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The scar was a reminder of the girl she had been, dark history marked on her pale flesh. Lucifer’s daughter. Devilspawn. Silver Blood: a corrupted vampire who fed on the souls of its own kind. A Dark Angel cursed to live the rest of her immortal life on earth, reincarnated through the cycles to perform her father’s bidding. The Dark Prince had been using her as a way to seek revenge on his enemies, to wreak havoc and terror.
In the end she had managed to fight him and regain control of herself, her body, her memories. There was some cold comfort in knowing that it was all behind her, that there was nothing left of her father’s malice except for a faded purple gash where she had plunged a knife into her own body rather than murder another innocent victim. Bliss had been ready to face death, ready to make the ultimate sacrifice. But she’d been blessed with another chance, a new life, a new way forward to redeem the past and forge a new identity.
But now that she was no longer Senator Llewellyn’s eldest daughter, no longer a student at Duchesne, no longer a cheerleader from Texas, she didn’t know who she was supposed to be. Was she still immortal? Her mother, Allegra Van Alen, had told her that she was human now, and that her true name was Lupus Theliel. Wolfsbane. But Allegra hadn’t told her what it meant. She’d only told her to find the wolves. They are demon fighters and we will need them in the final battle with the Silver Bloods, she’d said. Tame them. Bring them back to the fold. She hadn’t said anything else—not where to start, not where to go, nothing at all about how this task was to be accomplished. Bliss had managed to put it out of her mind so she could enjoy her friends’ bonding, but now that she was home, she needed to get to work.
Finally, Aunt Jane pulled up to the curb. “Hop in,” she said. “We’ve got a long drive ahead of us.” Bliss thought about how much her friends would make fun of her if they could see her with this woman in this car.
“Where are we headed?” Bliss asked. Before she’d left for Italy, they had been investigating a case in Chicago, but Jane had told her to take a return flight directly to Ohio instead.
“Cleveland area.”
“Hellhounds in Cleveland?” Bliss said, smirking a little.
“Maybe,” Jane sighed. “Allegra must know something I do not if she thinks you can bring them back to our side. Hellhounds are uncontrollable, violent, and vicious, creatures of shadow. This is a dangerous proposition she has laid on your shoulders. We will have to exercise utmost care.”
“But Allegra said they stood with the Blue Bloods once…that they’ve just been estranged,” Bliss said.
Jane explained. “The Hellhounds are Lucifer’s Dogs. When the Dark Prince was known on earth as Emperor Caligula, they were his guards, the best soldiers in the vast Roman army. But the hounds turned tail, betraying their master to stand with the Blue Bloods during the Crisis in Rome, helping Michael to send the demon king back to the underworld. They disappeared soon after. Some say they were punished for their actions, and once again do Lucifer’s bidding. The Repository isn’t clear on this, though.”
“Aunt Jane,” Bliss said in a small voice. “If the hounds are with Lucifer, that means we’ll have to go down to the underworld, doesn’t it…to find them? Down to the Ninth?” She shuddered at the thought of it. She had no desire to see her father again, much less to fight him for command of his dogs. Why had Allegra put this on her shoulders? More importantly, why had she accepted? She’d done it to repent for her actions, Bliss reminded herself, because whether she had been aware of it or not, she had been the vessel for her father’s malevolent spirit in mid-world. She had accepted this task to clear her conscience, to do a bit of good in the face of impossible evil. She only hoped she was strong enough. She wasn’t a vampire anymore—just a mortal girl now, with a middle-aged mortal to help her.
Her aunt’s forehead crinkled. “I truly hope not. I hope that’s not what Allegra had planned for us. Let’s see what we can accomplish on this side of the fence for now.”
Bliss exhaled.
“What’s in Cleveland?” she asked.
“Not Cleveland exactly, but a place called Hunting Valley,” Jane said. “There’s a burnt house with a strange story. I think something happened there that might lead us to find what we seek.”
“How was the bonding?” Jane asked as Bliss studied the papers on her lap and they drove deep into the night.
Bliss put down the newspaper clipping she was reading about the fire. She smiled a little, thinking of the happiness she had been part of so recently, which felt already as if it had happened many years before, as if the memory was already as worn as a sepia-tinged photograph. She thought of Schuyler’s shining face and Jack’s proud one. “It was wonderful,” she said, blinking back tears, feeling a deep longing and an ache for something she knew she would never have. Love throughout eternity.
Jane reached over from the steering wheel and squeezed her arm in sympathy. “I know you’re thinking about Dylan,” she said. “But you were right to let him go.”
Let him go…an interesting choice of words. Bliss could never truly let Dylan Ward go. She thought of what he had done for her: kept her sane, given her the strength she needed to fight her father’s spirit, to stand up to the Dark Prince. Her sacrifice had released her link to him—Dylan had moved on, gone to a better place—but she missed him with an ache that was physical. She would never heal from it.
“One day, you will find a love as great as the one you two shared. You deserve happiness, my dear, and you will find it,” said Jane.
Bliss sniffed, blinked back her tears. “I’m okay.”
“I know you are.” Jane smiled. “You are stronger than you know.”
They drove the rest of the way in silence, and an hour later arrived at their destination. Jane pulled the rental car up to a police barricade around the remains of the burned-out house in the middle of the street. “I think this is it,” Jane said. It was after midnight, and the streets were empty, the heavy cloak of darkness impenetrable. The only sound came from the crunching of their tires on the gravel. The night air was bracing cold.
They stepped out of the car. Bliss clicked on her flashlight and led the way. Once they’d reached what remained of the house, she swept the flashlight across what must have, at one time, been the living room. “What do you think?” she asked. True to the reports Jane had pulled up for her to read on the drive, only the front door was still standing. Otherwise, everything had burned to the ground, to ashes and dust, rubble and debris, covered by a light gray snow. “An accident? Arson? Or…?”
“Not sure yet,” Jane said. “Let’s take a closer look around, see if we find anything odd.”
Jane had printed a story about the burned house from a blog that documented supernatural phenomena. Those who’d witnessed it burning said they had heard terrible screaming, eerie roars, and manic howling from inside the house as the fire raged. But it was an abandoned home—no one was supposed to be living there—and after the fire had consumed everything, the police had found no human remains, no proof that anyone had even been in the house when it burned.
The fire had been written off as an accident—the electric company had forgotten to turn off the power and a utility cable had sparked during a blackout. That was all.
Maybe the police were right. Maybe nothing had happened here. Maybe there was nothing to see, nothing here that would lead them to the hounds.
But Bliss kept staring at the door that was still standing, that hadn’t burned. It was impossible that an entire house could burn down leaving just the one door. She could imagine it only if there had been some sort of spell, some kind of protection over the house that the fire had managed to extinguish, but only in part.
She shone her flashlight on the scarred face of the door, and up close she could see faint traces of writing on the burned wood. Runes of some kind, perhaps. Across the dark lot Jane sneezed from the dust. “Hamlet’s ghost,” she muttered, blowing her nose.
