Ghost Leopard (A Zoe & Zak Adventure #1) (23 page)

“Are you calling me a monster?” the bhagwan asked.

“I am calling you a minor annoyance to eternity, Monkey. But still, courtesy requires that I ask you in for a dip.”

Mukta stood and stretched out his bony frame before executing a perfect swan dive into the pool below. As he hit the black water, the pool lit up with millions of phosphorescent sparkles, the perfect glow of a lizard’s head outlined on its calm black surface. It really looked exactly like a lizard. The bhagwan stepped to the edge of the pool as Mukta waded out. I was starting to get worried that they could see me, but I was also starting to realize that I wasn’t really there, not my body anyhow. I listened like a fly on the wall.

“Enough, old man. My quarrel isn't with your foolish ways,” the bhagwan said.

“But mine is with yours. You cannot have the Ghost Leopard, Monkey Man. All that is good will not allow it.”

The bhagwan's face tightened, his skin stretching beyond the breaking point as his jaw lengthened, jutting outwards. His fangs flared and reddish-brown fur grew out across his face. He ran a rough black tongue over his lips. The bhagwan was half human and half monkey now — a Vanara — there was no other way to put it. He looked exactly like the ancient Monkey Man in Mukta’s story, his once coal-black eyes glowing a hot red. And in that moment I remembered where I had seen him. When I had first arrived in India, I dreamt of his horrible face and those red glowing eyes on the mountainside. And it wasn’t only his face that was horrible. He had a tail. It was long and lean and powerful looking. The bhagwan lifted his tail and looped it around a stalactite, cracking the stalactite off the cave's ceiling. He seemed to be testing the weight of the stalactite, balancing it carefully in his tail. Then he let it fly. The spear-shaped stalactite cracked through the air straight at Mukta.

That’s when I came to. Another white flash burned my vision and I was back in the tomb, Rhino Butt’s goon securing my manacles. The other goon chained up Zak in the column beside me. I noted that the hair on his back stood up as he secured Zak’s chains. But it wasn’t just hair, it was fur. His whole neck was covered in it. The goon ran his yellow nails under Zak's chin. The tips of his nails were coated in red.

“Nice nail polish,” Zak said.

“It’s not polish,” I said.

Zak’s face fell as he realized that the wet red color on the goon’s nails wasn’t polish at all. It was blood.

“Oh, OK.”
 

The goon wrenched Stryker from Zak, throwing the whip deep into the depths of the cave. There was a small splash as though it had landed in a pool of water, but the whip was nowhere to be seen.

“How long do you think they’re going to keep us here?” Zak whispered to me.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “By the looks of those mummies maybe three, four thousand years.”

“My dad is going to kill me.”

“Quiet,” Rhino Butt commanded.

Rhino Butt cocked an ear. There were muffled noises coming from the corridor. It sounded to me like rocks were falling out there. I wondered if it had anything to do with what I had just seen. Rhino Butt’s goon shackled Zak's other wrist with a clank then held up the key like he didn’t know what to do with it.

“Keep it,” Rhino Butt said.
 

The goon wrapped the iron skeleton key in his palm and followed the others out of the cavern.

“Did you see anything?” I asked Zak.

“Yeah. I saw a really scary guy with bloody nails and a hairy back chain me up.”

“No, I mean when they stuck us in here. Did you see Mukta talking to the bhagwan?”

“What are you talking about, Zoe?”

“I don’t know. I saw something that’s all. It was like I wasn’t in my body.”

“Whose body were you in?”

“I don’t know, OK? I was like a fly on the wall. It was weird.”

“More yogi powers, I bet,” Zak said.

I let Zak’s comment go. Now wasn’t the time to debate my supposed yogi powers. An enormous crack echoed through the cavern. It was very loud. I tugged at my wrists.

“We’re going to die,” I said. “This is it.”

Cold water dripped down on us from the cavern roof above.

“No. You’re going to yogi us out of here.”

“How am I going to do that?”

“You still got your birthmark right?”

I looked up at my wrist. Of course I still had my birthmark. What was it going to do? Fall off? I could only see part of it though because the other part was covered by the shackle.
 

“Yes. I still have my birthmark,” I said icily.

“So yoginate it.”

Clearly Zak wasn’t going to drop the yogi thing. “How many time do I have to tell you. I can’t yoginate anything.”

“Back on that zip-line you sure did.”

“That was different I was…”

“You were what?”

“You were going to die.”

“Well, I got news, Zoe.” Zak tugged at his iron shackles. “We’re going to die here too.”

“I know,” I screamed.
 

I felt a cold sweat forming on my forehead. My head was starting to hurt, pressure building inside of it. But it wasn’t like before. Back at the gorge, I knew who I was angry with: The bhagwan. I just looked at him and focused. Here in the cave, it was different. I didn’t know how to direct my energy. I wanted to break the shackles, but when I stared at them, all that happened was that my head hurt. I closed my eyes and tried to relieve the pressure. I imagined a green field. I imagined I was lying down in the sun relaxing, not a care in the world.
 

“Stryker,” I said. “We can use Stryker to get out of here.”

“Stryker’s gone. Besides you saw him. Stryker was about as useful as a strand of spaghetti. You broke him.”

“I can fix him,” I said. “We just need to find him.”

Zak twisted his head back into the dark cavern. “That way.”

I tried to clear my mind. I imagined Stryker deep in one of the cave’s pools. I had heard the whip hit the water with a splash as it sank. I imagined the water was cool and dark. I thought about Stryker there, sitting at the bottom of the pool on a glossy cave rock. When I saw the whip clearly in my mind, sitting limply at the bottom of the pool, I concentrated, trying to pull it nearer. I felt the whip nudge from its position underwater and the pressure in my mind seemed to ease, but I saw nothing more. The picture in my mind went blank. Nothing else happened. There was no whip.

“It’s not working.”

“Try harder.”

“I already tried as hard as I could!”

“Holy India.”

“I told you, I tried as hard as I could.”

“Totally,” Zak said. “You totally did.”

Why was he agreeing with me now? Had Zak all of a sudden become Mr. Agreeable? I followed Zak's gaze down to the cavern floor and understood. Zak's whip was slithering along the wet cave floor toward us. I knew that it was his whip because I saw the three green sparkling emeralds on one end of it. But, on the other end, I saw a pair of yellow narrowly slit eyes because Zak's whip was back to looking like the hooded black cobra again. The snake slithered up to the base of Zak's tomb and began to climb his leg, its forked silver tongue tasting the air as it moved.

Zak closed his eyes as the snake slithered up his leg and over his stomach. It’s not nice to admit it, but at that moment I was really happy that I wasn’t Zak. The cobra hissed as it moved. I was positive it was the whip though. It had the emeralds in its tail so it had to be. Of course, the diamond wasn’t there, but I had that. The cobra moved rhythmically past Zak's cheek and up his arm. Its silver tongue shot out and it opened its mouth wide. I wasn’t sure what to expect next, but I was really hoping it didn’t sink its long hollow fangs into Zak’s face. Luckily, it didn’t. Instead, its silver tongue shot into the keyhole of the iron shackle. The cobra twisted its head and I heard a click.
 

The manacle hinged open and Zak took out his bruised wrist. He looked a little more confident now as the cobra slithered across his chest to his other hand. Zak winced, but the snake did the same thing, sticking its silver forked tongue into the opposite manacle’s keyhole. It clicked open just like the other side had. I breathed a sigh of relief.

“Your turn,” Zak said.
 

No way, I thought. I’d die there before I let that snake squirm up my arm. Just then, a deafening crack echoed through the cavern. A glowing stalactite flew by like a spear. It missed us by a hair.

“What was that?” Zak said.

“I don’t know but keep that snake away from me.”

The cobra slithered back down, coiling around the bottom of Zak's column. Zak didn’t move. I don’t think he wanted to step over it.

“How are you going to get out?” Zak said.

“Let me try my own way.”

I closed my eyed and concentrated. I tried to empty my mind, doing my best to pass through the shackles.
 

“Mind is matter. Matter is mind.”

I pulled on the shackles but nothing happened. They were still as solid as they ever were. I flipped my chin at the mummy in the stalactite beside me.

“Tell her to stop staring.”

“She’s dead.”

I concentrated again. “Mind is matter. Matter is mind.” I pulled on my wrists but once again, the shackles didn’t budge. “She’s still staring at me.”

“You need to use the snake,” Zak said.

“Not if I can help it.”

I glanced at the snake coiled at the bottom of Zak’s column. I didn’t know why I hated snakes. I didn’t mind them living. Just nowhere near me. I willed Zak's cobra to stay where it was and closed my eyes again. I concentrated. This time I felt resistance. I thought I felt the shackles on my wrist moving. I pushed and I kept pushing, but I felt nothing more. Then the pressure went away. I relaxed my wrists.

“I can’t do it.”

“Sure you can,” Zak said.

“I just can’t do it.”

“Look at your hands.”

I looked up at the shackle. But my left hand wasn’t in it. Neither was my right. Both hands were resting on the inside wall of the tomb, the spots on my hand glowing.

“Your hands went right through the steel.”

“How could they?”

“I don’t know, but I watched it,” Zak said.

“So did, I.” Both Zak and I looked up to see who had spoken. It was Amala.
 

“Holy India,” Zak said. “What are you doing here?”

“Trying to help.”

I stepped down from my hollowed-out tomb, careful to keep my distance from the cobra coiled on the cave floor below Zak's feet.

“Give Zak the elephant tear,” Amala said.

I reached into my pocket and handed the elephant tear diamond carefully to Zak.

“Now Zak, put the stone back in the snake’s tail.”

“Are you kidding?” Zak said.

“Put it in.”

Zak stared down at the snake from inside the tomb. I’m pretty sure he didn’t want to step down over the snake, let alone touch it. The cobra hissed softly, looking up at us with its yellow eyes. Its tail was visible at the end of its coiled body, the three glittering emeralds marking the spot. Zak stepped down from the tomb and took a breath. He hunched down and carefully took hold of the snake’s tail. I could almost feel the snake, scaly and cold to the touch, as he took the diamond between his thumb and forefinger and placed it in the slight depression above the emeralds. He twisted the diamond in a clockwise motion and, as he did, I heard a click. With that click the snake transformed back into the whip.

“Whoa,” Zak said. “Stryker’s back.”

He cracked Stryker gently. There was a small crack of thunder and a tiny bolt of lightning shot out of the end. Zak smiled.

“I like it.”

“Listen carefully,” Amala said. She pointed to the nearest stalactite, a frozen mummy stuck within. “That was Naija, the Leopard's fifth life.”

“Naija looks a lot like you. When she isn’t a mummy that is,” Zak said.

“Yes, she does.”

“We saw you. When I picked up the dagger, we saw you in these mummy clothes.”
 

“Exactly who are you?” Zak asked.

“I’ll answer your questions later, Zak. But please listen to me now. Naija lived for nineteen hard years on the burning lake before the Monkey came for her. He set fire to her village, then her family, and finally, he destroyed her as well. You must understand, the gods won't allow the Monkey to use his mental powers against the Leopard, but they can't stop him from using mortal tools.”

“Mortal tools?” I asked.

“The Monkey Man, or the bhagwan as you know him, seems to prefer a bow and arrow,” Amala said. “Or so he’s tried in the past. If he shoots the arrow true, under the light of the hundred-year moon, he’ll have the range and power to bring down the Ghost Leopard in its physical form.”

“Why don’t the gods just stop the bhagwan from shooting it?” Zak asked.

“Mortal tools follow mortal rules,” Amala said. “The gods can’t interfere.”
 

“Then they're lame gods. If I was a god I could stop anything,” Zak said.

“If you were a god, you'd spend all day eating chips and playing video games.”

“I do that now.”

“Listen. The full moon is two nights from now. The Ghost Leopard will be vulnerable on Tendua Tibba’s slopes. If the bhagwan destroys it at this time, the Earth will once again be his.”

Both Zak and I ducked back as a flying stalactite cracked through the air.

“Again?” Zak said.
 

“Yes. Again. Fire and death will rain from the sky. The monkey will kill countless souls, just as he did Naija.”

I wanted to concentrate on what Amala was saying, but was having a difficult time because I saw that Mukta had backed his way into the cavern. Mukta dodged from left to right as the flying stalactites whipped past. As Mukta backed toward us, I saw the bhagwan or Monkey Man or whatever it was we were supposed to call him. He leapt from one wall to the other like a crazed beast. I was scared. He lifted his tail and hurled three stalactites, one after the other. Mukta was close now. Close enough that I could see exactly what he was doing. He raised a hand, slowing the stalactites. The stalactites moved more and more slowly as they flew toward him. So slowly that I wondered if they would stop and fall out of the air. Mukta's spotted birthmark glowed: I could see it all the way across the cave. Then Mukta crossed his legs and levitated into the air. As Mukta floated there, the stalactites flew through his body as if he wasn’t there. But I was worried. Mukta's arms and legs had begun to twitch as if he was tiring.