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the other.
    Tucker followed, trailed by the other men, across the overgrown cemetery. Ivy scrabbled over every surface. Corkscrewed tendrils snagged at his jacket. Broken branches snapped like brittle bones underfoot.
    All around, the flashlights danced over shadows and revealed greater threats than old markers on the ground. Yawning black pits began to open around them, half hidden by foliage or stripped over by vines, revealing collapsed or ransacked old tombs.
    Threat or not, Tucker decided to take Csorba’s words to heart and watched where he placed each foot.
    The men chattered excitedly behind him in their native tongue, likely planning how to spend their share of $92 million. The professor moved silently, contemplatively.
    Tucker used the distraction to touch his throat mike and try radioing Kane.
    Can you hear me, buddy?
    K ane crouches amid the shadowy pack.
    He bleeds, pants, and stares the others down.
    None come forward to challenge. The one who first did slinks forward on his belly with a low whine of submission. His throat still bears the mark of Kane’s fangs, but he lives, having known to submit to an opponent who outmatched him. He still reeks of urine and defeat.
    Kane allows him to come forward now. They lick muzzles, and Kane permits him to stand, to take his place in the pack.
    Afterward, Kane turns. The battle has carried him far from the car, from the gun. As he stares, pondering what to do, a new command fills his ear.
    “TRACK ME. BRING GUN. STAY HIDDEN.”
    With this wild land now his, Kane heads back to where the fight began. He rushes silently through the woods, whispering through bushes, leaping darkness, dodging stone.
    But it is not only the land that is his now.
    Shadows ghost behind him.
    He is not alone.
    C sorba called out in Hungarian, holding out his GPS.
    He had stopped near a flat-topped crypt raised a foot above the ground. Its surface was mostly obscured under a thick mat of leaf detritus and mulch, as if the earth were trying to swallow the tomb up.
    Tucker was handed a hammer and a crowbar. He considered how best to use them to his advantage, but now the professor had a pistol in hand, pointed his way, plainly not planning on getting his own hands dirty. Plus the man still had the wireless transmitter in his pocket. Tucker remembered the frightened look on Aliza’s face, the grief shining from her father’s.
    He could not fail them.
    With no choice but to cooperate, Tucker worked with the others. Using hammers, they managed to loosen the lid. Once done, they all jammed crowbars into one side and cranked together on the slab of thick marble, as if trying to pry open a stubborn manhole cover. It seemed an impossible task—then, with a grating pop of stone, the lid suddenly lifted. An exhalation of sulfurous air escaped, like the brimstone breath of the devil.
    One of the trio made a sign of the cross on his forehead, in some superstitious warding against evil.
    The others made fun of this action, but only half-heartedly.
    Afterward, with some effort, they pushed and shoved and worked the lid off the base of the crypt.
    Csorba came forward with his flashlight and pointed the beam down. He swore happily in Hungarian. Cheers rose from the others.
    Stone stairs led from the lip of the tomb and vanished into darkness below.
    They’d found the right tomb.
    Orders were quickly made.
    Tucker was forced to sit on the edge of another crypt, guarded at gunpoint by two of the men. Domonkos and Csorba, both with flashlights in hand, climbed down together to see what lay below, vanishing away, leaving only the glow of their lights shining eerily out of the open tomb.
    With nothing to lose, Tucker sat with his arms behind his back, feigning full cooperation. As if mumbling to himself or praying, he subvocalized into the throat mike. “Kane. Keep hidden. Bring gun.”
    He held his palms open behind him and waited.
    He breathed deeply to keep himself calm. He let his eyes drift closed.
    C’mon,