There was a girl on the bed. She was hooked to a drip line and sleeping quietly. Lawson walked to her side and stared down at the sleeping girl. Her hair looked different; her skin was so pale it was translucent; she looked half-dead. What have they done to you?
Next to him, Bliss read the label on the bag of fluid attached to the girl’s arm. “She’s heavily sedated. Probably why there’s no guard anymore, no need for locks.”
Of course not, Lawson thought. No need for locks, not with that industrial-strength dope they’re feeding her. She must have really scared the life out of everyone to earn that much of a dose.
He felt Bliss put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay,” she said. “Tala’s going to be all right, we’re going to get her out of here.” He shook his head and he gripped the metal bars on the bed so tightly his knuckles were white.
“Lawson…what’s the matter?”
The girl opened her eyes then. Her bright blue eyes were the color of the sky, but her voice was mocking. “I think he’s expecting someone else,” she said.
“Ahramin,” he said. The girl in the bed was the hound who’d been at their doorstep, the same girl who had bested him for alpha.
The day of the trials, when the gates had lifted, he had expected to see Varg, his strongest opponent. Instead, a lithe figure emerged from the shadows. Ahramin. He’d stared at her, unbelieving, but there was no sympathy in her eyes. She had fought him ferociously and she had triumphed. She had sunk her teeth into his neck. Had lifted him by the hair, displayed his white throat to Romulus, would have torn it, slashed it with her teeth, from ear to ear, but the general had spared him, and Lawson had been able to live.
But Tala was right, Lawson thought. I let her win. The masters had thrown him for a loop. He could not kill her—not Ahramin, one of his own, one from his den. He had been caught off guard and been defeated. He had allowed Ahramin to live, thinking he had made the bigger sacrifice. He had been prepared to meet his death rather than take her life. How could he have foreseen that doing so would mean that one day she would unleash the forces of Hell on his pack and destroy the only home he had ever known?
“Who’s Ahramin?” Bliss asked.
“Tell her, Lawson. Tell her who I am. That’s what they call you now, is it? Lawson? Strange name. But then again, you were always a little different,” Ahramin said. “Nice to see you again, sorry about that house. It looked…cozy.”
Lawson clenched his jaw. He ignored her and answered Bliss. “She was one of us. Tala’s sister. But they caught her when we escaped from Hell.…”
“And they turned me into one of them.” Ahramin looked at Bliss. “Hello again. So you found wolves instead of hounds, did you? Interesting. I wondered if you would return.”
Bliss thought Ahramin did look like Tala; she had the same almond-shaped blue eyes and the same fair skin, the same long face, the same slight build. But she didn’t have Tala’s round cheeks and pretty smile. Ahri was taut, lean, and tense. She was like a lioness ready to spring. Dangerous. Untrustworthy.
“You’re a hellhound,” Bliss breathed. She should have known from the beginning, thinking of the dread that surrounded the room, the strange things that had happened to the nurses, the janitors.
“Not quite.” Ahramin’s face crumpled and for a brief moment Bliss saw the broken girl from the other day. “You’ve got to believe me, Lawson, I’m not a hound anymore. I’m not anything. Not even a wolf. I can’t shift. I can’t do anything. When I failed to bring you to him, Romulus broke my collar.” She pulled her gown lower to show them the jagged black line around her neck, an imprint of the collar that used to be there. “He left me in that house to die, left me for dead in that fire we set for you.”
“She’s a hellhound, Lawson,” Bliss warned. “She might have been your friend once but she’s not anymore.”
“You can’t leave me here!” Ahramin cried. “You would abandon me again after everything?” she said, challenging him. “After my sacrifice?”
“Lawson—!” Bliss said, watching with horror as Lawson moved toward Ahramin and began to untie her foot restraints. “Think about it! You said so yourself—there’s no going back after the change. You don’t know what she’s capable of!”
But Lawson ignored her, although Ahramin didn’t seem to need any help—she ripped off the needles and wrenched her wrists out of their plastic shackles seemingly without effort. She nodded a thank-you to Lawson and walked out of the room, holding her hospital gown tightly closed. She walked regally, with her head held high, like a queen, the cheap cotton fabric like armor or couture. “Which way?” she asked when they came to the hallway.
“Here,” Lawson said, leading them up the back staircase. He seemed cowed somehow, okay with taking orde
rs. Bliss didn’t know what to make of it. Maybe he was shell-shocked; maybe he was doing it only out of guilt. But there seemed to be no talking him out of it.
A nurse tried to stop them and Ahramin merely smirked. “I’m taking a walk.”
If it was so easy to walk out, why hadn’t she done it before? Bliss wondered. Why stay here? Because it was the only place she was safe from the hounds, Lawson had explained. Hallowed ground. Blessed space. Off-limits to underworld scum. There was no way Ahramin could still be a hellhound if she was allowed into St. Bernadette’s. Maybe that was why Lawson was so confident that she was on their side? Bliss hoped so.
When they exited the hospital, Ahramin stopped in her tracks. Edon, startled by the noise, turned around and looked right at her. He gaped at her. “Ahri…Oh my god…Ahri…”
Ahramin blinked her eyes. Edon hesitantly moved closer to her, a half smile forming on his lips. But the smile disappeared when he saw the hard, closed look on her face.
“Ahri—I’m so sorry—we failed you.”
“Save your apologies, Edon,” Ahramin said, her voice cold and flat. “I have no need to hear them.”
Edon froze, his entire face red, as if she had just slapped him, and Bliss realized that somehow—without raising a hand—Ahramin had. Whatever had gone on between Edon and Ahramin was over; that much was clear.
“How are we getting out of here?” Ahramin asked.