could help himself.
"Sorry," she said. She struggled to conceal the horror on her face when she saw the extent of his injuries, continuing to undress him until he was naked underneath a cool sheet to cover the terrifying sight of broken bone and skin and muscle, the blood congealed into a purple cake.
Arthur came back and lifted the sheet, examining the wounds. He nodded, muttered a few things to himself, and then put the sheet back down. "Clean him up as well as you can," he told Bliss. "I'll need to collect a few other things before we begin."
"You gonna make it through this?" Lawson asked, challenging her.
"I'll be fine," she said, but her voice was gentler. She cleaned his face first, dabbing slowly at the crusted blood and pus, wiping the dirt away. Bliss felt his eyes on her as she cleaned the rag, submerging it in the warm water and removing it, rolling it into a tube and wringing it out before returning it to his skin. Soon the pan of water was red with blood. Her hand was shaking a little as she cleaned around the wounds.
"It's okay," he said. "It doesn't hurt that much."
"Liar," she said softly.
Arthur returned. "Lawson, it's time."
"What?" Bliss asked, pausing with the wet rag in the air and looking between Arthur and Lawson, whose face had turned even paler.
"I'm going to burn it out," Arthur said, confirming his fear. "To leach the poison. I'm sorry, Lawson, but it can't be helped. It's the only way."
"Do your worst," he said, sucking air through his teeth.
"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."