The Jackal (Black Dagger Brotherhood: Prison Camp #1)(75)

“You bring a gun in here. I am so disappointed in you.”

As the Command leaned down, he felt his hand get lifted and tossed aside, his palm slapping into the floor as it landed as dead weight. And then the weapon was in front of his face, so close that if he were to focus on it properly, his eyes would cross.

“This. You bring this here to me.” Another hand appeared from out of the other sleeve, and the weapon was checked. “And it’s loaded—and it’s one of mine. You brought a fucking loaded gun from one of my guards to my house?”

The nine millimeter was drawn back across the Command’s shoulder, and Jack braced himself to be pistol-whipped—

Before he was struck, the Command spun off of him and stalked around, the black robes streaming out in the wake of the furious pacing. In his paralysis, Jack took satisfaction at the anger—

The Command stopped abruptly. “Did you think you were going to kill me? Did you think you were going to come here and kill me? You motherfucker.”

The gun rose toward him, the muzzle shaking ever so slightly.

Jack stared into the black hole where the bullet was going to come out. Over the course of his life, there had been a few incidents—not many, but a few—when he had entertained briefly the idea that he was going to die: An illness when he was young. His transition. And then twice since he had come to prison.

Nothing had been like this.

The sound that came out of the Command’s hood was guttural as the gun went off, not once, but many times—and Jack was utterly exposed in his paralysis. Not that anything short of a stone wall could have helped him. Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop—

Abruptly, the gun swung toward the door and the Command yelled, “Get the fuck out! You get the fuck out of here until I call you!”

The door was slammed, likely because those guards were afraid of being served lead as their last meal.

The Command stomped back over to Jack, double-palmed the gun, and trained it in his face. From this close, his head was going to blow up like a melon when they pulled that trigger.

And as he contemplated his death, his biggest regret was that he could not be sure whether Nyx had made it out safely. That he could not save her. That—

“Open your eyes!” the Command yelled. “You will open your eyes and look at me when I kill you—”

He hadn’t been aware of shutting his lids, but he reopened them because he would not be a coward. He would look his death in the face. All along, he’d know this was how it would end, and there was so much on his conscience, on his heart. Except it was too late.

The Command leaned down even farther. “You did this to yourself. You chose this—”

Jack moaned a denial.

“You bastard. You fucking bastard!” they barked.

More gunshots rang out and he didn’t flinch—and not just because he’d been drugged. He stared right at the hood, at the mesh that covered the face. The irony in all this was that the Command would suffer more than he did. This flight of their anger and retaliation was temporary; his death was permanent. There would be epic regrets, and if there was indeed a Fade? For all the Command had done, they were going to Dhunhd. No Fade for them. Meanwhile, he would wait for Nyx. For an eternity, he would wait for his female, his fighting angel who had showed him that however trapped he was, his soul remained free.

To love who he did.

Nyx.

—Pop!Pop!Pop!—

The ricocheting bullets stopped, the sharp ringing ended, the echoing explosions drifted into silence.

Click, click, click—

The Command was pulling the trigger over and over again, the loose folds and sleeves of the robe swinging out as from under the hood, rasping breath beat like a drum.

Jack just stared upward, unblinking, unflinching . . . unbowed, though he was flat on his back and incapable of moving. Surely he was bleeding out and that explained why his immobile body felt nothing of all his wounds and he was unaware of his suffocation.

“I hate you,” the Command growled. “I fucking hate you.”

The Command reached up and ripped the hood off.

Red hair tumbled loose, hanging into his face, into his eyes, the female’s calculating features and flashing, aggressive stare the source of his suffering these many years.

He hated when she took the hood off. It was easier for him to think of her as sexless as long as it stayed on. But now, seeing that hair, seeing that face, he was reminded that she was the opposite sex, and that she demanded to mate with him whenever she fucking wanted.

He hated that she would be the last thing he saw. But reveled in what would happen as soon as she realized that she had broken her toy, and it was never to be functional again.

“I want to kill you,” the Command bit out, long fangs flashing.

And that was when Jack realized . . . for all the bullets that had been discharged, she had not hit him. She’d shot around him, into the floor.

There was no scent of his blood in the air.

Meanwhile, the Command continued to breathe heavily—until she seemed to calm herself. Straightening, she looked at the gun in her hands, and then those eyes returned to his own, suspicion narrowing them.

“Where did you get this?” The Command put the weapon in his face, so close that every breath he took was full of gunpowder residue. “Where did you fucking get this?”

He couldn’t have answered even if he’d wanted to. Which he did not. He enjoyed her loss of control and what it did to her. He wanted her to suffer. After all these years, he wanted her to have a taste of what he had endured.