Ghost Leopard (A Zoe & Zak Adventure #1) (27 page)

“Tell me we're at the top,” I wheezed.

Zak rolled onto his back.
 

“We’re at the top.”

“Excellent,” I said breathlessly.
 

Zak let his eyes fall backward, casting his glance farther behind him. There was a maze of stone and ice there, but not much else.
 

“My ears are freezing.”

“Mine too,” Zak said.

“Nice work leading the climb,” I said.

“Thanks.”

“Why did we come here again?” I asked.

Zak reached into his pocket and pulled out the weird-looking yellow yak-hair hat he had bought back in the bazaar. He slapped it on my head.

“We came to come.”

“We came to come.”

I pulled myself up and started snapping photos in the moonlight. We were above everything on this mountaintop. We were above the valleys, we were above the clouds and the other mountains, we were above even the moon that was finally rising in the distance. We were at the top of the world.

The full moon floated above us, casting its cool glow over the night world. There it was, the hundred-year moon. Zak looked around the mountaintop while I shot pictures.

“Moon’s up.”
 

“Yup,” I said.

“No Leopard.”

“Nope.”

“Kind of makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

“Wonder what?”

“If we’re going to see this Leopard at all.”

I put down my camera.

“We came this far. We’re going to see something.”

“I really hope so,” Zak said.

What’s the old saying? Ask and ye shall receive? Well, that’s when the ground began to shake. I had already felt the ground shaking once before and I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to like what came next. The icy mountaintop we were standing on was really vibrating this time. It was hard to stand up. And that was before the deafening whistle blew through the air. It was so loud that I thought my eardrums would burst. A bright light appeared, bearing down on the both of us, casting huge shadows as it lit up the night. I don’t know how, but once again, a railroad track materialized at our feet. I covered my ears and dove off the track with Zak. Then the bhagwan's giant, cherry-red locomotive screamed down on us from a hole in the rocks. The engine zoomed past us, continuing across the plateau until it came to a screeching stop. It didn’t take long before the bhagwan descended from his private train car. He didn’t wait for his servants to put out the stairs, he just stepped right out into the snow bank.

“Crud,” Zak said.

“Yes. Crud indeed,” the bhagwan replied.

A gust of wind raged across the plateau, blowing a wall of snow with it. Rhino Butt got out of the train, followed by his goons. They carried the huge metal trunk that Zak and I had hidden in between them. I wondered why they would want the trunk up here? The mountaintop had begun to feel very crowded.
 

“Nice to see you again,” Zak said.

“Pleasure,” the bhagwan replied.

The bhagwan's long tail rose behind him. He had not yet fully transformed into the Monkey Man, but I didn’t like the look on his face, or the polished crossbow in Rhino Butt's hand. Rhino Butt glanced at a tablet computer. I could see from where I stood that he was looking at a digital map which he cross-referenced against the old piece of parchment that had started all of this.

“This is it,” Rhino Butt said. “This is the spot. Lay it down there,” he said to the goons. “If we do this right, we get it to jump right in. We do it wrong, you two carry the corpse. Either way that Leopard’s coming home with us.”
 

Rhino Butt’s hairy men laid down the metal trunk and at that moment I realized what it was. The trunk wasn’t luggage. It wasn’t a box to carry crossbows or equipment. It was a coffin for the Leopard.

“That isn’t just a box,” I said.

The bhagwan smiled, his yellow claws extending from his fingernails. “No,” he said. “It’s much, much more. This box ensures that no one will ever lay eyes on your precious Leopard again. This box is your Leopard’s final home.”

Thinking about the Leopard being slapped inside a box like that made me mad. Really mad. But I didn’t know what to do about it right then. What could I do? Ask the bhagwan to go home? Something told me he wasn’t going to listen. The bhagwan scraped his claws on an icy granite boulder. They screeched like fingernails on a chalkboard. A faraway look entered his eye and I knew what was going to happen. He was transforming into the Monkey Man. The bhagwan's jaw slowly elongated. Fur began to cover his face, his coal-black eyes glowing red.

“I think we should get out of here,” I said.

“Right behind you.”

Zak and I walked slowly backward. Where we were going to go, I had no idea. But it had to be better than where we were. The goons began their transformation alongside the bhagwan. Their teeth elongated, wiry hair growing from their cheeks and ears. I don’t know why the whole thing didn’t bother Rhino Butt, but he didn’t seem overly concerned. Instead of watching them transform, he loaded his crossbow. Then the bhagwan leapt. In that moment his fangs extended down over his thick lips and he became the Monkey Man. Zak and I dove out of the way as the bhagwan landed in the deep snow. But something else happened. A roar echoed across the mountaintops. Suddenly everyone was very still. Zak and I were still. Rhino Butt was still. The bhagwan was silent. Then a flash of white fur glided between the rocks. Fire lit up the bhagwan's eyes. He turned to Rhino Butt.

“It’s time,” he said. “Take the top path.” He pointed to the goons. “You two, with him.”

The bhagwan disappeared through the rocks, Rhino Butt and the goons heading off in the opposite direction. Zak and I were left suddenly alone.

“That was easy,” Zak said. “Now let’s get out of here.”

I looked around. The locomotive now blocked our view of the mountaintops below and there was a maze of rocks behind us. We were hemmed in.

“Not so fast,” I said. “This is why we’re here.”

“I’m starting to rethink that,” Zak said.

A flash of fur slipped through the rocks above us. One thing I was certain of was that now was not the time for hesitation.

“You go that way. I’ll go around. We meet back at the train in five minutes.”

“Let me just go on record and say that those guys scare the living crud out of me,” Zak said.

“Me too.”

I turned on my camera and took off quietly into the night.

Sparkling snow blew in gusts across the mountaintop. The moon was so bright that I bet I could have read the ingredients off a cereal box out there. My shadow followed me as I walked between the towering boulders. I didn’t hear much except the wind, but I sensed that the others were near. It was spooky inside the rock maze, giant boulders casting their shadows across the snow. Already I wasn’t sure how I would get back. Rock after towering rock looked the same. I hadn’t seen another glimpse of the Leopard. I hadn’t seen anything. Maybe just being there had been enough to protect it. Maybe I had done my duty. I didn’t know, but I was beginning to think that Zak might have been right. Maybe we should have gotten out of there when we had the chance. I heard something. The sound of feet on crisp snow.

“Zak?”

My only response was the echo. If Zak was out there, it was high time that I met him back at the train. I had done my part to protect the Leopard. Now we needed to get off this mountain before it was too late. I began to backtrack. I turned and followed my footsteps. They led me back the way I had come, around a giant granite boulder, until I had done a full circle back to where I was standing. It didn’t make any sense. How was I ever going to get out of the maze? Then I was stopped in my tracks by an enormous roar. There was no mistaking it. The Leopard, barely visible for an instant, slinked between the gray rocks.
 

This was it. This was my moment. I took hold of my camera just in time to see the Leopard’s long white tail disappear.

I followed the Leopard’s path, slipping between a pair of rocks. As I did, I came to a drop-off. It was at least twenty feet down to the next level. I saw Rhino Butt in the maze of rock below me. He held his crossbow steady, ready to shoot an arrow. Zak was hiding behind him. I didn’t know if Rhino Butt knew Zak was there or not, but I didn’t think so. I saw a quick flash of fur in the maze below. Zak's whip was in his hand, the elephant-tear glowing brightly. Rhino Butt took one more step and Zak stepped out from behind the boulder cracking Stryker. The snot-green emeralds glowed as the tip of the whip cracked through the night air. Stryker’s silver tip wrapped around Rhino Butt’s crossbow. Zak ducked as he pulled the crossbow toward himself, the arrow firing into the air above.

The flash of fur appeared again, but the shot had missed. I know that Rhino Butt turned toward Zak, but I didn’t see what happened after that because the next thing I knew, the Leopard had leapt up a level and into the rocks above me. I walked backward, struggling to get a clear shot of it as it snuck through the rocks above my head. It was here and then there, but never right in front of me. I stared at the world through my viewfinder, rapidly clicking on the shutter, but I couldn’t get a full shot. It was maddening. All I got was white fur, or a leg, or a tail. The thing wouldn’t stay still. Then the Leopard took a massive leap upwards. I saw little more than a silhouette as it did, because a gust of wind blew snow in my face. The Leopard was directly above me and when I took another step forward, I saw why. Somehow I was back at the train, the Leopard slinking its way along the roof of the carriages above. I looked to either side to ensure that I was alone and made my way up between the carriages, climbing the icy ladder to the rooftop of the train.

When I reached the rounded red carriage top, I found it completely iced over. But I wasn’t alone up there. Through the gusts of blowing snow I could see the silhouette of the Leopard in front of me. I was too close to it. What I needed was to move backward. I took one step back on the icy rooftop and clicked a shot. I felt my rear foot slip on the ice, but I held my ground. I wished that the wind would stop gusting, if only for a moment. The blowing snow was everywhere. I glanced to my right and saw that there was nothing below me. The train car was perched on the cliffside. It didn’t matter. What was down there was not my concern. I took another step backward, and clicked the shutter, trying to get that golden shot. The Leopard moved a step closer to me again. The stupid thing was that I had probably clicked my shutter thirty times and I didn’t think I’d gotten a picture of it yet. It was driving me crazy.

“Just a little more,” I whispered to myself.

I stepped backward again. The wind stopped gusting for a moment and the sky was clear, but dark. A cloud had passed in front of the full moon. The cloud began to blow over, the giant moon gradually lighting the rooftop again. That’s when I heard Zak's voice.

“Zoe…”

“Sure. Now you want to talk,” I said to myself.

The Leopard's shadow loomed above me. I took another step back on the icy carriage roof, continuing to stare through the lens at where the Leopard stood. But I could no longer see the black silhouette of the Leopard. Instead I saw the bhagwan. His monkey head loomed large in my viewfinder, his yellow fangs bared.

I lowered my camera and took one more step back. But it was one step too many. I slipped on the icy carriage, sliding down its red rounded roof to the mountaintops below. I desperately grabbed at the icy steel, but there was nothing to hold onto. It was just too smooth and too slippery. Even as I tried to claw the carriage’s roof, I felt my body fly through the air as I slipped right off, over the cliffside.

My heart was in my throat as I fell, back first, off the rooftop. When I looked up, the bhagwan's giant monkey head was all that I could see. I felt my fall slow, almost as though I was lying on my back in midair. It took a moment for me to realize that I actually was lying on my back in midair, my camera floating in the air beside me. I got it now. The bhagwan was holding me there in midair with the power of his mind. It was a strange feeling, lying there frozen like a starfish, gusts of wind biting at my skin, nothing below me but thousands of feet of sky, nothing above me but the bhagwan.

 
“I’ve spent millennia searching for the beast whose destruction would return my honor. In that time I've dealt with countless figures like you,” the bhagwan said. “You who see fit to stand in my way. You who are no more than a child.”

“Me who's going to whoop your butt,” I said, though not very convincingly.

The bhagwan tilted me upwards with the power of his mind so that he could look me in the eye. I felt a flood of memories rush over me. He was doing it again. The memory trick, except without the plants. I saw myself as a baby, then as a toddler, then in first grade, then second grade, and then the memories slowed to a trickle until I saw only one image in my mind’s eye. I was looking at myself as a little girl again. I was being kicked by the older girls in the school playground. I was afraid. More afraid than I can ever remember being. More afraid than even now.
 

“You’re afraid of what you are, Zoe Guire,” the bhagwan said.

“Really? What am I?”
 

“A weak little girl who wants to possess the Leopard, just as I do.”

“I came to protect it,” I said.

“You came to take its picture.”

“You’re wrong.”

“Am I?”
 

The bhagwan laughed and in that moment, I hated him. I hated him for what he had done to us. I hated him for what he had done to Mukta and Amala. I hated him for being a bully and I hated all bullies everywhere. It didn’t change anything though. I was still stuck, frozen in midair.

“You’ll never defeat me,” the bhagwan said. “You’ll never defeat me because you’ll always be afraid of what you are.”

The bhagwan whirled as a flash of fur leapt from the train top to the icy rocks above. It dashed in, then out of view. The bhagwan must have thought the Leopard was more interesting than me because he sniffed the cold breeze and left me hanging there, over the chasm.