by J. R. Ward
Looking down at her leg, things were too dim to really see where the injury was.
Nyx kept going, the limping becoming worse with every step. Nausea surged. Dizzying waves of weakness battered at her. She stopped thinking and knew only her breath.
In the end, she didn’t feel alive anymore, even as she kept going up the ever steeper incline. She just existed, and proof of this was that she came to the end of the passageway on a full-body bump: She walked right into the rock wall in front of her, knocking her forehead, scraping her bare arm, stubbing her boot—the good one, not the one with blood in it.
For a moment, she just stood there, her sluggish mind refusing to process what to do next. But then her hand, her right hand, the one she had killed with, reached out on its own accord in spite of the cuffs and patted at the wall. Three feet from the ground.
He had carved this, she thought as the uneven nature of the stone registered. Jack had somehow chipped away at the rock and made this exit.
She should wait here. To see if he and his young came—
The switch was hit just as that pitiful idea struck her, and the panel that rolled back seemed a condemnation on the fantasy.
Nyx weaved on her feet. And then she went forward. She wasn’t sure why, though. What was she doing here?
Her feet just started walking, taking her through a portal. When she got on the other side, she looked back just as the panel started to shut itself. Three seconds. Jack had told her, back a million years ago, that the delay was three seconds.
The weak light of that bulb, far in the distance, got cut off.
As everything went pitch black, Nyx’s balance shifted like gravity had forgotten about her and she was about to float off into space. She caught herself by throwing out her cuffed hands.
If she fucked around for much longer, the question of her getting out was going to be answered in the negative when she fainted from blood loss.
Blindly, she put one foot in front of the other in the pitch black. Both her arms were off to the side, touching the wall. It was the only orientation she had.
Underneath her, the ground rose some more—and then rose sharply.
Finally, she was on all fours, grabbing onto loose, damp dirt with her tight-knit pair of hands.
The fresh air was something that crept up on her awareness. But the higher she went, the stronger the clean, bright scent became. Rain. Grass. Flowers.
Nyx was still crying, tears running down her face, when she finally emerged from the earth like an animal, covered with dirt and blood.
As the gentle rain fell upon her and the wind swirled around, nature seemed to greet her as a long-lost relation. But there was no time to think about that. Without warning—maybe the whole trip out had been the warning—her legs went loose underneath her and she landed on her knees.
Lifting her face to the heavens, she tried to see the stars. Which was dumb. Where did she think the rain drops were coming from?
It wasn’t like the universe was weeping for all that she had lost.
Her sister. Her male. Her hope for anything good in the future.
For even if she made it home, she was a different person from when she’d left. She had killed. She had loved and lost. And she knew a family secret that she was going to keep from everyone else.
Sitting back on her heels, she tilted her head to the clouds above so that the rain coated her face, cool fingers tapping lightly on her flushed and overheated cheeks, and the open wound at her temple, and her hair, which she had braided and tied with one of Jack’s leather thongs.
She let herself fall to the side.
The mud of the ground caught her in a sloppy embrace.
She didn’t know where she was. She didn’t care.
Nyx closed her eyes and let go of everything . . . and as she did, she realized that Jack was right. Freedom was so much more than being physically unrestrained. Even though she was back up here, she remained chained to where she had been, what she had seen, what she had done.
Who she had known.
And who had forced her to go.
It was a lifetime sentence.
As the escape passage’s panel locked back into place, Jack laid his hand on the stone and said a prayer unto the Scribe Virgin that his love would get out safely. Then he gathered up the chain links and started running. As he raced along the empty tunnels, he thought of all the places the Command might have hidden their young.
He returned to the private quarters, retracing the roundabout way he’d had to go with Nyx because of the barricades of the lockdown. It was inefficient and a waste of time—and his only option. When he arrived at the arch marked with white slashes, he shot forward, punching through the steel door—
Blood. Fresh blood.
So much of it, and from so many different individuals, he couldn’t trace all the sources.
His footfalls were loud against the tiled floor as he thundered down to the young’s cell. Which was open.
Just outside of it, on the ground, was the wicker basket, the one that contained the Command’s pet.
The lid was off.
“No . . . no!”
There was blood on the bed. Blood on the floor. Blood in a trail out of the cell—
The laughter started soft, but did not stay that way.
Jack looked down the corridor. Standing with feet planted over a still-twitching corpse, the Command was unhinged, and stained head to toe in red.
“What did you do,” he demanded. Even though he knew.
And there were so many bodies to show it. Guards and prisoners alike littered the hall, their bodies tangled one into another. A dozen or more.
But there was only one that he cared about.
He’d never thought she would hurt their young. It was the one thing they had in common.
The Command smiled, her fangs flashing white in the midst of the blood that covered her face and dripped from her chin, her hands, her red hair. “I took care of things. I took care of everything. Everything!”
The laughter rose to the level of hysteria, and that was when he noticed what was in her hand.
“Oh, do you want to see my souvenir?” she said. “Would you like to see my souvenir?”
She screamed with maniacal mirth as she held up the heart.
“I got my souvenir from this place,” she yelled at the top of her lungs. “I got my souvenir! And I’m not sharing with you!”
Her face was a distorted, ugly mask of horror, her eyes crazed and bloodshot.
“What did you do—” Jack launched himself into a run, attacking her, grabbing her by the throat and shoving her against the wall. “What—did—you—do!”
Bang. Bang. Bang.
In the back of his mind, he wondered what that noise was. Bang. Bang. Bang—
“You. Fucking. Bitch!”
Bang. Bang. BANG—
It was the Command. Her body was making the noise as he beat her against the wall, breaking through the lath and plaster with her torso, smashing the finished panels into pieces. And even as her head lolled forward and she clearly lost consciousness, he continued, over and over again, taking all of it out on her, the violations, the murder of their young, the murders of his friends, the danger to Nyx, who he loved. Matted red hair lashed his face and shoulders, and from out of the choking sandalwood spices she wore to conceal her sex, he smelled her own blood begin to flow.
And he would have continued. Until her skin was but a bag for everything he’d mangled.
Except from out of the corner of his eye, he saw something race toward him, something low to the ground, something furred—
The wicker basket. The animal therein that had been freed by its owner.
Jack looked toward the creature. The thing was part groundhog, part piranha, part rabid raccoon, with short grungy fur and feet that splayed out to the side. It ran over the bodies that littered the hallway in a wave formation, like a weasel, but it was much bigger.
And it was snarl
ing, its red-stained muzzle peeled back from its dagger-like teeth.
Black eyes, matte and mostly blind, were trained on Jack.
He wheeled around, keeping the Command between him and the imminent attack—
“You love me . . .” The words were gurgled, and blood splattered his face as the female he hated with everything in him spoke. “You love me.”
She lifted her head and those hazel eyes focused obsessively on his own. “You will always love me—”
The Command let out a high-pitched scream and her body arched in agony.
The creature had leapt up and was feasting on the back of her skull.
Jack shoved the female away from him, and as he jumped free, the Command kicked and thrashed, her hands slapping and clawing at the animal that was eating . . . chewing . . . swallowing . . . at an open wound in the back of her head.
Jack had started the process by banging, banging, banging her against the wall. But that hungry little demon she kept in that wicker crate finished the job.
And Jack watched. Every time he blinked, he saw that wicker basket brought out onto the dais. He saw the underground beast released. He heard the screams of the prisoners and recalled the brutal deaths. Mostly, the creature had gone for the bellies, chewing its way inside, consuming the intestines that fell out like loose sausage in casing, slipping, sliding on the stone floor.
It appeared its palate was equally amenable to brains.
Blindly, Jack turned away, hurried away. When he tripped on a dead guard, he quickly recovered his balance and went faster.
The creature did not care for the already dead. So he needed to hurry, though he did not know where to go.
Weapons. He needed weapons.
The Command’s private quarters came up to him, not the other way around, the unreality of everything making the segregated compound move, not him. He entered the chamber and looked to the table, to the tranquilizer gun and the darts. His hands were curiously steady as he reached out—
Chains. He was dripping with chains.
He hadn’t even noticed them when he’d gone after the Command.
Slinging them over his shoulder, he got the tranquilizer and the darts, and when he turned away, something on the bed caught his eye.
It was a piece of clothing.
Going over, he put down the tools that had been used to subdue him and picked up the windbreaker that smelled of Nyx. He pressed the folds to his face and breathed in. For the briefest of moments, he couldn’t smell blood. He only smelled . . . his female.
He tied the sleeves of the thing around his neck as if it were a scarf. Then he grabbed what he had found and left the room.
Stepping free, he looked down the corridor. The creature had left.
Nothing was moving.
He felt numb as he went to the left, jogging down the corridor toward the work area. There were fewer bodies of guards here, and then none at all, the fresh corpses like a trail extinguished.
Punching into the work area, he didn’t bother to hide his presence. And there was no reason to. No one was inside the fifty-by-fifty-foot white-walled processing facility. The individual workstations were in shambles, stainless steel tables toppled, chairs pushed out of the way, plastic baggies and powder-covered scales on the floor. As he pressed on, he found nothing but diesel fumes and tire tracks where the transports had been lined up.
Gone, gone, gone.
It was all over.
But then what had he expected to find here?
Jack turned. And turned. And turned.
As he circled where he stood, he saw through the walls, past the honeycombs of tunnels, into all the spaces he had lived in for a century. He saw those who he had known as well as one could know anybody in the underground. He saw those he had endured, and those he had ignored.
He tried to imagine leaving. Going back up to the real world, with all its changes.
When his young’s body was somewhere down here.
It was all his fault. If he had somehow been stronger, he wouldn’t have condemned his young to this life. To this suffering. To the death at the hands of a mahmen who was an unholy terror.
If only he had fought harder.
If only his body had not gotten aroused against his will.
If only . . .
As the distant rumbling of the collapses registered, he went back to the Command’s area, keeping the dart gun at the ready in case the creature fell upon him. But instead of returning to where he had been, he went into the rough part, where the tile beneath his feet stopped and so did the finish on the walls.
Bare tunnel now, and when he sent his will forth, candles flared.
As he approached the Wall, he held his breath.
There was nothing out of place. And no addition to what had been carved into the black rock since he had brought Nyx here—not that there would have been time for that.
As he thought of Nyx, he missed her so much that he felt as though his heart had been struck a terrible blow with a fist.
But if his young had to spend an eternity down here—alive or dead—so did he. Some debts could never be repaid, and he had been a damnation upon his progeny before the birthing had even commenced.
That needed to be righted by a sacrifice worthy of the curse.
He focused on the name Nyx had lingered over, the name of the female who had been her sister . . . the name of the scourge upon which all of Jack’s suffering had been based. To paraphrase Lucan, may he rest in peace, destiny could indeed be a bitch.
How were they one and the same, Nyx’s sister and his tormentor?
What did it matter.
“Where is the body,” Jack growled at the Wall. “What did you do with mine dead.”
The light was so bright, Nyx knew that she had passed out and been found by the dawn, sure as if the sun was a predator that had closed the distance with its prey and was prepared to claim its victim.
So bright. Her eyes burned even though her lids were closed, so she dragged her arm over her face.
She should have tried harder to get home. But as with most decisions, if you didn’t resolve things for yourself, the choice was made for you. She had intended to only rest and catch her breath for a moment—
Squish, squish . . . squish . . .
The sound was like a pair of kitchen sponges coming at her. And then there were a pair of soft cracks, right beside her head.
“Where are you hurt?”
That voice . . . that male voice. Nyx lifted her head—or tried to. Her whole body hurt and her neck was incredibly stiff, so she didn’t get far.
“Can I move you? Or is your spine broken.”
“Not broken . . .” she whispered hoarsely. Because this had to be a dream.
Her grandfather couldn’t possibly be here, in the middle of nowhere, turning up just as the dawn claimed her body with its beautiful warmth.
“Is it you?” she said.
Her grandfather—or her mental manifestation of him—picked her up, one arm under her knees, the other behind her shoulders. As he carried her over muddy ground, his familiar scent—that blend of pipe tobacco and cedar boards—registered in her nose, bringing with it an awareness that this was real. He was real.
Forcing her eyes to focus, she took in his lined face, his white hair, his workman’s shoulders and workman’s shirt. Abruptly, she was overcome, tears flowing onto her cheeks.
“This is really you,” she choked out.
He, on the other hand, stayed completely calm, in the way he always was, his attention fixated on something ahead of them, something he was going toward.
So yup, he truly had found her, wherever she was.
“Can you stand?” he said.
“Yes.” She didn’t want to disappoint him or seem weak in any way. “I can stand.”
Old habits and all. She had always wanted to live up to his expectations. The trouble was going to be that limb and that boot full of blood, however. She’d been injured somehow, alt
hough she couldn’t remember when. During the explosion? Or when she’d landed with the Command on top of her as rocks had fallen everywhere.
Oh, God . . . Janelle was dead.
“Here’s the car,” her grandfather announced. “I have to put you down.”
“Okay.” Nyx sniffled and wiped her face on the sleeve of the prison tunic. “All right.”
When he lowered her to the ground, she wobbled and had to lift her bad foot. Prepared to be left to fend for herself in the balance department, she was surprised as he held on to her arm while he opened the rear door . . . to the Volvo.
The sight of the station wagon got her crying. It was about everything that had gone before . . . the way things had been and never would be again.
“Get in,” her grandfather said.
She couldn’t move. She couldn’t speak. She hopped a couple of times so she could face the front of the station wagon. The hood was uneven and held tight by bungee cords, but he’d obviously gotten the motor back to functioning.
How long had she been gone? She’d thought it was two days . . . three at the most.
“You can get in now,” her grandfather said.
“You fixed it.”
“Well, some of the damage is repaired. There’s still a ways to go before she looks good—”
Despite her cuffs, Nyx threw out a hand and squeezed his forearm. As she pegged him right in the eye, she wanted a hug from him, but knew that would not be coming—and not because of how things had been left.
There were other ways of connecting, though.
“You were right,” she said hoarsely. “Janelle was guilty. I am so sorry—”
Her grandfather shook his head and looked away, a ruddy flush turning his wrinkled face bright red. As if he might be, underneath the surface, every bit as emotional as she was. “Lie down across the seats if you can’t sit up. The sun is coming—”
“I was wrong. I’m so sorry—”
“Get in—”
“No,” Nyx said sharply. “We’re talking about this. Janelle was guilty. She killed that old male. She deserved . . . her sentence. I was wrong about what I thought happened with you turning her in, and I apologize. I thought . . . well, that doesn’t matter anymore.”