The movement stopped. Filax listened to the sound of the silence listening right back at him. He rumbled another warning, deep in his chest. ‘He is growling,’ said a new voice, much like the first. Filax lowered his head, ready to spring at whatever was about to turn the corner and enter his space. But what he saw was not a cat. It was a woman’s legs, a woman made of black stone that both shone and sucked in light. And then the legs of three more stone women walked in and stood around him in a half circle. Filax smelled cat, more cat than he had ever smelled in one place, but the human bodies confused him. And then he looked up and saw there was something wrong with their faces. It was hard to see exactly, because their eyes blazed a blue light that dazzled him, but he could tell they were not human heads. They were the faces of lionesses, and their great cat-heads wore Egyptian headdresses that fanned out behind them like cobra hoods.
