---
One of the men turned in a circle, seeing the wrong sky, the impossible dark breadth, the silence beyond distance, and finally understood that the warehouse raid had not ended in capture by rivals or guards or common killers.
It had ended in being fed to something hidden.
He began screaming then.
That was the worst thing he could have done.
The bats reacted at once.
They did not dive immediately because they had learned better than uncontrolled hunger under Sekhmet's line. But they dropped lower in fast tightening swirls, red eyes fixed, wings flickering in the dimness. Bat Bat walked among them, and they parted for her.
That made the surviving men even more frightened. Naturally.
She turned to Sekhmet. "How generous are we being."
He looked at the kneeling captives. No use in keeping them whole. No use in wasting them quickly either.
"The bats eat first," he said. "If anything remains useful after, the ghouls get what is left."
