Czech Hunter 10 -

The tunnel opened into a chamber the size of a small cathedral. Stalactites hung like broken teeth from the ceiling. And in the center of the chamber, arranged in a circle, were the children’s belongings: shoes, jackets, a doll, a toy truck, a schoolbag with a half-eaten apple inside. No blood. No bodies. But the objects were arranged with precision—each one facing inward toward a single object at the circle’s heart: a small, rough-hewn limestone statue of a creature with a wolf’s head and a human child’s body.

“They are home. You are the visitor. You took my tooth. I will take your years.” czech hunter 10

He guards the tooth.

And he waits.

They were the missing children. Alive. Filthy, hollow-eyed, dressed in rags, but alive. Lukáš, Anička, the Schneider brothers, and a fifth he didn’t recognize—a girl who had disappeared from a village twenty kilometers away, whose case wasn’t in his file. The tunnel opened into a chamber the size