Seize the Night Read Online Free PDF

across the much narrower width of the building to illuminate either side wall.
    As I scythed away the shadows, they regrew immediately after the beam passed, lusher and blacker than ever. At least no looming adversary was revealed.
    Looking more doubtful than suspicious, Orson padded into the light and, after a hesitation, seemed to dismiss the warehouse with a sneeze. He headed toward the door.
    A muffled
clang
broke the silence elsewhere in the building. The cold acoustics caused the sound to resonate along the walls of this cavernous chamber, lingering until the initial hard metallic quality softened into an eerie, whispery ringing like the voices of summer insects.
    I switched off the flashlight.
    In the blinding dark, I felt Orson return to my side, his flank brushing against my leg.
    I wanted to
move
.
    I didn’t know
where
to move.
    Jimmy must be near—and still alive, because the kidnapper hadn’t yet reached the dark altar where he would play his ritualistic games and sacrifice the lamb. Jimmy, who was small and frightened and alone. Whose dad was dead like mine. Whose mother would be forever withered by grief if I failed her.
    Patience. That is one of the great virtues God tries to teach us by refusing to show Himself in this world. Patience.
    Orson and I stood still and vigilant until well after the final echo of the noise faded. Just as the subsequent silence grew long enough to make me wonder if what we’d heard had any significance, a voice arose, deep-toned and angry, as muffled as the
clang
had been. One voice. Not a conversation. A monologue. Someone talking to himself—or to a small, frightened captive who dared not reply. I couldn’t make out the meaning, but the voice was as hollow and grumbly as that of a troll in a fairy tale.
    The speaker was neither approaching nor retreating, and clearly he was not in this chamber with Orson and me. Before I was able to determine the direction from which the growled words came, the troll fell silent.
    Fort Wyvern has been closed only nineteen months, so I haven’t had time to learn each niche of it as thoroughly as I’ve acquainted myself with every cranny of Moonlight Bay. Thus far, I’ve confined most of my explorations to the more mysterious precincts of the base, where I’m most likely to encounter strange and intriguing sights. Of this warehouse, I knew only that it was like the others in this cluster: three stories high, with an open-beam ceiling, and composed of four spaces—the main room, in which we stood, one office in the far right corner, a matching room in the far left corner, and an open loft above those offices. I was sure that neither the sudden noise nor the voice had come from any of those places.
    I turned in a circle, frustrated by the impenetrable darkness. It was as pitiless and unremitting as the black pall that will fall over me if, one day, cumulative light damage plants the seeds of tumors in my eyes.
    A louder noise than the first, a resounding crash of metal against metal, boomed through the building, giving rise to echoes that rolled like a distant cannonade. This time I felt vibrations in the concrete floor, suggesting that the source of the disturbance might be below the main level of the warehouse.
    Under certain buildings on the base lie secret realms that were apparently unknown to the vast majority of the soldiers who conducted the ordinary, reputable army business of Wyvern. Doors, once cunningly disguised, led from basements down to subbasements, to deeper cellars, to vaults far below the cellars. Many of these subterranean structures are linked to others throughout the base by staircases, elevators, and tunnels that would have been far less easy to detect before the facility, prior to abandonment, was stripped of all supplies and equipment.
    Indeed, even with some of Wyvern’s secrets left exposed by its departing stewards, my best discoveries would not have been possible without the aid of my clever canine companion.