Ghost Leopard (A Zoe & Zak Adventure #1) (22 page)

Just when I felt like my lungs were about to burst, the whirlpool released its grasp and dropped me twenty feet through the air, spitting me out in the shallow water next to a sandy shore. I dragged myself to dry land and opened my eyes to the ceiling above. I could see the dark gaping hole that I had just fallen from, water raining down from it. Looking around, I saw that I was in an underground cavern filled with enormous glowing stalactites. Stalactites are the spiky cave rocks that grow down from the ceiling of a cave, not to be confused with stalagmites, the ones that grow up from the cave floor. When a stalagmite and stalactite meet at the middle and grow together, they’re called a column. I know this stuff because I’ve always been a bit of a science geek. But there was no stalactite I’d ever heard of that glowed the way these ones did. They threw enough light to reveal Zak lying there, ten feet away from me. My heart skipped a beat when I saw that Zak was lying perfectly still. He was so hyper, I’d never seen him not moving since I’d known him. I started to worry that he wasn’t breathing.

“Zak?” I called his name, but he didn’t move an inch. “Zak, are you, OK?”

He just lay there. I pulled myself up. We’d come too far at this point for some stupid waterspout to get him. I ran over to Zak and turned him over, shaking him. His eyes were closed and there was sand on his face. I knew I had to do get him breathing again. That would mean mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. I had learned how to do it in swimming lessons at school. I placed my arm under Zak’s neck to make sure his airway was open and pinched his nose. The next step was to breathe into his mouth. I wasn’t looking forward to doing it, but it didn’t matter. I had to. Zak was white as a ghost. Even now, I thought I might be too late. I took a deep breath and lowered my mouth toward his, getting ready to breath into his mouth. Then, I thought I saw Zak’s face twitch. I blinked and some him twitch again.

 
“Sucker,” Zak said.

I whipped my head back to see the big grin on Zak’s face. His eyes were open now and he was laughing at me. He rolled over on the sand and started pounding on it like the fact that I had just tried to save his life was totally hilarious. I couldn’t believe him.

“I had you. I totally had you,” Zak cackled.

“Doofus!” I punched him hard in the arm.

“Ow! No fair. I owed you for the time you played dead back in the temple.”

“That was different.”

“How?”

“Timing. We weren’t being chased by a crazoid bhagwan man then.”

Zak seemed to think about it. “I guess that’s true,” he said. “But it sure was hilarious!”

“Yeah, really funny.” I looked around. “Laugh while you can. I don’t like this place.”

 
The more I looked around the cavern, the less I liked it. Farther away from the pool, torches lit the cave walls. Monkey statues were carved into every surface of the cave. Even the huge stalactites had stone moneys carved into them, climbing them like tree trunks. A bat flew above our heads.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” I asked Zak. “For real?”

I looked at Zak a little more closely. The color had returned to his cheeks. He had a few scratches here and there from the monkey on his head, but other than that, he looked OK.

“I don’t need mouth-to-mouth, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Good. Then let’s get out of here.”

Zak and I walked forward through the mass of glowing stalactites. Our pajamas were soaking wet and clung to our skin. But it wasn’t cold in the cave. In fact, it was surprisingly warm. Another sciencey cave fact: caves tend to maintain a constant temperature. I appreciated the fact that the cave wasn’t as cool as the air outside. I took a wooden torch down from the wall and used it to look at one of the glowing stalactites. The stalactite itself looked like a giant icicle dripping down from the cave’s ceiling. But it was what was inside of the stalactite that surprised me. Little bugs or mites floated around inside the stalactite’s fluid core.

“They’re tiny little miniature monkeys,” I said.

“In an icicle?”

“It’s not an icicle. It’s a stalactite, and I can see their little tails. See that?”

“Wow. You’re right,” Zak said. “I can even see their tiny pointy teeth. What are they doing in there?”

“Maybe they’re babies.”

“What kind of monkey baby lives in an icicle?”

“I told you, they’re not icicles,” I said. “And they’re not normal monkeys either.”

“Very weird,” Zak said.

I pointed the torch forward. Farther on, the stalactites and stalagmites had actually grown together into columns reaching all the way from the cave’s ceiling to the cave’s floor. It was just like I’d read about in my textbook, except the thing was, I already knew there was nothing ordinary about the cave we were in. I doubted there was anything ordinary about the columns either. Two more steps confirmed my thought. My torch lit up some writing at the base of one of the translucent columns. As I moved the torch upwards, what I saw took my breath away.
 

It was a face. A face peered out at me from inside the translucent column.

“I think I want to go home now.”

The translucent column was home to a frozen mummy. Not like an Egyptian mummy in bandages, but an old dried-out body with leathery skin preserved in what looked like ice. The smoke from my torch marred the stalactite with black soot, but the face still peered back at me. The mummy’s cheeks were drawn and there were only holes where the eyeballs had been, but the mummy had once been a woman, anyone could see that. The mummy carried a jeweled dagger and wore a suit of silver chain mail armor.
 

I waved the torch and six feet away there was another column with another mummy frozen inside. This mummy wore a rope tied to an iron anchor around its neck. I swung the torch around in a slow wide arc. There were nine more translucent columns. Inside were more mummies. There was a mummy wearing a sailor’s cap, and another carrying a pair of scissors, and another with a ball and chain around its ankle, and another, and another. They were everywhere, and each mummy had something written below it in strange letters. I guessed that the letters were Sanskrit, the ancient language that people used to use in India. I looked to Zak. He wasn’t laughing anymore. In fact his whole expression had changed. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he was starting to get scared.
 

“Three, four, eight, that’s eleven of the dead guys,” Zak said.

“I think they're girls.”

“Even the soldier and the sailor?”

“Yup,” I said. “Really frozen, really old girls. Give me your whip.”

“Why?”

“Just give it here.”

Zak handed me Stryker. I took hold of the elephant-tear diamond.

“This comes out right?”

“I don’t know. It went in. What are you trying to do?”

I ignored Zak and twisted the diamond. It popped out of the handle with a soft click. I held the diamond in my hand, the pointy end out, and began to scratch it over the stalactite containing the first mummy.
 

“Whoa! You’re going to wreck it.”

“Diamond is the hardest thing there is. I’m not going to wreck anything.”

I continued to score the stalactite. It looked like I was actually cutting it. A moment later, I had scored a near perfect circle in the rock. I hit it with the heel of my hand. A perfectly cut hole opened into the hollowed-out stalactite.
 

 
“Soldier. Sailor. Tailor. Prisoner,” I said, pointing out the mummies.

I reached inside the hole in the first tomb. It was frosty cold in there. My fingers wrapped around the jeweled dagger in the soldier mummy’s hand. What happened next was a little off the wall, even for me, so I’ll come out right now, and say, I’m not sure exactly what
happened
. All I’m sure of, is what I
saw
.
 

 
As I grabbed the dagger there was a flash of light. The columns themselves melted away before me. The mummies weren’t dead anymore. They were young and alive. And they weren’t just random mummies. They were Amala. Each of the mummies was Amala in a different set of clothes.
 

Zak backed away, but I just stood there watching the mummies come to life around me. The Amala dressed in chain mail armor was struck by a silver dagger. The Amala wearing a blue sailor’s cap had a rope tightened around her neck. The Amala in a tailor’s suit was stabbed by a pair of scissors. The Amala in a prisoner’s tattered clothes was struck by yellow claws. You get the idea. Whatever had happened so long ago was happening again, right in front of me. Then I saw the Ghost Leopard’s shadow moving between the columns. I’d never actually seen the Ghost Leopard before, but it’s hard to mistake the shadow of a giant cat. And when I say giant, I’m talking saber-toothed tiger giant. The Ghost Leopard’s shadow was here then there, but never in one place long enough for me to get a grip on it. A moment passed and the whoosh of an arrow cut through the air. The Ghost Leopard’s shadow disappeared and the mummies were, once again, encased in their columns. I dropped the jewel-encrusted dagger, pulling my freezing hand from the tomb. Everything went back to normal.

“Whoa,” Zak said.

“Did you see that?” I asked, cold sweat beading on my forehead.

“It was Amala.”

“Not just that.”

“What do you mean, not just that?”

“He’s going to shoot the Leopard.”

I noticed that Zak had become distant. One thing was for sure. He definitely wasn’t laughing. In fact, he looked like he’d never laugh again. Zak stared at the two columns furthest from where we stood. The columns were just out of my view and weren’t glowing like the others, so I walked forward with the torch to light them up. But these columns were different from the other ones. For one thing, they were open at the front — you could walk right inside of them. For another, they were empty, iron shackles hanging from the translucent rock walls.
 

“Did you hear me?” I said. “When the Leopard gets its body back, they’re going to shoot an arrow through it under the full moon.”

“I heard you,” Zak said, “but I think we’ve got bigger problems than that.”

“What are you saying?”

I followed Zak's gaze to the engraving on the bottom of the columns. The writing at the bottom of these tombs was in English, not Sanskrit. It read: Zoe Guire and Zak Merril.

“I think we’re dead too,” Zak said.

I heard what sounded like a splash and looked up to see Rhino Butt’s goons approaching from opposite ends of the cavern. Their mouths hung open, their sharp yellow teeth glistening in the torchlight.
 

The first thing I noticed about Rhino Butt’s henchmen was that they weren’t wearing any boots. Their feet were hairy, almost like paws, and nearly silent on the wet cavern floor. I guess it wasn’t enough to have the hairy-footed freaks after us, because Rhino Butt entered right after them. He came from another entrance, his polished wooden crossbow in hand.
 

“Give me Stryker,” Zak whispered.

I handed Zak his whip.
 

“Stay back.” Zak looked to Rhino Butt. Then he looked to the goons. The goons were closer so he turned to them. “I said, stay back.”

The goons continued to advance.

“I’m warning you.”

The goons smiled, spit falling from their pointy yellow teeth. The closer they got, the less they looked like regular men. They looked, I don’t know, like something else. It was scary.

“You asked for it.”

Zak cracked Stryker. He held his right arm high and slammed the whip down hard, but nothing happened. No thunder. No lightning. The whip just drooped like a wet noodle. Zak tried again, harder this time, but got the same result. Stryker wouldn’t work. He lowered it down.

 
“Sorry we left so soon back at the zip-line,” Zak said, grinning hopefully.

“Doesn’t mean we didn't enjoy your company,” I added.

Rhino Butt responded by pulling back the string on his crossbow. I found this frightening but the goons were even scarier, because they didn’t even bother with their bows which hung limply from their shoulders. Instead, they just they bared their yellow teeth, their rough black tongues licking at their lips.

The goons corralled us inside the tombs cut from the columns. It was freezing inside of the tombs. I guess something about me just didn’t like being in there, because just as I had seen a flash of light when I grabbed the dagger, I saw another white flash as soon as I got pushed inside the tomb. I didn’t know what was happening, all I knew was that even though I was still inside the tomb, I was suddenly staring at a completely different place. It was almost as though I had left my body entirely and was peering down from above. I felt like I was in a much larger cavern now, the size of a huge cathedral. Fiery torches ringed the walls, casting their flickering glow. The bhagwan was there. His servants were breathing heavily as they carried him in his sedan chair. But the funny thing was that even though his servants walked as though they were carrying the sedan chair by the poles, they weren’t carrying anything at all. The sedan chair floated on a cushion of air. I barely had time to wonder how it was doing that before the bhagwan spoke.
 

“You think you can come into my home uninvited?”
 

Nobody answered the bhagwan.
 

“The time has come to show yourself, Yogi Man.”

Still nobody answered him. The bhagwan stepped down from his chair. He looked around the cavern, a waterfall showering down into a glowing pool below. There were natural stalagmites grown into tall pillars in the pool, but there was no sign of any Yogi Man.

“You grow drunk on the blood you drink to stay young, Monkey,” a voice said from the darkness.

“You would be well advised to drink the blood too, Yogi Man.”

“I will not, for I would rather die a man than live a monster.”

I watched as the bhagwan cast his glance upwards. I still didn’t know how I could see what was happening, but it didn’t really matter right then. What mattered was that I was seeing it. The bhagwan soon found Mukta sitting cross-legged at the top of a tall blunt stalagmite set in the deep pool.