They could see the ceiling now, hewn from the rock, jagged and dripping water from long stalactites. The drops of water fell to the lake’s surface and sent out ripples—the sound they’d heard.

The path snaked around the lake, barely visible between the gnarly trees and the stagnant water. Darsal turned her horse right and forced it forward. Without trees to support them over the lake, thousands of Shataiki now perched on the trees that ran the lake’s perimeter, staring with beady eyes. So many that Darsal thought the cavern’s orange glow might be caused in part by the eyes, not just the torch.

Without moving, except to face them as they rounded the lake, Alucard watched them come. And then they were in the mud before the platform, eye to eye due to their being mounted on horses.

The beast stood nearly twice as tall as most Shataiki, and his skin was more than twice as mangy. Fur worn thin to reveal his skin beneath. He looked very old, if age was something that could be judged by how haggard a beast looked. His upper lip hung down on either side of his snout, like a sad hound that held a long stick supporting a flaming torch.

Only this hound gazed at them with furious red eyes, not dog eyes.

A centipede scurried across the bat’s brow and across its upper cheek before vanishing into the beast’s ear. Darsal imagined a nest inside and shivered.

“Only one of you,” Alucard finally said in a low, wet voice. Saliva trailed off his snout and dripped to the ground. “And this traitor.”

“I’m here on my own,” Darsal said. “Armed with water—”

“Silence!” the bat snapped.

Darsal flinched.

“Does this look like your home? It’s your tomb.”

“Then it’ll be your tomb as well,” Darsal said, gathering the last reserves of her courage. She cast a quick glance to her right at Karas. The girl was shaking.

Eyes back on Alucard. “I’ve come to make you a deal.”

That set the bat back a few moments.

“I don’t make deals with my enemy,” he said.

“You did with Tanis. Or was that Teeleh? You don’t have the power to deal like that greater monster?”

“I could have you killed with the slightest move of my hand.”

Darsal glanced at the beast’s sharp, curved claws. For the last two days she’d thought about the proposition she would now voice, and however preposterous, however blasphemous, however treacherous it sounded, she saw no way around it.

But first she had to know if Alucard had one of the books.

“You can’t kill me,” Darsal said. “Not if you want the books.”

“I’ll do what pleases me in my home.”

“You’re not just a pawn of that bigger beast, Teeleh?” Darsal asked. “I assumed you do only what pleases him.”

No response.