by J. R. Ward
The Jackal stopped and lowered his brows. “You do not know anything about me.”
“I am not so certain about that. I recognized you the first moment I saw you.”
“Our paths have never crossed.”
“I know you from somewhere and you had the same feeling. I saw your expression when first we met.” Rhage wagged his forefinger back and forth. “And nothing you say or do will change my mind—”
“I hail from the South. I was born there and was raised there. I told you Jabon’s sire aided me when I was first orphaned, and so of course, I have stayed in contact with the son. That is all, I am afraid. So uninteresting.”
“Your parents are from the South, then.” As the male closed his mouth with a clap, Rhage winked. “Careful there, your impervious wall of secrecy has a small crumble in it.”
“I have divulged nothing. You know nothing.”
“My dear fellow, even if you revealed all, I would still know nothing. Do not underestimate my capacity for silence.”
“It’s more your inquiries I have difficulties with.”
They stared across at each other for a moment. And then Rhage was entirely unsurprised when the male bowed in respect and took his leave.
The door shut silently in the Jackal’s wake, the room going dark.
As Rhage closed his eyes, he tried to get comfortable in the perfectly soft bed against the perfectly soft pillows. Out in the street, on the other side of the thick drapes and the interior black-out shutters that covered the glass windows, he heard the activity of the daylight hours begin to come forth, the sun calling the humans onto the road the grand house sat upon. Horses clopping. Carriages creaking. A motor carriage now. Soon there would be people.
Busy, busy. The humans always so busy—
The door to the guest room opened once again, and Rhage did not bother to lift his head. “I am dead. Leave me thus—”
A soft voice, but this time not female. “I am not supposed to be here.”
Rhage tilted his heavy skull up. The Jackal had leaned into the room, most of his body still out in the hall, as if he would have wished to avoid the whole thing.
“Are you hunted?” Rhage demanded. “Because I can take care of that.”
There was that dry laugh once again. “You cannae stand unaided.”
“Wait for it.”
“Thank you, but I do not need protecting. I am not pursued.”
The gravity with which Rhage spoke next made no sense to him: “If you are e’er in need of such, I will come unto you.”
“You don’t know me.”
“I do. Somehow, I do.”
The male looked around. Or at least Rhage assumed he did, given the circle the black cut of his head made. “Why . . . would you offer such a vow unto me?”
In truth, Rhage was not sure, and he felt compelled to fabricate one. “Because you have been of aid to my brother Darius.”
“You are very close then?”
“Not at all. We are opposites. He is a male of great worth. Great courage, great strength.” As he considered Darius, he realized he was not lying anymore. “For a brother such as him? Anyone who aids him, I shall take care of.”
Yet that was not the only reason when it came to this male, whom he could not place.
Abruptly, the Jackal’s head lowered. It was a while before he said aught. “I promised my mahmen I would never come to Caldwell, right before she passed unto the Fade. It has taken me ten years to get over the vow that I should never have made to her, and I confess that the violation of my word continues to sting.”
“Who do you seek to avoid here in this village?”
“My father.” There was a short laugh. “Of course, he is the very one I am in search of. Rather ironic, is it not.”
At that, the male ducked out and disappeared, the door closing with a click.
Nyx was hidden behind a fortress made of shoulders. Front, back. Side to side. She was surrounded by broad, heavy torsos.
In a totally different set of circumstances, she could have been at a bachelorette party.
As she moved with the males through what had to be the prison’s main tunnel, given its width, she kept her head down, but she did not avert her eyes. She tracked everything. Each person they passed. The turns that were made. The height of the ceiling, the feel of the packed dirt floor under her boots, the change in temperature.
Things were getting warmer.
The fact that they were approaching some kind of fulcrum made the back of her neck prickle and her palms sweat. There were many more prisoners around now, going in various directions. Nearly all of them were on their own, walking alone, and she wondered whether this grouping thing was going to be a red flag. But there was no time to worry about that. No other option, really.
The entrance to the Hive presented itself with little fanfare. The effect of the place, however, was disproportionate to its lack of demarcation.
One last turn and then the tunnel opened into a space so vast, her first thought was how the hell did the curved roof to it all stay aloft— but then she saw the supports, the rough concrete stands thick as cars and unevenly spaced, like the architects who’d designed the prison didn’t give a crap about aesthetics and barely cared about structural integrity. Holy hell, the interior space was cavernous, easily a couple hundred feet wide and just as long. And way down in front, there was a focal point to it all. Across the distance, there was a raised dais, with three tree trunks stripped of their bark and branches standing straight up like their roots were driven deep into the rock.
The dark brown stains on them made her stomach churn.
Don’t think about that, she told herself. Worry instead about the . . .
Nyx’s feet faltered when the number of prisoners registered in the dim overhead light. There were hundreds of them, all dressed in dark, loose clothing, moving like wraiths in the same kind of shambling gait—which she couldn’t tell was affect or affliction. Maybe it depended on the individual.
The smell was horrible. Like a barn stall that had not been cleaned out for two weeks.
And she had little hope of finding Janelle in the crowd. It was too dark to track faces, and the stench meant her sister’s scent wouldn’t carry.
Nyx wanted to ask Jack how much farther. And how he would let her know when it was time to run—or was it better to walk? They should have talked this out beforehand—
The first guard she saw was standing with his back against the wall, by the dais. A matte-black, long-nosed gun was across his chest, and he had his finger on the trigger and the muzzle up by his shoulder. His head was moving back and forth as he scanned the crowd, and his expression was a mask of deadly composure. And there was another opposite him. Armed in the same way with that same professional calm about him. And still others, ones she’d missed because their black uniforms blended in to the rock, those powerful guns capable of ripping bullets through the crowd of males and females in the blink of an eye.
It was a testament to their effectiveness that they hadn’t been the first thing she’d seen.
The route Jack took down to the dais was circular and slow and diverted. The six of them continued to move as a unit, but she was aware of the males creating space, then closing it, then creating it again. She had no idea why they bothered—until she realized that it was to make things seem like they were just sort of together, instead of definitively so. In fact, the coordination was so subtle and randomly unrandom that they had to have done this before, and she wondered when. Under what circumstances. But like that mattered?
When they reached the dais, her eyes locked on those posts. Down at the bases, there were bundles of chains, the blackened links piled up.
There was fresh blood on one of the trunks.
Her eyes went to the nearest guard. He wasn’t looking at her. His stare was behind her and tracking something.
It had to be that male, Apex—
Lucan looked at her. “What did you say me? What th
e fuck did you say to me?”
Nyx stopped short. “Wait, what—”
Mayhem leaned in. “I said you’re ugly and impotent. And when you’re changed, you’re hairy as an afghan.”
Lucan bared his fangs. “You mother—”
The two of them went for each other, their big bodies lunging around her and slamming hard, fists curled, faces flushed with aggression— and as soon as the fight started, a flank of guards poured in from the right-hand side of the dais, jogging out of some darkened place. Were they always on backup? Or was this the changing of the guard—
Jack’s hand grabbed her own and gave her a sharp pull backward.
As the other prisoners surged forward toward the fight, crumpled paper money coming out and being wagered as Mayhem and Lucan went at it, the guards circled around—and she and Jack hustled to the edge of the tremendous and growing knot of bodies, going against the flow of other prisoners who headed toward the commotion.
Pulling her along, Jack skirted the disturbance and led her into a thin fissure in the rock wall about twenty-five feet off from the dais, the fight, the guards. The pitch-black split in the cave was so narrow, they single-filed it at first, and then had to pivot and shuffle sideways when not even her shoulders could fit. The smell was moldy and stale, and she came face-to-face with an unexpected shot of claustrophobia thanks to the overwhelming stink, the prevailing darkness, and the close touch of the cramped space.
With no other orientation, she clung to the soft sounds of Jack’s movements like they were light to orientate herself with. The shifts of his clothing, the whisper of his feet, the occasional grunt as he obviously tried to squeeze his bigger size through the ever-narrowing passage, were the only reasons she could keep going.
Jack didn’t slow down. Until he had to. As the fissure became so cramped she had rock in her face, on her back, on her butt, she bumped into him.
“It’s not much farther,” he whispered. “You can do it.”
He must have scented her fear. “It’s not me I’m worried about.”
Liar, she thought.
Just when she was about to lose it, when she was opening her mouth to tell him she couldn’t go another foot, the smell changed.
Is that fresh air? she wondered.
Jack stopped and had to force his head around. Or at least she assumed that was what he did, given that his voice suddenly reached her ears more directly.
“We’re heading to the left, and we’re going to have to move very fast. I don’t need to tell you how dangerous this is.”
“I got it.”
“Nyx, I’m serious—”
“Shut up. If this fails, it will not be because of me,” she vowed.
For a brief moment, the Jackal closed his eyes in the black void of the fissure. Courage was as basic a need as air in life. Like oxygen, it kept a person alive, and in the darkest of hours, in the worst of circumstances, at the most dire of cliffs, one needed more of it than ever.
He was not surprised at Nyx’s iron resolve.
More than that, he was inspired by her. And it had been a very, very long time since that pilot light in the center of his chest had flared to life with any kind of engagement for the opposite sex. Yet here he was the now, buoyed by her steady resolve, propelled farther by her example.
If he could have dropped his lips to hers, he would have. Instead, he did what he could.
He took her where she had to go.
The last fifteen yards were the hardest, the tightest. But finally there was a glow he could focus on, and he made sure there were no sounds or smells outside before he shoved himself from the constriction. As he popped free into a shallow open area that was stacked with canned food in crates, his eyes stung in the light. Wheeling around, he caught Nyx as she fell forward, pulling her up against his body and holding her tight for the briefest of moments. As he took a deep breath, her scent replaced everything.
When he stepped back and nodded, she nodded back. Ready. Set. Go—
He kissed her quick, even though he probably shouldn’t have, and then he took off, ducking out of the pantry area and shooting forward down a twenty-foot passageway. Nyx was right with him, sticking close by.
When he put up his hand and halted, she stopped along with him.
No sounds up ahead. No smells. No alarms, either.
On his signal, they slipped out into the Command’s compound proper—which was nothing like the prison at large. Here, all the passageways and rooms were finished, the rock walls and ceilings hidden behind proper plaster, the lights set into panels, the floor tiled. There was no mold anywhere and no damp, earthy smell, due to a heating system that ran constantly, pumping fresh, warm air into the cold subterranean lair. There were other creature comforts, too, such as running water, and the light boxes with the moving pictures, and other technological things the purpose of which were tied to the prison’s business endeavors.
“There are different sectors herein,” he said in a low voice. “The guard bunks, the work area, and the private quarters.”
“Which one do we go to?”
“The private quarters.”
They moved in concert, him in front, her in back, their bodies sleek and silent on the balls of their feet, guns down by their thighs. On one level, he was surprised at how easily they formed a working alliance of function. On another, given the way they’d had sex, he should have known. Their bodies moved well together in any and all situations.
As they closed in on the private quarters, he became utterly paranoid that they were being followed. While that appeared to be untrue, he braced for a guard to jump out into their paths up ahead. However, if he was right about the time—and given the guards’ shift change, he had to be—the Command would be in the work area, for it checked in on productivity personally at the beginning and end of each work cycle. The Command took the product far more seriously than the prisoners, and one might have wondered why the business end of the prison wasn’t taken somewhere else, somewhere safer and less complicated. A workforce was needed, however, so the prisoners were necessary, and they were free, after all, no wages to worry about. Indeed, he was well aware that the only reason the incarcerated were fed and given even rudimentary medical care was because of the shift requirements of the product stations. What was more, based on Nyx’s report of the year they were in, he had a feeling that many prisoners had exceeded their sentences. Workers were required, however, and so they stayed trapped in this timeless, dim nether land.
It was unconscionable. All of it.
As he came up to a bifurcation in the hallway, he held up his palm again and they both stopped. Pause. Pause . . . pause.
Nothing. No sounds, no scents.
On his nod, they continued on. The private quarters were well guarded when the Command was in situ. When it was not, the place was a ghost town. Even still, as he led Nyx with efficiency and silence toward their destination, passing by all manner of doors and offshoot halls, his heart pounded in a disproportionate fashion to the amount of exercise he was experiencing.
And it was not only because he was preparing to run into the guards or an off-schedule Command. As he closed in on the Wall, he realized that there was another reason he had insisted on coming with Nyx on this mission. Another reason he wanted to get back here.
As they went around one of their last corners, he faltered.
Tripped.
Caught himself on the plastered wall by throwing out a hand.
“What is it?” Nyx whispered. “Are you ill?”
Up ahead, the cell that had been constructed some twenty years before, that had been kitted out with things from the world above, presented itself like a diorama. A stage set. An exhibit illustrating life the way it had been lived.
The Jackal approached the bars with shaking hands and a pounding heart. As his mouth went dry, he tried to swallow so he could offer some reply to Nyx. None came, especially as he peered in through the iron bars and the steel mesh.
&nbs
p; There was no one in there. Not on the soft bed with its clean sheeting and blankets. Not at the writing desk with the books and the notation pads and the pens. Not in the porcelain bathtub nor dressing area behind the screen.
Breathing in through his nose, he caught the familiar scent, and tried to reassure himself that there was still time—but in truth, time had not been what hindered him in this ultimate duty he must fulfill.
Abruptly, he thought of Nyx’s determination and courage.
“Who lives in here?” she asked softly.
As Nyx spoke, she felt like Jack wasn’t hearing her. Standing in front of a cell that was kitted out like a nice hotel room, he seemed utterly unplugged: His huge body was still, and except for one deep breath, it was like he’d turned to stone.
This was where his female stayed, she thought as he placed his palm reverently against the steel mesh that ran across the front of the space. The yearning, the sadness, the mourning, that permeated not just his face and eyes but his entire body, changed the air around him, charging it with an uncomfortable, dark aura.
The stab of jealousy that went through her was unacceptable on a lot of levels, but there was no stopping the red tide of aggression that was directed at a female she didn’t know, couldn’t see, wasn’t even around. Before she could stop herself, she also inhaled deep, curious as to what his mate smelled like, but all she got in her sinuses was a revisit to the stench of the Hive.
Probably for the best.
This was not her business.
“We should go,” she said. “We need to go—”
Jack’s shoulders jerked and his eyes swung around. For a split second, as he looked at her, his face was utterly blank.
Nyx shook her head. “Not right now. We can’t do this now. I need you back here.”
As she pointed to the concrete floor between them, he glanced down. And then he came back online.
“This way,” he said in a low voice.
As they continued on, he didn’t look back at the cell, and she took that as a good sign. Distraction in the only one who knew where the hell they were and where they needed to go was like a car without a steering wheel. In a life-or-death chase. Just before things were about to hurl off a cliff.
