Chapter 436:The Underground Strike III
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She killed one. She disemboweled another. She slipped the blood lash.
But Raka’s spike still drove into her thigh.
It was not deep. But enough to matter.
Her face changed at last.
That pleased him.
At the other side, the dark-clothed man finally drew his real weapon fully. A thin black blade that had stayed mostly hidden before. The moment it came free, three lesser vampires died almost together. One across the throat. One through the mouth. One opened from shoulder to chest. The weapon was better than his earlier knife. Much better. That explained something. He had been holding back part of his real edge because he had not thought the market dogs were worth it.
Now he did.
Too late.
Raka shouted, "Press them. Don’t let them breathe."
The underground market obeyed in the way only terrified subordinates and half-starved predators ever truly obeyed. Everyone pushed harder. The chamber became an animal. No formations now. No measured routes. Bodies piled. Blood spread. Men screamed. Lesser vampires went down and were replaced by others climbing over them before the first bodies even stopped twitching.
For a short stretch of time, maybe twenty breaths, maybe forty, Raka believed they could win.
Not beautifully.
Not without ugly losses.
But win.
Then Dickoff arrived.
He did not come alone.
That was the worst part.
Raka heard the new boots before he saw them. He heard organized movement from the northern side hall where his own outer watchers had already failed. Then he heard Iron House guard whistles. Then shouting. Then the first hired men crashing into the outer chamber like a flood of steel and noise.
Dickoff stepped in behind them with his face lit by something ugly and bright.
Vindication.
That bastard came to watch the result. Perhaps both. He was a bit late because the rank four was faster. He wore better armor than the market deserved and carried a sword he had never earned by merit. Behind him came Iron House guards in proper breastplates and hired street killers bought for immediate work. Enough of them to matter.
Too many of them to ignore.
Dickoff saw the claws first.
Then the fangs.
Then the red blood was shaping over the hands and arms of Raka’s stronger men.
His eyes widened.
Then his whole expression changed into delighted hatred.
"I knew it," he shouted. "I knew it. When they attacked me at the auction, I had my suspicions. Now I am sure." He pointed straight into the chaos of the chamber as if he had just found a buried truth no one else was clever enough to see. "Sekhmet is a vampire."
Raka wanted to kill him just for the sound of that line in his mouth.
Dickoff kept shouting anyway.
"Look at them. Look at his underlings. The claws. The fangs. The blood. I knew it."
Iron House guards and hired men surged in behind him.
The battle changed again.
That was the ugliest thing about fights like this. A man could begin losing, then begin winning, then begin dying again all in the same chamber if too many doors opened at the wrong time.
Raka’s people had the two Mihos subordinates under pressure.
Now they had a second enemy line crashing into their backs and flanks.
The first lesser vampire died so fast it hardly counted as a duel. A hired spear went into his side from behind while he was clawing at the woman’s shoulder. Another took a crossbow quarrel through the neck. One of Raka’s stronger men turned to answer the new attack and got his leg half-opened by the dark-clothed man in the same breath.
The room became a slaughterhouse.
Not one-sided. Not clean. Slaughter all the same.
Raka smashed an Iron House guard in the face hard enough to shatter teeth, then dragged blood out of his own wound and sent it in a jagged line toward Dickoff’s eyes. Dickoff flinched backward and the red spike missed by less than a hand’s width. Two hired men reached Raka at the same time after that. He killed one with claws under the jaw and the other with a blood-coated hand through the throat, but the woman came in behind their bodies and carved another line across his back that nearly dropped him.
His lesser vampires were dying now.
One after another.
They died on hired blades. On guard spears. On the black sword of the dark-clothed man. Under the woman’s armored brutality. They died biting. They died screaming. They died in heaps against the tunnel mouth trying to stop Iron House men from breaking farther inward.
And far above, inside Dawn House, Sekhmet was already moving.
He had heard enough through the communication stone to know the shape of the disaster. Not every detail. Enough. Raka under attack. Two strong enemies. Underground market. Immediate pressure. Then the line went dead in the middle of motion and metal.
He did not waste a single breath. He left at once.
The route from Dawn House to the underground approach was not one meant for noble movement. It cut through side lines, storage lanes, lower stairs, and dark stone access routes few house-born people ever saw unless they were being hidden or taken to kill hidden things.
Sekhmet moved through it faster than most men could think.
Behind him came the twins.
Not Mira.
Not Lily.
He had not called them.
They were occupied with other work in the auction house and he had not wasted time dragging them into this yet. Vela and Vera, however, had caught enough from his movement and expression to understand that whatever was happening was not small. They followed without argument. Both were armed. Both moved like women already tasting blood in the air ahead of them.
Halfway down the second lower route, the system answered with something colder than sound.
[Ding! SYSTEM Notification: A lesser vampire subordinate has died.]
Sekhmet’s expression changed.
Not outwardly by much.
Inwardly, it turned black.
He kept running.
Then another notification came.
Then another.
One after another.
[SYSTEM Notification: A lesser vampire subordinate has died.]
[SYSTEM Notification: A lesser vampire subordinate has died.]
[SYSTEM Notification: A lesser vampire subordinate has died.]
The system did not care about drama. It only counted losses.
That made it worse.
Behind him, the twins heard nothing from the system, but they saw enough in the set of his shoulders and the speed of his movement to understand what kind of answer was building in him.
Sekhmet ran faster.
The tunnels blurred.
Stone walls, low lamps, lower arches, shadow turns, all of it became less place and more distance to be murdered through.
Another death. Then another... Another...
Each one hit like a tally carved into something already angry.
He did not slow. He did not speak. He only ran harder, and by the time the underground market’s outer blood smell hit the air ahead, fury had already sharpened inside him into something much colder than rage.