Dawn Walker

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The words had barely left Sekhmet’s mouth when the next wave reached them.

The guards came down the central lane in a rough rush of boots, steel, and shouted courage. There were more of them than the first groups. Someone deeper inside the warehouse had finally managed to gather the frightened into something close to a line, and desperation had done the rest. Men who might have fled alone were suddenly brave enough to run when surrounded by other men who were equally afraid.

It would not save them.

The first one came with a hooked pole meant for pulling crates or breaking through stacked barriers. He swung it badly and too high, aiming for Lily because her transformed shape offended his courage the most. She stepped inside the swing with perfect timing, caught the shaft with one hand, and drove the heel of her palm into his throat so hard his heels left the floor for a breath. When he hit the ground again, he did not rise.

Mira moved at the same moment.

Her Crimson Gorgon form cut across the side lane with a burst of force that made her look less like something running and more like something released. Two snake heads spat in opposite directions. Venom struck one guard across the face and another across the exposed skin above his collar. Both men froze mid-step, their bodies locking from the inside as their blood ceased obeying their panic. Mira reached the first one, drove him into the stacked crate wall, and then spun low enough that her scaled raptor leg cut the second man’s balance out from under him.

Vera and Vela took the center.

The twins always looked best in the middle of confusion. Not wild. Not loud. Just frighteningly precise. One man rushed Vera with a short sword and died before he understood he had already lost his wrist. Another tried to come at Vela from the side and found her blade in his ribs before he fully turned his shoulder.

Auri took height again, one dark blur rising along the side beam line before dropping at the rear of the charging group. That alone broke their courage more than the killing did. Men feared what they could face. They feared what they could not place in the right direction even more.

Bat Bat, now in full bat form, chose not to attack the strongest target.

Of course not.

She chose the loudest.

The man shouting, "Form up, form up," suddenly had a black-winged bite-mad nightmare smash into his face and latch onto his ear. He screamed, which ruined the line, and then screamed louder when Bat Bat tore free and shrieked directly into his eye.

The men around him flinched apart.

That was all Sekhmet needed.

He crossed the space between them and broke the center of their rush with one brutal series of movements. A blood-forged blade formed in his hand as he moved. It opened one throat, cut down through another man’s shoulder, and then reversed in a red arc to catch a third in the neck. The blade no longer felt strange in his grip. It felt hungry.

The line collapsed.

Not fully. Not yet. But enough.

One of the warehouse guards, a broad-shouldered brute with a chain wrapped around one forearm and an axe in both hands, roared and charged Mira from the side. She turned just in time, but the axe came heavy and fast enough that dodging cleanly would have cost her position. Lily moved first instead, cutting across the lane and slamming into the man’s side hard enough that the axe missed and buried itself in a crate stack. Mira’s snakes struck him at once, spitting into the exposed throat line between beard and collar.

The man convulsed.

Lily took his face in both hands and bit.

That pleased Mira more than she expected.

Interesting.

She felt the flicker of it and threw Lily a look while the guard sagged under blood disruption and feeding. Lily looked back for one brief instant, crimson gaze bright, mouth touched with another man’s blood, and Mira understood at once that the house would never again be as simple as it had been before either of them transformed.

Not simpler.

But Stronger.

The remaining guards broke into smaller fighting knots after that. One tried to flee for the front doors and found Auri already waiting near the support post, her hand buried in his chest before his second step. Another tried climbing the side stacks to reach the upper ledgers and perhaps save something valuable enough to matter later. Bat Bat and Vera got to him almost together. Vera cut his path. Bat Bat took his face. He fell badly and did not trouble the night again.

Sekhmet moved through the center like a pressure point turned into a man.

He did not waste time on speeches or personal fury. Every strike had purpose. The foreman line died first. Then the bell runners. Then the men brave enough to stand near the reserve chamber doors. By the time the last true resistance formed near the inner loading gate, those forming it had already seen too much blood to believe in success. They were fighting only because survival sometimes confused itself with motion.

Mira spat venom into the last cluster before they could commit.

Three men locked up in place.

Vela reached the nearest and opened him cleanly.

Lily drove the second backward into a support beam and left him hanging there.

The third was still trying to understand why his knees had stopped obeying him when Bat Bat bit his thumb, then his throat, then announced proudly, "You were particularly disappointing."

He died offended.

The final guard tried to surrender.

Sekhmet looked at him.

The man looked around at the dead, the blood, the broken line, and the women in true predatory forms under iron lantern smoke. Then he looked back at Sekhmet and made the mistake of trying to explain that he had only been hired for warehouse work, not war.

Sekhmet let him finish.

Then killed him anyway.

When the last sound of fighting finally thinned, the warehouse did not fall silent all at once. It settled in layers. First the steel. Then the running. Then the shouting. What remained was the noise of damage. Oil dripping. A beam creaking somewhere under too much bad weight. A crate settling after being hit. Bat Bat chewing. The small sounds that proved the building was no longer a battlefield because the battle had already chosen its winners.

The floor was a ruin.

Bodies lay scattered from the front lane to the reserve chambers. Spilled grain mixed with blood and dust. Broken ledger shelves leaned at crooked angles. One overturned lantern had burned out in a circle of blackened oil without finding enough courage to take the floor with it.

Sekhmet stood in the middle of it and looked over the conquered warehouse.

This was worth taking.

He knew that at once.

Not just the goods. The ledgers. The reserve stock. The routes. The proof of how much Iron House had pulled inward thinking this place would hold them safe for at least another day.