Wolf Pact: A Wolf Pact Novel by Melissa de La Cruz Page B

you guys? What have you done with my aunt Jane? What the hell is going on?” she demanded.
    “Lawsonsaid you speak
Hroll
. This means you can’t mean us any harm. He’s sorry about what happened back at the shop. I’m Malcolm, by the way,” Malcolm said sweetly. “And that’s my brother. Lawson.”
    “Pleased to meet you both,” Bliss said, her tone sarcastic. “Now why don’t you tell me where you’re taking me?”
    Lawson caught her eye in the rear-view mirror. “I’d like to, but I need to know who you are first. I don’t know what to make of you. I thought you were a tracker, but you speak our tongue, which means you aren’t, but if you’re not a spy, then what are you? But I’m getting ahead of myself. First things first: what do you know about Tala? Where is she?”
    Bliss furrowed her brow. “Tala? I don’t know who that is, I’ve never heard of her. I told you, I’m looking for my aunt Jane.”
    Lawson’s heart sank. He’d had a feeling it wouldn’t be as simple as he’d hoped, but there was still the possibility that Bliss could lead him to Tala, even if she didn’t realize it herself. He just had to figure out how. He cleared his throat. “Next question, then—what are you? You’re no ordinary mortal.”
    “I guessnot. Seeing that I used to be a vampire,” she snapped.
    He hadn’t expected her to say that. Malcolm yelped from the backseat.
    “Easy there, Mac,” Lawson said, looking back at Bliss. “You’re one of the Fallen.” He was not pleased. The Fallen were no friends to the wolves. They had left them to their fate, to their curse. The wolves had a role to play in their story, Arthur had told him, but Lawson wanted no part in it.
    “I used to be. It’s a long story.” She looked away.
    “I’ve got time.”
    “There was … something wrong with me. I killed myself. Or at least I killed the vampire part of me. What-ever I was … I’m not anymore. I’m just human now.”
    And she expected him to believe that? He wanted to laugh. “No one’s just human. Especially not the Fallen.”
    “Maybe you’re right,” she said. “But that’s my story.”
    “Not all of it,” he said. “Why were you looking for us?”
    Bliss paused, and Lawson wondered if that meant she was about to lie. “I wasn’t looking for you exactly,” she said finally. “Like I told you already, I was looking for my aunt Jane. She’s missing, and I think … the hounds have her.”
    “Hounds? Whydo you think that?”
    “From the way she was taken.”
    “And how was that?”
    She described the room: everything torn up, as if raked by sharp claws, the whole place—bedspreads, curtains, sheets, pillows—shredded to pieces. “There was blood everywhere, and strange claw prints on the wall.”
    Lawson felt the hair on his arms rise as he listened to her tale. The hounds were afoot and had taken other victims, it sounded like. But why? Who was this Bliss Llewellyn and what was her connection to the hounds? Was he still right in thinking she would lead him to Tala somehow?
    “My turn to ask questions now,” she said. “What are
you
?”
    “I’m a wolf,” he said proudly. “We were once the
Abyssus Praetorium
.”
    “The Praetorian Guard,” she whispered. “The guards of the abyss. The keepers of time, guardians of the passages.”
    “You know our history.” He was pleased.
    “Yes I do. Lucifer’s dogs. The Hounds of Hell,” she whispered, her face paling.
    “Never call us by that name!” Lawson roared. The car veered to the side of the road and stopped abruptly. Bliss was thrown against the front seat, and blood trickled from her forehead. She was shaking.
    Lawsonturned and glared at her. Malcolm cringed. “Lawson, please,” his brother begged. “She doesn’t know.”
    Bliss stared back at the two of them angrily. “Know what? Wolf, hound, all the same, isn’t it?”
    “No!” Lawson shook his head. “Never.” He looked down at the steering wheel, at his white