---
Then they turned and slipped into the darker stretch where the holding ground waited. A few breaths later, the first frightened movement from the captives reached the air as they realized what was coming.
Sekhmet did not look that way again.
He turned instead toward Sofia and Natasha.
The two true vampires were already watching him.
Of course they were.
Even sealed, even weakened, even made human-looking by the layered suppression on them, they remained too old in instinct not to recognize hunger walking toward them. They had felt Lily's transformation. They had felt the trapped shockwave. They had watched him leave, watched him return, and now they saw the extra stillness in his body, the focus in his eyes, the way he no longer moved like a strategist solving house problems but like a predator choosing where to feed.
Natasha was the first to speak.
"So," she said softly, "the girl still lives."
Sekhmet stopped in front of them.
He did not answer at once.
