He pulled the heavy door open and saw light for the first time. An orange glow ebbed and swayed in a tunnel to their right.

“It’s the same as before,” he said.

“You recognize it?” Her voice was thin and shaky.

Johnis took her hand. “Identical,” he said. “This is his lair.”

“Whose lair?”

“The prince or whatever they call him that rules this forest.”

“Not Teeleh himself, then.”

“I don’t think so. Maybe. I think we’ll know soon enough.”

He led her forward, but she pulled her hand free after a few steps, preferring to keep the water bag close instead.

Johnis stopped when they saw the first worm on the tunnel wall. Ten feet long, perhaps three inches thick, sliding though its own milky mucus. He studied it for a moment, then flicked water on it.

The worm uttered a soft, alien shriek and thrashed on the wall, skin smoking where the water had made contact. It fell to the ground with a loud splat that echoed down the tunnel.

Johnis looked at Silvie. Neither said a word. They went in, deeper.

The orange light was coming from a flame fixed to the entrance of what Johnis assumed was a library or a study, like the one in Teeleh’s lair.

He stopped and nodded. “This is it.”

“If Darsal’s alive, she’s staying quiet.”

Johnis didn’t want to dwell on the implications of the statement. It was bad enough that they’d seen no sign of their comrades since entering the Black Forest.

“Keep your water ready,” he said, but he didn’t need to. Silvie had her right hand submerged already.

They strode up to the gated entrance and found it open.

“Come in.”

The voice was thin and rasped like a file on a sword. Johnis took out a dripping hand and stepped into the underground library.

The room was small, maybe ten paces square, with a bank of bookcases on his right, a short table in the center, and several stuffed chairs situated haphazardly around. A torch flame licked at the wall opposite the entrance. All very much like in Teeleh’s lair.

But the tall, mangy Shataiki seated at the desk to Johnis’s left was not Teeleh.

“I knew you would eventually make it,” the Shataiki said.

“Alucard,” Silvie whispered.

“You remember.”

The bat stood. He was taller than most Shataiki by a foot or two, but shorter than Teeleh by as much. Thinner, much thinner. His mangy carcass hung off his bones like cobwebs. Vivid images of what this creature had done to them sent shivers down Johnis’s spine.

“I could kill you,” Johnis said.

Alucard lowered his eyes to the water bag in Johnis’s hands. “Yes, I suppose you could. You’re growing more clever by the day.”

The bat had no fear, which could only mean he knew something they did not.

“Where’s Darsal?”