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“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.”
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.
