lose. He did not expect to return to this place ever again.
His shambler followed him down the stairs, staring at him from its baleful, glowing eyes. It was gaunt. Kress realized that it had been ages since he had fed it. Normally it could take care of itself, but no doubt the pickings had grown lean of late. When it tried to clutch at his leg, he snarled at it and kicked it away, and it scurried off, obviously hurt and offended.
Carrying his bags awkwardly, Kress slipped outside and shut the door behind him.
For a moment he stood pressed against the house, his heart thudding in his chest. Only a few meters between him and his skimmer. He was afraid to take those few steps. The moonlight was bright, and the grounds in front of his house were a scene of carnage. The bodies of Lissandra's two flamers lay where they had
fallen, one twisted and burned, the other swollen beneath a mass of dead sandkings. And the mobiles, the black and red mobiles, they were all around him. It took an effort to remember that they were dead. It was almost as if they were simply waiting, as they had waited so often before.
Nonsense, Kress told himself. More drunken fears. He had seen the castles blown apart. They were dead, and the white maw was trapped in his cellar. He took several deep and deliberate breaths and stepped forward onto the sandkings. They crunched. He ground them into the sand savagely. They did not move.
Kress smiled and walked slowly across the battleground, listening to the sounds, the sounds of safety.
Crunch, crackle, crunch.
He lowered his bags to the ground and opened the door to his skimmer. Something moved from shadow into light. A pale shape on the seat of his skimmer. It was as long as his forearm. Its mandibles clacked together softly, and it looked up at him from six small eyes set all around its body.
Kress wet his pants and backed away slowly.
There was more motion from inside the skimmer. He had left the door open. The sandking emerged and came toward him, cautiously. Others followed. They had been hiding beneath his seats, burrowed into the unholstery. But now they emerged. They formed a ragged ring around the skimmer.
Kress licked his lips, turned, and moved quickly to Lissandra's skimmer.
He stopped before he was halfway there. Things were moving inside that one, too. Great maggoty things half-seen by the light of the moon.
Kress whimpered and retreated back toward the house. Near the front door, he looked up.
He counted a dozen long, white shapes, creeping back and forth across the walls of the building. Four of them were clustered close together near the top of the unused belfry, where the carrion hawk had once roosted. They were carving something. A face. A very recognizable face.
Kress shrieked and ran back inside. He headed for his liquor cabinet.
A sufficient quantity of drink brought him the easy oblivion he sought. But he woke. Despite everything, he woke. He had a terrific headache, and he stank, and he was hungry. Oh, so very hungry! He had never been so hungry.
Kress knew it was not his own stomach hurting.
A white sandking watched him from atop the dresser in his bedroom, its antennae moving faintly. It was as big as the one in the skimmer the night before. He tried not to shrink away. 'I'll . . . I'll feed you,' he said to it. 'I'll feed you.' His mouth was horribly dry, sandpaper dry. He licked his lips and fled from the room.
The house was full of sandkings; he had to be
careful where he put his feet. They all seemed busy on errands of their own. They were making modifications in his house, burrowing into or out of his walls, carving things. Twice he saw his own likeness staring out at him from unexpected places. The faces were warped, twisted, livid with fear.
He went outside to get the bodies that had been rotting in the yard, hoping to appease the white maw's hunger. They were gone, both of them, Kress remembered how easily the mobiles could carry things many times their own weight.
It was terrible to think that the maw was still hungry after all of that. When Kress reentered the house, a column of sandkings was wending its way down the stairs. Each carried a piece of his shambler. The head seemed to look at him reproachfully as it went by.
Kress emptied his freezers, his cabinets, everything, piling all the food in the house in the center of his kitchen floor. A dozen whites waited to take it away. They avoided the frozen food, leaving it to thaw in a great puddle, but carried off everything else.
When all the food was gone, Kress felt his own hunger pangs abate just a bit, though he had not eaten a thing. But he knew the respite would be short-lived. Soon the maw would be hungry again. He had to feed it.
Kress knew what to do. He went to his communicator. 'Malada,' he began casually when the first of his friends answered. 'I'm
having a small party tonight. I realize this is terribly short notice, but I hope you can make it. I really do.'
He called Jad Rakkis next, and then the others. By the time he had finished, five of them had accepted his invitation. Kress hoped that would be enough.
Kress met his guests outside-the mobiles had cleaned up remarkably quickly, and the grounds looked almost as they had before the battle-and walked them to his front door. He let them enter first. He did not follow.
When four of them had gone through, Kress finally worked up his courage. He closed the door behind his latest guest, ignoring the startled exclamations that soon turned into shrill gibbering, and sprinted for the skimmer the man had arrived in. He slid in safely, thumbed the start plate, and swore. It was programmed to lift only in response to its owner's thumbprint, of course.
Rakkis was the next to arrive. Kresser ran to his skimmer as it set down and seized Rakkis by the arm as he was climbing out. 'Get back in, quickly,' he said, pushing. 'Take me to the city. Hurry, Jad. Get out of here!'
But Rakkis only stared at him and would not move. 'Why, what's wrong, Simon? I don't understand. What about your party?'
And then it was too late, because the loose sand all around them was stirring, and the red
