Wolf Pact: A Wolf Pact Novel (20 page)

Lawson began exploring the palace. He wandered through room after room on the first floor. The dining room, filled with recliners for royalty to lie on during their meals. No chairs for the elite, not in ancient Rome. Some of the recliners were clearly meant for one person; others were semicircular and could seat a number of people. An interior kitchen, with a fire pit for roasting meat and long tables and serving stands. Bedroom after bedroom, with sleeping couches holding high, fluffy feather beds, covered in blankets and pillows. If Romulus was keeping her by his side, then she’d be in a room closer to Romulus’s chambers, or even in his chambers themselves. The thought twisted his stomach, but he had to keep going.

Corridor
after corridor, room after room. Finally, he saw a door that bore the sigil of the republic. Romulus’s quarters. She had to be in there.
Tala, where are you?

The bedroom was larger and more elaborate than any he’d seen so far. The bed was enormous, the mattress higher off the ground than any of the others. Lawson sat down and sunk deeply into the plush feather bed. Apparently firm mattresses were a thing of the future, he thought. He tried to picture Tala here, to pick up her scent. Nothing.

He heaved himself off the tall bed and explored the rest of the room. Wooden shelves held togas, spare armor, leather sandals. The togas were lighter and softer than the one he wore, some made of cotton, some of silk. Too bad there weren’t any extra weapons lying around. No sign that a woman had been here; none of the tunics looked like dresses, like the ones Bliss and Ahramin were wearing.

Except …

He turned his head to the corner of the bedroom. There was a pile of what appeared to be laundry sitting in the corner. Funny how some things stayed the same, no matter what century you were in, he thought; people still left their clothes on the floor. But then he looked closer. The clothes appeared to be silk; they glistened as he moved toward them. He picked up the fabric and saw that it was a woman’s tunic, soft to the touch and beautifully cut, as best as he could tell.

And covered
in bloodstains.

Lawson felt as if he couldn’t breathe.
Tala … where are you? What happened here?

It couldn’t be hers, could it? But it had to be. Romulus had taken no mate, and he’d shown himself to be insistent on doing whatever he could to destroy Lawson, to destroy whatever power he thought Lawson possessed. He didn’t want to think about what Romulus had done to her, about the prospect of never seeing Tala again. It couldn’t be true.

“She’s not here, my boy.”

Lawson turned around to see Romulus standing at the doorway.

B
liss stumbled
into the crowd blindly, blinking back tears, not caring where she was going, not knowing what to do, or what to think. She had trusted him to accept her as she was, and he had rejected her. She could still see the hate that had been in his eyes when she’d told him—but what did she expect? Of course he would react that way—her father had cursed his people, turned them into beasts, made them slaves. How could he see past that? She barreled through the crowd, unseeing, until by accident she bumped into Rafe.

“Bliss!” he cried.

“What’s wrong? What happened?” she asked. “Why aren’t you at the oculus?”

“Ahramin sent me to find you. The oculus does not respond. We cannot change the order. She thinks the masters have locked it off somehow, to keep anyone from tampering with it. Where’s Lawson?”

Bliss shook her head. “We don’t need Lawson right now.” Lawson might have dismissed her, but Bliss knew what she had to do. Lawson had sent the wrong person to the oculus. She was of the same blood as the masters, and because she was Lucifer’s daughter, the hounds would follow her every command. Only she could stop the massacre. “Take me to the oculus, quickly.”

The
oculus was housed in the great Temple of Mars, and when Bliss arrived, Ahramin and the boys had managed to clear the area; the hellhound guards were dead or subdued, bound with silver chains. There was no time to explain, and Bliss stepped directly into the light of the oculus in the center of the room.

It was like being in the passages; it was all connected, she realized, the oculi, the dark roads, all part of the great network of space and time. Bliss stepped inside the abyss and sent out the message, seeing each hound in the light, their souls as dark stars in the firmament.

You shall not harm the Sabine women but take them as wives. The Dark Prince himself wishes this so.

One by one the light of each hound brightened in response. The message was being received and transmitted to the hive mind.

Bliss hesitated—she realized the oculus could help her in another way. “Show me the Watcher,” she ordered.

The images whirred and flew, and finally she saw her aunt. Jane Murray was wearing a raincoat and walking purposefully through a gray, foggy city. She was alive and unharmed. Bliss called to her through the vortex of space and time.

When
Bliss stepped out of the oculus, Ahramin was waiting. “We saw the light flash, it meant the message went out. You are one of them,” the dark girl said. “Lucifer’s kin.”

Bliss did not argue. She looked at the boys, worried about their reaction. “I am sorry that I did not tell you sooner, but while I am my father’s daughter, I am my own person. He is as much my enemy as yours.”

“You don’t need to explain,” Malcolm said, and hugged her. “You saved the timeline.”

“Where is Lawson? Does he know about you?” Ahramin asked.

She nodded. “Yes,” she said, not wanting to share any more information for now.

They heard footsteps from the entrance to the temple. Ahramin turned to the boys. “Guard this place. Make sure no one else uses the oculus. Bliss and I will go to Lawson. Come,” she said to Bliss, moving her away from the brothers.

“Look,
Lawson doesn’t want me around, I’ll stay here,” Bliss said.

Ahramin shook her head. “There is no time to be bashful. Listen, Lawson thinks he can kill Romulus with the archangel’s sword.”

Bliss nodded.

“He can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I stole it,” Ahramin said, trembling. “When I shook his hand, when he released me.” She showed Bliss the velvet pouch that contained Michael’s sword. “I’ve had it ever since.”

Bliss stared at her. “You sent him to his death! Romulus will destroy him! What were you thinking!” Then she realized. “You lied to us. You are still a Hound of Hell.”

Ahramin’s body was wracked with spasms. “I tried to fight it—Romulus left me in the house as bait—he hoped that somehow Lawson would find out—and come back for me. I was supposed to deliver them all to him—but I fought it, as long as I could.”

Bliss stared at the shaking girl, seeing the broken patient from the hospital again. “Your cough. Your body was fighting your will.”

“Yes.”

“But
hallowed ground—how did you manage it? I thought hounds weren’t allowed to be in those places.”

“St. Bernadette’s was not holy. It was once run by an order, but it is a public hospital now. I made sure before they took me there.”

“Why are you telling me this now?”

“I have fought the collar as much as I could, but it is killing me. With every step I take to help the wolves, it takes another piece of my soul. I am going to die now,” Ahramin said. “But I don’t want … I don’t want
them
to die.” She motioned to the temple, where the boys were fighting the hounds. “Edon doesn’t know. I don’t want him to know I was ever false. Please, let him still love me, even when I am gone.”

“Why should I believe anything you say?”

“Because you love Lawson and you want to help him. I love him too. Will you help me?”

I
n human form,
Romulus was an enormous man, nearly seven feet in height. His shadow covered Lawson, his blinding red robe fluttering in an iridescent halo around him. No simple togas for him, silk or otherwise; he was arrayed in full golden battle armor, with the sweeping robe flowing from his shoulders. In one hand he carried the golden staff Lawson had seen from the window, a weapon as heavy as a pair of Roman soldiers. A red fire roared in his black eyes as he smiled at Lawson, a strange, eerie smile.

“Where is she?” Lawson asked. “Where’s Tala?”

Romulus laughed. “Where do you think she is? She’s dead, of course.”

“You’re lying.” Lawson tapped his pocket, looking for the sword he had stolen from the underworld, the sword of the angels, but it was nowhere to be found.

Romulus
smiled as he smacked him down with his golden staff, felling him as easily as if he were a child or a small animal. An annoyance, nothing more. Lawson fell backward on the hard stone. He heard his skull crack, blood trailing from the wound.

What had happened …?

Where was the sword?

Bliss?

Had she …?

The heavy staff came down again and again, and he collapsed against the force of more blows from Romulus. He held up his hands to shield his face, but a silver claw embedded at the top of the golden scepter cut deep into his chest.

Lawson tried to lift himself off the floor and Romulus clubbed him in the back with a blow so powerful it might have cleaved a normal man in half. The Great Beast of Hell hovered over him. “Silly boy,” the general said. “You should have joined us when we still wanted you. Instead, you doomed her to her fate.”

“You didn’t need to kill her. What harm was she to you alive?”

“She was useful for a time,” Romulus said, and Lawson didn’t want to think what the flicker in the fire of his eyes meant. “A pity she wasn’t any prettier, though. Otherwise I might have kept her around a bit longer.”

Lawson
groaned. He looked over at the bloody toga, just feet away from where he lay on the ground. Tala was here, but he had come too late.

Romulus laughed. “Oh, that thing? No, you’re mistaken. That was not hers.”

Lawson felt a surge of hope.

“When you left her to burn in that house, I killed her myself. Besides, why keep her alive when I could gain the same advantage by having Ahramin tell you a lie? Your mate has been dead for a very long time now. Truly, you should have listened to your brothers and kept moving. But when you showed yourself at the oculus, it was clear you still had hope, just like you had only a moment ago, when I told you the clothes weren’t hers. It gives me great pleasure to watch that hope die, the hope that is your downfall.”

Lawson writhed on the floor, holding his head. He was bleeding from his wounds—and the silver poison was working its way into his blood. He would die. But it didn’t matter.

Tala was dead.

She’d been dead from the beginning.

She’d been dead since he’d left her. She was dead …

Tala …

It was all
a dream, this idea that he could rescue her, a stupid dream. A fantasy. His guilt had prodded him on because he hadn’t wanted to accept what had happened. He’d known she was as good as dead when he left her to the hounds, but he wouldn’t accept it. He knew, but if he accepted it, he’d also have to accept that she’d been killed because of him, because of who he was, what he was.

Tala had pushed him away. She knew what was going to happen. She knew that if they left her behind, the hounds would come and tear her apart. But she loved him, so she had saved him.

Tala, I’ve failed you … and now I’ve failed everyone …

“Fenrir,”
Romulus sneered. “The great hope of the wolves. The man out of time, whom time cannot hold. The one who would save them all, who would free them from their chains. I gave you a choice back then to join me, and you chose unwisely. There will be no freedom for the wolves. After today, there will be no wolves at all.”

Romulus moved to the balcony and gave the signal to commence the attack.

“S
omething’s wrong,” Romulus growled; he moved away from the balcony. Bleeding from his wounds on the floor, Lawson could hear the sounds of screaming and chaos, but if Romulus was not satisfied, then maybe, just maybe, his pack had succeeded in changing the orders. Maybe it meant the Sabines would survive, and so would the line of wolves.

The great
general turned to him with a menacing glare. “This is your doing,” he hissed. “There is no other way. The orders were clear.”

Lawson managed a weak laugh; if this was all the victory he would taste, he would savor it before the end. “It is too late … you will not be able to change it …”

“No matter,” Romulus said. “You were the gravest threat to the Dark Prince and you will die today.” Once again, he struck Lawson with the staff, sending him skittering to the far wall.

Lawson
was too debilitated by his injuries to protect himself but he did not care. He would die, but he had saved the wolves. Bliss was wrong; he was no Fenrir, but maybe Marrok would find a way to bring them out of the underworld.