Temple of the Jaguar (6 page)

The critter hissed its displeasure. I suppose it wasn’t accustomed to a potential meal fighting back. I had only a brief moment to consider what to do next. Should I turn around and run like the others? Or, should I stand my ground using a dented flashlight that now flickered on the verge of dying out? Tough decision and a bad time to be without a Ken Blanchard action plan.

Then I suddenly remembered the pickaxe strapped to my side. I couldn’t believe I had forgotten it, swearing to the Good Lord that I would never drink my mind into such sluggishness the night before an expedition ever again.

Just let me kill this angry mother and...

It took a swipe at me, the wind lifting my bangs from my forehead as its claw just missed my face.

My turn.

Rather than spar with this thing, which I had little understanding of in the first place, I swung repeatedly with the axe, catching the tip in the critter’s belly scales several times while it hissed angrily. One of the last blows came close to pay dirt, and I just knew the next shot would puncture its heart.

I prepared to slam the pickaxe into the critter’s chest and brought my weapon down hard. But it had better reflexes than I had anticipated. It brought its left claw up to meet my right hand, and while I marveled at its sudden dexterity, the axe flew out of my hand and fell harmlessly into the chasm below.

Uh-oh.

Without a serviceable weapon, I was now officially screwed. Meanwhile, Marie and Ishi called for me from somewhere nearby...maybe fifty to seventy feet away. I turned toward their voices for just an instant, and the critter pounced.

It cost me my favorite hat. No, I didn’t throw the damned thing at it—my cherished wide-brim fedora meant far too much for me to ever do something as drastic as that. However, sharp claws attempting to harpoon my skull and coming away with my preferred head cover instead certainly qualifies as a good reason not to mourn the loss.

At least it bought me time.

“
Hurry, Nick!
Run!”

“
I’m coming!” I said, after turning around and running as fast as I could along the precarious pathway. “You two keep moving!”

“
We
are!
Oh shit, it’s coming after you—
watch out!”

Marie was right...the bastard was pursuing me, crawling on its belly and snapping its menacing jaws at my feet. I felt the warmth of its breath upon my ankles. That spurred me on, and I sprinted blindly along the ledge, nearly falling into the abyss to my left more than once.

Despite Ishi and Marie’s head start, I soon caught up to where they were, a mere twenty feet ahead of me, as we raced along the narrow path that seemed to take us even deeper into the earth. The humid smell of mold and decay surrounded us, and the sound of rushing water grew louder and louder in the darkness further below.

This was a bad place, where horrible events had happened. Intricately menacing glyphs covered the walls around us, revealed ever so briefly in the reflected glow of our flashlights.

But what in the hell good would it do any of us if we ended up as mid-afternoon snacks for the enraged critter keeping pace close behind? That thought became especially pertinent when the path ended abruptly.

And I mean abruptly.

One moment we were running, and the next the three of us were balancing on the edge of a sheer drop. Below, a surging, underground river poured from one dark opening and disappeared into another. More interesting was the fact that the water was glowing slightly green. I had seen this effect before. The green water was lit by the surrounding phosphorescent lichen.

Little good that did us, considering the thing chasing us had just appeared behind us.

“
Oh, shit!” Marie murmured.

“
Oh, shit, indeed,” said I, casting an irritated glance at her before returning my gaze to the lizard-thing stealthily swaying back and forth. It prepared to launch itself at any of us.

Ishi looked wildly around himself and started speaking loudly in Tawankan. Sounded like gibberish even to me...but for some crazy reason, the critter suddenly backed off. It cocked its head as if mesmerized by Ishi’s tribal mumbo-jumbo.

Hell, if it works, why knock it? Keep the pied-piper act going, little brother!

Meanwhile, we still had nowhere to go...or did we?

Marie aimed her flashlight at the wall and began smiling nervously, and then she giggled.

“
What the hell’s up with you?” I demanded. I had no doubt that Barney the Luminescent Dragon would come out of his spell at any moment. “I didn’t sign up for this shit, and neither did Ishi!”

“
I think I’ve got it,” she said, looking relieved. “It makes sense when added to what I already knew about this place. I know what to do now.”

“
What in the hell are you talking about, now?”

This was getting weirder by the minute, and unfortunately Ishi’s spell on the Minotaur that looked like a lizard was fading. The sucker eyed us dangerously again.

“
We’re not far from the first chamber...the door is somewhere close to us,” she said, seemingly unaware of our renewed immediate danger. Her smile grew wider and her eyes almost sparkled with excitement. She looked damned sexy again. “Help me look for a small opening. A door, a lever...something! It’s got to be around here some place...”

And there it was.

“
Well, I be damned,” I whispered, reverently looking down into the surging, foaming water. My apprehension melted into amazement.

And then, more appropriately, fear.

Chapter Eleven

“
There,” I said, pointing down.

Marie, who had been searching the face of the wall for the doorway, followed my pointing finger. “Where are you pointing to? The water?”

“
Look, just below the surface, the dark opening.”

She looked, leaning out over the ledge—started shaking her head. “Oh, no. No way.”

She saw it as clearly as I did. The opening to another tunnel. Except this one was just below the foaming surface of the raging river. A shimmering black maw that awaited us.

“
You can’t be serious, Nick,” she said, standing, suddenly pale.

“
Hey, I didn’t make the rules.”

“
Compadre
,” said Ishi, mixing his Tawankan with some Spanish. “You think you might want to give me a hand here?”

I stepped around Marie, who was only too happy to have a little more space between herself and whatever was still bearing down on Ishi.

Not that I didn’t feel like we were moving in a blind panic. Still, a new vantage point allowed me a better assessment of the situation. And what I saw wasn’t good—and it certainly wasn’t natural.

Something new, and this thing creeping towards Ishi along the narrow ledge looked like a nightmare. No, it didn’t look like one.

It was a nightmare.

It had human-enough looking legs and torso. After that, things got really bizarre. It’s chest and arms were decidedly reptilian, and its head was for certain crocodilian. Or, as they’re called in these parts, caimans. Speckled caimans, in fact. Central and South America’s version of the crocodile. But it also resembled something else...something much more familiar.

What in the hell?

“
Nick...” muttered Ishi, backing away—and into me.

As I mentioned, the beast was easily a foot or two taller than me, which would put the damned thing at least seven or eight feet tall. A lot of that height came from its extended, scaled neck.

Sweet Jesus.

Marie was suddenly behind me. Apparently, I had backed away, too, and into her. I knew we were all inches away from tumbling over the ledge. Still, the hulking half-man, half-caiman approached us. Its eyes were emerald slits of fire. Unnatural, and yet, could have been enhanced by the ambient phosphorescent light emanating from the river below.

Without realizing it, I had removed my Bowie knife. My cherished weapon that I had completely forgotten about! It felt good in my hand. It always felt good in my hand. I had used it to protect myself from wild boars, rabid dogs and one or two cutthroats in town. I’ve hunted with it and mastered it. It was my preferred weapon and tool of the trade, and as instinct took over, I was glad it was waiting and ready in my hand.

I touched Ishi’s shoulder and my good friend jumped. But I needed my good friend out of the way, as I hate him fighting my fights.

He tore his frightened eyes off the approaching beast and looked at me. I had never known Ishi to be deeply scared—and especially not terrified to the core of his being. Then again, he and I had never faced such a walking nightmare.

I pointed to the knife and he got the idea. Without much room to maneuver in, he allowed me to step around him. Still, he stayed close behind me. Terrified or not, he wasn’t going far. I heard him unbuckle his own knife and slide it free.

“
What do you think it is?” he asked, whispering in my ear.

Marie heard him, and spoke behind us as I crouched lower, holding the knife out before me. The crocodile-man-thing paused only briefly, then picked up its speed as it approached.

“
Ciudad Blanca is
full of legend,” said Marie, her words reaching me almost as an afterthought. I was completely focused on the creature coming at me. “The ancient ones living within these caves have been rumored to have perfected something close to bio-engineering long ago, along with their mastery of darker energies.... I think it’s safe to say that these rumors were true.”

“
So this is the result of some ancient ritual gone bad?” I asked over my shoulder.

Her reply reached me distantly as the enraged critter sprinted toward us, its ghastly mouth fully open. “Those within
Ciudad Blanca
re-designed the human-genome to create hybrid human and animals.”

Good information to know...especially yesterday, or even on the trip down inside this apparent death trap. But right then? Well, it was a little late. As she finished uttering those words, the monster suddenly launched itself into the air, its talons flayed out.

I’m fairly certain it didn’t expect for me to leap as well. The beast and I crashed into each other in midair, and then landed hard on the slender ledge. There wasn’t any way to prevent tumbling together into the frigid water of the underground river.

Chapter Twelve

For a moment, I thought my final memory of this life would be of me drowning in the river’s unknown depths. The creature had a distinct advantage—an amphibian advantage, that is. Since it could easily outlast me under water, I didn’t have long before I’d either pass out from holding my breath, or endure the lizard-man’s menacing bite. Which would be worse? Yeah, I honestly asked myself that question, and when I decided I’d prefer to die intact rather than bleeding from a fatal wound, I made one last desperate move.

I relaxed my grip on it’s shoulders, hoping the damned thing would mistakenly think I had succumbed to its natural environment. I prayed like hell that it wasn’t near as cunning as it seemed earlier. The monster reared back in preparation to bite my head off clean from my shoulders, and I pretended to be unconscious. For a moment, my hair drifted over my eyes in the water. But I was far more ready to launch into an attack than I let on. If the sucker really did have any human qualities, then I’m sure a serious moment of shock flew through it’s brain as I deftly avoided its bite and then plunged the Bowie knife deep into its heart. If not for the soft, green glow surrounding us, I would’ve only felt the burst of warm blood spurting onto my arms in the cool depths of the river.