Ancient Hiss Story (14 page)

The blade made a sickening squishy sound as it penetrated Jersey’s rib cage.

Jersey’s eyes widened and then darkened with anger. Kate could see the red stain on her shirt. She’d done some good damage but Jersey was still on her feet. Kate’s side started to throb.

“You won’t win!” Jersey threw down the stick and launched herself at Kate, who stood with her heels at the very edge of the snake pit.

Kate teetered backward, her arms grabbing at thin air in a futile attempt to pull herself back onto the platform. She tried to lean forward, but gravity was stronger and the momentum kept her falling back. She felt her feet leave the platform and shot a panicked glance over her shoulder, just in time to see dozens of golden, slitted snake eyes rushing toward her.

K
ate’s hip
exploded in pain as she hit the stone slab. Contrary to what she’d expected, she did not land in a rubbery pile of snakes. The snakes had all slithered out of the way when she’d fallen. Maybe they didn’t want to get crushed and ruin the opportunity to eat her.

The panic that had welled up in her chest paralyzed her and she lay there for a few seconds

“Kate!” Ace’s voice drifted down from above. She looked up in time to see him leaping into the pit. He landed with a thud beside her.

She whipped her head around to get a bead on the location of the snakes and look for some way to get out of the pit before they attacked her. She noticed something strange—the snakes were making a bee-line out of the pit, slithering off through narrow slits on the side of the platform. Now why would they do that? Unless, somehow, they knew it was dangerous to stay in the pit.

Before she could voice a warning to Ace, the platform gave a sickening lurch, pivoting at a ninety-degree angle. Kate slid down the length of it, her nails scraping the smooth stone as she tried to stay on top. Despite her efforts, she kept sliding into the darkened maw of the bowels of the pyramid.

“What the…” Ace echoed her thoughts as she thudded onto something hard, landing on the same hip and causing even more pain.

The stone slab sprang shut just as quickly as it had dumped them and they were in complete darkness. They sat, unmoving for a few seconds while their eyes adjusted to the darkness. Kate mentally scanned her body for broken bones, but everything felt fine. Even the pain in her hip was receding.

She smelled herbs and old dirt and water. She could hear water running somewhere. She didn’t know how far they’d fallen, but they must be close to the level of the river.

“Did what I think just happened just happen?” Ace asked.

“You mean did we just fall into a pit of snakes and then get dumped into the inside of a temple which shouldn’t even be hollow?” Kate squinted her eyes. She was starting to be able to see shadows. This definitely was not an empty room.

Looking around, she could see the space was cavernous and the floor wasn’t dirt—it had hurt too much when she'd landed on it—it was something harder. As her eyes adjusted, the shadows took the form of statues, pillars and murals around the room. In the middle sat a large, rectangular object. Her heart skipped a beat.

Was it possible that they were inside Itizuma’s tomb?

“I have a flashlight on my phone.” Kate scrambled for her phone, hoping it hadn’t been jarred out of her pocket in the fall. She found it, pressed the flashlight app and aimed it into the room, tentatively hoping it didn’t illuminate more snakes.

It didn’t. What it did illuminate sucked the breath right out of her.

The room was constructed of large, polished limestone blocks. Carvings and hieroglyphs decorated the walls. Large statues were placed along the walls, some of them covered in turquoise tiles. A niche carved out of the wall held dozens of zoomorphic figures in gold and jade.

And in the center, just as she’d suspected, was a sarcophagus. It was not unlike that of an Egyptian sarcophagus, Kate realized, as she played her light over it. Shaped like a rectangle, the top was carved to resemble a human body. Except instead of the Egyptian humanlike form, this was more geometric, much like the Aztecs’ carvings on the walls.

“Wow. There must be a fortune in gold and gemstones in here.” Ace walked around the perimeter of the room, looking at the various carvings, sculptures and trinkets.

He stopped in front of a large niche with what looked like a thick piece of paper.

“So, it really is true.” His voice was barely above a whisper.

Kate joined him. She could see the piece of paper had been preserved pretty well over the centuries. She guessed the absence of airflow in the tomb had helped.

“Is that the codex?”

“Yes. It’s on fig bark, all handwritten in hieroglyphs.”

“What does it say?” Kate asked

“I have no idea. An expert would have to translate it, but if what I’m told is true, this contains the secret to time travel.”

Kate stared at it for a while, trying to make sense of the symbols. Something on the floor caught her eye.

“What’s this?” Kate pointed to a small piece of paper on the floor in front of the niche. This paper was not fig bark. It was more modern but still decades old. It was yellowed with age and contained light blue fountain pen, much like that in the journal.

Ace picked it up, his eyes growing wide as he read it. “I think this is from Reginald White.”

Kate looked over his shoulder at the paper. It was just a small scrap, but on it was written, ‘I have discovered the secret. Will test the time. See you on the other side’ and it was signed R.W.

Kate felt a bubble of excitement. “You mean Reginald White actually found this tomb?”

“Well, it looks like someone did. This paper isn’t from Itizuma’s time.”

“But why didn’t he make the discovery public? Cash in on it?” Kate asked.

Ace rubbed his hand over his chin, scruffy with a day’s worth of growth. “Reginald White disappeared, or so everyone thought. They suspected foul play, but maybe he didn’t actually disappear. Maybe he really did figure out how to time travel. No one ever found his body. Maybe he traveled through time and didn’t want to come back.”

“Or couldn’t figure out
how
to come back,” Kate added.

“Maybe.” Ace grabbed Kate’s shoulders, his face a mask of seriousness. “You realize what we've stumbled onto? If this really is the secret to time travel, we can’t let anyone know it exists.”

Kate’s brows tugged. “Why not? It seems like this would be very important. A lot of people would want to know about this.”

“Exactly. And what do you think those people would do with it? Sure, it could be useful for some things, but in my experience, most people would want to use it for something bad. Imagine how it would be if someone could go back in time and change the outcome of wars? What if they could kill off key political or religious figures before they became known? Governments would kill for this and they could totally change the course of history. No one can be trusted with this information … not even our own government.”

“Are you suggesting we simply not tell anyone? I think too many people already know about it.” Kate said.

“There might be another solution.” Ace scouted the perimeter of the room, looking in the various niches and muttering to himself. Finally, he nodded and turned to Kate. “Do you hear the water?”

“Yes. I figured we’re probably low in the pyramid, maybe even under the ground. Close to the river.”

“Sort of. I think this pyramid is constructed with flood chambers. The water is running through them inside the pyramid.”

“Flood chambers?” Kate asked. “You mean that you can somehow flood the tomb?”

“Yes,” Ace said. “It was a common tactic that pirates used to use when they buried treasure. Maybe the pirates even learned it from the Aztecs.” Ace shrugged. “Who knows? I’m pretty sure that removing these stones will cause the chamber to be flooded.”

Kate thought about what that would mean. Max was counting on her to find the tomb, but did he know about the time travel codex? Kate figured he probably didn’t.

She didn’t know Max that well, but from what she knew of him, he wasn’t a money-grubbing scientist. He just wanted good exhibits for the museum. If he knew this tomb contained the secret to time travel, he might not want it to be known, either.

She hated to go back to the museum empty-handed, but the evil ramifications of making time travel known to the world weren’t lost on her. The responsibility weighed heavily.

She looked around the chamber at the gold, the jade, the turquoise and the amazing wealth of history and riches it contained. If they flooded the chamber, all of it would be lost forever. And so would the time travel codex.

“What if we just destroyed the codex?” she asked.

“I thought about that. But there’s no way to know if there are other clues inside this chamber. There probably are. If you had that sort of information, would you trust it to a flimsy piece of fig bark?”

“I guess not.” Kate’s heart sank. Ace was right. The only way to be sure this information didn’t get into evil hands was to flood the tomb. “Flooding the room seems like the right thing to do. How do we get out of here?” Kate asked.

The look on Ace’s face made her heart twist. “That may be a problem. Near as I can tell, these flood stones open up the chambers that will send the water in, but if you look over here,” Ace pointed to another stone that was at a ninety-degree angle from the flood stones, “it looks like this stone might open another passage.”

Kate didn’t understand why he had such a grave look on his face. “Okay, so we start flooding the chamber, go out the secret passage and shut the door on the other side. Easy peasy.”

Ace grabbed her hand and pulled her over to him. She didn’t like the look on his face at all. What was wrong with her plan?

“It’s not that simple,” he said. “Look at the position of the stones. You need to push the stone that opens the passageway to the chamber over to the left. But the flood stones need to be pushed to the right. Once the flood chambers are open, you can’t open the passageway. And once the passageway is open you won’t be able to activate the flood stones.”

Kate stared at the stones. It looked like either you could exit the room, or you could flood it, but not both at the same time as the stones would be positioned in each other’s way. “There’s got to be another way out!”

Ace shook his head. “I went all around the room. You saw me. There’s no other way. These are the only stones that activate anything.”

“But that’s impossible,” Kate said. “You mean the chamber was designed to drown the person who floods it?”

“I’m afraid so. It kind of makes sense when you think about it, because it would be one way to ensure that the person flooding the chamber was serious about it.”

“Deadly serious,” Kate said. “Well, then, we can’t flood it. We’ll just have to lie about its discovery. We’ll pretend we found nothing. We’ll say it was empty.”

Ace pulled her close. “You know that won’t work. Someone is bound to find out and I’m afraid I can’t let that happen.” He tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear. “This is bigger than both of us. We
need
to flood this chamber, but I’m not going to let you die.”

“What do you mean?” Kate’s heart skittered around in her chest as she saw a flood of emotion pass through Ace’s eyes.

“Kate. You’ve got to go. I’ll open the door and you go out and activate the mechanism from the other side that closes the door, then I’ll flood the chamber.”

Kate’s eyes darted from Ace’s face to the stones. There had to be another way. Ace Mason had been a thorn in her side since he’d sacrifice her to the FBI, but for some reason, her heart was breaking at the thought of him not being around anymore.

“No! I won’t let you die.” The words tumbled from her lips.

Ace’s face broke in a sad smile. “I knew you still cared about me. And that’s why I can’t let anything happen to you.” He pushed the stone and the opening slid open. Beyond it was a dark corridor.

Kate’s eyes ping-ponged between the opening and Ace.

“Go!” Ace demanded.

Emotions warred in Kate’s chest. Her heart twisted at the thought of leaving Ace in there to die—would she ever be able to forgive herself? But her blood boiled at the high-handed way he’d ordered her to leave. She didn’t take orders from anyone.

In a split second, she made her decision. She pushed him against the wall her lips seeking his. Her hand bumped against the stone that opened the passageway. The passageway silently slid closed—not that either of them was watching.

Ace pulled her closer, his lips burning against hers, causing her stomach to flip-flop. Her hand explored the wall behind her, feeling for the flood stone that jutted out two inches from the wall. She found it and then, with only a moment’s hesitation, she pushed the stone to the left.

The sound of rocks scraping against rock filled the chamber, the flood channels opened and water rushed in.

A
ce ripped
his lips from hers and stared at the water swirling around their ankles incredulously. “What did you do?”

“I couldn’t leave you to die alone.” The water was freezing. Kate’s feet were already getting numb. Maybe she’d been a bit too hasty in her decision.

“But now we’ll both die.”

Kate narrowed her eyes at Ace. He didn’t sound very grateful for her sacrifice. He sounded mad. Probably pissed because she'd disobeyed his orders. Yep, that would be just like do-it-by-the-book Ace Mason. What had she been thinking?

She pushed herself away from him and pressed the stones frantically. “There has to be a way out.”

Ace sighed. “I already told you, I looked over the wall pretty good. There isn’t one.”

“Well, we should look again. Unless you have something better to do?” Kate was shocked at how quickly the water was coming in. It was halfway to her knees and so cold it chilled the blood in her veins. She trudged to the opposite side of the room, her legs like wooden stubs. Her fingers explored the wall, pressing on anything that looked like it might open a trap door.

Ace was still over by the stones, grunting as he pushed on them to try to stop the water.

“Damn it!” He pounded on the wall.

Kate looked around the room frantically. Her eyes fell on the ceiling where they’d fallen into the tomb. She could see slits of light filtering in. The slits the snakes had gone through, apparently. But where were the snakes?

If the snakes had found a way out, maybe they could, too.

“What about up there?” She pointed to the ceiling.

Ace looked up. “The slits are too small to fit through. But maybe we can pull down the platform that we slid in on. It must have some sort of mechanism like a spring that caused it to dump us in here in the first place.”

Kate felt a surge of hope. “How do we get up there?”

The ceiling was tall, maybe twenty feet above their heads And there was nothing to climb up on.

“I don’t know,” Ace shouted over the roaring water, which seemed to have gotten louder. It was coming in faster—the depth was now over her knees. “We could wait until the water floats us up but if our theory is wrong it won’t be long until the chamber is full with no breathing area and we won’t have a chance to look anywhere else.”

Kate wrapped her arms around her shivering body. “Not to mention that we might succumb to hypothermia first.”

Ace battled the current to get over to her. He pulled her into his arms. “I can’t believe this is happening. I have to find a way to save you. I came all the way here to make sure nothing happened to you and now look what's happened. You’re going to die because of me.”

Kate’s heart melted. Ace was almost in tears. She reached up and touched his face. His gray eyes were stormy with emotion.

He pulled her closer, his thumb stroking her cheek. “Kate, we may die in here and I’ll never get the chance to tell you that I lo—“

His words were cut off by a loud squeal in the corner of the room. They whipped their heads around to see one of the statues moving. If Kate wasn’t mistaken, it was swinging open as if it were a false door. She couldn’t believe her eyes when a figure stepped out into the water.

“What the heck?” Ace released Kate and started toward the man. Kate was right on his heels.

The man was dressed in the most unusual outfit. He was wearing what looked like a long shirt that reached just below his crotch. The shirt was a colorful blue with gold designs. He wore no pants and he had a feather headdress on top of his head. And if Kate wasn’t mistaken, he held a spear in his hand. Was he some sort of native that hadn’t yet been introduced to Western clothes?

“Come. I will show you the way out.” He gestured with his head to indicate the area inside the statue behind him which Kate saw was actually some sort of opening. The statue had been a fake and behind it were stairs leading up to a dark passage. She felt a tremor of trepidation. She didn’t know if she could trust this guy—but, then again, staying in the rapidly filling chamber wasn’t that appealing, either.

The man turned and walked up the steps. Kate shrugged at Ace and then followed him.

Kate climbed the narrow steps on numb feet, her hand trailing against the moist wall for balance. It took about twenty steps for her legs to start to thaw and in a few more steps they reached a landing that looked like some sort of intersection with tunnels going off in several directions. The man stopped in the middle.

“Who are you?” Kate asked.

“A friend,” the man said simply.

Ace was a little less friendly. He stood with his feet shoulder width apart looking like he was spoiling for a fight.

“Who sent you? And why are you dressed like that?” Ace looked the man up and down.

Kate frowned at Ace. It was just like him to be so distrusting of a man who had just saved them from certain death … even if he was wearing what looked like a mini-dress. She was sure they taught that sort of antagonistic behavior in the FBI, though she didn’t remember taking the class herself.

The man glanced down at himself, then leveled his brilliant blue eyes on Ace.

“We don’t have time for these questions now. The pyramid is filling with water.” He gestured back toward the stairs and Kate looked in that direction. She could hear the rushing water coming up the stairs and, judging by the rate the chamber had been filling up, it would reach them quickly.

Kate was glad they’d been saved from drowning in the chamber, but she didn’t have time to sit around getting all sentimental about it. Since falling into the tomb, she'd been too busy to worry about her parents and the
Golden Capers
gang. Now that
she
was out of immediate danger, worry for her parents came flooding in. She didn’t know if her blow had killed Jersey or not. For all she knew, her folks were at the bottom of the river.

“We don’t have time for this. My parents are in danger! We need to get out of here now!” Kate’s voice rose in panic.

“This is the way out.” The man pointed toward the middle path. Kate’s eyes followed the direction he was pointing and, catching a glance of his wrist, she gasped.

He had the infinity tattoo on his arm!

She looked up at him and saw he was watching her reaction. His eyes seemed to glow with a knowing light and he nodded at her. “You both must go quickly before the water finds us.”

“But what about you?” Kate asked. It didn’t seem like he was planning on going down the tunnel with them.

He pointed to another path and smiled. “Don’t worry, I will be fine … I will see you in another time.”

Kate didn’t have time to stick around and ask him what he meant by that strange remark. Her parents needed her. She sprinted off down the tunnel.

“
Y
ou’re going
to just follow what that weird guy tells you to do?” Ace sprinted along behind her.

Kate hadn’t really thought about it. For some reason she trusted the guy, but she supposed he could have been leading them into another snake den of danger. But if he wished them harm, why rescue them from the tomb?

“I don’t see as we have much choice,” she said.

“There were three passages we could have chosen. Any one of them could be the wrong one. We don’t know if he was working with the bad guys to lead us into some danger!”

Kate frowned at Ace. “Well, sometimes you have to go with your gut. But you can feel free to go down any passage you want.”

Ace made a snorting sound. “Going with your gut can get you into trouble.”

“Right. You probably would have just shot him and we’d be heading down the wrong path now.”

“I wouldn’t have shot him,” Ace argued. “I might have chosen the path a bit more thoughtfully, though. These rash decisions, like locking us both in the tomb and flooding it, can have disastrous consequences. If you’d followed my orders you’d be safe by now.”

Kate’s brows shot up. “And you’d be dead. Besides, we’re not partners anymore and I don’t have to follow your orders.”

Kate sprinted faster, not sure if she was in more of a hurry to get
to
her parents or
away
from Ace. She remembered how impossible he could be and hoped she wouldn’t regret not taking him up on his offer to get out of the tomb and leave him in there to drown.

Kate’s breath came in short gasps. They were traveling uphill and she was getting winded. Uphill was good, though, because it meant they were heading away from the water. But where would they end up? Would the tunnel lead to a dead end with an opening that plunged to the river below?

A pinpoint of light up ahead told her she wouldn’t have to wait long to find out. She picked up speed.

The tunnel spilled out on the side of the pyramid. She could see they were about three quarters of the way up. Where were her parents?

Her stomach tightened as she strained to listen for the sound of their voices, but all she could hear were the birds calling in the forest.

“We need to get around to the front!” she said to Ace.

When she’d last seen her parents, they’d been on the platform in the front of the pyramid and she figured this was the best place to look now. The stone steps were very narrow on this side but she didn’t have time to go down to the ground and then up the wider steps in the front, so she shuffled along sideways to the edge of the pyramid, peeking tentatively around the corner just in case Jersey was lying in wait for her.

She angled her head to look up at the platform. It was empty. She had visions of Jersey pushing her parents and the
Golden Capers
gang off the back. She could almost hear their screams as they plummeted toward the river.

“Kate!”

Wait a minute. Was that her mother?

Kate swiveled her head in the direction of the voice which was coming from the bottom of the pyramid. Her mouth hung open at what she saw. Vic, Carlotta, Sal, Gertie, Frankie and Benny were standing leisurely in the grass as if they were discussing the latest baseball scores. In between them, they had a large piece of paper which looked like a map.

“You escaped!” Kate was so excited, she lost her footing. She stumbled sideways, almost falling down the side of the pyramid until strong arms broke her fall.

“Whoa, there,” Ace said.

Kate pushed his hands away.

“Thanks,” she said brusquely.

She was still a little mad about his high-handed manner and the thought that she should take orders from him. Not to mention that whatever it was he had been trying to tell her before the strange man came out of the statue had made her a little nervous.

She needed time to think about her feelings for Ace, which had re-surfaced in the heat of the moment in the tomb. Until then, she didn’t want to give him any false signals.

They both scurried down to the ground where Carlotta was waiting with open arms.

“We thought you guys were goners,” Sal said.

“We thought the same of you,” Kate admitted. “How did you get away? What happened to Jersey?”

Sal snickered, held up his hand and flipped out the blade on his prosthetic thumb. “While you and Jersey were having your sword fight, I was using my blade here to work on our ropes so we could get free.”

“That jab that you gave to Jersey really hurt her. She didn’t have much energy left after she pushed you into the snakes,” Gertie said.

“Then that guy that was working with her … Ed? He came charging up the steps and the two of them got into it something fierce,” Frankie added.

Benny nodded enthusiastically. “They got to fighting. One thing led to another and she fell off the edge into the river.”

“Darn shame,” Gertie tisked, then smiled, erasing any doubts as to whether she actually thought Jersey’s fate really was a darn shame.

“We figured it was for the best.” Carlotta shrugged. “But tell us what happened to you inside that pyramid. We feared the worst.”

Kate and Ace exchanged a glance. Should they tell them about the tomb? Kate didn’t think so. Even though she trusted her parents and the
Golden Capers
gang implicitly, it was probably better off for
them
if they didn’t know about it. The less people to talk about the codex, the better.

“The inside of the pyramid is a big, empty room. I guess it must have been a temple for worship at one time, but everything’s been looted.” Kate slid her eyes over to look at Ace, who gave a tight nod.

“It had flood chambers from the river and when we got dumped in, a switch must have been flicked that started the flooding,” Ace continued. “We were lucky enough to find some passages that led us out onto the other side of the pyramid.”

They all looked up at the pyramid in time to see water running down the steps like a waterfall. The flooding must have reached the top. Kate remembered the little slits that the snakes had disappeared through. She figured the water was now pouring out of those and running down the steps.

It was for the best—no one would be able to get inside the tomb now. She belatedly wondered what happened to the snakes. Did they get away through the tunnels, or did they drown? She found herself hoping it was the latter. And what about the strange man they’d seen? Where was he now?

“We’re just glad you got out. We were just about to go in after you,” Benny tapped on the map. “This map shows the passages.”

Kate frowned. “Where’d you get that?”

“That guy Ed gave it to us,” Frankie said. “He said he found it in Jersey’s things and thought we might need it. Somehow, he was worried you would get trapped inside. Don’t know why he would think that, but apparently he was smarter than he looked.”

Kate looked around the site. “Where
is
Ed, anyway?”

“It was the darnedest thing,” Benny said. “He gave us the map and while we were bending over it and inspecting it the next thing we knew he was gone. Poof. Just like that.”

Ace made a face. “What do you mean,
just like that
? The guy couldn’t disappear. He must be around here somewhere.”

Vic shrugged. “I don’t know. One minute he was here and the next he was gone. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t paying much attention. I was busy looking at the map and trying to figure out how to get Kate out.”