The Almighty Dominance (by Sunshine) novel Chapter 821

In Victor Russell's hall, it was so dark that nobody could see his own hand.

"Lights!" Curtis Bennett's voice cut across the black. "Somebody get the lights!"

"The switch is dead, boss!" his right-hand man shouted from the stairs.

"Then use your phones!"

A screen woke by the far wall. Its torch came on, bright and white, and the beam swung across the stone floor, across a boot, across the hem of a long coat.

"I've got light! Over here, I've got—"

The man was gone from behind it. The light leapt out of his hand, as if something had struck him and the phone in the same blow, and it went spinning end over end across the hall and burst against the wall.

Black again.

A second screen lit up by the door. It lasted less time than the first.

After that, nobody tried.

Then, from the far wall, a thud. A gun hit the floor and slid away across the stone, and nobody had fired it.

"Who's that?" a man yelled. "Who's moving?"

"Answer me! Somebody answer me!"

The thuds came along the wall, one after another, like the first heavy drops of a storm.

"Hold your fire!" Curtis roared. "Nobody shoots! You'll kill each other in the dark!"

Nobody shot. Somewhere a man began to pray, and his prayer broke off halfway.

By the staircase, Connor Russell had gone very still. He knew this dark. He had lain on his back in it on the floor of the Grand, in the spilled soup, with his arm bent the wrong way.

"It's the same," he whispered. "Uncle Curtis, it's the same as the Grand. It's him. He's here."

"Who's here?" Curtis snapped.

"I don't know! Nobody knows! That's what I'm telling you!"

Connor's good hand was shaking. The dead one hung in its strap against his chest, and tonight, of all nights, he was glad of the strap, because it held the arm still.

Something was standing in front of him. He could not see it. He could feel it, the way you feel a wall in a dark room before you touch it.

" Please don't kill me! It was him, it was my uncle!" Connor went down on his knees. " Please. I'll do anything. I'll give you the harbour, I'll give you all of it—"

A sound like green wood snapping. Connor screamed once. Then he did not make any sound at all.

Up on the beam, Serena hung with her eyes shut. Her back was on fire. She heard every sound in that hall, and she understood none of them. Beside her, Preston's rope creaked.

"What was that?" Preston babbled into the black. "Was that Connor? Is somebody dead? I didn't see anything! Somebody write that down! I didn't see anything!"

"Shut up, Preston," Patricia sobbed. "Please, just shut up."

"You shut up!"

"Quiet, both of you," Serena whispered. "Please."

Curtis did not shout again. He had stood on many floors like this one, and he knew what fear sounded like in other men. Tonight he heard it in his own breath.

"Whoever you are," he called into the dark, quite politely, "you're very good. I'll give you that. My brother had twenty years on this coast, and you took him in one night."

Nobody answered.

"Come and stand in front of me, then," Curtis said. "Face me like a man." Then, louder, to the walls: "Leave him to me, all of you. You hear me? He's mine."

"Boss, we can't see you!"

"You don't need to see me. Stay where you are."

He set his feet and waited. When the cold came close beside him again, the same cold that had stood at his side when the lights died, he turned and drove his fist into it with everything he had.

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