Behind him, a man screamed. Then another, and the very ceiling seemed to shudder as the predators above moved onto the central platform.

Jens pushed farther, but his breastplate would not budge. His face strained red as he scrabbled at his neck, trying to force the lid back a little more.

“Help,” he choked.

Then he was yanked away, his neck bones crackling as an extreme force pulled him awkwardly through the small gap.

Cade covered his mouth, horrified. Behind him, all was silent, the legionaries smart enough to keep their mouths shut. A pair strained with a heavy, ornate coffin, then shuffled on, crab walking their way toward Genghis’s tomb.

Cade crouched beside the narrow gap, his gun ready in his hand. He heard the crunch of teeth against metal. Heard it crumple like tinfoil.

And then, a snort. One that blew the dust through the gap. A snout, heavy and thick, nosed at the entrance. It was armored with dark, horny scales and had two massive nostrils flared like a horse’s.

A long, wet tongue flopped from the mouth, lapping at the pool of blood from the slaver Cade had shot. Cade held up his gun, the heavy weight trembling in his hands.

The creature was far larger than anything he had expected to see. It was like a raptor, scaled up to twice its size.

Another snort sprayed blood across Cade’s feet, and he shuddered. Outside, he could hear more outsized thuds as the beasts roamed the floor above them.

Cade knew there would be plenty of dead men on the other side of the rubble. But there was no sound of crunching metal. Or feeding. This attack was not due to hunger.

This was their territory. And Cade and his friends had trespassed.

The lid of the coffin shifted as the beast pressed its muzzle into the gap once more. Cade knew it could smell him, smell the fear permeating the room like a cold mist.

Slowly Cade backed away. Turned, only to see Scott and Amber motioning at him with their hands. Their meaning was clear. There was nothing left to find.

Cade shut his eyes, even as there was the scrape of stone on stone. The snout pressed forward another inch, and now Cade could see the teeth, jutting over drawn lips. Massive yellow fangs, long as butcher’s knives.

It was a theropod, all right. What Cade called a carnosaur.

Cade gestured with his arm, sweeping the others into the confines of Genghis’s tomb. They moved, reluctantly at first, but faster when Cade frantically waved his arms.

The legionaries retreated deep, but Amber, Quintus, and Scott remained at the entrance, watching. Cade motioned for them to close the door, but they refused obstinately, rather closing it halfway so they could still see him.

It was as good as Cade was going to get, and now he saw the beady orange eye of the carnosaur, its pupil contracting in the new light of the room, where a crackling torch had been abandoned by the legionaries on the ground.