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And he would have continued. Until her skin was but a bag for everything he’d mangled.
Except from out of the corner of his eye, he saw something race toward him, something low to the ground, something furred—
The wicker basket. The animal therein that had been freed by its owner.
Jack looked toward the creature. The thing was part groundhog, part piranha, part rabid raccoon, with short grungy fur and feet that splayed out to the side. It ran over the bodies that littered the hallway in a wave formation, like a weasel, but it was much bigger.
And it was snarling, its red-stained muzzle peeled back from its dagger-like teeth.
Black eyes, matte and mostly blind, were trained on Jack.
He wheeled around, keeping the Command between him and the imminent attack—
“You love me . . .” The words were gurgled, and blood splattered his face as the female he hated with everything in him spoke. “You love me.”
She lifted her head and those hazel eyes focused obsessively on his own. “You will always love me—”
The Command let out a high-pitched scream and her body arched in agony.
The creature had leapt up and was feasting on the back of her skull.
Jack shoved the female away from him, and as he jumped free, the Command kicked and thrashed, her hands slapping and clawing at the animal that was eating . . . chewing . . . swallowing . . . at an open wound in the back of her head.
Jack had started the process by banging, banging, banging her against the wall. But that hungry little demon she kept in that wicker crate finished the job.
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.
