chapter 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?