Chapter 40 - The Fire at Devil’s Creek
"You're thirty years too late to play father, Arthur," Daniel said, stepping into the center of the flooded corridor, raising the AR-15 directly at Arthur’s chest.
"Put the gun down, Danny," Arthur wheezed, waving a frail, liver-spotted hand. "Marcus, don't shoot him yet. Let him look at me."
The lead mercenary stepped forward, leveling a combat shotgun at Daniel’s head. Daniel didn't flinch. His finger rested on the trigger.
"Look at you?" Daniel spat, his eyes burning with absolute hatred. "I see a rotting corpse dragging an oxygen tank through the mud because you're terrified of hell."
Arthur chuckled—a sound like dry leaves grinding in an iron grinder. "Hell? I built this valley, Danny. Margaret thought she could put me in a cage, thought she could lock away the monster. But she was greedy. She wanted the Vance fortune, but she was too cowardly to take what was necessary to survive. I made you. I paid for the womb that carried you. And now, your little daughter is going to give me twenty more years."
"She will die before she gives you a single drop of blood," Daniel snarled.
"No, Danny," Arthur wheezed, leaning forward, his pale eyes bulging. "She won't die. I have the best surgical team in Zurich waiting in a private hangar at the regional airstrip. They only need two lobes of her right lung. She’ll live... a quiet, sheltered life in a private villa in Switzerland. Just like you did. A family tradition."
"You sick, twisted bastard," Daniel whispered.
"Where is she, Danny? Tell me where she is, and I'll let you live. I'll give you ten million dollars. You can start over. Have another child. A healthy one."
Daniel looked at the lead mercenary. He looked at the cracked linoleum floor covered in two inches of stagnant water. And then he looked at the open junction box on the wall behind Arthur—an exposed industrial electrical conduit from the building’s old emergency feed that had been sparking intermittently against the wet floor.
Daniel slowly smiled. It was a terrifying, blood-soaked grin.
"You forgot one thing about me, Arthur," Daniel said softly.
Arthur narrowed his eyes, sensing the sudden shift. "What's that?"
"Margaret didn't raise a victim. She raised a survivor."
Daniel dropped his aim—not at Arthur, not at the mercenaries.
He fired five rapid rounds straight into the industrial electrical conduit behind them.
*BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG!*
Sparks erupted in a blinding, explosive cascade. The 480-volt commercial power line severed, whipping through the air like an electric serpent, splashing straight into the flooded corridor where the mercenaries and Arthur’s motorized chair were standing.
At the exact same instant, Daniel lunged forward, throwing his flare stick directly into the pressurized release valve of Arthur’s liquid oxygen tank.
"GET DOWN!" the lead mercenary screamed.
*KABOOM.*
The oxygen tank ruptured in a colossal ball of pure, white-hot fire. The concussive shockwave ripped through the corridor, shattering concrete, blowing out the ceiling beams, and throwing Daniel backward through the air like a ragdoll.
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Fire swept across the standing water, fed by the high-pressure oxygen, transforming the basement into an inescapable inferno of roaring heat and crumbling masonry. Screams of agonizing terror pierced the smoke, abruptly cut short as the concrete ceiling collapsed under the weight of the old building, burying Arthur Vance and his mercenaries beneath tons of burning rubble.
***
