The Jackal (Black Dagger Brotherhood: Prison Camp)

by J. R. Ward

  Nyx glanced at the warrior with the bright blue eyes. Even though he was staying quiet, he knew something. She could just sense it.

  “He wouldn’t leave,” she said.

  “It’s a prison. Not a lot of free choice when it comes to the exit.”

  “He was special. I mean, he was a different case down there. There were extenuating circumstances.”

  “Why.” The goateed Brother was like a polygraph that lived and breathed, his attention fixated on her like he was reading every nuance of her facial expression as well as the pounding pulse in the jugular at the side of her neck. “And if he won’t leave of his free will, why do you think he needs rescuing. Because that’s what you’re here for, right? You want us to rescue him.”

  “No,” she countered sharply. “I’m going to rescue him. We just thought the King might want to know that a thousand prisoners are on the move, and many of them are in custody under false pretenses—”

  “You and your granddad are not going into that prison, abandoned or otherwise.”

  Nyx lifted her chin at the goateed warrior. “You can’t stop me.”

  “The fuck I can’t, female—”

  “Here you go again, V,” someone interrupted, “making friends and influencing people. What are you putting your foot down about now? She buying an iPhone after she leaves here or some shit?”

  Nyx glanced to the archway and did a double take. The vampire standing just inside the room was bigger than even the blond Brother who had Jack’s blue eyes. With long, waist-length black hair falling from a widow’s peak, and wraparound black sunglasses, he was obviously a killer. But the enormous black diamond on his middle finger meant he was . . .

  “The King,” she whispered.

  A black brow lifted up over the top of the wraparounds. “Last I checked, that’s right. And you are?”

  Well, that escalated quickly.

  About thirty minutes later, as Rhage re-formed in the middle of a bowling-alley-flat scrub brush meadow, the Ron Burgundy meme was going through his head. Then again, hard to think what else applied considering he had been up to his elbows in Danish, and now he was here. Wherever the fuck “here” was.

  Looking around the valley and at the highway that ribboned through the low area between two pipsqueak mountains, he had a gut twist going on—but the uneasiness was not connected in the slightest to this stretch of ground that made him think of an old guy’s tufted, balding head. It also wasn’t about the mission they were on.

  Okay, fine, not everything about the mission.

  “So you did know the male,” V whispered as the brother materialized right beside him. “This Jackal?”

  “I haven’t heard that name in a century.” Rhage kept his voice down as he glanced at V. “He worked with Darius for a little bit. I met him only briefly—and my born brothers are all dead. I was the only one of my sire’s male offspring to survive. So I don’t know what the fuck she’s talking about.”

  Reaching back through the years, he tried to picture the gentlemale in question. It had been a long time, a good century, but his memory was sharp enough. He remembered that asshole Jabon and the young female—what the hell had her name been?—and the mahmen. The peach dressing gown with the stains. The scenes in the middle of Jabon’s formal receiving area in that tool’s crowded meat shop of a house.

  And then Rhage had an image of meeting the Jackal that first night he’d come down from that infernal guest bedroom. The guy had been in the parlor. Ready to talk with Darius.

  The male had done a double take as soon as he’d looked over.

  “All my born brothers are dead,” Rhage repeated.

  As the others arrived, one by one, he remembered another thing: the conviction that, when he’d been introduced to the Jackal, he had known the male from somewhere.

  What if he hadn’t seen the Jackal before in the hi-how’re-ya sense, though. What if it was his own face that he recognized in the other male’s? At the time, he’d been so poleaxed by recovering from his beast coming out that he’d been drained and exhausted. Mental connections that should have been made maybe hadn’t been.

  Like the fact that the pair of them looked a lot alike.

  “Rhage? Where you gone, Hollywood?”

  Shaking himself, he glanced at V. “Sorry. I’m back.”

  Z and Phury had materialized to the site, their guns out and down by their sides. And the female, Nyx, and her grandfather, Dredrich, were standing next to what looked like a nothing-special patch in the middle of the ugly nothing-special acreage.

  “Over here,” the female said, motioning to the ground.

  Rhage and the brothers came across as she lowered herself onto her knees and clawed at the loose ground. Underneath, a trapdoor with a circle pull was exposed to the moonlight. When Nyx went to lift it up, the brothers interceded to help.

  She was tough, Rhage had to give her credit. And she’d obviously had quite a time down underground, her limp and the fading injuries on her face and head the kind of thing that bothered him deeply because they were on a female. If she’d been male? Sure, fine, whatever. But he was never going to be comfortable with the opposite sex being all battered and fucked-up, and if that made him a throwback, fine. People could kiss his antiquated ass.

  Standing over the hole in the earth, Rhage trained a flashlight into the dense darkness. There was a steep slope to the passageway, the decline disappearing out of sight.

  “I’ll go first,” he said.

  “And I’m after you.” When everybody looked at Nyx, her face was set in a hard line. “I’m the only one who’s been in there. You can’t do this without me because you’ll have no fucking clue where you are, and moreover, part of the prison has collapsed, so it’s very dangerous. You need me.”

  Well. That just about covered it, didn’t it.

  Rhage sat his ass down on the lip of the trapdoor hole, his shit-kickers dangling into the darkness. After a resolve not to think about red balloons and clowns, he dropped himself down and landed on a scramble, his weight taking him on a slide as loose soil rained on his head and he had to use his palms to slow his roll.

  When his momentum stopped, he shined his flashlight around and saw a whole lot of stone that had been chipped away. “Someone dug this out?”

  The female re-formed next to him. “Yes, he did.”

  “Over how many years?”

  “A hundred.”

  Phury and Z also dematerialized down, as well as V and Nyx’s grandfather. The passageway was narrow, so it was a single-file situation, and he stayed in front with the female right behind him, the sounds of creaking leather and shuffling boots loud in the silence. Everyone had a gun in their hand, and he was reminded of how much he didn’t like working with civilians. He had no idea what the skills of that pair were, although so far, they were calm and focused. And very comfortable with metal against their palms.

  Soon enough, his flashlight became immaterial as a single bulb flared to life and then they reached a no go as they came up to solid wall.

  “Let me by,” Nyx said as she pushed him out of the way and patted around.

  She must have hit something because a panel slid back—and the bouquet that reached Rhage’s nose was a whole lot of unpleasant: Damp air, mold . . . and blood.

  The latter was faint, but it was present and of complex derivation.

  A lot of vampires were dead.

  The tunnel they progressed through next was broader, and the female seemed to know where to go. The blood smell got thicker, and so did the faded scents of males and females. There were no obvious sounds.

  No talking. No running. No screaming.

  The silence in the labyrinth was what eerie’d him out the most. And shit, it was a big place. So many halls and branches of tunnels, all of this just under the surface of the earth, away from prying eyes—human and vampire. When Nyx had talked about a thousand prisoners, he’d assumed she was exaggerating.

  Now? He could see it. Total
ly.

  They ran into their first body when they came out of one of the tunnel’s turns. Beneath the bald bulbs strung from wire on the ceiling, the loosely clothed female was lying facedown on the rock floor, her feet crossed, one arm outstretched with the fingers scratched into the ground.

  The blood was strong, but they didn’t stop to roll her over and find the wounds. She was gone.

  More bodies started to show up the farther they went. Two. Three. A fourth and fifth together. All in brown/gray/black tunics and baggy pants.

  Animals, he thought—and not in disrespect to the deceased. The prisoners had existed like animals down here, never seeing the moonlight or taking fresh air. This was an atrocity. How had they let this go on for so long?

  “Who was in charge here?” he asked out loud.

  Nyx glanced at him. Then cleared her throat. “The Command.”

  “Is that a warden?”

  “Kind of. But from what I understand, it wasn’t an official position, sanctioned by the glymera. It was a created authority, one that was taken by force and intimidation, as the aristocrats lost interest in the prison.”

  “Lost interest? Are you fucking kidding me? Like this is a toy they got bored with?” Goddamn, he hated aristocrats. “And the Command was a prisoner, you mean?”

  “Yes,” she answered. “A prisoner who took over, gathering power and control and using it to their own ends.”

  Rhage shook his head. “This is fucking awful. We should have done something—but we didn’t know. Fuck, Wrath is going to lose it.”

  “The Command didn’t want to be found.”

  “How the hell did they feed everyone?”

  Nyx stopped. Looked around. Leaned forward so she could see around a corner. “Okay, so the barricade is gone.”

  “What barricade?”

  The female went over to the wall and ran her free hand up a vertical stripe. “It’s been retracted.” She seemed to refocus. “The prison was on lockdown as I left. Most of the tunnels were blocked so that you could only go into certain areas. But that’s been lifted now.”

  “So someone’s still here?” V said.

  “I don’t know,” the female murmured as she looked to what was ahead. “I have no idea.”

  In the end, although Nyx did her best to lead everyone to the Command’s private quarters, she got turned around, and only figured out the miscalculation when she took the group into what had to be the work area.

  Hoping to find Jack somewhere, anywhere, she pushed through a pair of steel doors that seemed like they belonged in a human hospital— and discovered a disordered work area the size of a soccer field. Long tables were out of alignment and chairs were toppled over. Stray plastic baggies littered the floor and there were scales here and there.

  The kind you used for measuring food portions.

  Except there was a lot of suspicious-looking white powder dusting them.

  Shit. Drugs, she thought.

  The goateed Brother walked over to one of the few tables still on its four legs and picked up a tiny plastic bag that was filled with something that appeared to be facial powder or flour. Licking his pinkie, he put his finger inside, then sucked off the residue.

  Peeling his lips back, he licked his front teeth. “Cocaine. And maybe something else.”

  “Makes sense,” the blond Brother murmured as he walked around, his enormous shitkickers crushing anything he happened to step on. Spoons, baggies, scales. Hell, she was pretty sure, given his size, he could ruin a table. “It’s a perfect commerce system if you want to stay under the radar. Unregulated by humans with endless demand and a great profit margin.”

  “Plus if you’re a vampire,” another of the Brothers said, “and you’re picked up for distributing? Take the cop’s memories and you’re home free.”

  “So that’s how they fed everyone.” Nyx went over to the other side of the space where there was no debris at all. Instead, the floor was marked with tire tracks and oil stains. “And kept the prison going.”

  “Do the wholesale deals out of the country,” someone murmured. “Import the shit here. Process it with the prisoners and get it out onto the streets. It’s a money-making machine.”

  Nyx glanced back at her grandfather. As their eyes met, he shook his head sadly.

  Guess Janelle had found her fortune, Nyx thought.

  “There’s a lot of blood right here,” she said, pointing to the stained concrete she was standing on. “They were moving people and supplies out in big trucks. They also had an ambulance that looked really legit.”

  Walking forward, she sighted the road that disappeared out of the area. But she wasn’t going to worry about all that. Old news, as it were. The trucks were gone, what guards and prisoners had been still alive as well.

  They weren’t why she was here anyway.

  Doubling back into the processing area, she went down the side wall to another door. As she cranked the handle, she wouldn’t have been surprised if it was locked—

  The thing opened wide, and the scent of spilled blood was so strong, she recoiled, arching back.

  She didn’t have to call anyone over. The fighters and her grandfather came immediately, the smell getting their attention.

  Stepping through, she saw dead guards down on the floor—which was a surprise. But maybe it meant Jack was alive and had fought back?

  “Jack!” she called out as her heart started to pound.

  As her voice echoed, the blond-haired Brother took her arm and squeezed. “Shh. None of that. We don’t know who’s in here.”

  Except ultimately, the noise alert risk was immaterial. No one was alive. As she went down the finished hall, she had to step over limbs, torsos, and heads. When she came to a door, she opened it. Inside, there was a sparsely furnished bedroom, and as she looked to the bed, she frowned.

  Hustling across, she picked her backpack up off the floor.

  It was unzipped, and the weapons and ammo were gone. The toothbrush and the water bottle were still inside, though.

  But it wasn’t like she was ever using that Oral-B again.

  She let the pack drop to the mattress. She had no desire to take it with her. Too many bad memories. And on that sad note, she stared at the messy fitted sheet and breathed in deep. Underneath the scent of spilled blood, there was a heavy undertone.

  Of sandalwood. And Jack’s scent.

  It had happened here. Jack had been chained down . . . here.

  As it became hard to breathe, she wheeled around. The Brothers were talking. Her grandfather was checking out some medical stuff left on a table.

  She couldn’t stand to be inside the room for one more second.

  Stumbling back out into the hall, she looked to the left and quickly walked in that direction.

  “Hey, wait up,” the blond Brother said.

  Dimly, in the recesses of her mind, she tried to remember what he’d said his name was. She couldn’t recall it—or any of the others’, though she knew for a fact they’d all been introduced before they’d left the Audience House. The goateed male. The one with the skull trim and the facial scar. The one with the amazing multi-colored hair.

  And the blond one with Jack’s eyes, who was catching up to her.

  Just as she arrived at the cell that was nicely furnished.

  Its entry panel was wide open, the iron bars with their steel mesh having swung free of the jambs. Inside, around the hotel-homey setup of furniture, there was blood . . . everywhere.

  As she breathed in, she tried to sort through and see if it was Jack’s. Had the Command somehow survived the collapse? Found her way back here?

  Had they fought?

  Nyx’s heart started to skip beats and she backed out of the cell. Blindly turning away, she started walking without really tracking where she was going—

  Her body stopped before she was aware of anything registering in her mind.

  And then she saw it. Down on the floor.

  A tangle of long red hair.<
br />
  Which was matted with blood and . . . something else. Something terrifying.

  A sudden surge of paranoia made her eyes skip around at the other bodies. But they were all uniformed. None were in prison clothes. So none were Jack.

  “What is it?” the Brother said.

  She glanced over her shoulder and said softly to him, “Take my grandfather back out to the work area. Make an excuse.”

  “We’re not splitting up—”

  “Please.” She pointed to the floor. “This is my sister, and I don’t want him to have to see her. Just take him away. I’ll hide the body.”

  The Brother shook his head. “I can’t leave you. But I’ll handle it.”

  In spite of his size, he hurried back quick, said something to the goateed fighter, and justlikethat, her grandfather was rerouted out of the Command’s private area with the other two Brothers.

  Taking a deep breath, Nyx glanced around. Back inside the furnished cell, there was a throw blanket of good size that had been draped over the back of a stuffed chair. Tucking her gun away, she went in and got it, and then with shaking hands, she gently wrapped Janelle’s remains in the soft crimson and black folds.

  She did not look at the injuries directly. Her peripheral vision told her enough.

  Sitting back on her heels, she wiped her forehead with her sleeve. Then she gathered her sister in her arms and walked down the corridor, sidestepping the bodies. As she went along, she was aware of the goateed Brother and the blond one with the blue eyes following her solemnly.

  Nyx went to the Wall.

  As she approached the long list of inscribed names, she willed candles to light, and she was looking at the rows of symbols in the Old Language as she came to a stop.

  She laid Janelle at the foot of the memorial and stepped back.

  Crossing her arms, she stared at the wrapped body . . . and then she focused on her sister’s name in the lineup.

  After a moment, she nodded and turned away. She said nothing to either of the Brothers as she passed them by, powerful sentries who fell into her wake once more without a word.

  She had a feeling they had seen a lot of death over the course of their lives.