The Jackal

by J. R. Ward

  “You’re the one who stole a gun and made a prisoner take you to the Wall.”

  “Because I wanted to know if you were alive, if I could help you—”

  “And you put that gun to the prisoner’s temple, didn’t you.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You threatened the life of one of my prisoners, didn’t you. You put a gun to his temple and forced him to carry you—”

  “Janelle, why are we talking about this—”

  “Because I am in charge here! This is my prison!” Janelle jacked forward on her hips. “Do you have any idea how long I have worked to get this far? To get this authority? Decades, you stupid idiot. I had to play my cards smart, develop allegiances, learn how to bribe guards. And as the glymera lost interest down here, I took my opportunity and seized control. I’m someone here, goddamn it. I matter—”

  “You matter to us! I’ve been eaten alive by the idea that you were put away falsely—”

  “Are you fucking kidding me? I killed that old motherfucker. What are you talking about?”

  Nyx clamped her jaw shut and felt the world spin. “What,” she whispered.

  “I killed that old male. I snapped his neck because I was sick and tired of him telling me what to do.”

  Blinking hard, Nyx couldn’t process what was being spoken. “But… why didn’t you just quit if you were unhappy with the job?”

  Janelle’s chin lowered, and she stared out from under her brows. “Because I wanted to know what it was like to murder someone.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “Oh, I do. And I’ve learned a lot more about death since I took over down here. I like it. I’m good at it.” As Janelle shook her head, the last of the light that had so briefly flared in her eyes faded. “I belong here. This is my world. The sister you had is dead and gone and I’ll prove it.”

  She slammed the door to the cell shut and then stepped up to the mesh. “You put my gun to the temple of that prisoner. What else did you do with him?”

  “What?”

  Janelle punched at the panel between them, the mesh rattling against the iron bars. “What else did you do with him, you whore!”

  As a sickening realization ran through Nyx’s aching head, she took a deep breath. And that was when she made the connection. The scent on Janelle, that sandalwood, which she hadn’t smelled anywhere else in the prison…

  … had been in Jack’s hair.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  When the door to the Command’s quarters opened, Jack shot his eyes in that direction even as his head remained where it was. He braced himself for guards. Many of them. Or maybe the Command with Nyx’s body—

  Apex?

  The male with the dead stare and the bad past walked in with a bored expression on his face—and a severed hand… in his hand?

  The vampire lifted the body part. “I borrowed this from one of the guards. After we’re done getting you out, I’m going to slap him with it. Assuming he hasn’t bled out.”

  As Apex tossed the appendage over his shoulder and strode across to the bed, Jack blinked quickly. It was the only way to communicate.

  “What’s that?” the male asked. “Why’d I cut it off? I needed a thumbprint to get in here and his worked nicely. So what do we have to do here to get you out?”

  Jack cast his gaze over to the table and returned it to Apex. And then he went back to the table.

  “Right.” Apex walked over and picked up one of the vials of clear liquid. “This or the other guy?”

  When Jack blinked twice, Apex said, “Is that a yes on this bottle?” Jack blinked twice again. “Okay. How much.”

  Apex came back with the syringe, inserted the needle through the red rubber seal, and started to draw out the antidote to the tranquilizer. “Blink twice when we’re good.”

  Jack had no clue about the proper dosage so he just blinked repeatedly when the syringe seemed fully filled.

  “Where do you shoot it up? Vein or muscle?” Apex rolled his eyes. “Blink twice for vein.” When Jack did not, the male said, “Blink twice for muscle.” Jack blinked twice. “Leg?”

  More with the blinking, and Apex moved so fast, Jack was still communicating with his eyelids when he felt a puncture on his thigh. Well aware of what was coming next, he braced himself for—

  The rush of animation was like being plugged into an electrical socket, his body jerking and jumping against the shackles until the chains seethed and rattled like snakes. But instead of promptly leveling off, the burning buzz continued to build until he was shaking, great rushes of energy vibrating through his veins, his muscles, his limbs.

  “Shit, I think you’re exploding from the inside out,” Apex said evenly. “You want me to hit you with a dart—”

  The guards who ran into the chamber had guns drawn, and before Apex could respond, one of them hauled back and nailed him on the head with a baton, knocking him out cold. As he dropped like deadweight to the floor, there was some conversation, but Jack couldn’t follow it. His teeth were clapping together like a set of castanets, and then there was the raucous sound of those rattling chains. The good news? He could move his head. The bad news? He couldn’t stop moving his head.

  His vision was all over the place, vibrating around the chamber as his skull wobbled at the top of his earthquaking spine. He was in a tornado, but he was aware enough that he knew when the guards came over to him. They released his ankles first, and his legs danced free of the shackles with no rhythm at all, skipping, bucking—

  When his arms were liberated, he flopped around the bedding platform, a fish in the bottom of a boat, the momentum carrying his body to the edge of the mattress. The guards, ever careful of his welfare, caught him before he ended up knocked out on the floor with Apex. Muscling him up to his feet, they dragged his spasming form over to the door, his feet skipping across the bullet holes the Command had put into the tile.

  He wanted to fight, but he was no better off than he’d been before. On the tranquilizer, he’d had no control because he was paralyzed. Now, he had no control because his body was a lightning bolt.

  From out of the chaos of his vision, he was fairly sure that the guards picked up Apex as well. And then he was out in the hall, being taken in the opposite direction from the work area, from where the transports left, from where he’d been praying Nyx would get out. When they arrived at the main tunnel, he had a passing thought that everything was very empty, and this proved especially true as he was brought into the Hive.

  Just as before, when he’d come out of the fissure with Nyx, there was no one in it. Not one prisoner. And the only guards were those carrying him.

  They took him down toward the dais, through the piles of trash and debris left scattered by the normal crush of inmates. There were six stone steps up to the platform, and his feet knocked into them on an ascension that ended at the middle of the three posts. As he was turned around, he heard the metal-on-metal chime of chain links while Apex was dropped like litter off to one side.

  Jack’s arms were bent backward, his shoulder sockets straining, his wrists burning as they were once again shackled. The seizures racking him made him kick against the greasy, stained wood, and he knew he was going to be bruised.

  Not that he was going to live through this.

  Dearest Virgin Scribe, he hoped Nyx had gotten free again somehow.

  As Jack looked across the vast space of the Hive, he heard a rumbling off in the distance, one that rose in volume and gradually declined, like a massive vehicle was passing by somewhere close. When it happened again, his brain churned over the implications.

  Double shifts called in. No prisoners in the main tunnel. No one here.

  Holy shit. The Command was emptying the prison.

  She was moving out everything… and everyone.

  * * *

  “What did you do with him?” Janelle demanded through the mesh and the iron bars. “The prisoner. What did you do with him.”

  T
hat furnished cell, Nyx thought. The one Jack had hesitated in front of.

  Maybe he’d paused there not because he missed the female who lived inside, or yearned for her… but because she was holding him against his will and he didn’t know what to do about it?

  Or how to get free, regardless of the relative autonomy he had around the prison?

  “Which prisoner?” she hedged, to buy some time.

  “The one my guards saw you with. The one you threatened to kill in front of them if they didn’t let you through.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You’re lying to me.”

  Nyx shrugged. “I think the larger question is what you’re going to do with me. Everything else is just conversation.”

  Janelle went silent. And then she slowly put the hood back in place, her face covered once more.

  “I’ll answer that right now,” she said in a low, threatening voice. “Guards!”

  As Nyx felt a cold rush of panic, Janelle turned away—and she did not look back as she left. The black-robed figure who used to be her sister just walked off, as if she hadn’t had a conversation with a close relative. Someone who she’d grown up with. Someone who she shared parents and a sister and a grandfather with.

  In the wake of the departure, Nyx remembered standing in front of the Wall and seeing the bastardized version of her sister’s name carved into the slick stone.

  One thing was absolutely clear.

  The female she had once known as Janelle was well and truly dead.

  I wanted to know what it was like to murder someone. I’m good at it.

  Maybe that person had never existed.

  The time for thinking ended as guards reentered the holding area and opened the cell. They were silent as they marched her out, one male at the crook of each of her arms, the three of them pivoting to shuffle through the doorway. Striding out into the tunnel, there was no wasted time. They took her directly to the Hive, and they entered through a side door—

  Nyx looked up to the dais and lost her footing. Jack was chained to the center post, and there was something wrong with him. His body was trembling violently, his head jerking around on his shoulders, the chains keeping him in place chattering because of all the movement—that certainly seemed to be involuntary.

  But he managed to focus on her. Even through his palsied condition, his eyes, those blue eyes, locked on her—and as she was brought closer, his shaking eased some. He couldn’t seem to talk, though, his lips moving and nothing coming out. Was he sick?

  No, he was drugged, she decided.

  The guards dragged her up onto the dais and stood her in front of him. Off to the side, Apex was down on the ground and not moving. When there was a rustling from the shadows behind the dais wall, Nyx expected her sister to walk out—no, not her sister.

  The Command.

  Instead, another set of guards emerged, and they were dragging a prisoner by the male’s arms, the torso and body lagging behind. They dropped the body like it was trash next to Apex, and Kane slowly flopped over onto his back.

  Nyx gasped. His face was so bloody and swollen, she almost couldn’t recognize him, and as he breathed through his mouth, all that came out was wheezing.

  She glanced back at Jack just as one more was brought in. Mayhem was fighting against the guards who had him tied in rough rope, big body jerking and twisting, white hair ripping around as he snarled and cursed. All that fight stopped as he got a look at the empty Hive. He was so stunned that as he was chained to the post on the right, he didn’t resist.

  Then again, he was done for and he must have known that.

  They were all done for.

  The guards stepped back from them, forming a line on the left, and as Nyx’s biceps were abruptly released, her balance went wonky and she had to catch herself from falling over. She steadied her balance by focusing on Jack. She wanted to ask him what they should do, how they could beat this, but she knew the impulse was the immature part of her talking, the little girl inside the grown female who was desperately looking for someone she trusted and loved to tell her it was all going to be okay: She wanted the plan that would magically free Jack and Mayhem, that would bring Apex back to life and save Kane from his injuries, that would make her sister not dead and the Command someone else… that would see Nyx, herself, safely back to the farmhouse, this whole nightmare never having happened.

  The yearning for that fantasy was as strong as her love for the quaking male who was chained before her, stronger even than her mortal fear about the death that was surely coming.

  “I wanted to see you two together.”

  Nyx jerked around. Down on the floor of the Hive, standing in the center of the vast, empty cave, was the black-robed figure that had briefly removed her hood and looked, catastrophically, like Nyx’s long-lost sister.

  The Command came forward, those billowing folds of black fabric ominous, like funeral draping about to fall on a casket. She stopped when she was five feet away from the dais, the hooding angling back as she looked up.

  “Bring the basket.”

  Nyx looked at Jack. The trembling was subsiding in him, the unhealthy flushing in his chest and throat and face fading—to reveal a palm print on his cheek as if he’d been slapped.

  “No,” he mumbled. “Not her—”

  “You gave up any chance to have an opinion about anything when you let her take your vein.” The Command shook her head. “And your reward for being a faithless fuck is that she gets to watch everything. Then I’m going to teach her about death—”

  “No!” he yelled as he strained against the chains.

  “Fuck you!” the Command hollered back. “You had everything here! I took care of you—you were treated with more goddamn deference than anybody except me. And you fucked it all up—you fucked yourself when you fucked her!”

  The Command grabbed the folds of her robe and marched up onto the stage. “I fucking hate you!”

  Nyx started to respond, but the Command went by her like she didn’t exist, getting up into Jack’s face, punching at his chest. “You fucking asshole!”

  “I was never yours,” Jack said on a growl.

  The Command ripped off her hood, that red hair glowing under the harsh lighting. “You were left to your own devices here, you were taken care of, you had everything—”

  “I had nothing—”

  “You had me!”

  “I. Didn’t. Want You!” Jack screamed the last word, the muscles in his neck and shoulders bulging. “You drugged me and strapped me down and took what I didn’t want to give you. I didn’t fucking want you!”

  The Command seemed stunned. “You lie.”

  “When was the last time I got on that bed willingly? It’s been decades,” he spat.

  Nyx felt the world spin on its axis again. As her brain jammed with the implications of it all, the Command, trembling with rage, hauled back with her open palm—

  Nyx moved before she had a conscious thought to take action. Surging forward, she took her cuffed hands and raised them high, jacking them over the Command’s head and yanking back, catching the chain between the shackles right across the front of that throat.

  Blind rage gave Nyx a strength she had never had before, and she dragged the Command up against her own body, taking control, owning the situation as she wheeled around and faced the guards.

  In a loud, clear voice, she spoke over the choking sounds and the thrashing of the robes. “I will fucking kill her. I will snap her fucking neck right now if any of you move.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  As Jack saw Nyx jump forward, he would have yelled at her to stop, but there was no time. One moment, she was standing behind the Command, the next she had her handcuffs around the female’s throat and was hauling back as if her life depended on the Command’s losing hers.

  Which was the truth of the situation they were all in.

  His female was in a magnificent fury, her eyes glowi
ng with retribution, her body strung like a bow as she strangled her prey. And when she ordered the guards, her voice was like something that had come from on high, from a deity of war. Meanwhile, the Command’s hands clawed at the constriction, her face flushing, her eyes bulging—

  Jack’s awareness instantly bifurcated. Part of his brain stayed on the situation before him, his female ahvenging his honor like the warrior she was. The other part was looking at the two faces side by side, Nyx’s right behind the Command’s.

  He refused to believe the conclusion he was coming to. But if one disregarded the difference in hair color… there was a shocking similarity between the shapes of their faces, the arches of their brows, the tilt of their eyes. They were even the same height, tall for females, and…

  “No,” he whispered as Nyx continued to bark orders. “It cannot be.”

  That was the last thing that came out of his mouth, the last conscious thought he had as everything went to senses and reaction rather than logic and reason: In a strange, slow-motion kind of dreamscape, he noticed from the corner of his eye that Kane was getting to his feet in a wobbly manner.

  Kane looked at Jack. Then his eyes went to Nyx.

  At that moment, a fresh phalanx of guards jogged onto the platform from the shadows off to the side. As they drew their guns, Nyx’s forehead glowed ruby red from all the laser sights trained on her frontal lobe, but none of the males discharged their weapons.

  They couldn’t. The Command was too close, and the two females were moving around.

  And that was when Kane, who had been badly beaten about the face and head, stumbled back toward the guards, both those lined up and frozen at attention, and the new ones who were getting up to speed on the unprecedented situation. None of the males paid any attention to him. They were all focused on Nyx and the Command—

  So when Kane lifted his hands to the back of his neck, none of them noticed.

  Jack opened his mouth. But there was nothing to say. He knew what the aristocrat was going to do—

  There was a final moment as their stares met. The sadness in Kane’s eyes was palpable, all that he had lost, all that he had had to endure, coming out of his soul. Then he nodded once, in deference and commiseration—