The Jackal (Black Dagger Brotherhood - Prison Camp 1)

“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.

The Brothers and her grandfather came out as well, and the males stood together and talked, hands on hips, heavy-jawed faces nodding in the way males did when they had seen and done something serious.

She let them go.

She had different problems than they did.

While they were discussing options for clearing out the bodies, and then strategies for finding where the prison had gone, she was steaming angry.

The rage—wait, that was the blond Brother’s name, wasn’t it—the Rhage she was feeling was out of line, but undeniable. And it took her at least three trips around her bush to realize where it was coming from.

No body.

Jack’s body hadn’t been down there. Not in the Command’s private area, and not when she had insisted on going farther into the partially collapsed Hive.

So he had left with the rest of the prisoners. Or he was somewhere in the tunnel system—either avoiding her or maybe dying.

Or he was out in the world. Without her.

Whatever it was, she couldn’t find him—and she was pissed off. Damn it, if he had only come with her. If he had put that secret tunnel to use with her, he could have had exactly what he’d been looking for—

“Nyxanlis?”

At the sound of her formal name, she shook herself back to attention. Her grandfather had come over, and he was looking as if he wasn’t sure whether her brain had broken.

“I’m fine?” She put it as a question because she wasn’t sure what he had asked her. Wasn’t sure that she actually was “fine.”

“We’re going to the farmhouse. All of us.”

“Okay.” As her eyes went to the trapdoor, she saw that one of the Brothers was kicking earth over the panel, keeping it hidden. “I’ll come with.”

Like she had any other place to go?

One by one, the Brothers dematerialized, and she had a thought about what Posie was going to do when these warriors with their black daggers strapped handles down on their huge barrel chests showed up in the side yard.