Ricker Prison was the toilet bowl of evil. Every wicked creature hived in the concrete box and was only brought into the sunlight when they showed in the annual Execution Battle.
“I cannot go to Ricker Prison! That’s a prison for Soulless.”
She tapped my birthdate on the file. “You are Soulless.”
“No! I’m a good person!”
She stood out of her chair and collected her paperwork.
“I’m a good person!” I said louder. “I’m a good person!”
She left.
A windowless van chauffeured me for several hours and when it finally halted my body was weeping in knots and muscle aches. They couriered meout of the van and white gold sunlight filtered across my skin. I gulped in fresh air as though I had been drowning. The moment of small relief and reconnecting to nature was swallowed up as I came to meet the playground of evil.
Ricker Prison speared high, penetrating the clouds in a wash of jaundice yellow. Barbed wire adorned fences, guard posts watched.
A billboard showed my brother’s face. He smiled with all his pearl white teeth in the photo, giving the prison a thumbs up. It was my family who had managed much of the bills regarding Soulless prisons and their upkeep.
Judging by the direction of the tiny metal laced windows, the prisoners had an unobstructed view of my brother, reminding them which family kept them caged. At least they did not knowmyface.
The billboard’s shutters changed to a new photo. ‘De Astor,’ printed boldly in glittering gold and my brother smiled again, this time I stood next to him with my own large smile.
“Oh freckles.” I cringed.
The guard prodded my back to move.
Inside, I was lectured and processed. The warden looked me up and down, a faint grin over his lips. I was a De Astor in his palm. He could fold over his fingers and crush me if he pleased.
When introductions were over two guards flanked me in front of a set of double doors that would welcome me in the general population of the prison’s inhabitants. The smell of sweat perfumed the air. My blood pumped in my ears. A muffle of zoo animal sounds scratched on the other side of the door.
“I cannot go in there.” I dug my heels in the ground. “They will know who I am. They will know it is my family who has assisted in putting them all in there.”
The guard used his baton to nick my side. “Maybe they won’t know who you are.”
The guards opened the doors and pushed me in like food to a lion’s den.
Layers of floors curled up like a snail shell holding hundreds of inmates in matching red, their clamour and clatter ceased as they twisted their heads to see their newest neighbour.
A woman with a tattooed face pointed at me with a grin. “It’s Delphine De Astor!”
5
Soulless did not have a Soulmate because they had no soul to give.
Psychopaths. That was usually what they were. Creatures that did not know the taste of empathy and practiced manipulation more than manners. Narcissists were another breed. Paedophiles of course. Machiavellianism. Essentially anyone with indifference to morality—or who spoke on their fucking phone on fucking speaker in a fucking public place—or who caused great hurt to others, was Soulless. Nero was one. Hitler another. Stalin, oh yes, most definitely. Tyra Banks? Probable.
Without a soul and without a Soulmate to make them whole, their lack of love festered and turned them ugly with evil. It happened to them all.
If you wanted to be saved and save those from the horror of it, you had to find your Soulmate.
No one in Ricker Prison had.
A melting pot of every violent thing in humanity was pushing at the seams in this cage of concrete. There was an obnoxious amount of Soulless being captured and squeezed to fit inside, especially in the last few months leading up to an Execution Battle. No point in extending their residences. Most would die soon.
Besides, Magnus had said it was opportunistic to have them mashed into each other’s personal space and fighting for breath before the battle. It made them irritated. It made them angry. By the time they got to the date of theExecution Battle they were more than eager to take out their frustrations on each other.
The Execution Battle was in two days.
