Gates of Paradise (Blue Bloods 7)

“Let me try something else,” Lawson said, and knocked.

And waited.

And waited.

And then…the door opened.

“Well, it’s about time,” Arthur said, looking up from his book. “What took you so long?”

The room behind the cavern was enormous. It was really more of an apartment than a room, complete with a kitchen and dining table.

“So this is where you really live,” Lawson said.

“An old warlock needs to have his secrets,” Arthur said, with a wink. He turned to Ahramin. “Hello, my dear. And you are…?”

“I’m Ahramin,” she said, almost shyly. Lawson had never seen Ahramin nervous like this, but it was probably because she’d never met a warlock before. Not that there was anything to be scared about, as Arthur was a true friend of the wolves. He had explained to Lawson that long ago he’d owed a favor to a Fallen angel named Gabrielle, who had turned out to be Bliss’s mother. Gabrielle had asked him to help the wolves, and so he had.

“And Bliss?” Arthur asked.

Lawson didn’t flinch at her name. He quickly explained what had happened, how they’d fixed the issues with the timeline but got stuck trying to go to the underworld; then how he and Bliss had gone to New York to try to find her friends. “But you still haven’t told us what happened here. How did you escape the attack? Who attacked you? And what can we do to reopen the passages?”

Arthur laughed. “One thing at a time, my boy, one thing at a time. The Hellhounds left me alone once you disappeared. That mess up there is merely an illusion. As soon as it became clear you weren’t coming back anytime soon, and there was danger afoot, I knew I needed a better hiding place. What better way to escape an attack than to convince potential attackers that one has already occurred? I made the place a glorious mess.”

“You did a good job,” Edon said.

“Too good,” Lawson said. “We almost didn’t figure it out.”

“Oh, I knew you would. Such a simple clue, really. I almost worried that whoever came to attack me might cotton to it.”

“Did anyone come?” Rafe asked.

“Trackers, but they left. No hounds.”

“Well, what have you been doing here all year?” Malcolm asked.

“Don’t be rude,” Ahramin said.

Said the pot to the kettle, Lawson thought, but he was curious to hear Arthur’s answer.

“I’ve been working on your problem,” Arthur said.

“But we only just found out about it,” Lawson said, puzzled.

“When it took you such a long time to return, I started to worry and thought I would look into it. As it happens, I’ve discovered why the passages are out of sync. There’s been a rift in time.”

“What does that mean?” Edon asked.

“I’ll show you,” Arthur said. He retrieved a map from a drawer, one Lawson had never seen before. “This is a time map I discovered. Do you see this image here?” He pointed.

Lawson looked closer. The map was largely made up of pictures, but where Arthur pointed, there were two identical images, side by side, followed by a series of images that looked similar at first and then started looking different. But after studying the images for a minute, Lawson realized the first two weren’t identical. They were mirrored.

“Do you notice the difference?” Arthur asked. “The images on the map should all be unique, because there should only be one true path through time. But something broke, and now there are two paths. They’ve been there for a while. It’s amazing you’ve been able to move through the passages until now, since that break has caused a ripple effect that slowly created enough of a blockage that the passages are rendered useless. If that blockage is allowed to spread, time as we know it will cease to exist, and the world will crumble into chaos and disorder.”

Lawson had a feeling he knew what that meant. The wolves were members of the Praetorian Guard, keepers of the timeline. If something had gone wrong, it was their job to fix it. “What do we do?” he asked.

“You have to find the passage and fix the broken part. You’ll have to travel to its location since you can’t use the passages themselves anymore.”

“How will we know where to look?”