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“I need your help.” Her voice was threaded with emotion. “Oh, God, we need your help. Your brother needs your help.”
It was the eyes. The incredible blue eyes, the aquamarine blue eyes that Nyx had never seen on any other people. But Jack. And Peter.
And now, this member of the Black Dagger Brotherhood.
“Please,” she said, aware that she was shaking. “We need your help.”
The warrior locked a gentle hold on her arm, like he expected her to pass out. “Can we get you some medical attention? You’ve clearly got some—”
Emotion vibrated up from the center of her chest, making her talk too fast. “Jack, you need to help Jack—”
“—bruising on your face, and this wound on—”
“—in the prison. Jack is—”
“Who is Jack?”
“The Jackal.” Even though she didn’t know the Brother, she could see recognition flare behind his eyes. “Yes, him. Your blooded brother.”
“I don’t have any blooded brothers.” The warrior shook his head slowly. “I’m really sorry, but you’ve got me confused with someone else.”
The other Brother, the one with the goatee and the tattoos by his temple, spoke up. “Okay, okay, let’s take this one drama bomb at a time. What prison are we talking about?”
Nyx looked over at the fighter. “The glymera’s. The one that is out west, close to where I live.”
“Say what?” The Brother stabbed his cigarette out in the ashtray he’d brought in with him. “I thought that place had closed down years ago.”
“The hell it’s closed down.” Nyx stepped free of the blond Brother’s hold because she didn’t want him to think she was physically weak. Which she wasn’t. “I’ve been down in it for the last few days.”
The other Brother narrowed his cold, diamond eyes on her. “Why would you, as a free citizen, choose to go there?”
“To find my sister. I’ve been looking for her for fifty years.”
A black-gloved hand raised. “Hold up. Who did you go with?”
“I went alone. The entrances are all hidden. I found one behind an abandoned church. I thought my sister had been falsely—well, it doesn’t matter. She’s dead. She died there.”
“And how did you meet up with the Jackal?” the Brother with the brilliant blue eyes asked.
“He was down there. And he’s still down there—even though we believe they are trying to abandon the place. There are about a thousand prisoners as well as some kind of manufacturing thing. But I don’t know many details about that part of it.”
“How did you get out?” the goateed one asked.
“The Jackal . . .” Nyx cleared her throat and looked down at her boots, realizing for the first time that they had dried bloodstains on them. “He helped me. He got me into a hidden tunnel that he’d made himself. I followed it to the surface, and then my grandfather happened to come upon me.”
“Happened” didn’t really cover it. It turned out that her grandfather had spent the days fixing the Volvo and the nights scouring a fifty-mile radius on foot, on mountain bike, and finally in the station wagon, when it was operational. He had been determined to find her. Thank God.
“Why’s this Jackal still down there?” the goateed Brother demanded.
Nyx glanced at the warrior with the bright blue eyes. Even though he was staying quiet, he knew something. She could just sense it.
“He wouldn’t leave,” she said.
“It’s a prison. Not a lot of free choice when it comes to the exit.”
“He was special. I mean, he was a different case down there. There were extenuating circumstances.”
“Why.” The goateed Brother was like a polygraph that lived and breathed, his attention fixated on her like he was reading every nuance of her facial expression as well as the pounding pulse in the jugular at the side of her neck. “And if he won’t leave of his free will, why do you think he needs rescuing. Because that’s what you’re here for, right? You want us to rescue him.”
“No,” she countered sharply. “I’m going to rescue him. We just thought the King might want to know that a thousand prisoners are on the move, and many of them are in custody under false pretenses—”
“You and your granddad are not going into that prison, abandoned or otherwise.”
Nyx lifted her chin at the goateed warrior. “You can’t stop me.”
“The fuck I can’t, female—”
“Here you go again, V,” someone interrupted, “making friends and influencing people. What are you putting your foot down about now? She buying an iPhone after she leaves here or some shit?”
Nyx glanced to the archway and did a double take. The vampire standing just inside the room was bigger than even the blond Brother who had Jack’s blue eyes. With long, waist-length black hair falling from a widow’s peak, and wraparound black sunglasses, he was obviously a killer. But the enormous black diamond on his middle finger meant he was . . .
