"Romulus," Lawson said, tapping the picture. "I've always been drawn to this painting; one of the stories passed down among the wolves is about our history with the Sabines, but I don't know much about it. None of us do, we just know we're connected to them somehow. I found this in a gift shop and I had to have it."
"I know a little bit," Bliss said. She had studied history with Jane Murray, and she remembered what her aunt had told her about the event.
"Tell me."
"During the founding of Rome, the Romans took the Sabines as wives. They were a soldiers' society and women were scarce. They needed to balance the population and so they had to abduct their wives from the surrounding communities. They planned celebratory games for their new city and called the festival the Consualia, a festival for Neptune. It was intended to attract people from the surrounding region, act as a showcase for the newly built city of Rome. They issued invitations to all the tribes, including the Sabines. But it was just a cover. As the games were about to begin, Romulus gave the signal that you see here, and the Roman soldiers rushed into the crowd and snatched the unarmed Sabine women." She looked closely at the picture. "Something's different. Something's changed," she said. "Look!"
"I don't see any difference," Lawson said, squinting at it.
"There is - they're killing the women in this version - stabbing them, gutting them." Bliss turned the postcard over. In small print, the text read The Massacre of the Sabine Women.
But when she turned the postcard back, the image was the original painting, in which the women were merely being captured. The title went back to the original as well.
"It's changed back - what's going on?" Bliss asked.
"You can see that?" Lawson asked. He looked at her keenly. "I'm not sure, but I think what we're seeing is a timeline in flux. History hasn't been set. Something's happened or is about to happen. This must be where Romulus is headed when he enters the passages. He's going to this moment in time to turn the abduction into a massacre. But why? Why does Lucifer want the Sabines destroyed? Why are they so important?"
Chapter Twenty-Eight
In the morning, Lawson told his brothers the plan to follow Romulus into the timeline. "I don't expect you to follow me, I can handle him myself," he said.
"What do you take us for, cowards?" Rafe asked. "Of course we are going with you. Right, Mac?"
Malcolm nodded. "We followed you out of the underworld, we will follow you back to Rome."
Lawson nodded his thanks and it was clear he had not expected anything less. "Come on, let's go see the chief," he said.
Marrok listened patiently as Bliss told her story. "So, Romulus has found himself a guide to the passages," he said. "Let us hope she is not as good as this one." He pulled something from his pocket. It was a small round silver pocket watch in a cloth handkerchief. "We were immune to the silver once, but not anymore. I will give this to you to hold, since I don't think it will burn your skin." He dropped the watch into her palm. It was unusually heavy and cold.
Bliss looked down at the chronolog. The dial had Roman numerals numbered from one to twenty-four. The numerals started at the bottom of the dial and moved counterclockwise around the circle. There was a second dial, layered over the first, in silver, and the edge of the watch face was carved with runes. "How do you use it?"
"We're not sure," Marrok said, embarrassed. "I'm hoping it will be self-explanatory once all of you enter the passages."
Bliss touched the chronolog and suddenly experienced a flash of memory. In her mind, she saw a hand reach out and press a button on the side of the chronolog. But it wasn't her hand, and she wasn't accessing her own memories; they belonged to someone else. Not Lucifer - she didn't have the icy feeling that crept up her spine when she knew she was recalling something he'd seen. No, these were pleasant memories, memories of a happier time and place, memories belonging to someone she loved. This memory was Allegra's. She blinked and looked around. How strange that she had her mother's memories in her as well. It comforted her to know she still had a connection to Allegra.
"Can I see it?" Malcolm asked shyly.
"Careful," she said, placing it on his palm with a handkerchief.
Lawson was arguing with Marrok. "I told you last night, I'm not leaving without Ahramin. She's part of my pack. Release her to me."
Marrok did not look happy to hear that. "You don't know what she did down there. She was the worst one they had, Lawson. She was vicious ... cruel. She's not the she-wolf she was. They turned her into a hound."
"Even so, they turned her into something else when Romulus broke her collar. She's not a hound anymore. Her eyes are blue. She cannot shift. Marrok, be reasonable."
"She tortured us, Ulf. Not reluctantly - with glee. When they released her aboveground, she tracked us one by one. Wasn't she the hound who found your pack?"
Lawson did not answer. Of course he remembered. The dark girl at the door, her eyes blazing with crimson hatred. "She wore a collar back then. She doesn't now. She's part of my pack. I speak for her."
Marrok sighed. "There's no other way?"
"She belongs with us. My brother will not leave her side. Without her, I lose Edon. I will need all my strength when I go to Rome."
"I understand," Marrok said. "I will release her to your care. But she is your responsibility now. If she betrays us, my pack will not hesitate to kill her."
"If she betrays us," Lawson promised, "I'll kill her myself."
Ahramin did not seem grateful that Lawson had pled her release. The wolves had been holding her in a wooden cage, and the bars exhaled as they clattered to the ground. She stepped over the wooden sticks. "Marrok had every right to hold me, you don't know what I did for Romulus," Ahramin said dully. "Why did you secure my freedom?" she asked Lawson.
"I trust you, Ahramin. You brought us to Marrok, to the free wolves, as you had promised. You say you are no longer a hound and I believe you," he said, offering his hand to shake. "Peace?"
Her eyes flashed but she held her tongue and managed to shake his hand. Bliss hoped Lawson knew what he was doing. Ahramin made her way to Edon, who had never left her side, who had slept next to her cage all night.
"I know he only asked for my freedom because of you," she said to him, sounding tender toward him for the first time since she had returned to the pack. She held a hand to his cheek, and Edon put a hand on top of hers. They stood there for a long time. Whatever had broken between them appeared to be mending.
As Bliss watched the two of them, she felt another stab of jealousy. It was another reminder that Dylan was gone, forever this time, and the one person who made his absence hurt a little less was obsessed with finding his own lost love. She could never compete with that, and she wouldn't want to.
The pretty scene was broken by Malcolm's vomiting all over his shoes. He fell to the ground and began to shake all over, his body jerking in spasms. Rafe picked him up in his arms. "It's bad, they must be right on us," he said.
"Into the pine trees. Now!" Lawson said as he led them into the forest, where the thicket of trees was dense and could protect them from being seen. Bliss huddled down and held her hands around her knees. "How many?" she asked.
"A whole legion, it seems like," Lawson whispered. "Poor Mac."
There was a rustling that slowly turned into the sound of an army approaching; Bliss got scared. She grabbed Lawson's arm to steady herself, and he pulled her toward him, his arm around her shoulders, her head resting in the crook of his neck.
"It's okay," he said. "We're going to get through this."
Then came the sound of heavy boots, and the hounds appeared. They were fearsome and massive in the dim twilight. Their crimson-and-silver eyes shone, and their armor clanked loudly. There were hundreds of them and they roared past, heading toward the serpent mound. They kept coming - they leapt from branches and tore through the tall grasses, bounding over the low earthen mounds until they were out of sight.
"Let's go," Lawson said. He signaled to his brothers and the team raced through the woods and down the side of the mountain, to the serpent mound.
Marrok was waiting for them at the serpent's mouth. Around him were nearly a hundred wolves in their animal form, clawing the ground and howling. "You sure about this?" he asked Lawson. "That was an entire legion we just let inside."
Lawson nodded. "There will be more." He turned to Bliss, Ahramin, and his brothers. "Ready?"
They nodded.
"Where are we going?" Ahramin asked.
"Shh - " Edon warned. "We will go where Lawson leads us."
"Well, then, there's no time like the present." Lawson turned to Marrok one last time. "You will hold them here? Keep the rest from entering the passages behind us?"
"It's our duty," Marrok said, raising his hand in farewell. "Godspeed."
Lawson raised his hand to salute Marrok and led his team into the passages.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Bliss followed Lawson into the mouth of the serpent, Ahramin and the boys following close behind. The path was narrow and dark, the air dusty. Ahramin started coughing again; Bliss felt almost like she needed to cough herself. She could hear Marrok's wolves battling the hounds behind them, but the further they walked down the passages, the fainter the noises became. The wolves must have been doing their job well, though, because no hounds followed them.
"Stay close," Lawson warned. "It's only going to get darker as we move away, and there's more than one path underground - we have to make sure we stay behind the hounds and find the actual entrance to the timeline. I don't want to lose anyone."
"I've got the scent," Edon said.
"Me too," said Rafe.
Bliss moved to the side and let them pass her. She ended up just ahead of Malcolm, and turned around to check on him. "How are you feeling? Still nauseous?"
"A bit," he admitted. "But I'm used to it. I don't follow scent as well as they do, so it's kind of good that I have my own way of telling when they're around, you know?"
They were now deep enough into the path that Bliss couldn't hear the wolves at all, and she could barely see. Fortunately, Lawson had brought some matches, and every so often he'd light one to make sure everyone was nearby.
The brief flicker of each match revealed that there were occasional openings to paths stemming off the one they were on. Occasionally Lawson would veer in one direction or another, and Bliss could feel that they were heading deeper and deeper into the earth. The group walked silently for what felt like hours. How deep in the earth did the timeline start? Bliss wondered. They might as well just walk to Rome.
"Everyone, brace yourselves," Lawson warned. "I think we're getting close to the passages." He explained that once they entered the timeline, they would be moving through time itself, from moment to moment, where everything happened at once, and it could be disorienting at first.
"The Praetorian Guard kept the timeline safe," he said to Bliss as they walked down the narrow space. "Time is sacred. It must not change, and the wolves saw to that. Those who tamper with the timeline are doomed. Time must be allowed to flow, the sequence of events must remain fixed."
Bliss nodded. "Otherwise ..."
"Paradox, chaos, disorder. Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it," Lawson said, smiling.
Bliss did not smile back. "Marrok said he didn't know how to use the chronolog ... and you've never traveled through time before, have you? You said the passages were closed ... lost to the wolves."
"Are you asking me if I know what I'm doing?"
"Well, yes."
Lawson grinned. "Then the answer is no. But when do I ever?"
They walked a few more steps, and the space was suddenly flooded with light. They were no longer in the serpent mound but in the timeline itself.
Bliss shielded her eyes while Lawson yelled, "HERE WE GO!"
For the first few steps, Bliss couldn't see a thing - the light was so bright it had blinded her. Then everything changed - it was as if she had stepped on a roller coaster. She could feel her stomach drop. With each step she was in a different place, a different time. It was like moving through a movie screen but with the events of the movie actually happening. It made her feel as nauseous as Malcolm seemed.
"Look to the horizon," Lawson said. "It's a constant - like being in the sea. It will make it easier."
She nodded, trying to focus on the blue sky ahead. All around her, images and memories swirled, from many moments in time, not just from her life but from the history of the entire world. She could hear everyone around her, so at least they'd arrived safely, wherever they were. The light changed, slowly fading until she could see more comfortably. She saw Edon holding on to Ahramin as if she were about to fall; Rafe helped Malcolm. Lawson was at the head of the group.
"Bliss - the chronolog," Lawson called.
She pulled the handkerchief-wrapped object out of her pocket and carefully unwrapped it. It was a beautiful object, a pocket watch, heavy and silver.
"You'll have to do it, none of us can touch silver."
Bliss looked at it closely. There were tiny scratches on the side that looked as if someone had tried to pry it open. She recalled Allegra's hand reaching toward it, and Bliss did the same, pressing a hidden button on the side of the watch. A small round disc appeared in midair. It looked like a spinning globe, with lines moving around it.
