“Like shooting fish in a barrel,” he said to himself.

As he considered fresh approaches to winding up tall, dark, and judgy, the cave he was looking for came forth to greet him. The craggy hole in the side of the mountain was utterly unremarkable, nothing but a split in a vein of granite that was camo’d by trees and brush. Unless you knew it was there, you’d never see it—and that was the point.

Slipping inside, he got a prickly whiff of earth and mold—another grand recommendation for camping—and in the darkness, he orientated himself by throwing a golden glow around the low-ceiling’d—

Directly in front of him, on just an any-closer-and-it-woulda-bit-ya foot away, was a mound of pottery shards that was hip height and wide as a dance floor.

The remnants of the Black Dagger Brotherhood’s collection of lesser jars.

Picking up an irregularly shaped piece that had a blue glaze, he thought of the Omega. The Lessening Society. The end of that era.

How many trips had it taken to clear the mess out? he wondered as he tossed the shard back and stepped around the pile.

Heading into a subtle curve in the fissure, he came up to a set of iron gates that were covered with a shiny-bright mesh. The bars were thick as a male’s wrist, and the fine weave of steel, which prevented vampires from dematerializing inside, had been soldered on. The lock was copper.

With a sweep of his hand, he cast the venerable barrier aside and stepped into a hall set with torches that hissed and spit on their mountings. The sounds of brooms a-whisking escorted him forward, and soon enough, the ruination presented itself. From floor to ceiling, shelving made from hand-hewn planks was hanging in disarray, the lengths broken or mostly missing, the ragged ends like something had bitten at them. As he went along, he pictured things as they had been before, the horizontal levels set with jars of an incalculable number of different shapes and sizes and colors. There must have been . . . shit, a thousand of them? No, maybe more. And inside of those jars? The hearts of the lessers that the Brotherhood had killed.

The containers had been from every century, from ancient pottery ones that had been handmade all the way up to cheapo, mass-produced stuff from Target.

The collection had existed for so long, and been added to for so many years, that it had, in the manner of all things frequently seen, been taken to be permanent. The Omega had fixed that. Like a late-summer wasp on its last throes, the evil had come in to sting one final time, reclaiming the hearts he had removed during inductions to bolster his lagging strength.

The evil had ultimately been defeated, however.

And now? A new enemy had come to Caldwell.

Lassiter could only pray to himself that what they needed to fight the Book was still in that coffin.

Down about forty yards, Butch and Vishous were doing the brooming thing, the pair of them dressed in long black robes, some kind of conversation back-and-forthing between them.

No doubt the cop was trying to chill his roommate out about something.

How that former human managed to live with a Molotov cocktail like V was a shining example of forbearance.

“Speak of the devil,” Lassiter said to Vishous. “And how’re ya, Butch?”

“Don’t you ever knock?” V bent over to corral a wedge of debris into a handheld dustpan with a Joe Rogan Experience sticker on it.

“Nice to see you, too.” Lassiter sauntered by. “And jeez, you boys are handy with the tidy-up. If I had a car, I’d ask you to detail it.”

“Why are you here again?” V said as he sloughed the dust off Rogan’s face and into a Rubbermaid trash roller.

“Oh, same ol’, same ol’.” Lassiter shrugged. “I haven’t seen you for almost twenty-two minutes and I just wanted to be in your presence. You know, to recharge myself with all the warmth you put out into the world.”

As V straightened and glared across the narrow corridor, Butch clapped his roommate on the shoulder. “No, you can’t hit him with your broom. Don’t even think about it.”

“I’m going to start calling him your zookeeper, V.” Lassiter winked and kept going. Then, over his shoulder, he added, “See you at the altar, boys.”

“I wouldn’t cross the road to piss a fire out on your dead body,” Vishous announced.

Lassiter pointed to the top of his head without turning around. “Immortal, remember?”

The sanctum sanctorum of the Black Dagger Brotherhood was deep inside the mountain, the vast subterranean cavern having once served as the reservoir for an underground river. And down at the terminal point of the gradual descent was the focus of it all: A raised dais, lit by black candles on stanchions, on which a stone altar had been set so that the ancient skull of the first brother could be properly displayed. Behind that precious artifact? An enormous wall of marble that was inscribed with the name of every member of the Brotherhood, from the first . . . to the most recent, John Matthew.

There would be others. Not that he could share that.

Fate was, after all, a need-to-know kind of jam.

Lassiter stopped before the skull, meeting the black voids of the eye sockets as if he were trading gazes with a living thing.

“I wish I could reassure them,” he murmured.

It turned out, when you were in charge, there were things that the rank and file were not permitted to know. And of all the surprises that had come since he’d accepted this job from the Scribe Virgin, the biggest shocker was the amount of information he was not able to share with the people who would be most affected by it.

Evidently, knowing the outcome sometimes changed the “free” part of the will thing.

So as much as he hated it, he had to zip it a lot of the time—

Voices, deep and far off, percolated down to him, and before the Brotherhood arrived, he took a final look around at the stalactites, the black candles, the torches . . . the altar, the wall.

Stepping away from the skull, he went off to stand at the side. Moments later, the voices dried up and were replaced by the approaching sounds of heavy boots and the shifting of heavy fabric.

The first of the black robes entered alone. And even though the ceremonial garb’s hood was up and shielding most of the facial features, it was obvious that it was Wrath—and not because of the white cane sweeping side to side, either. He was just bigger than the others, in ways that had nothing to do with physical size.

The next in line was Tohr, a spot of honor earned by virtue of him being the first lieutenant of the Brotherhood. And as the fighter’s presence registered, Lassiter had a memory of finding the male in the forest and bringing him some McDonald’s. The grief-stricken widower had been surviving off the blood of deer, waiting impatiently to die so he could join his shellan and unborn son in the Fade.

Destiny had had other plans for him, however.

Behind Tohr, the rest of them filed in, and the four in the middle were not empty-handed. Or empty-shouldered, as was the case. Rhage, Vishous, Phury, and Zsadist had the old coffin up on their shoulders, and they bore the responsibility with solemn honor.

The Black Dagger Brother Sahvage was back in the house, so to speak.

The coffin’s wood had darkened nearly to black, the paneling run with age-created cracks and spotted with wormholes. But the carvings were still evident. Symbols in the Old Language detailed warnings on all sides, and woven among the dire missives was the brother’s name.