“I wanted to execute him,” I said plainly. The awkwardness of my beliefs and the position I was in always caught me at odds. I never really wanted to think about it, so I didn’t. I had so many other things on my plate on any given day—except for the days I was at the prison, days like this one.
“Of course.” Raphael was silent as we continued our long walk around.
Once the perimeter was done, we found ourselves back at the front door. The heavy silence continued as we moved through security, with Tarak making it go quickly. Then we moved into the real troublesome area of the prison—the cell blocks.
There was a loud, obnoxious noise as the door opened. Once inside, I looked up at the three levels of cells with walkways. Every cell door was visible. Spelled bars kept magic users and the super-strong from breaking through, but unless the prisoner was in solitary, they had a completely unobstructed view of everything outside their cell.
Meaning, they could all step up to the bars and see me.
So, it begins.
“Looky here!” someone yelled. I didn’t bother to look for the individual. In my mind, they were all the same. My job was to make sure they were being treated fairly, and security was still tight. “Our grim reaper has stopped by!”
Someone grabbed my wrist tightly, squeezing though I didn’t know why. I couldn’t bother to glance down when I had the all-important task of looking dangerous in front of the most dangerous supernaturals allowed to live. I licked my lips, catching the eyes of the different superstars of the supernatural underground, but there were too many scents. The hand was warm, but I didn’t know the feel of it well enough.
“She’s got a boyfriend now! Yo, Warden Tarak! Your pussy found a new plaything!”
Raphael, then. I wonder what’s wrong. He doesn’t touch me often, if ever. He’s never done this before. Should I have left him in Tarak’s office? Can he not handle this?
Our group walked slowly through the southern cell block, and I reviewed each cellmate for anything worthy of concern. The guards were on their best behavior, and the general rule was to let the jeering happen and just ignore it. Everyone followed the protocol, but the hand on my wrist grew tighter as the jeering grew worse.
“Hey, pretty, I love your skin. How much does it go for on the black market these days?”
“Heard snake eyes are lucky, sweet thing. I need a bit of luck. Maybe you can lend me yours some time.”
Chills went down my spine. The ones on the bottom floor always made the sly, darker comments that hit home. They weren’t comments anyone on a higher floor was stupid enough to scream down, but down on the first floor, they were ballsier and could get a hand on me if I went too close to the bars. I turned and met the gaze of one scarred son of a bitch with a toothy grin. He seemed pleased with himself.
“I won’t lend you my eyes, but my fangs are always willing to meet someone new,” I whispered, smiling a little as his eyes went big. I stepped closer, trying to exude confidence and superiority. I was the one in charge here. I was the one who would come if any of them stepped just enough out of line to get their sentences changed. I was their grim reaper, and they all knew it. “I haven’t played in a little while.”
“Not what I heard,” someone muttered. “Heard you killed Sinclair.”
I kept the smile and shrugged. “I bet you have. I’ve been itching to start a new game.”
“Kaliya,” Raphael whispered softly and tugged gently, not enough to move me but enough to tell me he wanted to keep moving.
“Yeah, Kaliya…get moving like the little boyfriend wants you to. Never knew you to keep backup, but it’s cute to see you’ve finally found someone,” someone teased. I wished I knew all of their names and species. I had no idea who this guy was. The only thing he couldn’t be was a vampire. Those were kept underground for their own security reasons, and generally, vampires didn’t send their bad apples to the prison. There were only a couple being kept there.
“You should honestly be more worried that I have backup now,” I said, my fangs dropping. “It means there’s finally someone who can keep up and kill well enough,