by J. R. Ward
“Ended you thus? What the fuck. You can leave! And spare me the justifications—”
“I will not spare you a defense of your accusation,” he snapped. “I was denied that right once, and believe me when I say that will never happen again. You have accused, and you will now listen to my side.”
Nyx’s brows flared. And when she went silent, he spoke on. “I do not owe you an explanation—something that strikes me as a convenience as it is clear that you will afford me no impartiality. This in spite of the fact that I have done nothing but ensure your safety and the success of your mission to ascertain the fate of your sister. This in spite of you not knowing anything of me but what I have shown you, which I think we can both agree has been nothing but courtesy and protection.”
As she exhaled, she spoke in a low voice. “When is the next change of shift. That’s all that I care about.”
The Jackal opened his mouth. Then closed it.
After a moment, he spoke quietly. “You are worried about yourself. But of course.”
“I just want to get out of here.”
“And strangely, or perhaps not, I find myself in utter agreement with this goal of yours.” He rubbed his eyes. “We are past being able to concern ourselves with shifts. There are dead guards now, in a place that only a limited number of people have access to. The prison is on lockdown as we speak, in which case I have to go back to my cell for mandatory count. Assuming I have not missed it already.”
“How do we find that out?” she said. “Whether we’re on lockdown, I mean.”
“I will go—”
“No.” She got to her feet. “We go together.”
The Jackal stared across at the female he had seemed to be in such concert with when they had been fleeing the guards. All of that communion and partnership was gone. He was dealing the now with somebody who was a total stranger, one who was, moreover, incompatible with him.
“As you wish,” he muttered. “Far be it from me to get in your way.”
This was all over, Nyx thought as she put on her windbreaker, strapped on her backpack, and walked around the pool. This whole bizarre, too-dangerous, heartbreaking interlude was over. She was going to go back the way she’d come in, and then she was returning to the farmhouse and her family—
As she thought of her home, and her remaining sister, she cursed, remembering the picture she’d taken of Janelle’s name in the Old Language.
There had been plenty of very worthwhile distractions since she’d stood in front of the Wall, but grief surged now: Janelle was dead. And she had likely died alone. Had her body even been buried? Or had it been thrown out like trash.
And it was all their grandfather’s fault.
“Put a new tunic on,” Jack said.
“I don’t want to.”
He went over to the stack, picked one up and threw the thing at her. “Put this on now.”
Yanking the garment over her head, she promised herself she was going to burn the damn thing as soon as she could find a fireplace.
As Jack stalked off down the passageway, and the candles extinguished in his wake, she fell into step behind him and kept focused on the only thing that mattered. He might choose to stay here, but she was free to go—and she was not going to look back. Literally or figuratively. She was not going to ruin her future over a male she didn’t know who was stuck in a situation she couldn’t understand—and didn’t believe anyway.
These were the resolutions that propelled her away from the pool, and kept her going as he led her out into one of the main arteries of the prison.
There was no else around. No sounds, either. Like rats fleeing from a subway system, all of the prisoners had taken cover.
The lockdown was definitely happening. In which case, fine. She didn’t need him. If he took her to the way she’d come in, she would handle the rest of the way—and he could go back to his cell and waste the rest of his life down here.
Excellent choice on his part. Really, really great.
“Stop,” she said.
He didn’t. “What.”
“I know the way from here.”
Now he turned around. Staring down at her from his greater height, he lifted an eyebrow. “Do you.”
“It’s a left here, and then four rights, one after another.” She shrugged. “It’s not hard.”
“Of course it isn’t. Not for you.”
“I took all lefts when I came in.”
“What?”
Nyx repositioned the backpack under the tunic he’d made her wear. “When I came in here, so I didn’t get lost, I took all lefts. This tunnel here”—she pointed to the one they were standing in front of—“will take me to the first of the corners I took. Three more and I’m there. So we’re done. You can go back to your cell alone, which is what you wanted.”
His brilliant aquamarine eyes narrowed on her. “You have all the answers, don’t you.”
“I know how to save myself. And I know the way out of here. Those are the only two answers I need.”
“Well, then.” With a gallant bow, he stepped aside and motioned forward with his hand. “Allow me to get out of your way.”
“Thank you.”
Nyx was tempted to offer him her palm, but there was no reason to be petty, and that did seem like a taunting move. So instead, she walked by him—
And kept going.
For the first fifty yards, she had one ear on what was behind her. She expected him to follow her or call her back. And when there were no footfalls and she didn’t hear her name, she was relieved. She didn’t like the prowling frustration he caused, and she sure as hell could take care of herself—
“Enough,” she muttered. “Just stop with him.”
The rights she needed to take came at the proper intervals, what she remembered for distances between turns the same as what she was finding. When she came to the last corner, with no scents in her nose or sounds in her ears, she felt triumphant. Rounding the final right, she—
Stopped dead in front of a massive steel wall.
Wrenching around, she recounted her turns in her head. Pivoted back around.
No, this was wrong. There was another fifty yards, and then there were the locked steel panels across the entry she’d used coming in here. The ones she had the pass card to.
Putting her palms against the cold metal, she pushed at the barrier even though she knew that was going to get her nowhere. The damn panels had dropped down from the ceiling and were bolted together. Did she think she was going to punch a hole in them?
“Shit.”
As sweat broke out under her arms and across her chest, she felt herself begin to panic. But then she turned her head and saw the blinking light on the wall.
“Pass card . . . pass card . . .”
With shaking hands, she went under the tunic and patted every pocket she had. Just as she was convinced she’d lost it along the way, she felt the stiff card. Ripping the thing out, she jabbed it at the reader pad that was bolted onto the rock wall.
Nothing.
She went up with it. She went down. Across. She tried both sides of the card. Twice.
“Shit.”
As she considered her options, time was not her friend, and if she did the math right on the distances, then the barrier also blocked her from accessing the first hidden passage Jack had taken her into— because that one was closer to where she had entered the prison from the crypt. Her only shot at getting hidden and doing a proper reset on her plans was going back to the pool.
If she could make it—
Voices.
And the telltale marching. Of many, many boots.
Nyx began to tremble. Putting her shoulder blades against the steel panels, she closed her eyes for a brief moment. Popping her lids back open, she quickly went into her pack and palmed up not one but two guns.
Assuming the guards were coming her way, her only chance was to try to shoot her way out of this.
Not that that was going to
get her far. She was trapped down below, a prisoner just like all the others.
The Jackal returned to his cell in the nick of time. Just as he shot into his private space, he heard the first of the guards enter the corridor down at the other end. There were shouts of names and replies from prisoners as the Command’s detail walked the line, the sound of the boots getting louder as they came toward him.
Fuck, the scent of blood was all over him. Even though he’d changed tunics and rinsed his face off, that didn’t go far enough.
In the rear of his cell, in the corner, there was a ready stream of water that flowed down the crease where the rock walls met, and he ripped off his tunic, lunged forward, and shoved his head into it. On a ledge, he kept a bar of that homemade prison soap, the rotgut combination of lye and herbs like sandpaper, and he massaged the pumice-like egg in his palms under the rush, calling up the anemic suds.
Face. Neck. Chest.
Under his arms.
There was nothing he could do about his braid, but he didn’t think he had much blood in his hair—
“Lucan,” the guards called out.
Three cells away.
“Yesssss,” the wolven drawled. “Oh, I’m sorry, is this bothering you?”
Grabbing the fresh tunic, the Jackal dried himself and was about to hit his bed when he looked down at his pants.
“Fuck.”
More blood than he’d thought on them.
As the mouthy wolven went back and forth with the guards over Fates only knew what, the Jackal dropped his loose pants, washed what he could of his lower body, and dried off on his way back under his bed. He hid the stained pants under the platform.
Even though lying down was the last thing he wanted to do, he stretched out on his pallet, propped his head against the stone wall, and pulled the rough blanket over his nakedness. Throwing his hand down to his stack of old books, he grabbed the first one that hit his palm, brought the thing onto his chest, and held it open in front of his face.
Upside down. Words were upside down.
With a curse, he swung the book around and was just focusing on a line of dialogue when two guards appeared in front of his cell.
Peering over the top of Macbeth, he cocked a casual brow. “You rang?”
The guards were related to each other, going by their identical dark-colored eyes, their similar heights, and the fact that both of them had a strange cowlick in the front of their hairlines. But they were not twins, and he did not recall having seen them before. Then again, going by their hesitancy, they had to be new hires.
“I’m here. You can reassure the Command.” When they didn’t move on, he inquired, “Would you like to come in and watch me read?”
Their eyes narrowed at the same time and in the same way. But as vocal as they had been with the others, they did not take his verbal bait, nor did they chastise or punish him. They just turned and continued on.
The Jackal waited, keeping his position even as one of his bare feet tapped the other, the kinetic energy flowing through all of his muscles impossible to contain for long.
The guards came back shortly thereafter. Whether it was a test to see if he’d moved or just a natural course of their duties, he didn’t know. It didn’t matter. And this time, they kept going all the way down the lineup of cells, their footfalls growing fainter and then disappearing altogether.
The Jackal tossed the book off the bed and sat up. Over at his clothes stash, he got a fresh set of slacks and jerked them up his thighs. As he tied the waistband, the wolven appeared in his doorway.
For once, Lucan was not smiling. “Everything’s locked. All the peripheral tunnels. And they canceled the work shifts.”
The Jackal looked up sharply. “They’ve never done that before.”
“How many guards did you kill in the private sector?”
“Is that a rhetorical?” When the wolven just stared at him, he shrugged. “Four for sure. Then there were another four that were handcuffed together on the floor. Apex was on cleanup.”
“Were the quartet still alive when he came to them?”
“He may not have been the one who found them.”
“If he did, they’re dead, too—”
The Jackal stiffened. Breathed deep. Dropping his voice, he whispered, “Go back to your cell. Now.”
“Look, if your little girlfriend with the knife skills is loose in this place, she’s in deep trouble—”
The Jackal punched his comrade’s shoulder. “Go! You don’t want to be here.”
The wolven opened his mouth like he was going to argue, but then his head wrenched to the side as he clearly caught the scent as well.
“Fuck. Be careful.”
Lucan disappeared as the Jackal lunged for his bedding platform. He was pulling the blanket over himself again when a tall figure, draped from head to toe in black, drifted into the archway of his cell.
But it wasn’t Kane.
It smelled of sandalwood oil.
The Jackal’s stomach turned so violently, he had to swallow the bile that rose into his throat. Not from the scent, specifically. From what the scent represented.
He looked over at the figure, pegging the dense mesh that covered the face with hard eyes. “Yes?”
The Command’s voice was low and deep. “I understand that you were in the restricted area and you had a gun to your head. That an inmate threatened you. Is this true?”
Prison tunic. He’d made Nyx put that tunic on.
The guards didn’t know she was from the outside. Except why the lockdown if they thought she was one of them?
“It was,” he answered. “But it is over.”
“Who was it. Where do I find her and that gun.”
“I don’t know.”
There was a pause, and he knew damn well the Command was testing the air for scents other than his own. “Did you enjoy your bath just now?”
“Don’t be jealous. It doesn’t look good on you.”
“Watch yourself, Jackal. I’m short-tempered tonight.”
“Things not going to your liking? Such a pity—”
A guard rushed up to the Command. “There’s a female in prison gear cornered by the western checkpoint. She is armed, but she is about to be subdued.”
The Command’s head swiveled back to the Jackal. “Well. It looks as if this little problem has solved itself. Any explanations you’d like to offer before I enjoy interrogating her?”
The Jackal reclined back against the wall, putting his hand down on his stack of books again. As Macbeth resumed its position front and center on his chest, he shrugged.
“I don’t know her or where she came from.” All true. “She had a gun. I did what she told me to do. Then she made me face the wall and count to ten before I turned back around. I went to fifteen, just to be sure, and I found that she was gone. She’s your problem, not mine. You run this place, after all.”
“What did she ask you to do?”
“Take her to the Wall.”
There was a pause, and he imagined the frown on the Command’s face. “Why?”
“She was looking for her dead. I don’t know.”
“So she’s not a prisoner.”
“Like I said, she had a gun, so I wasn’t inclined to press for details. I did what she demanded. She left me unharmed. That’s all I know.”
One of the black sleeves lifted toward him, like the Grim Reaper was pointing. “I’ll know if you’re lying. Pain has a way of bringing out the truth, especially from females.”
“Do with her what you will. It doesn’t matter to me.”
“Expect to be called on later.”
“Don’t rush on my account.”
The Command shifted under those robes, that body changing positions. “Don’t play hard to get. It doesn’t suit you.”
The Jackal shook his head grimly. “On the contrary, it’s the only reason you want me.”
“Oh, no.” The laugh under the hood was low and sexual. “You are
so very wrong about that.”
As the Command turned away, the Jackal kept his eyes on the book and his body as still as he could.
Dearest Virgin Scribe, Nyx was worse than dead.
As Nyx stared at the lineup of armed guards in front of her, she felt herself recede from reality. Considering the number of them, the mental lapse seemed like a perfectly reasonable response, even though it was totally unhelpful. Then again, there was no thinking her way out of this. No talking her way out. No shooting her way out, even with the two guns.
“Drop your weapons,” one of the uniformed males ordered. “Or we’re going to kill you here and now.”
She was tempted to tell them she accepted what was behind door number two, even if it was the proverbial “Goodnight, Irene.” She didn’t want to die, but she knew that falling into their hands was going to be worse than taking her last breath here in this tunnel.
“Drop your weapons!” he repeated.
Too many guards. Too many weapons on them that they had been trained to use—
He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight.
From out of nowhere, she heard her defense teacher’s voice in her head, variations on the phrase repeating over and over again: If you cannot win, do not fight. Evade.
Sun Tzu. The Art of War.
Taking a deep breath, Nyx slowly lowered both her weapons. Then she closed her eyes and pictured the pool, with its waterfall and its clean scent and the candles down on the floor. She imagined herself sitting beside it, on the sofa rock, warm and safe.
Not enough. She wasn’t calm enough—
“Drop your weapons on three! One, two—”
From out of nowhere, Jack appeared in the image, and he was as he had been the night before, watching her, his astonishingly blue eyes on her—
Nyx dematerialized out from under the guards.
One second she was before them, with their guns in her face. The next she was just a scatter of molecules, traveling past them through the air, invisible.
Untouchable.
Back when this had all started, when she’d come to that old, decaying church, she couldn’t have dematerialized inside of it from where she’d been on the ground because she didn’t know the interior. Now, at least she knew the tunnel system to some degree, although she prayed that more steel barriers hadn’t dropped down from the ceiling. If they had? She was going to slam into all that steel and die a pancake.
