Chapter 387: Teeth in the Dark II
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Auri peeled away toward the side lane with the graceful certainty of something nocturnal returning to its preferred work. A runner there saw only the outline of a woman-shaped shadow before he found himself dragged backward into deeper darkness by hands and force he had not earned the right to name.
Mira looked at Sekhmet once, and he answered with a short nod.
She moved at once.
The Crimson Gorgon crossed the yard like something shaped by two ancient predator instincts that had been forced to improve each other. She did not move like a bird, and she did not move like a serpent. She moved like a perfected compromise between both. Her lower body carried her in silent, predatory bursts that made the distance disappear far too quickly. One guard at the side loading door had just enough time to see crimson hair and think the wrong kind of thought before one of the snake heads spat.
The venom struck his neck and jaw.
He did not turn to stone. His blood simply stopped obeying him. His body betrayed him from the inside so suddenly that he could neither flee nor fight.
Mira reached him, caught the back of his head, and lowered him without wasting any motion.
Lily entered through the opposite side line.
Her movement was cleaner than it had been even two nights ago, and Sekhmet noticed it at once. She had stopped treating the transformed body like borrowed danger and begun using it like something that belonged fully to her. A store runner inside the side hall saw her too late. She hit him once, drove him into the wall, and when he slid down half-conscious, she looked back toward Sekhmet for the briefest instant.
Perhaps she wanted permission.
Perhaps she wanted confirmation.
Perhaps she was showing Sekhmet how comfortable she was with hunting.
He gave it with the smallest gesture. He just moved his chin a bit at her.
She bit him, not from desperation, but from judgment.
That pleased him.
Then they were inside.
The first interior hall of the warehouse smelled of oilcloth, grain dust, dried leather, old wood, metal fastenings, wrapped tools, sweat, and weak and strong men trying very hard to stand still enough to look brave. Stacks of goods rose in ordered lines down the central floor. Side chambers branched off toward record desks, reserve storage, and loading spaces. Iron House had indeed moved much of its business there.
That made the night more valuable than before.
Sekhmet motioned them lower and slower. This part was no longer about open attack. It was about predation through structure.
They took the first chamber with silence and speed. There was one clerk with a knife hidden under the table, one watchman near the shelf line, and one ledger runner trying to reach a bell chord near the side post. Vela killed the clerk. Vera caught the runner before his hand touched the line. Mira’s snake head venom stopped the watchman before the man even knew his body had already surrendered.
Bat Bat stood very still for exactly two breaths and then whispered, "This is excellent teamwork."
Sekhmet gave her one look.
She mimed, sealing her mouth shut.
Then the line of stealth broke.
A shout rose from somewhere deeper in the warehouse, and from that moment onward, silence was no longer worth preserving.
The warehouse woke up badly.
Men ran. Doors opened. Someone knocked over a crate hard enough to split it. Somewhere farther in, a guard shouted for lanterns and then died immediately because Auri came through the upper beam space and dropped onto him from above with a force that snapped both his call and his balance at once.
Mira smiled then.
It was a real smile.
Lily saw it.
That mattered more than either woman admitted aloud.
Something changed between them in that instant, it was not in hostility, but in recognition. They were two women in their true predatory hybrid vampire forms, both blood-touched under Sekhmet, both discovering that the joy of a hunt inside enemy walls had a language of its own.
After that, they moved faster.
Lily took a pair of guards in the side crate lane, driving one into a support post and opening the other’s throat with brutal precision. Mira climbed the side stacks with impossible ease for a creature in a bipedal raptor form, then used the snake head to spit venom down into a clustered group below. Men convulsed, froze, and crashed into each other before they could form a proper line. Vera and Vela cut through the confusion like twin knives drawn under wet silk.
Bat Bat was released at last.
Sekhmet saw the exact moment and pointed.
"Now."
Joy lit her whole face.
Then she dropped her human form and became the small black-winged terror she had always been at heart. Bat form suited her entirely too well. She was fast, vicious, and wrong in all the most useful ways for enclosed chaos. She flew straight at a man trying to haul a crossbow from a high crate rack, hit his face, bit hard enough to tear a strip of flesh free, and shrieked in a way that was not elegant at all and therefore extremely effective.
Three men panicked at once.
One of them swung at empty air and struck his own ally instead.
Bat Bat wheeled away laughing bloodily. "You should all respect education more."
Auri actually laughed this time.
The warehouse had become a living thing by then, a beast made of lantern smoke, spilled grain, shouting, blood, and crashing wood. Men ran through aisles believing they still understood their own building. They did not. Sekhmet’s group had entered too fast, cut too deep, and moved too unpredictably. Every chamber now felt unsafe to those inside it.
He enjoyed that very much.
A heavyset foreman with a hooked blade came at him from the side with more courage than sense. Sekhmet caught the arm, broke it at the elbow, took the blade, and buried it under the man’s ribs in one smooth motion. Then he looked up and saw Lily and Mira land almost side by side in the same open lane, one coming from the left, the other from above.
That caught his attention immediately.
They noticed it too.
For one brief beat, in the middle of all the movement, the two of them stood in true form under warehouse lantern light with dead men at their feet and looked at one another as if measuring which reflection in the night pleased them more: the new housemate or the new predator.
Then Lily said, breathing slightly harder than before, "You spit first."
Mira’s snake-woven hair shifted. "They stop faster."
Lily’s mouth moved. It was not exactly a smile, but it came close enough to matter.
That was bonding, and the kind that happened under danger always ran deeper than the kind built over tea and arranged politeness.
Then the moment broke because Vera dropped from a side beam, wiped blood from her blade, and said, "More are coming."
Vela joined them from the opposite side and added, "And they are louder now."
For a second the four women stood in one rough line: Vera, Vela, Lily, and Mira. Twins, wife, concubine. Bloodline linked. Dangerous separately, but far more dangerous together.
Sekhmet looked at them.
Because the moment was right. He needs to tell them about their true powers. Because the warehouse was loud enough and the hunt had gone deep enough, and because the next truth of the house had to be spoken before dawn turned all this into memory, he said something that made all four of them shift their attention to him at once.
"You four can build your own vampire legions."
The sentence cut through the warehouse noise more sharply than a scream would have done.
Lily turned first. Mira followed a fraction later. Vera and Vela both went still.
Bat Bat, in bat form, landed upside down from a half-broken beam and stared at him. "That sounds extremely important."
It was.
Sekhmet stepped over a fallen body and said it plainly.
"You heard me."
The four women watched him with the kind of attention that did not belong to casual conversation.
He continued, "Under my bloodline authority, each true vampire I create can build a lesser line beneath them. Ten each. Your own vampire legion. Not random. Not uncontrolled. Yours."
The warehouse around them still raged with partial chaos. Men were still running somewhere deeper inside. A lantern had been knocked sideways in one side chamber. Auri was still ensuring no runner reached the outer yard. But for this stretch of breaths, the center of the night had become something else entirely.
’Lily. Mira. Vera. Vela.’
And the shape of the future opening beneath their feet.
Lily’s throat moved once.
Mira’s crimson eyes narrowed with a sudden and dangerous kind of thought.
Vera’s expression barely changed, but the blade in her hand stopped moving entirely.
Vela did not look shocked. She looked intent, as though she had already begun calculating what such a legion would mean in terms of war, territory, loyalty, and bloodline reach.
Bat Bat whispered from the beam above, "Oh, this house is becoming outrageous."
Sekhmet ignored her and finished the truth.
"You are not only my woman now. You are potential bloodline queens in your own right."
The words landed hard.
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