THREE

Bliss

merging from the Passages of Time was always a disconcerting experience, as if your entire being had been taken apart and then re-formed, the molecules and the memories haphazardly patched together. Bliss Llewellyn felt the familiar dizziness and disorientation, but it was worse now, since they were not just traveling through time but back to the underworld, back to her father’s domain, back to Hell, where the wolves were turned into Hellhounds, where Lawson and the pack had been kept in chains.

She had come upon the boys by chance—had been shown a vision of a wolf in the glom, and had tracked it to a butcher shop in a small town in Ohio. There, she had befriended Lawson and his brothers, and together they had traveled to the dawn of Rome, to the beginning of the empire, to solve a mystery of the wolves’ ancestry. Lawson was revealed to be the wolf Fenrir, the greatest wolf of the underworld, and he had bested Romulus, the Beast of Hell, the Hound of Hounds; had killed him with Michael’s sword, an archangel’s blade. With the help of his pack, he had stopped the Sabine massacre, and in doing so had saved the wolves from extinction. Now they had returned to Hell to fulfill his promise to free his people from the Silver Blood demons.

Lawson turned around, his dark eyes sparkling, and he smiled. The sigil on his cheek, the one that matched Bliss’s and marked them as part of the same pack, the blue crescent moon, shone in the dim light. “You okay back there?” he asked.

Bliss nodded, keeping pace with his long step. She was scared but determined to see it through. This was what her mother had tasked her to do—to bring the wolves back into the fold, to help the vampires in their war against their enemies—but she had her own reasons for pursuing this quest. Bliss had a dark history behind her: for centuries upon centuries she had been an unknowing party to evil. As the vehicle for the Dark Prince, she had kept his spirit alive on earth, and in doing so had brought death and grief to the vampires. Bliss wanted not only redemption, but revenge.

She had pinned her hopes on the pack—Lawson, impulsive, reckless, and powerfully strong, and his brothers—Edon, Rafe, and Malcolm—loyal soldiers all—along with Ahramin, the dark one—the wolf who had been turned into a hound and reclaimed her soul. They surrounded her now, and Bliss found solace in their number and strength. They were ready to fight.

Lawson stumbled out of the passage, and everyone else followed after. Bliss looked around—steeling herself for the worst—expecting to breathe the smoke of the underworld—to see gray skies and barren lands—or to be met by a thousand demons with crimson eyes and burning tongues, wielding swords of dark flame.

But what was this? There was grass beneath her feet. Trees forming a canopy over her head. The sweet smell of morning dew. This wasn’t the underworld….This looked strangely familiar….This was…Ohio?

“Where are we?” she asked Lawson, who was standing next to her. She looked to the rest of the pack. Malcolm wiped his eyeglasses on his sleeve. Rafe appeared confused, and Ahramin and Edon were whispering to each other.

“Guys?” she asked. “Um…are we where I think we are?”

Lawson nodded grimly. “Yeah. We’re back in Hunting Valley.” He kicked a tree stump. “We must have made a wrong turn somewhere.”

They’d landed in the middle of rural suburbia, not far from where Bliss had found them in the beginning. This was the clearing in the woods, a few miles away from the center of town, where the boys lived above a butcher shop.

“Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s go back in.” She removed the chronolog from her jeans pocket. The timekeeper was rotating, its hands spinning out of control. “Wait—there’s something wrong with it. Mac, can you look at it?”

“Sure,” Malcolm said. He took it from her hand and studied it. “It looks like it’s trying to make a reading, but something’s preventing it from doing so.”

Bliss looked back from where they came from. The passage had closed behind them. “Maybe because we’re out of the passage? Lawson, can you open it back up?”

Lawson nodded; his face took on a look of deep concentration.

They waited, but nothing happened.

“Come on, Lawson, get on with it,” Ahramin said, a trace of annoyance in her voice.

“I’m trying,” Lawson said. “Something’s wrong. I can’t open the portal.”

“Are you doing something different?” Malcolm asked. “Can we help?”

Of course he’d offer to help, Bliss thought. Malcolm was the youngest in the pack, and by far the sweetest. Bliss had come to adore him in the time they’d spent together. Edon and Rafe had been tougher nuts to crack, though she felt close to them as well. As for Ahramin, the former Hellhound was one of them now, her past transgressions forgiven when she’d proved herself worthy of the pack by fighting against Romulus’s will and breaking her collar. They were a team, a unit, and if Bliss had any lingering suspicions concerning Ahramin, she chided herself for them. For if she felt that way about Ahramin, how could she expect anyone to forgive her for her own dark past? Ahramin was merely a former Hellhound, but Bliss was Lucifer’s daughter. The Dark Prince had cursed the wolves, had turned them into slaves. In the underworld, the Silver Bloods had been the wolves’ masters.

“Tell us what you need us to do,” she urged Lawson.

“This has never happened before,” he grumbled. “But sure, why not? Guys, everyone focus. We just need to clear our minds, imagine the passage opening. Maybe if we all work together we can do it.”

The pack huddled together. Bliss pushed away her fear, pushed away her doubt, and pictured the Passages of Time opening before her. Her head ached, and she put her hands to her temples, feeling them throb and pulse, and for a moment she was convinced it was working. She could feel the passage opening behind her, felt the wind through the tunnels.

Then it stopped.

The feeling went away.

She opened her eyes and looked around. Nothing had changed.

They were still standing in the clearing.

“What’s going on?” Rafe asked, frustrated.

“Did you do something?” Ahramin asked Lawson. “Like accidentally seal the passage behind us when we went through?”

“Why do you always assume it was me who did something wrong?” Lawson protested.

“Because you’ve screwed up before,” she snapped. “Remember how I got left behind the last time?”

They sounded like an old married couple, Bliss thought. Which implied a certain kind of intimacy that she didn’t want to think about too much. Besides, it was ridiculous to even consider. Ahramin and Lawson? If they hadn’t been in the same pack, it was clear they would have despised each other. Besides, Ahramin had been pledged to Edon from the beginning. No, they weren’t like a married couple—more like bickering siblings, which made more sense.

“Don’t be so hard on him, Ahri; he’s doing his best,” Edon said.

“It wasn’t Lawson,” Malcolm said. “It’s like the passages have closed up on their own. Can’t you feel it?”

Rafe nodded. “It did feel different, like something was blocking them.”

“Or someone,” Bliss said.