Chapter 6 - Blood and Darkness
BOOM!
A flash of blinding blue light erupted from the power substation two hundred yards away. Instantly, every light in the North Docks complex went pitch black. The heavy industrial floodlights died, security cameras flickered out, and inside the warehouse, high-tech night-vision gear short-circuited with burning sparks.
Shouts of panic echoed from inside the warehouse.
"The power's out! Get the generators on!" "My scope is dead! I can't see!"
At the dark perimeter fence, Julian, holding a tactical radio, unlocked the heavy steel gate.
Maisie knelt in the wet mud, holding Cyrus’s broad face between her hands. "Find the boy, Cyrus," she whispered into his ear. "Bring him home. Soft feet, quiet breath."
Cyrus let out a single, deep exhaling breath. Then, like a shadow breaking off from the night, he sprinted into the darkness.
He moved with absolute silence—a phantom forged in years of combat training and refined by love. He crossed the mud-slicked yard without making a sound, slipping through a broken ventilation hatch on the ground floor of the warehouse.
Inside, the warehouse was a maze of pitch-black corridors filled with smoke and panicking guards.
A Moretti enforcer stumbled down the hallway, cursing as he tried to flick on a dead tactical flashlight. Click. Click.
He didn't hear Cyrus coming. The massive German Shepherd didn't bark. He struck from the shadow, slamming his shoulder into the guard's chest, knocking him unconscious onto the concrete floor before he could even squeeze the trigger of his submachine gun. Cyrus didn't bite to kill; he neutralized, moving on instantly.
Scent of copper... sweat... gunpowder...
Cyrus navigated by air currents and sound. He dodged two tripwires stretched across the floor, sensing the faint hum of tension on the wire. He leapt over a pile of rusted metal, ascending the central steel staircase toward the third floor.
On the third floor, two guards stood outside a reinforced office door, where Thomas Hart was tied to a chair, bruised and bleeding.
"What the hell was that sound below?" one guard whispered, raising his pistol nervously into the blackness.
"I don't know, man! I can't see an inch in front of my face!"
A pair of glowing, amber eyes materialized out of the dark shadow at the end of the hall.
GROWL.
The sound was not human, not natural. It vibrated off the steel beams, echoing from everywhere at once.
"Fire! Fire into the hall!"
Muzzle flashes erupted, lighting up the dark corridor in frantic, blinding bursts. BANG! BANG! BANG! Bullets tore into the concrete walls and wooden crates.
Cyrus leaped off a side wall, dodging the direct line of fire, and slammed into the first shooter. The gun clattered to the floor. The second guard turned to run, but Cyrus tackled him from behind, pinning him to the floor with an iron grip on his tactical vest.
Within forty seconds, the corridor was completely quiet again.
Cyrus pressed his nose against the bottom of the heavy office door. He smelled the unmistakable blood relation to Julian Hart—the same scent, mixed with fear and youth.
Cyrus reared back and slammed his massive chest against the wooden door frame. CRACK!
Inside, nineteen-year-old Thomas Hart flinched violently in his chair. "Who's there?! Don't come near me!"
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The door gave way on the second impact. A massive dark shadow bounded into the room. Thomas squeezed his eyes shut, expecting a bullet or a blade.
Instead, he felt a warm, wet nose nudge against his bloody hands, followed by the rough texture of a tongue licking the ropes binding his wrists.
