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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.
