chapter Thirty-Five
In human form, Romulus was an enormous man, nearly seven feet in height. His shadow covered Lawson, his blinding red robe fluttering in an iridescent halo around him. No simple togas for him, silk or otherwise; he was arrayed in full golden battle armor, with the sweeping robe flowing from his shoulders. In one hand he carried the golden staff Lawson had seen from the window, a weapon as heavy as a pair of Roman soldiers. A red fire roared in his black eyes as he smiled at Lawson, a strange, eerie smile.
"Where is she?" Lawson asked. "Where's Tala?"
Romulus laughed. "Where do you think she is? She's dead, of course."
"You're lying." Lawson tapped his pocket, looking for the sword he had stolen from the underworld, the sword of the angels, but it was nowhere to be found.
Romulus smiled as he smacked him down with his golden staff, felling him as easily as if he were a child or a small animal. An annoyance, nothing more. Lawson fell backward on the hard stone. He heard his skull crack, blood trailing from the wound.
What had happened ...?
Where was the sword?
Bliss?
Had she ...?
The heavy staff came down again and again, and he collapsed against the force of more blows from Romulus. He held up his hands to shield his face, but a silver claw embedded at the top of the golden scepter cut deep into his chest.
Lawson tried to lift himself off the floor and Romulus clubbed him in the back with a blow so powerful it might have cleaved a normal man in half. The Great Beast of Hell hovered over him. "Silly boy," the general said. "You should have joined us when we still wanted you. Instead, you doomed her to her fate."
"You didn't need to kill her. What harm was she to you alive?"
"She was useful for a time," Romulus said, and Lawson didn't want to think what the flicker in the fire of his eyes meant. "A pity she wasn't any prettier, though. Otherwise I might have kept her around a bit longer."
Lawson groaned. He looked over at the bloody toga, just feet away from where he lay on the ground. Tala was here, but he had come too late.
Romulus laughed. "Oh, that thing? No, you're mistaken. That was not hers."
Lawson felt a surge of hope.
"When you left her to burn in that house, I killed her myself. Besides, why keep her alive when I could gain the same advantage by having Ahramin tell you a lie? Your mate has been dead for a very long time now. Truly, you should have listened to your brothers and kept moving. But when you showed yourself at the oculus, it was clear you still had hope, just like you had only a moment ago, when I told you the clothes weren't hers. It gives me great pleasure to watch that hope die, the hope that is your downfall."
Lawson writhed on the floor, holding his head. He was bleeding from his wounds - and the silver poison was working its way into his blood. He would die. But it didn't matter.
Tala was dead.
She'd been dead from the beginning.
She'd been dead since he'd left her. She was dead ...
Tala ...
It was all a dream, this idea that he could rescue her, a stupid dream. A fantasy. His guilt had prodded him on because he hadn't wanted to accept what had happened. He'd known she was as good as dead when he left her to the hounds, but he wouldn't accept it. He knew, but if he accepted it, he'd also have to accept that she'd been killed because of him, because of who he was, what he was.
Tala had pushed him away. She knew what was going to happen. She knew that if they left her behind, the hounds would come and tear her apart. But she loved him, so she had saved him.
Tala, I've failed you ... and now I've failed everyone ...
"Fenrir," Romulus sneered. "The great hope of the wolves. The man out of time, whom time cannot hold. The one who would save them all, who would free them from their chains. I gave you a choice back then to join me, and you chose unwisely. There will be no freedom for the wolves. After today, there will be no wolves at all."
Romulus moved to the balcony and gave the signal to commence the attack.