“You all right?” Lawson asked from the driver’s seat.
“No. Pull over,” Malcom said urgently. The minute Lawson stopped the car, Malcolm yanked open the door, making horrible regurgitating noises.
“Try not to hurl all over the car, all right? Took a lot of work getting this for nothing,” Lawson said, keeping his voice light. He’d stolen the car, of course; they could never have afforded it otherwise. They’d have to lose it in a week or two, or once someone got suspicious about that old license plate he’d bolted on it.
Malcolm gave a hollow laugh, leaned over, and threw up his dinner all over the gravel, trying not to get any vomit in their new car.
Rafe gave his brother a sympathetic pat on the back. “Let it out, let it out.”
“You’re killing him, you know,” said Edon from the passenger seat.
“Mac?” Lawson asked. “You sure you can do this? We don’t have to,” he said, although he knew it was a lie.
Malcolm knew it too. “I’m okay,” he said, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. He sat up straighter, regained his spirit. “Keep your eyes on the road, hotshot. Don’t worry about me.”
“Maybe put your seat belt on too while you’re at it,” Edon said. It was pitch black outside and Lawson was cruising at just over ninety, headlights off. “No one minds if you hurt yourself, but you might plow into one of us on your way out the windshield. We’d rather not pick glass out of our hair.”
Lawson grunted. He gazed at the endless black pavement, no streetlights, just the dark of the sky and the endless road. He drove fast because it was fun and he could always talk his way out of a ticket, and he drove without headlights because it was easier to see Hellhounds in the dark.
The oculus couldn’t be too far now if Malcolm was so ill. The youngest could sense the hounds’ presence, they’d learned; his stomach acted as an alarm that the hounds were near. It had kept them one step ahead of their pursuers.
When they lost Tala, for a while it had seemed they had lost Lawson too. His brothers knew the reason—he and Tala hadn’t fooled anybody with their sneaking around. He had shut down, just like Edon had after their escape, if not worse. He did not speak, did not eat; he was barely functioning. His heart was shattered. It was torture not knowing what had befallen Tala, whether she had been killed immediately upon capture, or whether the hounds had let her live. Even if they had kept her alive, it was only a few weeks now to her eighteenth moon day, and he had seen what had happened to Ahramin.
There was little hope of executing a rescue operation. Hell was vast and infinite; Tala could be anywhere. He could spend the rest of his life looking and he would never find her. As the days went by, there was even less chance of finding her alive and unchanged.
She was gone, and that was it.
Until…
A few days earlier Malcolm had woken screaming from his sleep, sweat running down his face. “It’s him, I can see him!” The “him” was Romulus, of course. The Great Beast of Hell was ever in their minds.
“You saw Romulus? Where?” Edon demanded, his voice rising in panic.
“It looked like he was in the moon,” Malcolm said. “He was speaking to someone.”
“An oculus,” Edon said, wary. He explained that the obscura luminis were beacons that shone in the glom, the dark lights, which the wolves had used thousands of years earlier, during the days of the old empire, to communicate past vast distances. They were scattered all over the globe and the underworld, had been used by the Praetorian Guard to keep track of the packs as they roamed across the universe, but the oculi had been dark for centuries. Now one was lit, and possibly working.
“Where?” Lawson asked.
Malcolm shut his eyes, concentrating. “It looked like it was in that place we first appeared, when we arrived here. That place by the side of the road, that looked like it had been recently cleared.”
An oculus. Lawson felt the first flash of hope rise in his chest. “I can use it, I can use the oculus to find Tala. It can show me where she is, where they’re holding her.”
“No!”
Lawson looked at Edon as if he were a stranger. “No?”
Edon glared at him. “If you use the oculus, you could risk revealing our location to Romulus! Don’t you see that? You would put us all in danger.”
“I won’t—I can do it—I know I can. I’ll be quick, I promise. Nothing will happen.” He couldn’t give up on Tala, not yet. She might still be alive, and if she was, he couldn’t leave her to that dark fate; he owed her that much. He thought of his love, the girl with the bright pink hair and the shy smile who sang softly to herself while she went about her chores. He could still see her, lying next to him in bed, could still feel her sweet breath on his cheek.
“Edon—please. Let me do this thing,” he’d begged. He knew Malcolm and Rafe would follow, and it was Edon he had to convince.
“No, Lawson. You are a fool if you think you can get her back. It’s over. She’s gone. You must accept your loss as I have,” he said.
“No.” He felt a coldness inside him as he looked at his brother. Lawson had not wanted to admit it before, but in his heart, he judged Edon as weak for not having returned to Hell to rescue Ahramin. Weak for letting her sacrifice herself while he ran to freedom. He’d pitied Edon then, and he hated him for it now. That Edon no longer had any hope did not mean it was the same for him.
Tala might still be alive. Alive and unturned. Still the wolf he loved. There was hope. There was an oculus. It would show him where she was and he would get her back. Or he would die trying. Since he’d lost her, Lawson had all but forgotten about Marrok and the rest of his brothers and sisters in the underworld; only Tala mattered for now.
In the end, Edon had crumbled, as Lawson had known he would. But as they drove toward the oculus, Lawson felt a stab of guilt. He was running in the dark—literally and figuratively. He had sworn to protect the pack and yet here he was, leading them straight to danger. Edon said the oculus was sure to be guarded by hounds, and Malcolm’s queasy stomach confirmed this. Even Arthur had not approved of the idea.
“Look, I didn’t ask for you guys to come with me,” Lawson grumbled now. “I told you I could handle it myself.”
“Sure you can, man,” Rafe said from the back. “But why should we let you have all the fun?”
“We’re only here because of you. Remember that,” Edon said. Remember that you are risking our freedom for your happiness.
What if Edon was right? What if Tala was already dead? What if Romulus found them through the oculus? What then? If he failed to use the oculus without being seen, the hounds would be upon them and they would all be dragged back down to Hell, and all would be for naught.
“Fine,” he said. “Fine. You win.” He began to turn the wheel around. He was asking too much. He would not be able to bear it if one of his brothers lost his life in an effort to save Tala’s. Edon was right—this was likely to put them all back in chains.
“No,” Malcolm said from the backseat, his voice hoarse. “We need to go on. We already took a vote. We’re going to the oculus. We told Lawson we’d help him and we will.”
Lawson raised his eyebrow at his older brother, and for a moment, the tension in the car was strung as tightly as a kite string.
Finally, Edon threw up his hands. “Just make it quick, all right?”
“No one’s faster than me.” Lawson grinned as the car shot forward in the night.
“Oh god,” Malcolm gurgled, clutching his middle.
Lawson let off the gas. “How far?”
The deathly ill look on the younger boy’s face told him all he needed to know. He put the car in neutral and let it roll. With the lights off and the engine out of gear, the car whistled quietly down the steep incline like a sailboat cruising on smooth black water. Lawson watched and listened as they drifted down the slope, studying the trees and tall grasses for any sign of movement. Crickets chirped and fireflies flickered in the distance.
The car slowed until it stopped, and Lawson turned off the engine.
“Where’s the guard? Do you see them?” he asked.
Rafe swept the landscape with a pair of binoculars. “They’re on patrol, on the other side of the ridge.”
“There,” Edon said quietly, pointing to a blinking light through the trees.
“I see it.” Lawson nodded. “Stay in the car,” he told Malcolm. “The rest of you, come with me—you wanted to help, so you know the drill. If you get into trouble, let me deal with them. Don’t be a hero. Leave them to me.”
“Sure thing.” Rafe smiled, his sleepy eyes lighting up. “You get your ass kicked, we’ll stay out of it. Let them slap you around a little.”
Lawson stretched his neck and cracked his back, flexing his arm muscles, preparing himself for what lay ahead. “I just want to have a little chat. It’ll be a cakewalk, I promise.” He slammed the door and led the rest of the team closer to the light. No time to think of whether this was the right thing to do now. He just had to make it through the next few minutes. He had to concentrate. Get in and out before those hounds nearby caught their scent. “Ready?” he asked, preparing the boys for the ritual.
One by one the brothers whispered the words that bound them, the pact they had sworn to each other. As they recited their words, a small blue crescent appeared on each of their faces. The sigil of their pack, the pulsing sickle throbbed in time with the beating of their hearts, giving testament to the bond they shared. When the testimony was over, the blue marks faded from their cheeks.
“All right, then,” Lawson said, preparing himself for battle.
Next to him, his brothers were doing the same, their shoulders squared, blood pumping, eyes narrowed to squints, ready to attack if hounds appeared. Ready to fight. Edon balled his fists while Rafe cracked his knuckles. They were trained warriors, lean and ready.
The light blinked on and off through the dense forest of trees. Lawson struck out ahead, Edon next, and Rafe pulling up the rear. They fanned out in a triangular formation, keeping just enough distance from each other that they could easily come to each other’s defense while having space to get away so that not all of them would be captured if it came down to that.
Lawson left his brothers at the base of the hill and followed a trail to the top until he was standing just outside a dim pool of light centered in a clearing of the trees. Tall shadows radiated in all directions from the circle. The ground was newly cleared, covered with a fresh bed of leaves and ringed with tree stumps.
“I’m going in,” he called.
“Go on, then,” Edon said.
“Get it over with,” added Rafe.
“Relax,” Lawson chided. The hounds were far enough away. In the silence he could hear only the rustling of the leaves and the soft quiet slithering of snakes in the moss, the sniffing and scratching of woodland animals.
He stepped into the light of the oculus. Edon had briefed him on how to use it, and it sounded simple enough. Let the light shine on him, and then command it to show him what he wanted to see.
When he entered, the forest and hill and trees disappeared, and his vision filled with a blazing light, white-hot like the center of a star. Lawson shielded his eyes and blinked. At first he was dazzled by the light, surrounded and engulfed by the white glow, but then he felt a familiar sensation and he realized that it was not light he was seeing at all, but its polar opposite. The beacon was made from a darkness that was complete, the darkness of the abyss, his former home. He had grown unused to it since their escape.
Inside the oculus he was overwhelmed by images from every place and time; he could see into the past and the present, into all corners of the universe. He had to make it stop, make it show him what he wanted to see, what he needed to see.
“Show me my mate,” he ordered. “Tala of the Wolves, Born of the Underworld, Slave to None.”
The whirring images stopped and a vision of a girl appeared.
Was it Tala? Lawson couldn’t tell. He squinted into the light. If only the oculus would show him more—but the image remained vague and fuzzy. He was beginning to feel frustrated when it suddenly snapped into focus. He took a sharp breath. There was a girl in front of him. But she was definitely not Tala.
She was beautiful, though, with curly red hair and green eyes. She had a forthright, arresting grace about her, but her eyes looked a bit sad, as if she had been through some hardship.
She stared at him.
“Who are you?” he whispered. Then he noticed the amulet around her neck. The Heart of Stone. She carried the Black Fire of Hell. He jerked away from her, his mind racing. She was not a hound, he knew that much—her eyes were green, not crimson—but the charm she wore marked her as one of the underworld. A spy! Romulus’s spy! She had to be a human tracker—he’d heard the masters sometimes used Red Bloods as eyes and ears aboveground.
Lawson cursed under his breath. She had seen him—looked directly at him. He couldn’t panic. He had to do something—what? If she was a spy, then let her come to them—Let her find us, he thought. She was close by—he could sense her presence—perhaps only a few miles away.
He sent her a vision of the butcher shop, let her see him as a wolf. He felt her satisfaction. He was right, then. She was looking for them. That much was clear. She answered to Romulus. He released her from his vision.
The darkness returned and the oculus went black. Why had it shown her to him? To warn him? It had to be. But where was Tala? The oculus hadn’t given him the answer he sought.
Lawson didn’t know what to do. He was wasting time; the longer he stayed in the light of the oculus, the greater the risk that Romulus would see him there. He hesitated, and while he was vacillating, the oculus came back to life and a low, powerful voice rumbled from hidden depths.
“Speak your name, hound.” It was a command. Romulus.
Lawson backed away from the light, trying not to panic. The voice filled him with fear and loathing, and it took all his strength not to run. So far, it seemed that Romulus had not recognized him. But he had to get out of there.
“Speak your name.”
Think.…He had to say something…or it would become suspicious…he could not stall for longer…he had to do something…say something…he waited too long…
The oculus went dark and as the earth opened up beneath him, he was thrown into the void.
Lawson was falling, tumbling through a dark cavern filled with sharp rock, and when he landed, he crashed hard on the stone ground.
“Ugh,” he groaned. He heard the shuffling of feet and looked up to see his brothers standing at the edge of the pit, looking down at him.
“Oh great, just great,” Edon said when he saw Lawson lying there. “Did you have to get caught? Did you do this on purpose?”
“Not funny,” Lawson said, trying to stand up. Thank goodness his body healed quickly.
“Ah, you’ll survive,” Rafe said.
“I don’t think I’ve survived this yet, genius,” Lawson snapped. “Come on, guys, a hand?” He knew his brothers were enjoying this a little too much. At least he was upright. Now he just needed to get out of this hole. “Where’s Mac?”
“You dead yet?” Malcolm asked, peering over the edge.
“I keep trying, but the universe won’t seem to oblige. Any ideas on how I can get out of this one?”
Malcolm was quiet for a moment. He disappeared from the edge of the pit only to return a moment later with a broken branch. “Rafe, can you take this? I’m not sure I can support his weight.”
Rafe took the branch and held it over the side. “Lawson, can you climb up some of those rocks and then grab hold of this?”
Lawson flexed his arms and legs. Nothing seemed broken, and his bruises would fade quickly. He scaled the walls of the cavern and then grabbed the branch, letting Rafe pull him to freedom.
“We have to get out of here,” he said. “Mac, how you feeling?”
“Bad,” Malcolm sa
id, and Lawson could see his face was pale, greenish. “They’re heading back to the oculus now. A small unit, two or three.” Malcolm shook his head and clutched his stomach. “I think I need to puke.”
Edon hustled them to the car. “No time. Let’s go, let’s go. I’m driving.”
Lawson didn’t argue and took the backseat next to Malcolm. Edon drove the car quietly and carefully back down the dirt road, then gunned the engine once they were out on the highway.
“So what did you see in there?” Malcolm asked when they had put some miles between them and the oculus. The youngest boy had color back in his cheeks, a good sign.
“I heard Romulus,” he finally admitted.
“Are you sure?” Malcolm asked, paling at the name of their fearsome general.
Edon whipped around. He slammed his hand on the steering wheel. “Did he see you? Did he know you were in the oculus?”
“I don’t think so. He kept asking my name. I don’t think he recognized me,” Lawson said. He hung his head. “You were right, it was a mistake to come.”
“Whether or not he knew who you were, we’ve got to move.” Edon glowered.
“Not yet,” Lawson said. “There’s something else.” He told them about the girl he’d seen, the one with the brilliant red hair and sad green eyes, the tracker, Romulus’s spy. “I sent her an image of the butcher shop. She’s going there now. Take me there.”
“You want her to find us?” Malcolm gaped.
“I want her to find me,” Lawson said smoothly.