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“Edon, open the door so we can be together again.…”
“I have to open it,” Edon said.
“I can’t let you do that.” Lawson pushed Edon away from the door as Ahramin began pounding on it so hard that it made the walls shake and the light fixtures swing wildly. The pummeling was relentless, and it felt as if not just the door but the whole house would collapse from the fury of her blows.
The girl’s taunts turned to screams as the door held. “EDON!” she thundered as Lawson pulled his brother back into the living room. “EDON, IF YOU STILL LOVE ME, LET ME IN!”
Now that Edon was with them, the circle was complete. Edon sat dazed between Lawson and Rafe, who each held on to him in case he tried to make a run for the door.
“Can they follow us?” Malcolm asked, his eyes red and nose dripping.
“The hounds can’t come through the portals,” Lawson assured him. “At least the ones I make, I’m pretty sure.” He didn’t know how he knew; it was just instinct, but it felt right. “Close your eyes, and focus your hearts and minds.”
Lawson waited until everyone had their eyes closed, and then began to open the portal with his mind. It would be a much more dangerous jump than their escape from the underworld; their souls would have to cross first and their bodies would follow, unlike in Hell, where their spirits and flesh were one. Around them, the windows cracked and glass shattered. Dust drifted down from the ceiling. The smell of smoke was overpowering. Outside the sky was an eerie charcoal, and smoke billowed around the house. He could see the first wisps of flame edging toward the window. And then it was upon them.
The room turned a dull orange as strips of flame shot across the old carpet. The heat was unbearable, but familiar: the black fire of Hell. The ceiling glistened and blistered.
Lawson felt the passage open, felt the universe expanding to create this space, a space for them to be safe. In his mind’s eye, he watched as one by one the brothers crossed over, even as he kept his actual eyes open so he knew what was happening in the room.
Tala was waiting for him. Go, he urged her in his mind. Go now.
Only with you, she sent back. A charred beam fell from the ceiling and struck her. She fell backward, unconscious. Her mind lost its connection to his.
TALA! TALA, WAKE UP! WAKE UP! Lawson screamed as he stood at the border between the worlds. But there was no more time. Through the red-hot skeleton of the house, he could see dark figures gathered. Hellhounds, hunched in anticipation.
No. He couldn’t lose her. He began to break the connection and the portal started to close. Their bodies were frozen in a circle, asleep and oblivious to the fire that raged around the room, as walls ripped open with flame.
His brothers began to yell. LAWSON! HURRY!
He reached out again for her mind, but he couldn’t find her. For a few desperate seconds, there was nothing. Then, suddenly, the spark between them returned.
GO! Tala screamed. GO! YOU DON’T HAVE TIME! LEAVE ME!
I CAN’T, he screamed back. I WON’T!
The boys stood by the open passage, waiting while the room burned. Soon their bodies would be sacrificed to the flames and all would be lost. But still Lawson did not move. He was as paralyzed as Edon had been earlier at the door.
Tala, no…I won’t leave you the way Edon left Ahri. I can’t let that happen. I won’t.
Go.…Her voice was weaker now. But when she saw that he was hesitating, her voice recovered the ferocity he knew and loved so well. Remember the pact! Go!
Never!
But she pushed him away with her mind, and before he knew what was happening, he had joined his brothers on the other side. The portal continued to clos
e and he heard her scream as a whip cracked in the flames.
TALA! Lawson’s heart broke in anguish and fear. TALA!
In one instant the brothers were sitting in the burning living room; in the next, they had disappeared. The house shuddered, heaving its last gasp, and collapsed, the hounds storming the ashes of what they’d left behind. But Lawson and his pack were gone, save one.
Bliss Llewellyn waited at the airport for Aunt Jane to pick her up from the bonding she’d just attended. Aunt Jane wasn’t really her aunt; she was the latest incarnation of the Pistis Sophia, the Immortal Intelligence, what the Blue Bloods called the Watcher. She had been Lucifer’s sister in an earlier cycle and since then had been destined to foresee the return of the Dark Prince from the underworld.
Bliss scanned the cars, looking for her aunt’s Honda Civic. Sturdy and reliable, just like the form the Watcher had taken in this life, she thought. Jane Murray was a short, sensible-looking woman of late middle age who favored brightly colored wool cardigans, plaid skirts, and brown moccasins and was known to quote from Austen or Shakespeare when the mood struck.
She wondered why Jane’s powers didn’t extend to making them look more like relatives. Though the Watcher hadn’t managed it the last time, either; when she’d taken the form of Bliss’s sister Jordan, everyone always remarked they didn’t look like sisters. Bliss herself was tall and rangy, with long, thick hair that fell in russet waves down her back. She’d even been a model once, back in New York, in another life. A life that had probably ended with the bonding she’d just left. When would she see her friends again? she lamented, thinking of Schuyler, Jack, and Oliver. She missed them so much already.
As Bliss wandered up and down the sidewalk outside the airport, her hand slipped under her shirt, and her fingers traced the long, ugly scar in the middle of her chest, a rumpled ridge of skin, bumpy and coarse. She tried not to pick at it, since it just made it worse when she did, but it was hard to stop.
