Page 13 of Heart of the Deep

“We will slaughter you,” Neo snarled.

“Close your mouth,” Dracchus growled. “Give themnothing.”

“Is that how you want it to be, then?” the commander asked, looking from Neo and back to Dracchus.

Neo glared at Dracchus, lips pressed into a tight line, but said nothing more. Vasil remained silent, head slightly bowed. His siphons and nostrils flared in quiet anger.

The commander stepped back from the cage. “Ranger Dane, go get Sanson, Brock, and Altez. Our guests are tough. We might need some extra muscle to persuade them to cooperate.”

With a muttered acknowledgment, the human holding the light strode out of the room, plunging the place back into shadow. The commander clasped his hands behind his back and paced between the cells.

Dracchus strained against his bindings, but without any way to anchor himself, he couldn’t generate enough force to break them.

“You are without a doubt the most incredible things we’ve ever hunted,” the commander said, boots thudding on the floor in a steady rhythm, “and we’ve hunted damned near everything on this planet. You’re intelligent. Maybe as intelligent as a human. So, you should be smart enough to know that this isn’t going to be pleasant.

“I’ll ask again,” he stopped before Dracchus’s cell, “where are my missing rangers?”

Dracchus met the man’s gaze and pressed his lips together. Anger burned in his chest, speeding his hearts, but he would not give it voice. These humans did not represent the entirety of their race any more than Neo and Kronus represented the kraken. The thought did little to ease his fury.

The Commander clutched the bars and brought his face closer. “Where is Randall Laster?”

Hearing that name very nearly startled Dracchus into betraying its familiarity. At the edge of his vision, Neo stirred, skin pulsing crimson and black; the issuance of a challenge that could not be faced.

Dracchus focused on the commander. He’d seen eyes very much like this human’s many times over the last year They were Randall’s eyes.

This man was Randall’s sire.

The commander’s intensity dwindled at the sound of footsteps near the doorway. He eased back from the bars as Ranger Dane and three burly humans entered the room, plucking something from his belt — a small, thin piece of metal with toothlike protrusions at one end. He inserted the object into a box on the door. There was a click, and the door swung open. He turned away and repeated the motion for the other occupied cages.

Dracchus wasn’t sure what the tiny device was; apart from the few that required a certain pattern to be entered on a keypad, all the doors in the Facility opened at the touch of a button. Did the commander’s device fulfill a similar function?

Ranger Dane stopped beside the commander, who directed each of the other humans to enter a cage. The broad-shouldered human with yellow hair — Brock, according to the Commander — loomed over Dracchus with an indecipherable expression on his face.

“Rangers, introduce yourselves to our guests,” the Commander said, once again pacing between the cells.

Brock moved with surprising speed, slamming his fist into Dracchus’s cheek.

The kraken’s head snapped aside, forcing the collar into his neck. The taste of blood spread over his tongue; his teeth had cut the inside of his mouth.

Dracchus looked up at the human, whose large frame obscured the view of the other cells. Neo snarled and growled on the other side of the room, rattling his bindings.

“Release me and try that again,” Dracchus said evenly.

Brock snickered, mouth tilting into a smirk.

“However big you are, however strong you are,weare the hunters,” the commander said. “Give me the information I want, and we’ll see about altering our relationship. Until then, you’re nothing but animals in these cages. Six of my rangers went missing.”

Brock hammered a fist into the other side of Dracchus’s face.

“Cyrus Taylor.”

A blow to Dracchus’s gut.

“Hassan Stone.”

Another.

“Ward Bowman. Joel Tatum. Chad Booth.”

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