It occurred to Johnis that his thinking seemed to have slowed. He wondered if it had something to do with the air he and Silvie had subjected themselves to down here.

Silvie inhaled sharply, and Johnis followed her line of vision to a huge lump high on their right.

Alucard hung upside down by his feet from the corner ceiling. He was watching them with red glass globes, and his tongue was flickering at moist lips. Other than that he hung perfectly still, like a large cluster of rotten grapes.

Coiled around the beast’s torso nestled a long, thick worm. Alucard’s tongue reached for the mucus on the wall next to the worm, licked up a healthy portion, and withdrew the salve into his mouth.

All the while, not a word from the Shataiki. He seemed too distracted by his feeding or too smug in his confidence to react to their reappearance in his lair, which could only mean that his claim regarding Darsal’s oath was indeed true.

“You’ve come back to kill me?” Alucard spoke around the slimy mucus in his throat, offering each word with delicacy. He followed his question with a long, low chuckle.

Silvie backed toward the desk opposite the hanging beast.

“Would you like some worm smack?” he asked, flicking his tongue out like a snake. “The blood of evil isn’t red down here. Maybe if you drink, I’ll give you safe passage out of my forest.”

“So that we could return to burn it?”

“Burn it; I don’t care anymore. This world is too restricting for me.”

“And you think the world Billos and Darsal vanished to is waiting with open arms? You’re condemned to hell, no matter where you go.”

“I’m not interested in going where they went.”

“Then what?”

Alucard closed his eyes and licked the mucus to his right with a long, slow, probing tongue. His mangy fur shivered with pleasure; a wet popping sound accompanied his swallowing.

His eyes opened red again, but he didn’t answer.

“Kill him,” Silvie whispered bitterly.

Johnis nearly flung the full contents of his bag at the Shataiki, knowing that something very evil had hatched behind those eyes. But there was more at stake here than Alucard’s plotting.

“Darsal,” he said.

“She made her choice. Our only way out is to cut the head off of this forest’s power and get out while—”

“No. We can’t leave without the books.”

“You can’t leave,” Alucard said quietly from his corner. “With or without the books.”

Johnis spun back, grabbed the gate, and slammed it shut. He shoved a bolt through the latch, effectively locking them in. “Our fate is yours,” he said.

The bat chuckled. “I have all the food I need to live for a year down here. What did you have in mind?” He licked at the wall again. “It’s quite delicious . . . once you get used to it.”