Chapter 392: What the Dark Keeps II
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The man saw her shoes first, then the shadow over him, then her face when she crouched and lifted the board one-handed off his chest. For one hopeful instant he looked relieved to see a woman who seemed human again.
Then he saw the expression in her eyes.
His hope died beautifully.
"I can pay," he blurted. "I can tell you things."
Mira tilted her head slightly. "You already had your chance to be worth questioning."
That line was so cold Bat Bat visibly admired it.
The man tried to scramble away anyway. Mira simply stepped on his wrist, waited until pain reminded him what kind of night he was having, then bound him with a split cord and shoved him toward the others.
Auri collected the last one from the back lane.
He had tried climbing into the rafters and then failed because blood loss and bad luck made poor allies. By the time she reached him, he was hanging from the edge of a beam with one arm and whispering promises to whatever god watched warehouse thieves die badly. Auri climbed up after him with the smooth certainty of something born for height and dark. He saw her and nearly let go on his own.
When she dragged him down, he was shaking hard enough to rattle the beam dust.
By the time they were finished, six men knelt or sprawled bound in the central hall beneath the half-cleared warehouse beams.
Six.
Enough to be useful.
Not enough to be valuable.
Bat Bat walked a slow circle around them in human form again, hands linked behind her back, radiating the sort of satisfaction respectable households tried not to name. The tied men watched her more fearfully than they watched some of the others, which amused her so deeply that her shoulders twitched with contained delight.
One of them looked at Sekhmet and made the mistake of trying the universal last language of cowards.
"We were paid. That is all. It was just work."
Sekhmet looked at him.
Then at the others.
Then at the warehouse around them.
Burned sabotage. Broken confidence. Bought workers. Dead contract man. Pressure in all directions before the real killing game even began.
No.
This was not just work.
This was alignment.
Choice.
And choices fed consequences.
He said, "So is this."
The man stopped speaking.
The bats had begun gathering by then.
Not all of them. Not every summoned wing in the Void Land and beyond. Only the ones nearest his command line and the ones who had followed the raid from roof to rafter. Dozens of tiny black bodies settled along the beam lines, broken shelves, door frames, and hanging crate hooks, red eyes blinking in the smoke-thick air. More came through the open Void Land fold, circling once before settling to wait.
Bat Bat looked up at them and visibly changed.
Sekhmet had noticed it before, but never in a room quite like this.
She became quieter with them.
Not gentler. Not softer. Just more centered. Her black-winged line recognized her before anyone else had words for what she was in it. The little beasts turned their heads toward her as if to a point of instinctive gravity.
She tried to hide how much that pleased her.
She failed.
Auri saw it too.
Her expression did not shift much, but she looked at Bat Bat with the dry, resigned patience of a woman admitting that, yes, perhaps the ridiculous little menace really did belong at the center of a flying blood swarm.
Sekhmet said, "Void Land."
The bound men began speaking all at once then.
Of course they did.
They did not know what the Void Land was, but they knew it was worse than staying here. Fear understood direction even when it did not understand details. One tried to rise and received Vera’s boot between the shoulders for the attempt. Another started crying. A third promised names. Chaos stones. Hidden store points discount of Iron house. A fourth said he had children, which made Bat Bat roll her eyes in such a human way it almost broke the scene.
"You should have remembered them before the sabotage," she said.
Mira glanced at her once.
Bat Bat lifted her chin slightly. "That was morally fair."
No one disagreed enough to waste time saying so.
Sekhmet widened the gate.
The dark fold of the Void Land opened farther and colder, enough that the warehouse lantern smoke bent toward it like it wanted to flee the room. The nearest bound man tried dragging himself backward with bound hands and half-ruined knees. Lily caught the back of his collar and hauled him forward one-handed.
The others followed the work pattern without needing further explanation.
The twins moved two at a time, dragging, lifting, or shoving the bound men toward the gate. Mira took one by the throat and marched him on stumbling feet through the dark fold with such icy precision that the man entered the Void Land already half convinced he had died. Auri simply threw one across the threshold after giving him a chance to walk and finding his gratitude insufficient.
Bat Bat handled the last one herself.
That man made the mistake of begging her specifically, perhaps because in human form she looked the least monstrous to him.
Terrible choice.
Bat Bat took him by the hair, smiled very sweetly, and said, "I am queen here."
Then she dragged him into the dark.
The Void Land received the six living men with its usual silent patience.
On the other side, the bats grew louder.
Not in shrieks.
In movement.
Tiny wings shifting. Bodies gathering. Hunger becoming organized.
Sekhmet stepped through after them and looked over the scene.
The bound men had been thrown down or forced to kneel in the open dark stretch not far from the warehouse-side gate point, far enough from Auri’s little house and the green life around the spirit leaf that blood would not stain what did not deserve it. The bats gathered in rings overhead and around them, settling like living black leaves before a storm.