Chapter 6 - The Demon of Blackwood Bay
The gunshot didn't sound like a movie blast; inside the tight confines of the motel breezeway, the suppressed crack was like the snapping of an iron girder.
A heavy body slammed against the outer wall of Room 14, followed by a wet, gargling gasp and the dull clatter of an assault rifle dropping to the carpet.
"Contact! We got a shooter in the rear—!"
A second shot cut the man off mid-sentence. The flashlight beam dancing beneath the bathroom door spun wildly as a mercenary collapsed, blood spraying across the lower half of the entryway.
Elena frozen, her knuckles locked around the knife. This wasn't the police. The shots were too rhythmic, too calculated. Two rounds per man, fired with surgical, monstrous cadence.
*Pop-pop.*
A scream of agony echoed from the courtyard outside, followed by the deafening roar of automatic gunfire as the remaining hitmen fired blindly into the dark rain. Bullets tore through the drywall of Room 14, ripping through the cheap pine dressers, shattering the television screen, sending clouds of white plaster dust swirling through the air.
Elena dropped to her stomach, covering her head as wood splinters rained down on her. From inside the tub, Lily let out a muffled, terrified shriek.
"Stay down!" Elena screamed, weeping openly now.
Then, the storm outside seemed to intensify. A human silhouette materialized in the broken doorway of the motel room—tall, broad-shouldered, moving with impossible, fluid grace amid the chaos.
A tactical light snapped on, not mounted on a rifle, but held in the left hand of the figure, strobing with disorienting, blinding frequency. A mercenary lunged from the kitchenette, raising a shotgun.
The dark figure stepped inside the man's guard with casual brutality. A sickening *crack* echoed through the room as an elbow shattered the attacker's jaw, followed immediately by a single, downward shot from a heavy-caliber handgun. The attacker dropped like a sack of wet concrete.
Silence crashed back over the room, broken only by the patter of rain leaking through the bullet holes in the ceiling.
Elena lay flat on the bathroom floor, the paring knife trembling in her outstretched hand. The shadow was standing right outside the cracked bathroom door. She could hear his breathing—steady, controlled, completely at odds with the carnage he had just unleashed.
The door slowly swung open.
The beam of the tactical light dipped downward, pointing at the floor so as not to blind her.
Slowly, agonizingly, Elena looked up.
Standing in the doorway, soaked in coastal rain and speckled with the blood of three men, stood Damian Cross.
His bespoke charcoal overcoat was ruined, torn at the shoulder and drenched in dark crimson. His tie was slightly crooked, his hair plastered across his forehead by the storm. In his right hand, the slide of his custom .45 was locked back, smoking faintly in the damp air.
His gray eyes locked onto hers. The coldness that had defined his face for seven years wasn't there anymore. In its place was something raw, feral, and utterly terrifying—a mixture of agonizing relief and volcanic fury.
Elena’s paring knife slipped from her fingers, clattering uselessly against the linoleum.
"D-Damian?" she choked out, her voice barely a breath.
Damian didn't speak. He holstered his weapon, knelt down in the broken doorway, and reached out with hands that had executed fifty men. For the first time in four years, his fingers touched her skin—brushing a damp strand of hair away from her tear-streaked face. His touch was so gentle it made her heart stop.
"You're safe," Damian rasped, his voice raw, shaking with an emotion he couldn't suppress. "Elena. You're safe."
From behind the shower curtain, the plastic rings rattled softly. A tiny, tear-stained face peered out from the edge of the tub.
"Mr. Damian?" Lily whispered, sniffing loudly, her little eyes blinking through the haze of plaster dust.
Damian turned his head. His entire demeanor softened, the terrifying mafia don vanishing in an instant. He reached inside his ruined overcoat with his left hand and pulled out a mangled, rain-soaked stuffed rabbit with mismatched eyes and a newly stitched rear seam.
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"Barnaby had a mission, Lily," Damian said, his voice dropping into a gentle cadence that made Elena burst into violent, uncontrollable sobs. "He told me you needed a ride home."
***
