The Last Leopard (17 page)

He stood without moving. “Something’s wrong. The locals believe that after every leopard in Zimbabwe is gone, Khan will survive; that he’ll be the last leopard. They believe it because he’s so cunning. Remember what I told you about Tendai’s theory that people crossing rivers unconsciously walk in the direction they intend to travel, even if they’re trying not to?”

“That’s people,” Martine said. “Surely a leopard’s not capable of thinking like that?”

“Maybe not. But we already know that Khan is no ordinary leopard. His tracks show him heading southwest as he crosses the river and then when they appear again he’s going due south. What if he doubled back? What if he had the wit to jump onto the rock from the path, which would explain the way his claws seemed to have dug into the ground, and then he waded along the river for a while.”

Martine was frantic, but she knew that all the rushing in the world wouldn’t help if they misread the sign and ended up in the wrong place. “Okay,” she said. “It’s worth a try.”

Ten minutes later, Ben gave a triumphant shout. He’d found a series of upturned pebbles on the riverbank, about fifty yards along from where they’d started, their undersides black and moist from the wet clay. “That shows they’ve recently been turned,” he explained to Martine.

Next he spotted a ball of bloodstained cobwebs that had been wiped from a bush. From then on, they moved very quickly. After leaving the river, the leopard had started to bleed profusely, and tracking him, at least to Ben’s sharp eyes, was simply a matter of following the trail of blood. Ben jogged swiftly through the bush with Martine struggling to keep up. She could only just make out his blue T-shirt and jeans through the trees when she heard him shout, “Martine, I think he’s up here. Isn’t this Rock Rabbit Hill—the one Ngwenya told us about?”

A hand was clapped over her mouth. There was a faint smell of cologne mingled with tripe. Griffin! He pulled her off the path and into a ditch, making almost no sound.

On the path ahead, Ben tensed when Martine didn’t answer. He spun around. “Martine? Martine!”

He guessed immediately that she’d been snatched or worse. He sprinted back down the path and began studying the ground where he’d last seen her. So absorbed was he in his task that he didn’t see the hunters until he almost walked into them.

“What an unexpected pleasure,” drawled the duty manager from the Lazy J sourly, his bushy blond mustache twitching. He was with one of the guides who’d surrounded Ben and Martine in the forest.

Ben could still have made a break for it, but he didn’t want to go anywhere until he knew where Martine was or if the hunters themselves had taken her.

“Where’s your girlfriend?” the duty manager demanded in the next breath, answering one of Ben’s questions at least. “I have a score to settle with her.”

“I think she has a few to settle with you,” Ben replied coolly. “Unfortunately, she’s not here at the moment. She’s at Black Eagle Lodge with her grandmother, and the police are on their way to arrest you for trespassing.”

The duty manager laughed. “The police here are in the pay of Mr. Ratcliffe. whom you’ve grievously offended. If I were you I wouldn’t count on them to come riding in like knights on white chargers. They know we’re here. Now I’m going to ask you for the last time. Where’s your girlfriend? What were you yelling just now—Mary?”

“If you’re talking about my friend, her name is Susan,” Ben said. “And like I told you, she’s back at the retreat. I was calling for Mrs. Scott’s dog, Magnus. Maggy, I call him.”

In the ditch nearby, Martine listened in horror. If Griffin hadn’t been holding her in such a viselike grip, she would have burst from the ditch and confronted the hunters, regardless of the outcome.

“You’re a terrible liar,” the duty manager told Ben, “and if you continue to lie, you’re going to make me lose my temper.”

Ben folded his arms. “Well, you’re just going to have to lose it, then. If you think I’m lying, why don’t you try to find Susan yourself? I mean, can you see her anywhere?”

“No,” admitted the hunter. “But then I don’t see your dog around either.”

“That’s because he ran away when he saw the leopard,” Ben told him.

“The leopard!” cried the guide. “Where is the leopard?”

“The leopard you shot?” Ben said. “You mean you want me to tell you where he’s gone so you can finish him off. I don’t think so. Anyway, they’re expecting me back at Black Eagle. I need to go.”

The guide lifted his rifle menacingly. “You’re not going anywhere. You’re going to show us where the leopard is hiding.”

“And why in the world would I want to do that?” said Ben.

“Ernest, put down the gun and stop acting like a gangster,” the duty manager ordered gruffly. “Look, kid, you might not be aware of it, but there’s a bounty on the leopard’s head. A thousand dollars dead or alive. It’s yours if you can lead us to him.”

Ben grinned. “In that case, follow me.”

G
riffin waited until the only sound was the cooing of a lone dove before taking his hand from Martine’s mouth and pushing her none too gently out of the ditch. He’d taken off his white shirt and hat and was wearing his soiled black waistcoat and trousers. His face, neck, and bare arms were covered in swollen ant bites. He looked like the victim of some ghastly disease.

“You are lucky to have such a good friend,” he said. “Loyal friends who will stand by you no matter what, those are hard to come by these days.”

“Yeah, well, maybe if you’d gone to law school like your father says you wanted to, instead of hanging about with lowlifes looking for gold and diamonds that don’t belong to you, you might have met those kinds of friends,” Martine responded coldly.

“Papa remembered my dream?” Griffin said. A wistful expression flickered across his face, but then he shook himself and scowled. “You are too young to know anything about life. It is not always easy.”

He gave her a shove. “I was very prepared to be nice to you and your friend, but you tricked me and caused me to be attacked by the Enemy of Lions. Have you felt their bites? It is like being pierced by needles made red-hot in fire. So now you have two choices. You are going to help me, or you are going to pay. The leopard has been shot and the witch doctor says it is dying. Perhaps it is dead already. You will use your gift to locate Khan. Before the sun sets, the prophecy will be fulfilled. In the last resting place of the king of leopards I will find the king’s treasure.”

“The witch doctor told you that?” Martine felt a sense of disappointment. She’d really believed that he might change.

“No,” replied Griffin. “I tried to give the stubborn old drunk some wine in payment for a prediction, but he smashed it against a rock and became very abusive. He said that the leopard was dying and I was wasting my time. Luckily I found your footprints down by the river and followed you here.”

He jerked her arm. “Come, let’s go. Let’s find the leopard.”

Martine took a couple of steps along the path taken by Ben and the hunters, but Griffin wrenched her back so brutally that she winced in pain.

“No more tricks,” he shouted. “I heard your friend telling you that the leopard is on Rock Rabbit Hill. Start walking.”

The climb to the top of the fortress of rocks was agony for Martine. She was tired, hungry, and thirsty, and with every arduous step she expected to come across the bloody body of Khan and to have to deal with Griffin tossing it aside to scrabble for the king’s treasure.

She tried to think of an escape plan, but her brain was like mush. She didn’t even have the energy to sneak a hand into her survival kit—not that there was anything in it that could help her at this moment. And besides, Griffin was right on her heels. The witch doctor’s words kept running through her head. “You are bound together, but you will be torn apart. When that happens, look to the House of Bees.”

What
House of Bees? thought Martine.

A police siren wailed in the distance. It was so unexpected that Griffin, in mid-stride between two rocks, lost his footing and slipped.

Martine seized the opportunity to make a run for it. Somehow she had to get to the top of the hill and signal the distant police car. It was her only hope. Up she went, forcing one exhausted leg in front of the other. Griffin came scrambling after her. Martine felt like she sometimes did in dreams, when she was being pursued by an unknown assailant and her legs refused to work.

In seconds, Griffin would grab her, and this time there would be no Khan, Ben, or Ngwenya to save her. The sweat ran into her eyes, stinging them and blurring her vision. Through a red haze, she saw a swollen dark mass suspended from a tree. Black specks circled it.

The House of Bees! But how on earth was it going to save her? If she did anything to anger the bees, in the hope that they’d come to her aid by stinging Griffin, she’d probably be stung herself. But in the absence of any other option, it was a chance she’d have to take. She’d just have to grin and bear it.

Griffin grabbed at her ankle and missed. Martine scooped a rock as she dodged him and threw it with all her might. The rock hit the bees’ nest square on. It vibrated crazily, the black cloud of bees vibrating with it, before a great chunk of it plunged to earth.

The swarm swerved toward her with a hum so loud it resonated in her chest like a bass drum. Martine threw herself on the ground and lay motionless. There was a rush of whirring air as the bees swept over her, followed by a strangled yell as they descended upon Griffin. He turned and fled down the mountainside.

Martine got to her feet swaying, and stumbled on. Her sole intention was to make it to the top of the hill, where she could more easily be seen. She was almost there when she stepped on the piece of honeycomb that had broken off the nest. It stuck to her shoe. She paused to detach it, and that’s when it happened.

That’s when the ground gave way beneath her feet.

Her stomach was left behind, and she was falling, falling, falling, an avalanche of earth falling with her. Each time she thought she’d reached the bottom, the bottom would give way and she’d fall again.

When she did hit the ground it was with a nasty crunch, and yet still the avalanche kept coming. Moist, cool earth—earth that smelled of worms and rotting leaves—was filling her mouth, eyes, and ears, and as fast as she tried to spit it out or push it away, more came in. She was choking on it. She couldn’t breathe.

Seconds before the last chink of daylight was erased she saw Khan. He was trying to get to her through the debris, although whether he wanted to save her or attack her, she didn’t know. She just knew she was about to be buried alive.

Quite suddenly, everything was black and still. The roof stopped falling and she could breathe again. Gingerly, she tested her limbs. They were sore, but it didn’t feel as if anything was broken. Not yet at least. But who knew what Khan had in mind. Maybe he’d just chew her up whole. She strained her ears. Was he readying himself to pounce? She unzipped her survival kit and groped inside for her flashlight.

It was gone.

Disbelief and a panic so extreme she felt as if she’d been stabbed in the stomach hit Martine like a tidal wave. This couldn’t be happening. Through every adventure and every near-death disaster she’d experienced since arriving in Africa, she’d been kept going by the knowledge that there were tools in her survival kit that could save her. But it wasn’t only about what was in the pouch. It was that everything in it had been given to her by someone she cared for—by the Morrisons back in England, by Grace, Tendai, Gwyn Thomas, and even by Caracal School’s most infuriating boy, Claudius. Now it was almost empty.

Martine couldn’t understand it. The survival kit had been with her nearly every minute, apart from a few hours the previous night when she’d forgotten it by the fire after the crisis with baby Emelia. It was hard to believe that her pink flashlight, Swiss Army knife, and other items could have held any interest for the weary villagers. Then who? The witch doctor? She doubted it. The dogs? A roaming night animal?

A picture of fluttering eyelashes and a long yellow beak popped into Martine’s head. “Magnus!” she gasped.

The irony of it was too cruel. She’d escaped the human treasure seekers, only to be robbed by a treasure-seeking bird, and now she was alone in the blackness with the most dangerous animal on earth: a wounded leopard.

K
han gave a menacing growl that was somehow magnified by the dead air and the blinding dark. Martine tried to curl herself into a small ball. If she could have seen his eyes she could have attempted to use her gift to stop him from attacking her, but without light she could do nothing.

She couldn’t hear Khan, but she was certain he was very near. It would have been comforting to think that he could see as little as she did, but she knew leopards were nocturnal and had perfect night vision. He was probably watching her every move. An image of Khan on the first day she’d seen him came into her head, and the terror she’d felt when he smashed her to the ground, planted his great paws on either side of her chest, and drew back his whiskered lips in a snarl, returned with a vengeance now.