Page 21

The cracking continued for another ten seconds, deep groaning sounds from somewhere far below the surface, like a structure bearing weight it was never meant to hold. Then, slowly, it stopped. The birds, which had gone silent the instant the wards failed, stayed quiet.

Steph pressed her back against the oak's trunk and held her burned hand against her chest. Her heart was slamming and her ears were ringing and the basin in front of her looked like something had punched through it from underneath. New fractures ran in jagged lines across the stone, and the slab that had fallen had exposed a dark gap in the ridge face that hadn't been there before. A cavity. An opening into whatever lay beneath the lowest layer of wards.

She stared at it, breathing hard, adrenaline making everything sharp and too bright.

The wards hadn't simply failed from age or weather stress. She'd worked enough magically sensitive sites to know the difference between natural decay and active response. Decay was gradual, entropic, a slow unwinding over centuries. What had just happened was reactive.

Something had felt her touch the seal, recognized what she was doing, and fought back.

The energy readings on her magnetometer were off the scale, the needle pinned hard to the right and vibrating. The air inside smelled different now, metallic and old, like a room that had been sealed for so long the air itself had fossilized.

Steph looked at her burned palm, at the dark opening in the ridge face, at the fractured stone spread across a site that had been stable for longer than anyone alive could remember.

She opened her journal and wrote one line beneath the morning's notes.

Active resistance confirmed. Something down there is fighting between being found and staying hidden.

12

CRISS

Kieran had given him the southern perimeter again, which Criss suspected was less about ward maintenance and more about getting him out of the house before one of them said something they'd have to deal with.

Fine by him. The morning air was cool and the trail was soft underfoot and the woods smelled like pine resin and wet stone, and if he walked fast enough, he could almost outpace the image of dark curls on his pillow and an empty bed at four in the morning.

Almost.

He'd been checking markers for about an hour, the methodical work of pressing his palm to carved stone and reading the resonance. Three clean, one slightly off, noted and flagged for Kieran to review. His tiger had settled into something close to functional, the frantic energy from this morning dulled by movement and purpose, though the animal still pulled his attention east every few minutes like a compass needle he couldn't override. Right at the ridge where he knew she worked.

He stopped at the fifth marker and leaned against it, arms crossed, staring through the trees in the direction his tiger kept insisting on. This was stupid. He didn't chase women. Women came to him, and when they left, he let them go with a smile and no hard feelings. That was how it worked. The system had functioned flawlessly for a decade and he was not about to dismantle it because one archaeologist with a tool belt and an attitude had scrambled his wiring for a few hours.

Except he kept thinking about what she'd said by the fire, before things had shifted. The way she'd talked about her work, the dig, the patience of letting the ground show you what it wanted. There'd been something real in her voice when she'd said it. She cared about something enough to chase it into the mud in a rainstorm, alone, in a town full of supernaturals who could snap her in half. He had never cared about anything like that.

And that was interesting. He didn't meet interesting women often. Beautiful, sure. Willing, plenty. But interesting was rare, and his tiger had apparently decided to develop taste at the worst possible moment.

He pushed off the marker and kept walking, but the pull east didn't fade. If anything, it sharpened, and after another ten minutes of pretending he wasn't going to do exactly what he was about to do, he changed direction.

He'd just talk to her. Clear the air. Make sure things weren't going to be awkward the next time they ran into each other at Twyla's or Maeve's. Small town, limited social options. It was practical. Mature, even. Kieran would be proud.

He was maybe a quarter mile from the ridge when the ground shook.

Not a tremor. A jolt, hard enough to stagger him mid-stride, followed by a low grinding sound that came up through the soil and vibrated in his bones. His tiger snapped to full alert, ears forward, every muscle taut. The trees around him swayed without wind, and a flock of birds exploded from the canopy in a panicked burst of wings and noise.

Then he heard her. Not a scream, but a sharp, bitten-off sound of surprise that carried through the woods and hit his tiger like a live wire.

He caught himself form shifting, but his dead sprint was instinct.

The trail to the ridge was overgrown but his tiger found the path through instinct and speed, branches whipping past as he covered the distance in minutes. He broke through the tree line into the basin and found chaos.

The dig site looked like it had been hit by something from below. Fresh cracks webbed across the stone floor, and a massive slab of limestone had sheared off the ridge face and lay in fragments across the work area. Tarps were scattered, a tripod was on its side, and the air smelled ancient in a way that made his tiger's hackles rise.

Stephanie was crouched behind a thick oak root system at the basin's edge, journal open on her knee, pen moving fast. She had dirt on her face, a red welt across one palm, and stone dust in her hair, and she was writing like the ground hadn't just tried to kill her.

"What the hell happened?" He crossed the basin in four strides, eyes scanning the fractured stone, the dark gap in the ridge face, the scattered equipment. "Are you hurt?"

She didn't look up. "I'm fine."

"You're not fine. The ground just split open and you're sitting in the middle of it taking notes."