Crota

Bram Stoker Award: First Novel winner (1997).

When the police of Hobbs County, Missouri find a mutilated man's body on the side of the road, they figure a bear attacked him, except that bears aren't indigenous to their area. The local Indian tribe offers another explanation: Crota, a great beast of legend, has reawakened. As the body count increases, a hand-picked group of hunters stalk the mythical creature through an underground labyrinth where they will discover a horror beyond all imagining... but all too real!