Renegade Read online

  “See you on the other side,” he said.

  The light collapsed back on Billos and winked out.

  Darsal stared around, dumbfounded. The doorway where Claude had stood was empty, as was the street beyond, she saw. Smither’s Barbeque was gutted from inside out.

  The light had simply and completely destroyed the darkness.

  Billos stepped in, dripping wet, and stared at them,

  “Well then,” Karas said.

  Somehow Darsal was certain that all this power would be gone when they returned to Middle Forest. The real question was whether Billos had truly changed.

  A wry grin nudged his mouth. “Now, that’s what I call power, baby.”

  Darsal strode to the counter, withdrew the four books, and plopped them on a table next to Billos—the only one left upright that she could see.

  “Good to see you too,” she said, looking up at Billos, who watched her with wide eyes, perhaps harboring remorse. Something had changed him, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have cause to be terrified by his behavior.

  For the first time since entering the layer of reality that Black had insisted wasn’t flesh and blood, Darsal remembered her sworn oath to Alucard. Perhaps she would soon have cause to be terrified by her behavior as well. They could probably leave this place by touching the books with blood, but then what? She didn’t know.

  The books were his by oath. Either the books or one of their lives.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Billos said.

  he library was empty.

  Johnis and Silvie had rushed down the worm-infested tunnel and spun into Alucard’s library, armed to the elbows with water, only to find the room vacated.

  Silvie voiced the obvious. “He’s gone.”

  Alucard was gone, but no fewer than a dozen shiny, thick worms slid along the walls of his lair now. The bookcase was wet with their mucus and the wall lumpy with their thick pink lengths. Johnis studied the leather-bound books in the case, ancient volumes that looked as though they hadn’t been moved in a long time.

  The flame on the wall spewed an oily smoke, crackling as it tongued at its own fumes. The only other sound was the soft clicking of worms sliding through their own paste in the tunnei behind them.

  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.”

  Silvie spat to one side.

  “Your water is useless now,” Alucard said. “You’ll see that. I promissssss.”

  “We have no choice!” Silvie whispered, but her voice carried all too well in the stone chamber. “He’s bluffing about the vow! We have to take our chances now!”

  Johnis rubbed his submerged fingers together, considering. But his mind wasn’t working as quickly as it had only minutes ago. His vision shifted, showing doubles, and he blinked to clear his head.

  “Maybe …”

  Alucard was suddenly a blur, launching himself from his corner faster than Johnis could have imagined. Unless he was imagining it.

  One moment the Shataiki hung dumb; the next he was behind Johnis with a single talon hooked around his neck, ready to slice his jugular.

  “Am I a fool?” the Shataiki hissed.

  A dozen options slogged through Johnis’s mind. None of them were immediately useful. The creature was right: their water would only keep them alive so long. They were doomed here in this lair. The only thing they could hope for was to take this prince of darkness with them.

  “And the books?” Johnis asked.

  Silvie seemed to understand. “We’ll have to leave the mission to Darsal and Billos,” she said. Then she reached out and touched his hand. Her voice trembled when she spoke. “I love you, Johnis.”

  He glanced at her misted eyes. But he saw something behind her that made him start. Peering through the gate was a sea of red eyes. Not normal Shataiki, but larger beasts, like Alucard. A dozen were on each side of an even larger beast, who drilled Johnis with a glare that seemed to reach into his eyes, down his spine, and to his knees, which began to shake.

  Teeleh.

  Silvie saw his look and spun around. The sight of so many larger Shataiki staring with such purpose changed everything in Johnis’s mind. It was as if the beasts had expected this. Or at the very least, they were taking advantage of a situation they knew could only end well for them.

  “Kill me, and there are a thousand who would take my place,” Alucard said.

  “Kill him!” Silvie screamed, and flung a fistful of water directly at Teeleh.

  The water hit his chest and sizzled. A few drops splashed onto the bat to his right; he began to tremble.

  Johnis learned two things then: The first was that these Shataiki didn’t die as easily as the smaller variety. The second was that Teeleh was hardly affected at all.

  His mangy coat smoldered and quivered but otherwise showed no indication he’d been attacked. His eyes held steady, slicing through Johnis like bloodthirsty daggers. The Shataiki next to him was now shaking badly. It can be killed with the water, Johnis thought. But he didn’t know how much it would take.

  All the while Johnis remained still. The talon at his neck suddenly lifted from his skin, and Alucard stepped back.

  “Clearer n
ow?”

  They had enough water to kill Alucard, and perhaps the bat had feared for his life to that extent. But even if they used all the water they had with them, they could never escape the lair.

  Silvie was still staring at Teeleh with a mixture of disbelief and horror. The beast did not move, did not speak, did not breathe, as far as Johnis could see. It was as if he’d come only to observe and give his blessing. To what end, Johnis could not know. But he knew now that there was no good ending to this misguided journey. They’d survived once, but they would not survive twice.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  Johnis?

  The voice that spoke in his mind belonged to little Karas, whom he’d rescued. All in vain. She was now haunting him.

  Johnis!

  He turned to his left, from the direction the voice came from in his mind. In his mind’s eye Karas stood, holding the four Books of History, each wrapped in red twine. She was staring with wide eyes past him at Alucard, clutching her treasure in both hands. And on either side of Karas stood Darsal and Billos, scanning the room with darting eyes.

  Johnis blinked away the vision. But the sight of Karas, Darsal, and Billos remained stubbornly unchanged. Karas looked at him again. “What’s … what’s happening?”

  They were real. Here. All of them. With the books. And this is why Teeleh is here, Johnis realized. For the books.

  o your bidding,” Teeleh said.

  Alucard stepped around Johnis and slowly approached the trio, who stood unmoved. His wings dragged behind as he slogged forward, but Johnis knew better than to be fooled by the sluggishness of his movements.

  He stopped when he was halfway to Darsal, so that they formed a triangle with Alucard at one point, Johnis and Silvie at another, and their comrades at the third.

  “Give me the books,” he said.

  “Not exactly what I had in mind,” Billos said, looking at the worms on the wall. “I think I prefer the white room with DELL.”

  “This isn’t good,” Darsal said, her eyes fixed on Alucard.

  “You made a vow,” the beast said.

  Darsal just stared, but Johnis knew she had. They would now find out what that meant.

  “You can’t, Karas,” he said.

  “Then give me her.” Alucard stretched one talon toward Darsal.

  “No.” The muscles in Billos’s jaw bunched. “Over my dead body.”

  “Perhaps. But the vow was made over the books. You can’t use the books to undermine that vow. They cannot help you escape me, to whom you owe your life.”

  The words hung between them like knives that would slash flesh before this engagement was over. The only question was, whose flesh?

  Teeleh and his entourage breathed and peered from their right, undisturbed. Unflinching. Unchallenged.

  Johnis looked at Darsal. The water in his fist was now nearly useless. He could slow Alucard, but to what end?

  “Darsal, tell us he’s lying,” Silvie said.

  She swallowed and shifted on her feet. “There has to be a way out,” she said.

  Karas gripped the books tighter. “The books—”

  “Are mine!” Alucard finished.

  “That wasn’t the oath!” Darsal said. She’d snapped out of her indecision and glared at the beast. “The books or me, that was the deal, and you, too, are bound by that oath! Otherwise you’d have taken them already.”

  Her eyes switched to Johnis, and she spoke urgently. “Touch the leather skin on the books with blood and you enter a simulation between this world and another. Open these four and you enter another reality entirely. The other three books are hidden there, Johnis, sought by the Dark One.”

  “The Dark One?” Johnis glanced at Teeleh, who hadn’t removed his stare. The beast knew all of this already.

  “Marsuvees Black,” Billos said. “The magic man.”

  It made Johnis’s head spin, this business of realities. But in many ways it was like being able to see the Roush and the Black Forest here, while most of the world remained blind to them.

  Beyond the skin of these books waited another reality, bristling with power.

  Darsal stared at Alucard. Bitterness laced her voice. “So take your spoils!” she said, spreading out her arms. “But the books belong to them!”

  “What are you saying?” Billos cried. “Not on your life. No, not a chance!”

  Alucard’s eyes settled on the books in Karas’s arms. “Then you offer yourself in her place?” he asked Billos.

  “No, he doesn’t,” Darsal said. “No, Billos, you aren’t! That wasn’t the vow I made.”

  “Actually, it was,” Alucard said. “Either one of you. Dead.”

  “Stop it!” Karas cried. “Stop arguing about who will die! We don’t know that he isn’t lying!”

  Her voiced echoed, then the room settled into silence except for the breathing that came from the Shataiki beyond the gate. Watching, ever watching.

  “Then put it to the test,” Alucard said.

  “How?”

  “Billos, do you accept the debt owed to me by Darsal?”

  Darsal started to protest. “No, he—”

  “Yes,” Billos said.

  “I accept your obligation,” Alucard said. “You are now bound by the laws of the books and may not use them until you have paid your debt.”

  “Meaning what?” Darsal demanded, stepping forward.

  “Meaning he can’t use the books as long as he’s alive. Unless, of course, you give me the books first.”

  “But …” She stared at Billos, then back at Alucard, lost for words.

  “Show her, Billos. Open a book and see what happens.”

  Johnis jerked his hand from the bag and held it out without thinking of the water now dribbling to the floor. “No!”

  The water hit the ground and sizzled. He’d nearly forgotten the power at his fingertips. But it wasn’t enough now.

  “No,” he repeated. “We can’t just open a book—”

  “It’s the only way out of here,” Karas said.

  She spoke the truth, and the Shataiki all seemed to know it. Then why were they standing by?

  “Open the book, Billos.”

  He searched Darsal’s eyes. They both knew that the books might be Billos’s only way to survive. If there was no way out through the books, he would be trapped here to face whatever fate the Shataiki found suitable.

  “Open it,” Darsal said in a thin voice.

  Billos hesitated only one more moment, then reached for the green book on the stack of four in Karas’s hands.

  “The books have to be together to create the breach,” Alucard said through dripping saliva, as if tasting a delicious fruit he’d waited his whole life to sink his teeth into. “Then the breach is accessed by any of the books until all four are gone. To return, a new breach must be created, using all four.”

  The breach he was talking about wasn’t the same as the one that Billos had gone through. This gate opened by all four books would take them to a different place altogether: Earth.

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” Silvie asked.

  Billos withdrew his knife and placed the blade on the string that bound the book. He looked at Johnis, who nodded.

  The twine popped under the blade’s sharp edge. Alucard held his ground. The room stilled.

  “Open it,” the beast said. His lips trembled with anticipation.

  Billos rested one finger along the cover’s edge, then lifted it open. Parchment browned with age faced them all.

  But no magic. Nothing that indicated great power lay within. Not even words of another reality.

  “Cut your hand. It needs blood.”

  Billos sliced his palm. Blood seeped from the wound.

  “Put your hand on the page,” Alucard said.

  Billos’s hand hovered above, then lowered to the open page. He let it rest there for a moment, then lifted his eyes.

  “Nothing.”

  A coy smile twisted Alu
card’s lips. “You see?”

  “Silvie,” Johnis said. “Put your hand on the book.”

  “Yes, Silvie,” Alucard said. “Enter the book,”

  Silvie glanced at the gate, then looked into Johnis’s eyes. “If something happens—if I go somewhere—you’ll come. Promise me.”

  “I promise.”

  She handed her water bag to Johnis, walked up to the book, cut her own palm, and unceremoniously placed her bleeding hand on the same page Billos had tried.

  Only this time something did happen. This time the space where Silvie stood was suddenly spinning, as if she had become a funnel of dust, swirling in color, fading fast,

  Johnis stood rooted, shocked at the sight of her transformation. The book began to suck her in.

  “Do your bidding,” Teeleh breathed behind them.

  If Johnis had not been holding two bags, he might have been able to slow Alucard enough to prevent what happened next. The Shataiki streaked to the books with the same speed he’d shown earlier, slicing his palm with a talon as he moved.

  Silvie vanished into the book just ahead of him, but Alucard reached them before Johnis could move, and he dove into the swirl that had swallowed Silvie.

  The green book disappeared in a small flash of light.

  Silvie and Alucard were both gone.

  The sound of breathing behind the gate thickened. For a long moment no one in the room moved. The ramifications of what they’d just witnessed seeped in.

  One, the books worked.

  Two, a way of escape had been opened to them.

  Three, where that escape would lead them was completely uncertain.

  Four, Alucard had succeeded in his objective.

  Five, Billos might as well be dead.

  Talons grated on the gate. Johnis jerked around to see that two of the large Shataiki were opening the latch.

  “Go!” he screamed, rushing forward.

  “Billos?” Darsal reached for the man she loved.

  Billos stepped up to Johnis, snatched both bags of water from his hands, whirled to Darsal, and kissed her on the lips.

  When he pulled back, his eyes were fiery with determination. “Go!”