Here and there his torchlight showed huge pink roots that ran along the slimy walls. The cobblestoned tunnel floor ran wet into the earth. The passageway was terrifying in itself, but still no sign of the Shataiki bat.

Johnis started to walk down the tunnel, holding the crackling torch in front of him.

Farther into the earth. Farther from his comrades. The tunnel seemed to stretch into darkness forever. He stopped and considered returning. Thinking with his heart was one thing; madness was another.

And this was the latter.

He stared at one of the pink roots to his right. It was a good six inches in diameter, moist and smooth except for round rings every few inches. Like a huge earthworm.

The root suddenly bunched up slightly and slid forward. Johnis’s heart skipped a beat. Two beats.

It was a worm. And the worm was sliding forward through the thin layer of worm gel coating the wall.

Panicked, he tore his feet from the ground and bolted forward, deeper, screaming to himself that he was going the wrong direction.

He should be going back! That’s what his mind cried. Back, back, back, you fool!

But he wasn’t thinking with his mind. He knew that he couldn’t go back, so he ran on. The worms lined the tunnel walls, leaving long trails of slime in their wake.

For a brief moment he wondered what that stuff would taste like, because although it made no sense to him, he did feel an odd attraction to it.

You’re in Teeleh’s lair, Johnis. This must be where the disease was first born. This is where the worms feed on the souls of humans and leave sludge behind. You have no business being in this place.

A room suddenly gaped on his right, and he slid to a stop. Beyond a large wrought-iron gate sat a wooden desk, and in front of the desk, an old stone stool. Three candlesticks stood on the desk, along with an inkwell, closed at the moment. Bookcases lined the walls, filled with dozens of dusty, leather-bound volumes.

Teeleh’s library? Or lair? Perhaps both.

The vision he’d seen in the desert, when the man had told him it was all about the library—“The Horde is in the library,” he’d said, or something similar—came to mind. It was all connected. Books, visions, power, lairs, libraries, killers, Horde.

Teeleh.

The dark man-beast he’d seen when touching the book with his blood. But more than Teeleh, he thought. It still didn’t all add up.

Johnis reached for the latch, found it unlocked, and pulled the gate open, wincing at the loud screeching of metal against metal. He glanced both ways down the tunnel and heard no sounds of pursuit, only the continued dripping of water on stone. Drip, drip, drip.