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Rafe’s job was easier, she knew—all he had to do was look up Italy and he’d find everything he needed, and he did. “The coordinates for Rome are latitude 41 degrees 54 minutes north and longitude 12 degrees 30 minutes east.” He smiled at Bliss. “Malcolm will be able to figure out how to set it if we can’t.”
Her task was trickier—she had to figure out the year in which Romulus had held the first Neptunalia, when the Sabine women were captured. Should she look up Rome? Romulus? Neptunalia? Sabine women? She finally found what she was looking for in an entry entitled “The Rape of the Sabine Women.” She realized that later scholars changed their theories about what had really happened on that day—and that “rape” had been just another word for “kidnapping,” which was why the painting had been called The Abduction of the Sabine Women when she’d seen it in the museum.
“Have you found anything?” Rafe asked.
“Almost there,” she said. The information was pretty confusing, and she wasn’t sure how trustworthy the date the encyclopedia listed was. “It says eighth century BC, but the dates are a little vague. As best as I can tell, it was 752 BC. I’d hate to be off, though—who knows where we’d end up?”
“If that’s the best information we can find, it’s better than nothing,” Rafe said.
They headed back to find the group in heated discussion. “We’re trying to figure out what Romulus has to gain by killing all of those women,” Lawson said.
“Does anyone have a theory?” asked Bliss.
“Not exactly. But I’m pretty sure it has to do with all the things that have been changing lately. It’s not just the Gates of Hell that are falling—that’s part of it, but it’s more than that,” Lawson said.
“Like what?”
“Mac, you want to take this one?” Edon said.
“The oculi being lit, the dark roads being discovered. Like Marrok said, they seem to be signs that the power of the wolves is returning, and I think Lucifer wants to go back and stop it. If the wolves get their power back, it will be harder, if not impossible, to keep turning us into Hellhounds,” Malcolm said.
“The ancient wolves were immortal, right?” asked Bliss. “Romulus was a wolf, yes? Before he was a hound. One of the ancients.”
“Yes.” Lawson nodded.
“But all the wolves—like you guys—can breed. You can have pups.”
“Litters, even,” Ahramin added drily. “It’s why we’re all close in age.”
Bliss looked at them, her face flushed with excitement. “I know who the Sabines are.”
Lawson looked at her expectantly.
“Only mortals were given the gift of procreation. Vampires cannot procreate, they only reincarnate in new bodies for every cycle. But you can breed, and while you have extraordinary strength and power, you are mortal, which means the ancient wolves—the Praetorian Guard—the Romans—bred with human women. The Sabines are your human mothers.”
“And Lucifer…” Lawson said, his face growing darker.
“Wants to kill you all. He wants to stop wolves from being born. Especially one of you,” she said, looking directly at Lawson.
“What?”
“Isn’t it clear? He has to stop you from being born. Erase you from the timeline, from history. Lucifer will sacrifice his whole army for it, all his Hellhounds, rather than risk the rebellion and the chance that you might live to fight for the other side.”
“What are you talking about?”
She was breathless with her own realization.
“You are Fenrir. The great wolf whom legend has foretold will free the wolves from slavery and return them to the glory of the true Praetorian Guard.”
There was silence as the group digested this new information. Bliss saw Lawson’s brothers
look at him in a new light, and even Ahramin was gazing at Lawson with a respectful air.
Lawson frowned and crossed his arms, looking uncomfortable with all the attention. “You don’t know that for sure.”
“But think about it,” she said. “You can enter hallowed ground, and you can make portals through the worlds, something the other wolves can’t. And you said so yourself, after your escape there were many others who followed your path to freedom. ‘We freed ourselves.’ You certainly did. Marrok knew who you were. It was why he encouraged you to escape, why he risked stealing the chronolog. Because it was time. Because you are Fenrir.”
“Well then,” Malcolm said. “What are we waiting for? Let’s go to Rome.”
