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The fresh air was something that crept up on her awareness. But the higher she went, the stronger the clean, bright scent became. Rain. Grass. Flowers.
Nyx was still crying, tears running down her face, when she finally emerged from the earth like an animal, covered with dirt and blood.
As the gentle rain fell upon her and the wind swirled around, nature seemed to greet her as a long-lost relation. But there was no time to think about that. Without warning—maybe the whole trip out had been the warning—her legs went loose underneath her and she landed on her knees.
Lifting her face to the heavens, she tried to see the stars. Which was dumb. Where did she think the rain drops were coming from?
It wasn’t like the universe was weeping for all that she had lost.
Her sister. Her male. Her hope for anything good in the future.
For even if she made it home, she was a different person from when she’d left. She had killed. She had loved and lost. And she knew a family secret that she was going to keep from everyone else.
Sitting back on her heels, she tilted her head to the clouds above so that the rain coated her face, cool fingers tapping lightly on her flushed and overheated cheeks, and the open wound at her temple, and her hair, which she had braided and tied with one of Jack’s leather thongs.
She let herself fall to the side.
The mud of the ground caught her in a sloppy embrace.
She didn’t know where she was. She didn’t care.
Nyx closed her eyes and let go of everything . . . and as she did, she realized that Jack was right. Freedom was so much more than being physically unrestrained. Even though she was back up here, she remained chained to where she had been, what she had seen, what she had done.
Who she had known.
And who had forced her to go.
It was a lifetime sentence.
As the escape passage’s panel locked back into place, Jack laid his hand on the stone and said a prayer unto the Scribe Virgin that his love would get out safely. Then he gathered up the chain links and started running. As he raced along the empty tunnels, he thought of all the places the Command might have hidden their young.
He returned to the private quarters, retracing the roundabout way he’d had to go with Nyx because of the barricades of the lockdown. It was inefficient and a waste of time—and his only option. When he arrived at the arch marked with white slashes, he shot forward, punching through the steel door—
Blood. Fresh blood.
So much of it, and from so many different individuals, he couldn’t trace all the sources.
His footfalls were loud against the tiled floor as he thundered down to the young’s cell. Which was open.
Just outside of it, on the ground, was the wicker basket, the one that contained the Command’s pet.
The lid was off.
“No . . . no!”
There was blood on the bed. Blood on the floor. Blood in a trail out of the cell—
The laughter started soft, but did not stay that way.
Jack looked down the corridor. Standing with feet planted over a still-twitching corpse, the Command was unhinged, and stained head to toe in red.
“What did you do,” he demanded. Even though he knew.
And there were so many bodies to show it. Guards and prisoners alike littered the hall, their bodies tangled one into another. A dozen or more.
But there was only one that he cared about.
He’d never thought she would hurt their young. It was the one thing they had in common.
The Command smiled, her fangs flashing white in the midst of the blood that covered her face and dripped from her chin, her hands, her red hair. “I took care of things. I took care of everything. Everything!”
The laughter rose to the level of hysteria, and that was when he noticed what was in her hand.
“Oh, do you want to see my souvenir?” she said. “Would you like to see my souvenir?”
She screamed with maniacal mirth as she held up the heart.
“I got my souvenir from this place,” she yelled at the top of her lungs. “I got my souvenir! And I’m not sharing with you!”
Her face was a distorted, ugly mask of horror, her eyes crazed and bloodshot.
“What did you do—” Jack launched himself into a run, attacking her, grabbing her by the throat and shoving her against the wall. “What—did—you—do!”
Bang. Bang. Bang.
In the back of his mind, he wondered what that noise was. Bang. Bang. Bang—
“You. Fucking. Bitch!”
Bang. Bang. BANG—
It was the Command. Her body was making the noise as he beat her against the wall, breaking through the lath and plaster with her torso, smashing the finished panels into pieces. And even as her head lolled forward and she clearly lost consciousness, he continued, over and over again, taking all of it out on her, the violations, the murder of their young, the murders of his friends, the danger to Nyx, who he loved. Matted red hair lashed his face and shoulders, and from out of the choking sandalwood spices she wore to conceal her sex, he smelled her own blood begin to flow.
