troll slouched over to block their way. "Papers?"
"Papers?" Mimi said, affronted. "Do you know who we work for?"
"Helda hasn't approved your transfer," the troll sneered. "You'll need to go back to get the right papers if you mean to leave the kingdom of the Queen of the Dead."
Without a word, Jack raised his hand and stunned the troll, sending him flying, crashing against the barrier. The other troll guards lifted their spears, but Jack stood his ground. "Let us pass. I shall not be so gentle next time."
Mimi was impressed. She was sure he would have turned back and done the right thing. But that was the old Jack Force. The former Venator, the one who used to follow the rules. There were no rules now.
The trolls backed off, fear in their ugly faces.
The Force twins stepped through the Gates of Hell.
"Admit it, you enjoyed that. You like being evil again," Mimi teased.
Jack did not reply, but the sly smile on his face said it all. "Come on. Let's find this thing and end it once and for all."
Chapter Three
Bliss
merging from the Passages of Time was always a disconcerting experience, as if your entire being had been taken apart and then re-formed, the molecules and the memories haphazardly patched together. Bliss Llewellyn felt the familiar dizziness and disorientation, but it was worse now, since they were not just traveling through time but back to the underworld, back to her father's domain, back to Hell, where the wolves were turned into Hellhounds, where Lawson and the pack had been kept in chains.
She had come upon the boys by chance - had been shown a vision of a wolf in the glom, and had tracked it to a butcher shop in a small town in Ohio. There, she had befriended Lawson and his brothers, and together they had traveled to the dawn of Rome, to the beginning of the empire, to solve a mystery of the wolves' ancestry. Lawson was revealed to be the wolf Fenrir, the greatest wolf of the underworld, and he had bested Romulus, the Beast of Hell, the Hound of Hounds; had killed him with Michael's sword, an archangel's blade. With the help of his pack, he had stopped the Sabine massacre, and in doing so had saved the wolves from extinction. Now they had returned to Hell to fulfill his promise to free his people from the Silver Blood demons.
Lawson turned around, his dark eyes sparkling, and he smiled. The sigil on his cheek, the one that matched Bliss's and marked them as part of the same pack, the blue crescent moon, shone in the dim light. "You okay back there?" he asked.
Bliss nodded, keeping pace with his long step. She was scared but determined to see it through. This was what her mother had tasked her to do - to bring the wolves back into the fold, to help the vampires in their war against their enemies - but she had her own reasons for pursuing this quest. Bliss had a dark history behind her: for centuries upon centuries she had been an unknowing party to evil. As the vehicle for the Dark Prince, she had kept his spirit alive on earth, and in doing so had brought death and grief to the vampires. Bliss wanted not only redemption, but revenge.
She had pinned her hopes on the pack - Lawson, impulsive, reckless, and powerfully strong, and his brothers - Edon, Rafe, and Malcolm - loyal soldiers all - along with Ahramin, the dark one - the wolf who had been turned into a hound and reclaimed her soul. They surrounded her now, and Bliss found solace in their number and strength. They were ready to fight.
Lawson stumbled out of the passage, and everyone else followed after. Bliss looked around - steeling herself for the worst - expecting to breathe the smoke of the underworld - to see gray skies and barren lands - or to be met by a thousand demons with crimson eyes and burning tongues, wielding swords of dark flame.
But what was this? There was grass beneath her feet. Trees forming a canopy over her head. The sweet smell of morning dew. This wasn't the underworld....This looked strangely familiar....This was...Ohio?
"Where are we?" she asked Lawson, who was standing next to her. She looked to the rest of the pack. Malcolm wiped his eyeglasses on his sleeve. Rafe appeared confused, and Ahramin and Edon were whispering to each other.
"Guys?" she asked. "Um...are we where I