Page 28 of The Hyena’s Guardian

“That continues to be worse.”

Keene approached carrying several compact devices about the size of flashlights and handed one to Baptiste before passing another to Matt. “Activate the motion anchors if the tunnels begin shifting.”

Matt looked down at the device in his hand. “I would like you to know that sentence barely qualifies as acceptable.”

“You’ll understand when it happens.”

“That is not comforting either.”

Baptiste clipped the device onto his vest before checking the magazine in his sidearm one final time. Unlike earlier, none of the dry amusement remained in his expression now. He looked focused in the dangerous way experienced soldiers often did right before entering hostile structures, calm not because the situation was safe but because panic had already become useless.

Matt recognized that look because he had worn it himself.

Vale stepped toward the entrance and keyed her radio. “Proceed as briefed.”

The command post erupted into motion around her.

Rain lashed sideways through the excavation site as operatives pushed into the storm beneath sweeping floodlights. The ruined courtyard looked harsher now that the adrenaline had finally caught up with reality, all shattered stone and black shadows broken apart by flashing equipment lights and distant thunder.

Ahead of them, the excavation entrance waited beneath the monastery like an open wound in the mountain.

Matt felt the pull toward it again, stronger this time. The hyena stirred hard enough to tighten his chest as they crossed the courtyard. It wasn't urging him toward danger so much as insisting he was heading in the right direction, and that unsettled him more than fear would have.

Then he heard it again.

The breathing carried faintly upward through the excavation shaft, distant enough that he almost mistook it for wind moving through the tunnels below. But the rhythm was wrong for that. Too slow. Too heavy. And unmistakably alive.

***

The excavation entrance descended through the center of the ruined courtyard in a series of reinforced platforms bolted directly into ancient stone. Floodlights illuminated only the upper levels before the shaft vanished into darkness below, the deeper sections swallowing light so completely that Matt’s eyes kept trying to invent shapes inside it.

Rainwater streamed down the carved walls as the team approached the perimeter barrier. Up close, the claw marks surrounding the descent looked even more unnatural than they had from a distance. Some stretched nearly eight feet across the stone, carved deep enough that entire sections of the original monastery foundation had fractured around them.

Matt slowed briefly near one of the gouges, unable to stop himself from studying it more closely. The claw mark curved downward through solid rock in a single clean arc without any sign of hesitation or uneven pressure, as though whatever had carved it had moved through stone as easily as flesh. “You’re staring again,” Baptiste said beside him.

Matt looked away from the wall. “I’m trying very hard not to think about what kind of thing leaves marks like that.”

“That instinct is healthy.”

“Good. Nice to know survival instincts still exist somewhere in this organization.”

Vale reached the edge of the descent platform and keyed her radio once. “Team One establishes first relay point here. Team Two continues below.”

Several operatives peeled away, unloading equipment cases beside the upper excavation entrance while the rest of the team moved toward the reinforced lift platform suspended over the shaft.

Matt stopped at the edge long enough to look down.

The excavation disappeared into darkness beneath the monastery in uneven layers of exposed stone and collapsed architecture. Ancient staircases wound through portions of the shaft while steel scaffolding bridged others, though many of the lower sections looked older than the monastery itself. The deeper levels no longer resembled an archaeological site so much as something excavated accidentally and then desperately contained afterward.

The breathing echoed upward again, and the hyena in Matt sharpened instantly in response. Every instinct narrowed toward the darkness below with a restless intensity that made his pulse turn uneven.

Baptiste caught the shift beside him. “Still hearing it?”

Matt nodded once.

“Good,” Baptiste said.

Matt looked at him. “I would like you to explain why that’s good.”