The Jackal

by J. R. Ward

  “Five hundred dollars,” she repeated.

  “Tell me what I want.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You said you knew what I want. What is it.”

  He went back to looking at her mouth, like he wanted to watch it move, and she had a thought that he was thinking of places she could put her lips on him. Hard places. Places that, with a certain amount of attention, got things very, very messy.

  And not just in an “it’s complicated” kind of way.

  “You want to have sex,” she said. “But it’s not going to be with me. So I’d suggest you take the five hundred and pay someone to put up with your grunting and groaning.”

  “How do you know what I sound like when I come.” His voice was like velvet, his words running together. “Hmm?”

  “Fine. Maybe you sing the Kit Kat song. Maybe it’s your grocery list. Hell, it could be the Star fucking Banner. Whatever it is, it’s none of my business.”

  “Oh, I’m afraid it is. If you want to find your sister.”

  Nyx glanced over her shoulder. There were no other noises coming from behind her, but that was not going to last. Sooner or later those guards were going to return and she couldn’t believe this male was just standing here calmly, negotiating for sex, like they were on the sidewalk of a city street in a good zip code at one in the afternoon.

  Right. Because that was where these kind of deals went down.

  “I’m not fucking you,” she said. “So either you get over this or—”

  He moved so fast that she didn’t have any time to react. One second there was space between them, the next, he was back in her face. And turning his head to the side. And dropping his mouth so that it was a thin inch from her own.

  As she gasped, she smelled those dark spices.

  “I’m afraid that’s what I want from you,” he whispered. “And I dare say, it is what you want as well.” He breathed in deep again. “Fates, you smell like something I want to taste.”

  “No, I do not,” she said roughly.

  She went to slap him but he caught her hand, his reflexes faster than her own. And then he forced her arm back, his grip so tight she didn’t even try to yank away.

  He just stared at her with those mesmerizing eyes, and the next thing she knew, she wasn’t thinking of pulling back. She only thought about getting closer to him.

  It was the stress, she told herself. It was this strange, dangerous, knife-edge-of-adrenaline situation. That’s why she was getting… turned on.

  The male dropped her arm and regarded her with triumph.

  “Let’s find your Janelle then,” he said. “Shall we?”

  * * *

  The Jackal didn’t return the female to the hidden passageway. He was tempted, but he’d always had a sixth sense about the guards, and something was telling him that backtracking even a couple hundred yards in that direction was a bad idea.

  But they had to get moving.

  Fates, it had been so long since he had wanted a female. And after everything he had been through, he needed to feel that spark of attraction again.

  It meant he wasn’t as dead as he thought he was.

  “Take your jacket off and put it on over that pack,” he said as they headed off and he forced himself to snap out of the sexual spell. “And keep your eyes down and your hands in your pockets. I want you right behind me, and stay close. My reputation precedes me and that will be of benefit to us, but you do not want to be noticed. We don’t want to push it.”

  The female complied so fast with the reorientation of her supplies and outerwear that he upgraded his opinion of her. Mayhap she could survive this. Yet as he sensed her falling lockstep into his wake, he wished he were leading her out of the hellhole instead of deeper into it.

  She would try it on her own, though. She was just that reckless.

  The prison’s tunnels had been carved out of the earth with no rhyme or reason to their layout, which was what resulted when you had a system that had evolved rather than been designed for a given function. He was confident that a lot of prisoners didn’t know half of the prison’s confines, and he wondered about the guards.

  The Command knew, however. He’d learned that the hard way.

  For at least a quarter mile, they ran into no one, but as they got within range of the Hive, other prisoners were encountered. He kept her well away from the common area, skirting the high-traffic passages on a just-in-case. And it was strange how her presence changed things for him. Ordinarily, other prisoners were not on his radar; he worried about the guards. Now, anything that approached them was a threat to be assessed.

  The closer he got to his cell, the faster he went, as if the lack of complication they’d had thus far was the kind of thing that could run out over distance.

  The cells for the incarcerated were set in blocks in the oldest part of the prison, and you were lucky if you had one. The males and females who didn’t were forced to bunk up in one of the common sleeping areas.

  Which were rife with corruption. And worse.

  His carved-out compartment in the rock was the last in the row of the oldest ones, and as he proceeded down the lineup of berths, he deliberately looked into each and every one. None of the other prisoners paid him attention. Most were lying on their pallets, sleeping off work shifts. One was reading a Life magazine that had a picture of a male human with the name “Richard Nixon” under the black-and-white portrait. Another had a tattered book with no jacket upon it cracked open.

  When he got to his cell, he stood to one side and nodded for the female to go inside. Verily, he wished he had something better to offer her than these harsh, barely inhabitable accommodations. The days of luxury were long past him, however.

  Staying put, he stared in the direction they’d come from. No guards. No prisoners. Nothing.

  So her scent hadn’t been noticed.

  As he ducked into the ten-by-ten-foot space, he cleared his throat. The female looked over from checking out the rock-hard wooden platform he slept on.

  “Where are the bars?” she asked as she nodded at the open archway.

  The Jackal leaned to the side and pulled the set of iron slats and steel mesh out from the rock walling. “Here.”

  “So wait, you can leave anytime?”

  “Was it easy for you to get down here?” As she closed her mouth, he nodded. “The escape problem is not the cells, it’s the prison itself.”

  “But how is order maintained?”

  The laugh that came out of him was low, and even to his own ears, mean. “The Command has its ways.”

  “Is that the warden, you mean? The head of the prison?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who does he report to?” She motioned around. “And who’s in charge over him? Is this run by the King or—”

  “The prison has always been under the ultimate rule of the glymera and the Council.”

  The female frowned. “Are you sure about that? Because the Council has been disbanded by the King, and the raids killed most of the aristocracy off.”

  “What raids?”

  “The Lessening Society attacked the Founding Families in their homes about three years ago. No one has any idea how they found them. They slaughtered almost the entirety of those bloodlines.” As the shock he felt must have shown on his face, the female tilted toward him, but didn’t touch him. Dropping the volume of her voice, she said, “Exactly how long have you been down here?”

  “What precise year is it?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I wouldn’t have asked if I did.” He shrugged. “And it doesn’t matter. I was incarcerated in nineteen fourteen, and since then, time has had little meaning to me.”

  The female blinked. “You’ve been here for over a hundred years.”

  “Yes.”

  “You have had no contact with the outside world since then?” She shook her head. “I mean, no visitors?”

  “Do you think a place like this has visiting hours? As
if we are a hospital ward down here?”

  She started to say something else at that point, but he found himself distracted by the movement of her lips, paying more attention to their pursing than the syllables they released.

  “You stay here,” he said, cutting her off. “And get under the bedding platform.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll be gone for not more than five minutes.” Not that he had a watch. Not that he knew that for a fact. “Get under the bed. Unless you want to run the risk of some of my fellow prisoners making your acquaintance—and I can assure you, they won’t do it by shaking your hand.”

  “Take me with you.”

  “No. I’m going to the Hive. I can’t protect you there if it’s only me on my own.” He pointed to the bedding platform. “Get under there and don’t make a sound.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Nyx had never been good at following directions, but survival instinct made her uncharacteristically compliant. So, sure, fine, she all-four’d it and planked her way into the crawl space under the roughly constructed “bed.” Staring out at ground level, she watched as the male left and then listened to the sounds of the prison: the voices off in the distance, the footfalls… someone singing a Duran Duran song?

  Jesus, when was the last time she’d heard that? It had to have been when Ronald Reagan was in office and folks were watching Family Ties—and as she considered the lag in culture and progress, she couldn’t fathom how much things had changed up above as those incarcerated down here had stayed the same. For godsakes, back when Simon Le Bon had been singing about how hungry he was, the Internet hadn’t been invented yet, Amazon had only been a jungle, and electricity had been for vacuum cleaners, not cars.

  Janelle had missed out on so much—

  Through the open archway of the cell, she saw a draped figure walk by slowly, its head lowered, nothing of the hands or feet showing out of the hems of the asphalt-gray robing. It was too small to be a male.

  It had to be female.

  “Janelle?” she whispered.

  Nyx shuffled out from under like she was saving someone from a fire, and as her pack got caught on something, she shucked it off quick, leaving it and her windbreaker behind. Popping to her feet, she broke free of the cell and hung a right. There wasn’t much running involved on the catch-up, and as soon as she was in range, she reached out and touched the sleeve of the robe.

  “Janelle?”

  The figure stopped. Pivoted around.

  “It’s me, Nyx—”

  As the female looked up, the hood lifted and the light from the bulbs overhead penetrated the shadows obscuring the face. Nyx gasped and jumped back.

  The female had lost an eye at some point, and the injury had been badly treated, the socket stitched closed with black thread that remained in place even though the skin had healed. The mouth had been likewise ruined, part of the upper lip missing so that the long shanks of rotten teeth and the gray pads of discolored gums showed.

  The snarl that came out from under the robe was as vicious as a rabid dog’s, and what was left of the mouth curled back—

  Something pink was wedged in between those chipped teeth. Pieces of… meat?

  “Now, now,” a male voice drawled, “you just keep going. I know you can’t be hungry. I just saw you eat.”

  Nyx didn’t bother looking at whoever was putting his two cents in. She was too busy worrying about whether she’d be tackled so her face could be chewed off as dessert.

  After a tense moment—during which a spool of drool dripped off that chin as the eye went back and forth between Nyx and the male who was standing behind her—the female lowered her stare and shuffled away.

  As a wave of relief replaced the panic, Nyx turned to thank—

  The prisoner who had interceded on her behalf was enormous, which explained why that scarred female had done the math and left. But he was no savior. As he leaned casually against the rock wall, his glittering yellow eyes were heavy-lidded and calculating, his muscled body clearly capable of getting him whatever he wanted.

  And that warning about making acquaintances had been right. This predator was not looking to shake her hand.

  “I don’t think I’ve seen you around here, have I,” he said.

  Nyx looked back toward the cell she’d left. Thought of her backpack. Thought of the relative safety she’d left on a desperate whim.

  “If you’re new here”—he crossed his arms over the heft of his chest—“I’ll give you a quick orientation. First rule is, don’t approach anyone who’s not looking for your company.”

  As her heart pounded, she glanced in the other direction. That female was making a turn, moving out of sight.

  “Just so you know,” the male said with deceptive softness, “I am very open to meeting you.”

  Nyx refocused on the prisoner in front of her. She hadn’t wasted time taking note of his hair or his features, but she tracked every nuance of him now, from the long, wavy hair that was streaked with gray to the arch of his brows and the hard cut of his jawline. In other circumstances, she might have considered him attractive, but not down here. And not with that look in his eye.

  He was a killer.

  And he was… something else, too.

  There was something different about him.

  “You can run if you want to,” he murmured as his eyes traveled down her body. “It’ll make it more fun.”

  * * *

  The Jackal hoped he did not have to go all the way to the Hive to find who he was looking for. And this wasn’t the only thing on his mind as he entered the main concourse tunnel. Going along, he found himself making assessments as to the other prisoners: How tall they were. How strong. How weak. How fast. How slow. Almost all of them were wearing the same kind of loose, grungy-colored clothing he was, but there was a lot of variety in all the other physical characteristics displayed. Different hair colors. Eye colors. Ages and weights. He had some thought that he had done this back when he had first found himself in the underground.

  Then, it had been a case of wanting to survive.

  Now, it was through the eyes of that female that he took the measure of those with whom he was familiar. There were at least fifteen hundred prisoners down here, which sounded like a lot until you spent a hundred years with the same set of faces—and it wasn’t like there were new people coming in anymore. In fact, he couldn’t think of a fresh arrival in the last ten years.

  Then again, what had the female said? The raids. The Council gone. Most of the Founding Families dead.

  Seventy-five years ago, if that disruption in authority had occurred? Fifty years ago? Perhaps the population down here would have revolted and escaped. But not now. In spite of what he’d told his guest, the glymera was no longer in charge of the prison they had created—and they hadn’t been for at least two decades.

  The Command had been gathering the reins of control for quite some time—

  Up ahead, a figure among the others stood out. Taller than most, with what the Jackal’s grandfather would have called “a regal carriage,” the male somehow turned his common clothes into tailor-made masterpieces just by the controlled swing of his proper gait.

  Speak of the aristocrat.

  The Jackal jumped ahead, falling into the wake of his target. In a low voice, he said, “I need a favor.”

  It was a testament to the kind of vampire he was dealing with that nothing changed about the male. Not the stride, not the straight-ahead of the focus, not the swing in those arms.

  But there was a quiet reply, low and soft. “What do you need, my friend.”

  “Come to my cell.”

  “When.”

  “Now.”

  There was the briefest of nods, and then, at the next branching-off, the male deviated from the flow of bodies headed to the Hive, and penetrated a tunnel with narrower walls and no foot traffic. The Jackal stuck with the prisoner, and they went quite some distance before stopping.

  Nothing
was said as they waited.

  When there was no trail and no guards, the Jackal walked forward a couple of yards and paused with his back to the stone wall. The other male played lookout as the hidden switch was hit and a soft clicking sound was released as the panel slid back.

  A moment later, the pair of them were in the other end of the hidden passageway that the Jackal had brought the female into in the first place.

  “Tell me,” Kane said as candles flared, and they started walking.

  Kane had been the biggest surprise when the Jackal was first learning the ropes of the prison. Another aristocrat who was both educated and smart—not always the same thing—the male had, no doubt as a throwback social courtesy, extended a hand in mentorship. The two of them had much in common, and not only when it came to their backgrounds and fall from status.

  “I’m going to let her explain it,” the Jackal murmured.

  “Her?”

  The Jackal let that stand and went along faster, covering the distance to the nearest of the three exits with alacrity. Emerging from the passage was always a risk, and he was forced to stop and listen. When there was nothing on the other side, he released the hold and the panel slid back without a sound.

  Extraction was faster than a blink, and then he and Kane were almost to his cell—

  The Jackal jerked to a halt. Even though that was the wrong instinct. But he couldn’t understand what he was looking at.

  The civilian female, who he had witnessed hiding herself well and properly under his bed, appeared to be out and about, and she had managed to cross paths with the ultimate bad penny in the prison. She was standing within swiping distance of that wolven—and Lucan was looking like he’d found Little Red Riding Hood alone in the forest. The huge hybrid was staring down at her with hunger in his face and in his powerful body, the sexual intent rolling off of him in waves.

  The Jackal would have shouted, except he didn’t want to draw any notice from anybody. Instead, he lunged forward, prepared to tackle the other male—