by Kyla Stone
It was dark. There were no stars. No moon. It was the aurora that transfixed her. She had never seen it like this. So close. And the colors…it was like nothing she’d ever witnessed.
Above the tree line to the north, undulating ribbons of fiery blood-red draped the sky. Pulsating, brightening, softening, then growing brighter still. Transparent waves of scarlet, crimson, burgundy, woven with threads of tangerine and flame. They filled the horizon.
The world was on fire.
ELI POPE
DAY ONE
Eli Pope prepared to fight to the death.
Darius Sykes was coming to kill him.
Eli’s gaze sharpened. A shadow moved behind his eyes—something wary and dangerous and quick-silvered. His shoulders stiff, his gaze unmoving, he stood with an unnatural stillness at the back of the prison library, where he’d worked for the last three years.
The only place in this hellhole that brought him any sense of quiet, of peace.
Alert, he waited, wary and ready. His muscles coiled, hands tightened into fists.
He sensed the stack of bookcases at his back. The cart of returned hardbacks two feet to his right. Twelve rows of bookcases stood in the center of the room, rectangular tables bolted to the floor on either side. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead.
No other inmates were present. They seldom were. No correctional officers nearby, either. The library was the least supervised area of the prison. Sykes knew that. He would have planned for it.
Prison smelled like a mix of fear and desperation. Eight years he’d spent buried alive in Alger Correctional Facility, a high security prison located in Alger County in the Mideastern Upper Peninsula.
It housed up to nine hundred convicted criminals. None were as infamous as Darius Sykes, the vicious Hell’s Angels biker who’d murdered six members of a rival gang and arranged their corpses in a macabre display along M-28 from Wakefield to Sault Ste. Marie.
In two cases, he’d also slaughtered his rivals’ families, including three children under the age of ten. Darius Sykes was a volatile psychopath. A dangerous and skilled killer. He was serving three consecutive life sentences and ruled every square inch of this God-forsaken place.
Eli sensed them, then. Predators in the water. Three of them, slinking closer.
A tall wiry guy named Angel Flud approached to Eli’s left, creeping between the bookcases. Angel had a dragging left leg. His halting footsteps were a soft rasp on the nubby carpet.
Fat Tommy on the right, next to the high rectangular window. Fat Tommy stank of Axe body spray, procured from the commissary.
Eli couldn’t see Sykes, but he felt him, sensed his malignant presence. Sykes wouldn’t miss this. His last chance at Eli.
The inmates knew. They’d heard the COs talking. Hell, half of them had watched the news conference that morning. Eli Pope was about to be released from prison.
Everything—the investigation, the trial, the witness testimonies, the boxes of evidence—it was all going to be undone.
Eli’s appellate attorney had argued that the cop who pulled Eli over that night did so without just cause and with racial prejudice. On appeal, the initial search of Eli’s car was deemed by the Michigan Court of Appeals to be illegal. Therefore, the evidence found was inadmissible, aka fruit of the poisonous tree.
The DA had hung his entire case on the beer bottle with Eli’s thumb print and Lily Easton’s blood. Without it, they wouldn’t win a retrial. Eli Pope would be freed.
In the yard, in the chow hall, in the showers and hallways, he felt their hatred, their resentment, the shared indignation threatening to boil over.
The inmates and COs were united in their loathing for the Broken Heart Killer.
They wanted to kill him. He knew that. They knew that. The COs knew that.
He only needed to survive today.
How he despised this cursed place, home to the eternally damned. The claustrophobia. The cramped, hot cells. The incessant stench of piss and sweat. And his fellow prisoners, little more than animals, their eyes flat and cunning.
Like the men who approached him now.
Overhead, the fluorescent lights flickered and went out. Catcalls and shouts echoed down the corridor from the main rec room. Whoops and yells. The monkeys rattled their cages.
He waited for the generator to come back on. It didn’t.
The prison library darkened, the aisles heavy with shadows. But instead of darkness, watery light streamed through the high narrow rectangular windows along the far wall—light tinged red, though sunset had already come and gone.
He blinked to adjust his vision. His eyes still on the room, his spine to the bookcase against the back wall, Eli reached for a hardback copy of War and Peace.
It was thick and heavy. The leatherbound cover was worn, an explicit insult scrawled across the title in red Sharpie. It would work for what he needed.
His heartrate increased. Adrenaline pumped through his veins. He gripped the book in both hands and waited for them. Wiry muscles roped his arms, bulging as he flexed his forearms. His knuckles were scarred. Other scars marred his chest, his lower back, and his left thigh.
This was a hell where you never turned your back. Never let your guard down, not for one second. Never truly slept, because you were always waiting for the creak of footsteps, the whiff of body odor, that sharpened shank sliding between your ribs.
There were many ways to get hurt in prison. More ways to hurt.
Eli made sure he was the one doing the hurting. His years in the military had given him a hard brutal edge that most inmates had learned to respect.
He’d joined the Army at eighteen. A few years later, he joined the 75th Rangers regiment. As a tier one operator, he’d seen combat in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, among other places. He’d been trained to fight—and to kill.
He knew two things: Never back down. And never show fear.
“No need to hide, Sykes,” Eli said.
A muffled curse. An inmate stepped into view, draped in reddish shadows. Darius Sykes wide and thick as a tank with large, muscular hands. Prison-made tattoos snaked up both ham-sized biceps. His acorn-brown hair was shorn close to his skull.
His full lips and sensuous mouth gave him an almost feminine appearance. Anyone who registered that softness as weakness soon learned to regret it—if they lived that long.
“I’ve been waiting for this heart-to-heart, Pope,” Sykes said with a soft smile.
It was the dead-fish look in his eyes that revealed his true nature. Sykes wanted him dead. This was his last chance to get his revenge.
Sykes had loathed Eli from that first day, when he’d wanted Eli to join his gang of thugs. When he refused to kowtow to him, Sykes had tried to kill him.
Eli had been ready. The would-be assassin ended up a dead man in the shower, hot water spraying the naked body, washing away the blood, the incriminating evidence. No cameras in the showers; inmates exercised their rights to privacy.
Since then, Eli had lived with a target painted on the back of his prison jumpsuit.
Sykes wanted Eli on his knees. Wanted him to suffer, to confess, to beg for mercy before the end.
Eli would die standing before he’d live a moment on his knees.
“I feel like you’ve been avoiding me,” Sykes said.
Eli said nothing. His gaze flicked past Sykes to Angel and Fat Tommy. They stepped out from behind two stacks and flanked Sykes. Twenty feet from Eli, approximately forty-five degrees to his left and right.
Angel was a skinny, high-strung Hispanic gangbanger with teardrop tattoos on his face and a gold tooth. Fat Tommy was bald as a cue ball and weighed three-hundred pounds. Immense rolls of fat strained the fabric of his prison jumpsuit.
Sykes’ lips thinned. “You think you’ve got a miracle up your sleeve, but you ain’t walking out of here, Redskin. Not crawling, neither.”
Eli didn’t blink. Racial slurs against his Ojibwe heritage were nothing new in this place. Nothing n
ew outside of these walls, either.
He knew what they saw— a black-haired, sharp-faced Native American with death in his dark eyes. A strong and powerful body built for killing.
He was incredibly fit, doing hundreds of push-ups, sit-ups, and pull-ups in his cell each night, weightlifting in the prison gym. Trained in Krav Maga, he was a force to be reckoned with. Every inmate knew it.
Eli checked Angel and Fat Tommy again—their hands were visible. Angel held a plastic shank in his right hand, low at his side. Fat Tommy’s hands were empty, but he could shatter bones with those hammers at the ends of his arms.
“Something happened to the power,” Fat Tommy said in a thick-throated southern drawl. “No cameras. Nobody’s gonna see nothin’.”
Eli didn’t take his eyes off his adversaries. He didn’t care why the power was out. He sensed the empty space, the lack of other bodies, of prying eyes. No one else was here, or anywhere in the vicinity.
The COs had been paid off. Or maybe they’d chosen to look the other way. His guts tightened at the realization. The library was empty for a reason. The CO who normally supervised the library would be sick in a bathroom—maybe intentional food poisoning—or otherwise occupied.
It wouldn’t make the reports. Some official excuse would be made. No one would look too closely. Not the warden, not the DA, or the governor.
Everyone wanted Eli Pope dead.
ELI POPE
DAY ONE
Time stopped. Eli’s breathing slowed. His pulse steadied. He readied himself.
These thugs thought they could steal what had already been stolen long ago. He had nothing left. Nothing but the deadly ability to kill and to maim, the skill to cause grievous bodily harm.
Finally, after years of repressing his fury, shoving down his hate, controlling his outrage, he would release it. He would give these animals exactly what they wanted.
Fat Tommy cracked his knuckles. “You thought you were getting out of this joint, didn’t you? The irony of it just kills me.”
“It’s called poetic justice.” Sykes smiled, full lips worming back from his crooked teeth. He had the face of an eel. “No one is coming. I saw to that.”
Eli knew the consequences for killing one of them. But it was three stone-cold killers against one. He did not have the luxury of holding back, not if he wished to survive.
He had to go in 100%. He had to drop them as quickly as possible so he didn’t get taken to the ground. Death by stabbing wasn’t the way he planned to go.
Eli clenched his jaw. He tightened his grip on the book. They were coming for him, no matter what he said or did. He’d be ready.
The shadows deepened, an eerie orangish red. Writhing flames glimmered in Sykes’ glassy eyes. He gave the smallest shake of his head. The signal.
Fat Tommy and Angel rushed Eli. Two different directions, coming from either side. Angel with that vicious shank, held low and glinting. Fat Tommy up and swinging. Fat Tommy’s bulk made him slow but the power behind a single punch could knock a man out cold.
Angel reached him first. Eli’s training kicked in. He stepped into Angel’s attack. He moved, fast and efficient, lethal as a cobra.
Angel darted in and stabbed. Eli pivoted toward Angel, sidestepped fast and raised War and Peace. He slammed it hard across the man’s face.
The thick book smashed his nose. Blood spurted from his nostrils. His nose broken. Angel’s head snapped back. His forward momentum was cut short. The shank scraped harmlessly across Eli’s right side.
One eye on the two other attackers, Eli adjusted his grip and slammed the book sideways into the inmate’s throat. Angel threw up an arm, absorbing some of the blow. The impact still dropped him to the ground.
He sagged to the floor, landing on his stomach, mouth opened like a fish as he gasped for oxygen. The hand holding the shank wavered.
Eli raised his leg and brought his foot down hard, hoping to crush the first vertebra. He missed, but the man’s scapula gave a sickening crack as his arm dislocated and fractured. He wouldn’t be stabbing anyone.
As Tommy lunged from the right, Eli whipped sideways, feinting left. With his shoulder, he absorbed the blow meant for his skull. Pain exploded in his muscles, tendons, ligaments.
Ignoring the pain, Eli headbutted Fat Tommy. With a crunch, the man’s cheekbone fractured. He seized the inmate’s huge shoulders with both hands and slammed his forehead into his face, followed by a swift elbow to the side of the head.
Fat Tommy crumpled, screaming. He clutched his broken nose and shattered cheekbones. Blood poured between his fingers.
Eli had no time to worry about consequences.
Sykes had reached him with the knife. Not a prison shank fashioned out of melted plastic, but a butcher’s blade from the prison kitchen. Twelve inches long and sharp.
With a roar, he attacked Eli. Powerful quick jabs, slicing with the knife.
Eli’s adrenaline surged. He held the book in front of his vulnerable torso, protecting the internal organs in his stomach. The knife thrust struck the cover. It punched through leather and reams of paper.
Sykes yanked the knife out. War and Peace went flying. The book tumbled on top of Angel’s unconscious form. It thudded to the carpet.
Sykes came at him again. Growling, slashing, and stabbing.
Attempting to block or seize the knife was pointless. Trying to stop a knife was like trying to stop water from flowing. Impossible not to get wet.
Eli backed up swiftly, out of range of the blade. He seized an encyclopedia from the shelf and hurled it at Sykes.
It struck his right shoulder. Sykes winced but kept coming at him. dodging between bookcases and tables bolted to the floor.
Eli turned and sprinted down the stacks to the government section. This was Eli’s library. As any proper tier one operator would, he’d prepared for contingencies.
In the center of a giant economics tome, Eli found the object he needed. Inside the cut-out within the thick pages lay a shank Eli had fashioned from a section of metal bunk bed shaved to a vicious point.
Eli ripped out the shank as Sykes charged him from behind. Eli spun and stepped left, slashing hard. The shank sliced across Sykes’ hands.
With a shriek, Sykes dropped the butcher knife. Blood dripped to the carpet. Sykes’ fleshy lips opened in a startled O.
Eli thrust the shank into the man’s exposed stomach.
The homemade blade ripped through the jumpsuit before glancing off something hard. Underneath Sykes’ uniform, he wore several layers of cardboard and newspaper as makeshift armor—a common prison tactic. Sykes had prepared, too.
Sykes scrambled for the butcher knife. Eli didn’t give him the chance. With his left hand, he seized the man’s thick throat, shoved him back against the bookcase.
With his other hand, he drew the shank back to drive it into Sykes’ throat.
“Pope!” A correctional officer burst into the library. “Stop!”
Eli didn’t move a muscle, didn’t remove the shank from Sykes, so close he could count the broken blood vessels and pores in the convict’s bloated cheeks. The point pricked his Adam’s Apple.
“Pope,” the CO said, breathless. Eli recognized the voice. He glimpsed the vague shape of the man out of the corner of his eye. A young CO named Ivan Davis. “Don’t do this.”
“Too late,” Eli growled.
“If you kill him, you’re going away forever. They will put you in isolation, throw away the key, and you will never see the light of day again.”
Anger burned through him. His hands shook. Eli pressed the point of the shank harder into the man’s throat.
Sykes’ eyes popped. Red veins streaked the yellowish viscera. His mouth opened, purple tongue protruding.
“Pope.” Davis reached for his baton with one hand, his radio with the other. A canister of pepper spray was looped to his belt. He raised the radio to his mouth. “Don’t make me call it in.”
With tremendous will power, Eli
stepped back and lowered the shank.
Sykes staggered, clutched at his throat, gasping for oxygen.
Eli watched him warily, making sure the threat remained neutralized. He stood, heart pumping, anger searing his veins. His fingers would not uncurl from the shank’s handle.
He imagined all the ways he could kill this man, all the ways he should have.
Sykes did damage wherever he went. Killed women and children without compunction.
At least he was in here, locked up among other monsters. At least he would never get out to roam the Upper Peninsula again.
Sykes massaged his injured throat. Malice flashed in his eyes. When he spoke, his voice was ragged. “I will come for you. When I get out, and I will, I shall come to your town, your house, your bedroom. I will find everyone you love and I will hunt them down and slit their throats in front of you, one by one.”
Eli stared at him, dead-eyed. “It’ll be a short hunt. I love no one.”
“Let’s go,” the CO said. With a frown, he glanced down at Angel, who was unconscious on the floor. Fat Tommy had pissed himself. The sharp scent of urine stung Eli’s nostrils.
Davis radioed for medical aid for the injured convicts and gestured for Eli to follow him out. “I need escorts for three injured inmates to medical. Looks like we might need an ambulance.”
“I’ll kill you!” Sykes screamed at Eli. “That’s a promise!”
The CO turned to Sykes. “Shut the hell up.” He glanced at Eli and tilted his chin toward the door. “Pope, let’s go!”
Eli hated to take his eyes off his adversaries, even ones incapacitated, but he obediently followed the CO, his senses alert for any movement behind him. None came.
Still, he could feel Sykes’ malevolent presence at his back. Even imprisoned, as long as he was alive, Sykes would be a threat.