Free Blue Bloods: Keys to the Repository by Melissa de la Cruz Page B

feeling dizzy. She was human now, and despite her strength, she would have to
    get used to her new limitations.
    She hit the gas again and powered forward, turning the wheel, speeding wildly down the street. The windshield had cracked, making it hard to
    see, and she immediately crashed into a telephone pole. The windshield caved in, and the car swung sideways as it plowed into the curb. Bliss was
    thrown backward against the headrest. What had she done? She had gone from escape to disaster in only a few seconds. The car was demolished.
    She hit the gas again, but nothing happened. She tried reverse, but the engine was dead.
    Then a loud thump hit the top of the car, and the roof caved in slightly. She saw a pair of boots descend from the top of the car to the hood,
    fol owed by four hairy paws. So that’s where the beast had gone. She could see it more clearly now—its silver fur, its crimson eyes. They settled in
    front of her, the boy and the wolf, both of them crouched on their haunches, nimble as acrobats as they stared at her through the broken windshield.
    Behind them, she could see others, a group of kids slowly circling the car. How many were they? Three? Four? More? She caught a glimpse of a
    fierce-looking girl with wild green hair and tattoos, and several boys who looked dark and menacing. Someone was trying to pry open the rear
    passenger-side door. The handle rattled, but al of the doors had been smashed shut. Bliss took a deep breath and waited. “What do you want from
    me?”
    The boy smiled. “I want you to calm down before you hurt yourself, Bliss.”
    He knows my name. How does he know my name?
    “I’m Lawson, by the way.”
    She nodded, but her attention was elsewhere. The wolf had pushed forward, its teeth inches from her face. Spit oozed from its mouth; the odor
    was unbearable. Lawson coaxed the creature’s head away, so it backed off from Bliss with a whimper.
    “Come on now, Scooby, lay off,” he said, giving the creature an affectionate shake.
    One of the kids standing near the car—a little girl, Bliss could now see—she couldn’t have been more than eleven— tossed over a dog biscuit.
    The wolf caught the treat in midair and wandered away from the car, tail wagging.
    “Scooby?” The wolf was his pet. Bliss tried not to look too incredulous. When her mother had sent her on this quest, she had imagined the
    Hounds of Hel as supernatural creatures. Beasts that were half human and half animal, something from nightmares and horror movies. Hel hound,
    werewolf . . . same thing, right?
    “Is that what you thought? That we turned into them? At the sight of a ful moon?” Lawson smirked. How did he know what she was thinking? It
    was as if he had heard every word. Venators could do that, of course, but she could tel he wasn’t a vampire. What was he then? And who was “we”?
    That group of kids around the car? Were they with him? They had to be.
    Lawson threw back his head and howled. He pul ed at his shirt col ar in an imitation of an uncontrol able dramatic transformation. “You’re not
    serious are you?” he asked, looking a bit insulted. “I mean, you know there’s no such thing as werewolves, right? They were invented by some
    desperate screenwriter in the 1940s. We noticed you’d been fol owing Scooby for a while and thought it was high time we final y met. Sorry if what we
    arranged was a little crude. The boys have a sick sense of humor. Comes from living in the wild, I guess.”
    Bliss didn’t know what to say. Lawson was awful y chatty for someone who, moments ago, seemed to mean her quite a bit of harm. Her neck stil
    pinched where he had held her.
    “Sorry about your car, by the way; although you didn’t need to overreact so much. Anyway, we’l get you another one. Or Gorg could fix it.

Whatever you’d like. But we need to talk about what happened in there. How do you know our language? Nothing like that has ever happened to us
    before. We thought we knew every