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With a great scream, Ahramin leapt and wrapped the chain twice around Romulus’s neck, climbing on his back as she pulled and tightened, and the Great Beast of Hell fell to his knees.
“Remove it! If you treasure your life, you will do as I say!” Romulus ordered as he struggled with the chain, which smoked around his skin. As powerful as he was, he was still a creature of Hell, and silver was poison to him as well.
The scars on Ahramin’s neck began to throb, and a silver collar appeared against the skin as Romulus bent his will to hers. She wrestled and thrashed against it, howling in pain, but slowly, excruciatingly, she began to remove the silver chain around Romulus’s neck. “I’m so sorry.…” She sobbed. “I’m so sorry, I can’t fight him anymore.…”
They were losing time. “Lawson!” Bliss yelled. “Do it!”
With a roar, Romulus threw Ahramin off his back, and he turned to pick up his staff. Romulus snarled and readied to launch the final blow.
But Lawson had gotten up. If he could stand, he could fight, and if he could fight, he could hold a sword. He felt the weight of it in his palm, and he stood, uncertainly. He was broken and battered but he was resolute.
“For Tala,” he whispered. “For all the wolves in the underworld.” Then he lunged with the blade, which cut through the golden armor like butter, and he stuck it deep into Romulus’s black heart.
The Great Beast of Hell howled in pain, and his whole body began to shift, from wolf to man and back, trembling and shaking and smoking, until finally only a small black wolf lay dead on the floor before it disappeared in dark smoke.
There was a clamor and the rest of the pack entered the room. Rafe and Malcolm ran to Lawson, Malcolm’s eyes wide with fright, but Edon had eyes for only one person.
“Ahri!” Edon yelled, running to her side; she lay still on the ground next to Romulus. He knelt and cradled her in his arms. “Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me.”
She was lifeless in his arms, and the silver collar was still around her neck, but when Romulus’s heart exploded, the collar fell apart and broke in two.
Finally, she opened her eyes. “I told you, there is still wolf in me.” She smiled, and Edon kissed her.
Lawson collapsed to the floor even as his wounds began to heal. The silver poison had disappeared with Romulus’s death. He put his sword away as he turned to Bliss. “I’m sorry I doubted you,” he said as she knelt down to hear him.
“Never mind that now, did you find Tala?” she asked.
He shook his head to indicate no hope remained, but he had little time to dwell on that for now. “What about your aunt Jane?” he asked.
“She got away. I asked the oculus to show her to me, when I changed the orders. She told me she led the hounds through the passages but she was able to slip away at the very end. She went to London, she said. She told me to meet her there. The Blue Bloods need us there.”
Lawson removed the postcard he kept in his pocket and turned it over to read the text: The Abduction of the Sabines. They had succeeded in keeping the timeline safe, in killing Romulus. The wolves would soon be free, and there was still hope for the hounds as well; Ahramin had shown that. Lawson should have felt joy, but all he felt was exhaustion.
“I’m sorry about Tala,” Bliss said, and squeezed his hand. “I wish it had been otherwise.”
He had won, and yet he had lost. Bliss, of all people, seemed to understand that victory and triumph were not the same.
The chronolog took them back through time, and as they moved through the passages, Lawson could see places that looked familiar. The monastery, in Venice. France, with the enormous carved stones. He stopped in front of a house that looked more familiar than most.
“I’m sorry, I thought we were going back to the serpent mound,” Bliss said. “But this thing seems to have a mind of its own.”
Lawson looked at the structure in front of them. It was half-built, with only the foundation and the wood frame. He hadn’t recognized it at first, but now he did. “Can you take us here, only closer to the present? A week before we met?”
“I can help,” Malcolm said, and showed Bliss how to set the chronolog again.
Again they moved through time, but more quickly. Probably because they didn’t have far to go, Lawson figured. The passages finally landed them where he wanted to be.
“Where are we?” Bliss asked. “Is this where we’re supposed to go?”
“That’s the house,” he said, pointing to an ordinary-looking brown house at the end of a familiar cul-de-sac. There was a foreclosure sign on the front lawn. “Look, we’d just arrived, the curtains aren’t up yet. Remember those, Mac?”
“I remember,” Malcolm said quietly.
“Lawson, we need to keep moving,” Bliss said. “Marrok might need our help.”
“Hold on just a moment,” he said excitedly. “See, we can change what happened. I can leave a message—tell them to run. Tell myself to run. So they won’t stay here. Then the hounds won’t come and Tala will be alive. She’ll be alive.” Lawson turned to them, his eyes shining.
But his brothers just shook their heads. Ahramin was mute, hesitant.
