The Jackal (Black Dagger Brotherhood: Prison Camp #1)(101)

Except ultimately, the noise alert risk was immaterial. No one was alive. As she went down the finished hall, she had to step over limbs, torsos, and heads. When she came to a door, she opened it. Inside, there was a sparsely furnished bedroom, and as she looked to the bed, she frowned.

Hustling across, she picked her backpack up off the floor.

It was unzipped, and the weapons and ammo were gone. The toothbrush and the water bottle were still inside, though.

But it wasn’t like she was ever using that Oral-B again.

She let the pack drop to the mattress. She had no desire to take it with her. Too many bad memories. And on that sad note, she stared at the messy fitted sheet and breathed in deep. Underneath the scent of spilled blood, there was a heavy undertone.

Of sandalwood. And Jack’s scent.

It had happened here. Jack had been chained down . . . here.

As it became hard to breathe, she wheeled around. The Brothers were talking. Her grandfather was checking out some medical stuff left on a table.

She couldn’t stand to be inside the room for one more second.

Stumbling back out into the hall, she looked to the left and quickly walked in that direction.

“Hey, wait up,” the blond Brother said.

Dimly, in the recesses of her mind, she tried to remember what he’d said his name was. She couldn’t recall it—or any of the others’, though she knew for a fact they’d all been introduced before they’d left the Audience House. The goateed male. The one with the skull trim and the facial scar. The one with the amazing multi-colored hair.

And the blond one with Jack’s eyes, who was catching up to her.

Just as she arrived at the cell that was nicely furnished.

Its entry panel was wide open, the iron bars with their steel mesh having swung free of the jambs. Inside, around the hotel-homey setup of furniture, there was blood . . . everywhere.

As she breathed in, she tried to sort through and see if it was Jack’s. Had the Command somehow survived the collapse? Found her way back here?

Had they fought?

Nyx’s heart started to skip beats and she backed out of the cell. Blindly turning away, she started walking without really tracking where she was going—

Her body stopped before she was aware of anything registering in her mind.

And then she saw it. Down on the floor.

A tangle of long red hair.

Which was matted with blood and . . . something else. Something terrifying.

A sudden surge of paranoia made her eyes skip around at the other bodies. But they were all uniformed. None were in prison clothes. So none were Jack.

“What is it?” the Brother said.

She glanced over her shoulder and said softly to him, “Take my grandfather back out to the work area. Make an excuse.”

“We’re not splitting up—”

“Please.” She pointed to the floor. “This is my sister, and I don’t want him to have to see her. Just take him away. I’ll hide the body.”

The Brother shook his head. “I can’t leave you. But I’ll handle it.”

In spite of his size, he hurried back quick, said something to the goateed fighter, and justlikethat, her grandfather was rerouted out of the Command’s private area with the other two Brothers.

Taking a deep breath, Nyx glanced around. Back inside the furnished cell, there was a throw blanket of good size that had been draped over the back of a stuffed chair. Tucking her gun away, she went in and got it, and then with shaking hands, she gently wrapped Janelle’s remains in the soft crimson and black folds.

She did not look at the injuries directly. Her peripheral vision told her enough.

Sitting back on her heels, she wiped her forehead with her sleeve. Then she gathered her sister in her arms and walked down the corridor, sidestepping the bodies. As she went along, she was aware of the goateed Brother and the blond one with the blue eyes following her solemnly.

Nyx went to the Wall.

As she approached the long list of inscribed names, she willed candles to light, and she was looking at the rows of symbols in the Old Language as she came to a stop.

She laid Janelle at the foot of the memorial and stepped back.

Crossing her arms, she stared at the wrapped body . . . and then she focused on her sister’s name in the lineup.

After a moment, she nodded and turned away. She said nothing to either of the Brothers as she passed them by, powerful sentries who fell into her wake once more without a word.

She had a feeling they had seen a lot of death over the course of their lives.

So they knew just how to act.

As Nyx walked off, she willed the candles to extinguish their flames one by one. Until there was nothing but a shroud of darkness over her sister’s final resting place.





In the end, Nyx did not find what she had come looking for.

It was kind of a theme with the prison, wasn’t it. The first time she had gone underground, she’d been searching for Janelle—and ultimately been denied. The second time? No Jack, anywhere.

As she reemerged aboveground, coming out of his handmade passageway, she walked off without any direction . . . eventually making circles around one particular bush that had all the grace and beauty of a porcupine. Full of prickers and with leaves the color of dust, it seemed like the right kind of proverbial sun to orbit.

Given how she was feeling.