A small cabin had been built among the rubble, but this didn’t strike Silvie as the kind of place they would find the books that had caused them so much trouble.

“Take ’er down,” Karas signaled the pilot.

They landed a hundred feet from the cabin and ducked out from under the spinning blades. “Wait for us.”

Karas led Silvie through an unlocked cabin door, into what looked to be a long, deserted room with two doors leading farther in. They quickly checked the two rooms: nothing obvious.

Karas switched on her battery-operated torch and ran it over the floor. “Okay, we’re looking for an opening that leads below the cabin.”

Silvie tried her own light. She might have been mesmerized by the contraption—fire sealed in this battery Karas referred to—but her mind was preoccupied with Johnis’s absence. “How do we know the lair is here, not buried under all the rubble?”

“We don’t.”

“Surely Alucard would have searched this place.”

“Not since all four books have been in this reality, he hasn’t.”

“How do you know? He could be down there right now, waiting for us.”

“Turkey, maybe. Or Romania. I doubt he’s here.”

“Romania?”

“Never mind. Come on.”

They searched the outer room first, covering every square inch on their hands and knees. The whole business was enough to soak Silvie in sweat. All she could think about was Johnis caged in a dungeon . . . or worse.

“We’re wasting time!” Silvie announced, standing. “What was that you said about Romania? This can’t be the right place!”

“I’ll take one room; you take the other.”

The other was a bathroom, and it took Silvie only a few minutes to convince herself that there was nothing remotely resembling Teeleh’s lair within a hundred miles of this place.

“Silvie!”

She dove for the door, slammed into its frame, and spun through, ignoring the pain that flashed up her arm.

“What is it?”

She saw what it was before Karas could answer. The wood-frame bed had been pulled to one side, and a trapdoor rose to reveal a dark tunnel beneath.

They’d actually found it?

“There’s a ladder.” Silvie dove for the hole and was halfway into the floor before Karas could stop her.

“Easy! I have the gun. I should lead.”

Silvie hesitated as Karas dropped past her into the earth below. They were in a small tunnel that ran perpendicular to the earth’s surface, not deep. It was an escape route freshly dug, not an ancient fortified tunnel like Alucard’s lair.

“This isn’t it,” she breathed, hurrying behind Karas, who scurried forward in a crouch, her gun extended.

No response.

They rounded a bend, following the light from their battery-operated torches. The tunnel ended at another ladder heading up. Light seeped through a square trapdoor about fifty feet above their heads.