The Jackal (Black Dagger Brotherhood: Prison Camp #1)(90)

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.