The Jackal (Black Dagger Brotherhood: Prison Camp)

by J. R. Ward

  “True love doesn’t require a voice. It requires the heart. He knows how you feel.”

  “Will you tell him? That I love him?”

  “On my honor.” Even though there was very little space, Kane managed to incline his upper torso in a shallow bow. “I shall tell him, I swear. For if I could have gotten one last missive unto my love, I would have. I will not fail you. Or him.”

  For a moment, she searched Kane’s face and the sorrow that clouded his eyes.

  Then she hugged him. It was an impulsive gesture not easily accommodated in the tight space, but she couldn’t not reach out. They had both lost the one they loved. Him to death’s cold embrace, her to this prison Jack would not leave.

  “I still don’t know why,” she said as they separated.

  “Know what?”

  Why Jack refuses to leave, she thought.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said.

  “The next truck. When it comes by, you dematerialize onto the top. You’re wearing the color of the paint job, so if there’s a guard monitoring things somewhere, you should be able to pass notice. Stay flat. Keep your head down.”

  “And my eyes down,” she said roughly. “Which is the same thing.”

  “You can do this. I believe in you.”

  “The next truck.” When Kane nodded, she gripped his hand. “You are a male of worth. To help me. To be there for Jack.”

  He squeezed her palm. “I do not know about the male of worth. But I am certain that the love the two of you have for each other is worth just about everything.”

  “He doesn’t love me,” she said.

  “Of course he does. He has bonded.”

  “He’d be coming with me if that were true. Or he’d at least help me understand the why not. So no, he doesn’t love me.”

  Light flared down at the far end, a truck rambling around the turn, the engine roaring as whatever guard was driving stomped on the accelerator.

  “Here it is,” she whispered. “I have to go.”

  All she had to do was picture that pool with the candlelight, the calm place she had found grace in despite being in this harsh and hopeless prison. Except now, Jack could not be part of the vision. She needed to start giving him up right away. It was not going to get any easier.

  Kane reached forward and squeezed her shoulder. “You can do this. If you can face off at a squad of guards, you can dematerialize from here—”

  “If you move, I kill him.”

  Nyx wrenched around. In the dim light, a guard stood behind Kane, having come through the fissure from its other end. The male’s face and body were largely indistinct. The gun that was up to the aristocrat’s head was not—

  “I’ve got her.”

  Nyx whipped her head back toward the view of the road. There was a guard right in front of her, and before she could respond, he clasped a steel handcuff on her wrist and ripped the gun free of her hold.

  So dematerializing was no longer an option. And neither was shooting her way free.

  Out in the tunnel, the truck she had been waiting for barreled by, its diesel breath billowing in its wake, an opportunity lost.

  Maybe she was going to see Jack again after all.

  Too bad that was far from good news.

  As Jack was shackled to the bed by the guards, the sounds of the chains rattling and the clicks of the steel bands locking on his ankles and his wrists were loud in the silence of the Command’s chamber. Thanks to the drug dart, his unresisting flesh was alive with sensation yet totally unresponsive—and still he tried to fight, even though he got nowhere with it. He couldn’t even move his head. It had lolled into a side position when he’d been carried over and laid upon the mattress, so he was stuck staring at the door across the chamber.

  The guards handled him like crystal glass, nothing rushed or harsh.

  The Command reserved that kind of fun and games for herself.

  As the two males left, Jack’s eyes went to the floor. There was a ring of bullet strikes in the tile, an outline of where his body had been.

  When the Command stepped in front of his vision, the hood was down again, and that face he despised, the one that came to him in his nightmares, the one that he had endured in front of his own so many times . . . was calm. That temper had been controlled.

  The gun was still in those pale hands, but it was pointing away from him.

  “So where did you get this?” she demanded.

  On one level, the inquiry was a waste of time. He couldn’t speak. Then again, the Command didn’t actually want his response. She never did.

  “This came off a guard.” Those hazel eyes bored into his own. “One who was killed in my quarters with three others.”

  Jack blinked. He knew what was coming next.

  “You said you were held at gunpoint by a female in prison garb. But she isn’t one of us, is she.” The Command backed off and paced around, stopping to stand over the pattern of bullet holes in the floor tile. “You stated you did not know her. How true is that, I wonder.”

  The Command went over to a table. There was a syringe on it and two small bottles with rubber seals on their necks: The drugs that had to be used if he was to get hard, as well as the antidote to the tranquilizer. There was also the dart gun and a gathering of red-tailed darts. She put the nine millimeter down and picked up one of those projectiles.

  Pivoting, she held the thing up. “If I shoot you again with this, you will die. Your respiration will cease. You will turn blue and then gray. After that, your body will stiffen for a period of time before your limbs become loose again. Blood will pool on the undersides of your arms and legs, your back and your ass, turning everything purple. You will begin to stink after that, assuming I don’t choose to strip the meat from your bones and feed it to the other prisoners.”

  The female approached the bed and knelt down. Putting the dart right up to his face, the Command said, “I am in control of you. You’re mine, and I will do with you whatever the fuck I want.”

  Jack stared back at those eyes.

  “You are mine.” The Command reached out and ran her hand down the side of his face. “Only mine. And if I find out you’ve been with another female? I’m going to make you beg for death. Are we clear? I will fucking destroy you.”

  He wanted to spit at her. Instead, he closed his eyes, shutting her out—

  The slap was hard, her palm connecting with his cheek. “You will look at me.”

  She slapped him again. “Look at me!”

  The Command let out an unholy sound and mounted him. Grabbing his face with her hand, he felt a fan of pain and smelled his blood as nails scored his skin.

  “You will look at me, goddamn you,” she spat.

  When he just breathed in and out through his nose and stared at the inside of his lids, his eyes were clawed open. The Command was utterly undone, her face flushed, that red hair splaying out in tangles—

  And then she stilled.

  Those hazel eyes bulged. With a shaking hand, she moved his head to the side.

  Trembling fingertips pulled down the high collar of his tunic. Then she took a quick, hard breath, the air sucked in between gritted teeth.

  “Who . . .” That hateful voice cracked. “Who have you fed.”

  The Command sat back on his hips and pressed shaking hands to her mouth. “Who have you fed.”

  The question was repeated over and over again under her breath— and Jack had a thought that it was like storm clouds gathering on the horizon.

  He was not going to live through what was going to be done to him. As soon as the Command snapped out of the trance of shock, she was going to unleash upon him all the fury in that black soul. She was going to kill him.

  But it would be okay. Kane had sworn on his honor to make sure Nyx got out, and the worthy male had the three others to help him. And as for the other issue, the one that kept Jack here in the prison?

  It was the one and only thing the Command and he agreed upon.
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  Those hazel eyes burned into his own, and he had an odd thought that she must have dropped the dart somewhere on the bed. Maybe she would find it and use it on him. Maybe she would reload the guard’s gun and not shoot around him this time. Maybe she—

  The tears that welled in those eyes shocked him.

  They didn’t last. The Command’s characteristic hard aggression wiped them away, sure as if the force of her will was the back of a hand.

  “You fucking bastard, you fed her. You’re lying to me about everything and you fed her.”

  The door to the quarters opened wide, and the Command yanked her hood back into place. “I told you not to—”

  “We have the female,” the guard announced. “And the prisoner she was with.”

  The Command stiffened. Then she dismounted from him. As she stared down at him from behind the mesh, he knew the bite mark at his throat was a declaration of war, and Nyx was in the crosshairs of a battle that had nothing to do with her. In desperation, he tried to move his mouth, move his body—move anything.

  Fuck, he thought. He needed to stop this.

  The Command’s hood tilted to the side. “Perfect timing. And why don’t I go take care of her. How about that? Two can play at the biting game, you know.”

  The black robes drifted across to the door, the Command speaking over her shoulder. “I’ll bring you back what’s left of her. And then you and I will discuss the future. It’s not going to be a pretty one.”

  As he was shut in by himself, he started to scream. Not that he made any noise. The only thing that changed was his rate of breathing. He started to pant.

  He had to force his body to move. He had to fight to get free. He had to—

  The paralysis did not yield, even to the adrenaline coursing through his system. Frozen as well as chained to the bedding platform, Jack yelled inside his skin.

  His female needed him and he could not get to her.

  This was the worst of all the hells he had ever known.

  Nyx was shoved into a ten-foot-square cell. As she lost her balance and pitched forward, she put out her handcuffed palms and caught herself on the rock floor. Flipping over, she jumped to her feet and brought up her fists.

  All the guard did was shut her in. Then leave her.

  Staying in a fighting stance, even though there was no one around and her head was pounding, she looked through the steel mesh that ran between the iron bars. She had no idea where Kane was—or where she was. From the light bulbs hanging from the ceiling, it appeared that she was in some kind of holding area, but the place looked abandoned. There was black dust on everything, and the other two cells were not only empty, they had parts of their steel mesh hanging off in sheets.

  Not that the prisoners, with those explosive collars, could ever dematerialize.

  With a groan, she eased up on the go-nowhere aggression and went to try the cell’s opening. Locked tight. With copper.

  She was stuck until someone let her out of here. “Damn it.”

  Before the guards had split up her and Kane, she’d been stripped of her backpack—which meant she had no weapons, no ammo, no windbreaker with her phone. Not that she had reception in the prison anyway.

  God, had they found Jack, too? Were they going to hurt Kane until the male told them everything?

  The unknowns were making her crazy. And then there was—

  Nyx frowned. The holding area was at the end of a dim tunnel, and off in the distance, she could hear a commotion. People were talking fast, the multilayer of voices echoing down to her. And then abruptly, everything went silent.

  Marching now. Getting louder. And before she could make out how many were coming for her, a different scent, pungent and distinct, flooded into the cell and saturated the air.

  What the hell was that?

  Except Nyx didn’t spend a lot of time trying to place the smell. A lineup of guards approached, their black uniforms and shiny weapons and coordinated movements strobing as they passed in and out of the pools of illumination thrown by the tunnel’s light bulbs. As they closed in, she backed up against the cell’s far wall.

  Like that was going to do any good—

  “Oh . . . shit,” she whispered.

  There was a figure behind the guards. One that was draped in black robing, with a hood over its face and head. It had to be the Command.

  Well. At least she wouldn’t have to wait around, wondering what was going to happen to her. Her end was right here.

  As the guards filed into the holding area, they flattened against the walls, their AR-15s held across their chests, their faces up, their eyes down on the rock floor. The Command was the last to enter, the figure in black imposing and full of authority.

  Nyx lifted her chin. She was not going to bow before anything or anybody on her way out the proverbial door. She had fought too long and too hard to bend. Though she was scared, she was determined not to show it—

  The Command stopped abruptly. Then the hood that covered the face tilted to one side. After a moment, the figure seemed to weave on his feet, which seemed at odds with the obvious authority he wielded.

  “Leave us,” a low voice ordered.

  As if there were any doubts in Nyx’s mind as to the power of the male, the effect of the command was like someone had dropped radioactive material in the center of the open space in front of the cells: The guards flushed out of the area quick as a breath.

  And then the Command . . .

  Didn’t do a goddamn thing.

  Those robes didn’t move. There were no words. No weapons being taken out, either.

  After what seemed like forever, the figure took two steps forward to the cell door. A long sleeve moved up, and a hand reached for the lock. There was the sound of shifting metal, and then the section of steel mesh and iron bars swung open, the hinges creaking.

  Nyx braced for a physical confrontation, moving into the middle of the cell, sinking into her thigh muscles and clasping her cuffed hands together so she could use them as a blunt force weapon.

  “So you’re the Command,” she said roughly.

  The figure went still again, and Nyx breathed deep, smelling that thick scent that seemed to coat the male as another tangible robe. Sandalwood. It was sandalwood—

  Nyx.

  From out of nowhere, she heard her own name in her head. Which, considering all the things she needed to be aware of at this moment, was hardly an efficient use of brain power—

  “Nyx . . . ?”

  Recoiling, Nyx tried to figure out what was wrong with her hearing. Maybe it wasn’t her ears, though. Maybe it was her head injury from that rock falling on her temple. Because there was no way in hell the Command had just said her name like that.

  The figure brought up a hand to the top of his hood, and as he stripped off the—

  Nyx took an involuntary step back. And another one. The last took her right up against the back of the cell, the cold mesh and bars registering on her shoulder blades through the thin prison tunic.

  She could not understand what she was looking at.

  It appeared to be . . . a female with long red hair. Which was confusing, as she’d decided the Command was a male, a clear unconscious bias she was going to need to apologize to herself for later. But the sex of the figure was not the big issue.

  The overriding problem was that her brain, for reasons she couldn’t understand, seemed to be extrapolating from the features of what was in front of her not just a resemblance to her dead sister, Janelle . . . but an exact copy. Right down to the cowlick next to the widow’s peak at her hairline. And the delicate cleft in her chin. And the arch of the brows, and the flecks of deep brown in the hazel irises, and the way the lips were slightly elevated on one side.

  “You’re dead,” Nyx said hoarsely. “Why am I seeing—”

  “Nyx?”

  Hearing her name come out of that mouth was like a time machine. She instantly traveled back to before Janelle had been falsely accused and sent
to prison, to when they’d lived together at the farmhouse, with Posie and their grandfather. And then she went back even farther, to before her parents had died. And farther back still, to when Nyx had just been out of her transition.

  When she hit the last memory, it was with a slam: She saw Janelle holding Posie, right after their younger sister had been born.

  “You’re supposed to be dead,” Nyx whispered. “I saw your name on the Wall.”

  “You . . . were the one who came in here.” Janelle—or the vision that appeared to be Janelle—shook her head. “You were the one. Who infiltrated us.”

  Janelle put both hands up to her face, but she didn’t touch her cheeks. Her palms hovered there in midair, the fingers splayed out. Just like she had always done whenever she was stressed.

  “It was you, then,” she repeated. Then she shook her head, that red hair shimmering in the light. “I don’t understand. Why did you come down here?”

  “I was looking for you. I’ve been looking for you for fifty years.”

  “Why?”

  “What do you mean, why?” Nyx frowned. “You’ve been incarcerated for fifty years for something you didn’t do. Why wouldn’t I look for you? I’m your sister.”

  “I didn’t ask you to come after me.” Janelle’s voice got sharper. “Don’t put this on me—”

  Nyx threw some volume into her own syllables. “Put what on you? The fact that I was worried about you? That you were lost and I was trying to find you? What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I never asked you to come after me.”

  “You didn’t have to! I’m your sister—”

  “Not anymore.”

  The dead tone to the words shut Nyx’s mouth. But not for long. “I’m not your sister?”

  “Janelle is dead.”

  “Then who the hell am I talking to right now?” Nyx went to rub her aching temple and winced when her fingers hit the place where she’d been struck. “Jesus Christ, Janelle, you’re in charge here, right? You’re the Command—so why don’t you just leave? If you’re the fucking authority, you can come home, come back to us. Why don’t you come home—”