“That’s where you’re wrong, my friend. Finding the last three will be a simple matter now. They may be the prize locked away for centuries, but I now have the key.” He faced Johnis, his lips twisted. “Surely you know where the other three are.”

Johnis had his ideas, to which he’d tried to alert Silvie. But he knew more than Alucard could possibly know.

“There are only a few lairs in this reality. For all we know, the last three books are hidden here, in this very library.” His eyes ran over the bookcases. Johnis wasn’t positive that the books were in a lair, but they seemed to favor lairs on Other Earth.

After two thousand years, Alucard wasn’t in a rush to tear the place apart, Johnis realized. If the last three books were in one of the lairs, he wasn’t in any danger of someone else finding them before he did. Except for Silvie and Karas.

A chuckle echoed softly around the room. Alucard walked around him, moving easily, inspecting. “You’re wondering why I didn’t just kill all three of you? Are you really so foolish?”

The stench of the beast’s flesh so close was enough to make Johnis temper his breathing.

“Tell him, Miranda.”

“We can kill them at any time. Why would we eliminate something that could still be useful?” She spoke as if she were a disinterested peer to the Shataiki, not his servant.

How so? Johnis wanted to ask. But he already knew. They’d taken him in the event they needed leverage. “What makes you think Silvie and Karas won’t find the books before you do?”

“Let them. It is now only a matter of time. Hours, days, it makes no difference to me.” Alucard breathed heavily and continued in a soft voice that trembled with each word. “My time has come.”

The worms overhead moved through their own muck, agitated.

“We have waited so long. Unlike you humans, Shataiki are born of the hive lord, the equivalent of your queen bee, only male. All we need now are the females.”

Johnis shuddered. These worms were Alucard’s offspring, trapped larvae, waiting for a female to somehow make them Shataiki. Or was Alucard the female? Either way, with the four books, Alucard could return to the Black Forest and bring back what he needed to turn these larvae into Shataiki. And what would happen to this world if thousands of Shataiki were set free?

“You . . . you can’t do that.”

“And now that you know how your little quest is going to end, I can kill you.” Alucard’s long, sharp talon reached around Johnis’s neck from behind and drew a thin line over his exposed skin. One jerk and his head would be parted from his body. Was the beast’s need to see the chosen one dead greater than his need for any leverage Johnis might give him?