“Send her out,” a large blond-headed one at the mob’s center said. The skin on his face was peeling, revealing black flesh beneath.

A thin, wiry warrior, who looked like he might be quicker than a snake, stepped up beside the large blond. “Let me take ’em all. I can take ’em; you know I can.”

“Shut up, Pete.”

Another man stepped up, hands spread by his hips, as if he expected suhupow to fill them at the slightest movement. The look in his narrowed eyes put a chill in Darsal’s neck. She knew their kind—warriors who lived for the love of blood more than any cause. In the Forest Guard they were called throaters: fighters who counted their value by the number of Scab throats they’d cut.

Scanning the gathering mob, Darsal saw that at least half of them looked to be throaters. They were here for vengeance, and they would not go home without their fill of blood.

“Who are you?” Billos demanded.

The leader hesitated. “Claude.”

“What will you do with them?”

“We’re going to string them up,” the man called Claude said matter-of-factly. “By their necks. We want to watch them twitch in the air.”

The wind gusted past the door.

“What if I give you one of them?” Billos asked. “The young one?”

Darsal wasn’t sure she’d heard him correctly. This was Billos, for the sake of Elyon!

“Three is better,” Claude said, stepping forward. “Father, son, and all.”

Darsal had no clue what he was talking about.

“The last time we just went with the one, the son, and it cost us,” Claude said.

“I hear you,” Billos said. “So you want to string them both up?”

“Are you deaf?” asked Claude.

Darsal had crossed the desert, traded her soul to Alucard, betrayed Thomas, all for Billos’s sake. But she knew that if she didn’t make a move now, they would all die. And since Billos wasn’t moving with her, she would have to work alone.

She caught Karas’s eye and looked to the rear exit. The young girl nodded. Darsal eased back toward the door, moving to her right as she did so, until the door frame blocked the view of the mob.

“I hear you.” Billos shoved his gun into its holster. He snapped his fingers, and a glass goblet magically appeared in his hand. “I hear you, and I’ll drink to that.”

Amazing. Darsal briefly wondered what it felt like to have that kind of power. She bumped into the door behind her, and the questions fled. Reaching for the knob, she cracked the door soundlessly, then slipped outside, followed by Karas.

She had the presence of mind to shut the door in the face of the blowing wind before running across the back alley and into the forest behind. She rounded a crowded bunch of trees and pulled up hard.