Warbound: Book Three of the Grimnoir Chronicles Read Online Free PDF Page B

get what I mean. In fact, there ain’t much we can’t do. However, this particular fella’s got some rare skills I need.”
    “He’s dangerous.”
    “Which means he’ll fit right in.”
    “You know about . . .”
    “Heard about him. He got here after I left.”
    “Don’t think you can control him, Sullivan. He’ll get inside your head.”
    “He ain’t a Reader.”
    “Might as well be.” The Warden rolled his cigar to the other side of his mouth. “He’s not like you, Sullivan. Letting you out was one thing. Anybody who has studied the law could look at your case and see you were railroaded. You were a war hero who stomped a crooked sheriff in a crooked town, and because you were a scary Active, you were made into an example. I just wish I’d read your file sooner. The vast majority of the rest of my convicts, on the other hand, are in here for damn good reasons. This man Wells, for example. He’s a killer, nothing but a mad-dog killer.”
    “Sorry, Warden. I’m afraid where I’m going, mad-dog killers are exactly what I’m gonna need.”

    Solitary confinement was by the gravel pit. Sullivan had spent quite a bit of time in solitary. It was where you got put automatically after a fight. Didn’t matter if you started it or not. Get in a fight, go in the hole. And Sullivan, having had the reputation of being the toughest man inside Rockville, had no shortage of upstart punks who’d wanted a shot at the title, so Sullivan had spent a lot of time in the hole. Usually, he hadn’t minded. The quiet had helped him think.
    The holes lived up to their name. They were just shafts that had been dug ten feet straight down into the solid rock with a four-hundred-pound iron plate stuck on top for a roof. The holes weren’t even wide enough for a tall man like Sullivan to lie all the way down. Inside was just enough room for the prisoner, a bucket to shit in, and a whole bunch of rock. Once a day they’d send down a clean bucket with food and a can of water in it, and pull up the old bucket to hose out to send back with your rations in it the next day. Once they’d decided you had enough they’d roll down the rope ladder. It hadn’t been too awful in the summer, but being in a hole during the Montana winter was miserable. There tended to be fewer fights during the winter months.
    The Warden had telephoned ahead, so there were ten guards waiting around one hole in particular. Some were carrying nets, and the rest were armed with strange Bakelite batons with metal prongs sticking out the ends.
    “What’re those?” Sullivan asked, gesturing at the unfamiliar weapons.
    The guard patted the big square end of his baton. “Electrified cattle prod. Gotta have something. Bullets just bounce off this guy.”
    “It won’t be necessary. Stand back while I talk to him.”
    “Warden said you’d want it that way. Your funeral, pal.” The lead guard shrugged. “Stand away, boys.”
    The guards complied, a few of them giving him dirty looks that suggested they remembered him from the old days. Even cleaned up and without the striped prisoner suit and the ball and chain clamped around his ankle, he was still an easy man to recognize. He’d never given the guards any trouble. They were just men doing a hard job, so Sullivan held no grudge, but to them, once a convict, always a convict, and only a sucker trusted a convict.
    Waiting until the guards were safely away, Sullivan walked up to the hole and kicked the iron plate a couple of times to announce his presence. “Morning.”
    The voice was muffled through the plate. “What do you want?”
    “I want to talk, Doctor.”
    There was a long pause. “So it’s doctor now, huh?”
    “You got a medical degree and you’re an alienist, so that’s your title, ain’t it?”
    “I suppose I’ve rather gotten used to my title being ‘Convict.’”
    Sullivan remembered his own stays in the hole, how only the tiniest bit of light could creep through the air slots cut in