The Circle of Lies

by Crystal Velasquez

  “Nope,” Lin said. “First thing we do is get out of here! I don’t know about you guys, but I need a taco. Like, now!”

  At the mere mention of food, my stomach grumbled loudly. I leaned on my side and pressed my hand to my stomach as if trying to calm a wild animal. “Food sounds good to me,” I said, still trying to slow my breathing. “But then”—I looked at Ms. Benitez—“we can keep looking for my aunt and uncle, right?”

  “Girls,” Ms. Benitez said, remaining next to the fall of stones. “I cannot go with you.”

  “What?” Lin asked, looking at Ms. Benitez as if she had truly lost her mind. “What do you mean? We came all this way to rescue you.”

  “And you have,” Ms. Benitez said. “I’m so grateful for that. But if I leave now, Quetzalcoatl may rise again and prove to be a powerful ally to Anubis. I can make sure that doesn’t happen, but to do so I have to perform a complicated spell as Ixchel. I must stay here for a few days to make sure Quetzalcoatl is gone for good.”

  Lin nodded limply, too tired to argue.

  Ms. Benitez turned to me and said, “Ana, I am so sorry that I didn’t make any progress finding your aunt and uncle. I really thought whatever force was pulling me here may have pulled them as well. But I was wrong.”

  “That’s all right,” I said. “I’m glad they weren’t here. If they had been, Quetzalcoatl could’ve attacked them, too, and there’s no way they would’ve been prepared for that. Plus,” I added softly, “I was wrong about something too.”

  I told her about the fake phone call that I’d thought was from my aunt but was really just a ploy to lure us to the gym. I told her how Shani had saved us and gotten expelled and shipped off to Mumbai for her troubles. “I should never have gone to the gym, but my aunt told me she wanted to have it out with me once and for all,” I told her tearfully. “I had to know for sure whether it was her.”

  “Dear Ana,” said Ms. Benitez gently, “I am positive that was just one of Anubis’s tricks. Your aunt loves you tremendously and would never speak to you that way. Trust that from now on. Anubis may try to use her against you again in the future. But if you hold on to what you know in your heart is true, he won’t succeed.”

  Somehow she always knew exactly what to say. I knew deep down that she was right—I guess I’d known it all along—but sometimes you just need to hear the words out loud. I wiped away my tears and hugged her.

  After she pulled away, Ms. Benitez looked at Lin and Doli. “I’m sorry I can’t be of more help. I hope you understand why I have to stay.”

  Doli nodded. “It’s okay, Ms. Benitez. We’ll just go back to Cancún and look for Ana’s aunt and uncle on our own. If we don’t find them, we’ll go back to school and wait to hear from you.”

  Ms. Benitez started to speak, but suddenly her eyes turned a dark plum color, and she lifted her gaze to the ceiling. “Wait. You cannot go to Cancún!” she whispered intensely.

  I frowned. “Why not?”

  “Can you not feel it?”

  I stopped to focus on my body. Now that she had mentioned it, I did feel a tingling in my spine, sort of like I had the very first time the jaguar and I had become one.

  Lin’s eyes widened and she slapped at her back as if there were a hive of bees buzzing on her shoulder. “I sure feel it! What is this?” she cried, clearly freaked out.

  “It is the call of your sister cat. You must go to Mumbai tonight,” Ixchel insisted. “Shani needs you!”

  chapter 12

  Shani

  THE LINE TO ENTER THE temple moved quickly. I was grateful for that, since the man who’d given me the tea was still watching with concern from his stall. Before I was allowed in, a guard patted me down and had me pass through a metal detector. Too bad none of the things I was afraid of could be kept out by a metal detector. I wondered if maybe entering the temple alone was a bad idea. I was used to having the other Wildcats as backup in case anything bad happened. But they were all miles and miles away. I had to handle this one on my own.

  Once I got inside, I felt silly for having been nervous. I didn’t see any sign of the Brotherhood at all. The lobby was filled with flowers and soft candlelight. A man with bright orange cloth wrapped around his body instructed people to remove their shoes and place them in a stand of cubbyholes like those you would see in a bowling alley. I tiptoed past him, hoping I could keep my shoes on. These days I never knew when I’d have to run.

  Tour groups clustered around their guides, who whispered in various languages what each relic and fountain meant to the culture. A man wearing an AUSSIE AND PROUD T-shirt tried to take a picture, but a guard rushed over and pointed to a sign expressly forbidding cameras or laptops, in addition to loud talking, gum chewing, or inappropriate clothing, whatever that meant. The guard directed the tourist over to a row of lockers, where he could turn in his camera or leave. Guess it’s a good thing I don’t have anything on me, I thought. For once, not having my usual techno gadgets worked in my favor.

  While most people gravitated toward the large statue of Shree Ganesh, the destroyer of obstacles, who looked like a large red elephant, my eye wandered to a small glowing chamber off to the side of the main temple, separated from it by a metal gate. I walked in to find myself alone with a single statue. I didn’t know much about Hindu gods, but I was sure I had seen this one before. He had long hair piled on top of his head and sleepy, half-open eyes. He sat cross-legged with one hand on his knee and the other raised, his palm facing me. His skin was a soft green, and he had a calm, knowing look on his face. As I moved through the room, his eyes seemed to follow me. I looked at his forehead and was startled to see a third eye there.

  “That’s Shiva,” a girl whispered to me. “He’s the destroyer of worlds.”

  I turned to look at her, startled to find someone standing next to me. I had been completely alone just a second ago. Where had she come from? I noted her dark skin and thin frame. She smiled, and suddenly she looked familiar. Hadn’t Kiah’s friend, the one who’d giggled at me earlier, had two front teeth that overlapped like this girl’s? Was it possible she had trailed me here?

  “How did you know I spoke English?” I asked.

  She pointed to my feet. “Those sneakers. Sure sign of an American.”

  I looked down and winced, wondering if it was disrespectful to wear my Chuck Taylors into a temple. She was barefoot, which is why I hadn’t heard her enter the room. “Actually, I’m from Egypt,” I told her, “but I’ve been going to school in America.”

  The girl sniffed. “It shows.”

  Huh, I thought. That was definitely not a compliment. The old me would have immediately tried to find a way to cyber-sabotage her. But look where that kind of thinking had gotten me. Instead I said, “So, destroyer of worlds, huh? Sounds pretty scary,” hoping to change the subject.

  The girl shrugged and replied, “He’s not all bad.”

  I eyed her with one raised eyebrow. “How can a destroyer of the world be good?”

  “Easy,” she said. “If that world has become corrupt, then destroying it and transforming it into something new isn’t a bad thing.” She gave me a mysterious smile and padded out of the room.

  When I turned back to the statue, I froze. The arm that had been raised toward me was now folded in its lap. What the . . . Was I hallucinating again? Was I awake? I backed out of the room until my back pressed against the gate. I didn’t want to take my eyes off Shiva in case he moved again, but I did, just long enough to see that the gate I’d come through moments before was now closed and padlocked. Did someone lock me in here by accident? Or had this been the work of the girl who’d just left—her way of punishing me for being the tacky American she thought I was? Either way, I was trapped!

  “HELP!” I yelled, at the risk of disrespecting the temple. If someone had locked me in here, then the temple didn’t have much respect for me. I tried to crane my head so I could peer into the main temple. There was no sign of the girl I had spoken to. It was as if she had
vanished into thin air. Meanwhile there were people everywhere—guards, tourists, worshippers from Mumbai—but none of them seemed to hear me screaming at the top of my lungs and rattling the padlocked gate. My heart started to beat wildly in my chest. Something wasn’t right. Not right at all. I backed away from the gate, suddenly sure that this had Anubis written all over it.

  Then I heard a screech from the ceiling and my stomach clenched. No! It couldn’t be. . . . How would the Chaos Spirits have found me here? Unless they had been following me all along?

  I looked up just in time to see an eagle zooming toward me, its razor-sharp talons reaching for my face. I wanted to scream, to run, but I was frozen in place. For a moment time crept by, like this was all happening in slow motion. Fifteen feet away, the eagle’s murderous yellow eyes, large as quarters, burned into me. Ten feet away, its yellow claws and curved black talons, like the glistening horns of a raging bull, reached out for me. Five feet away, I stood transfixed as my own death approached. . . .

  But at the last second I thought, What are you doing? MOVE! I ducked a split second before the crushing talons could tear the flesh right off my face. The eagle, missing me by mere inches, crashed into the metal gate with a clang! It dropped to the floor, giving me just enough time to transform into a lion.

  Shape-shifting in the temple was probably a big-time faux pas, but I had no choice. The strange thing was that I barely had to try to transform. It came naturally. Either I was just getting better at it, or transforming was easier in a place of spiritual power.

  Whatever the reason, I was glad because the eagles were multiplying faster than I could count. They filled up the room, perching on the windowsill, on top of the statue, clinging to the gate. . . . Their scent—a mix of smoke and something rancid—invaded my nostrils. They weren’t attacking yet. They were showing me they could take their time with me, that I was hopelessly outnumbered. My whole body quaked, and I felt tears leak from my eyes and dampen the fur on my face. I had never been so scared in my whole life.

  But then, unexpectedly, my fear turned to anger. I am a freaking Wildcat! If I was going to go down, I could at least go down fighting. I scratched my own claws against the floor and let out a queen-of-the-jungle lion roar. Bring it on, birdbrains! In a flash I was on the nearest eagle, rearing up on my hind legs and crushing it with my weight. I trapped its wings under my paws and clamped my jaws around its neck, and shook it until it snapped. That seemed to animate the rest of the eagles, who all took flight at once, battering me with their huge wings and pecking me with their beaks. One rammed me from the side, knocking me onto my back, while another landed right on my soft belly and dug its talons in. The pain was so intense that I yowled. But then I slammed my heavy paw into the bird, dislodging it from my stomach and shattering its beak in three places.

  I got to my feet, feeling my blood seep out of fresh wounds and onto the floor. At least this way they couldn’t gut me. But they swooped in over and over, clawing and scratching at my head and back. I kept up the fight for as long as I could, but my breathing was coming in shallow gasps, and I was missing patches of fur where the eagles had ripped it out by the roots. Eventually they outnumbered me by so many, I couldn’t tell one eagle from another. The room seemed to be filled with brown feathers, glistening talons, and yellow beaks. I was bringing down a bird or two at a time, but when they decided to go in for the kill, it would be easy. Oh my God! I thought. I’m actually going to die here!

  I wondered if Doli, Ana, and Lin would feel it somehow. I hoped so. Otherwise, my dad would never know what happened to me, and he didn’t deserve that. I hoped he wouldn’t be too upset at this final screwup of mine—coming to the temple alone. Regrets tumbled through my head. I wish I’d been nicer. I wish I’d tried harder. I wish I had told my mom that I loved her. I wish I’d helped Ana find her aunt and uncle. . . .

  Thinking of my friends and the mission we had been charged with made me want to keep fighting. I opened my eyes, looking for a weapon, anything I could use to even the odds a little. That was when I spotted a glowing hole in the floor beside the statue of Shiva. I was positive it hadn’t been there earlier, but it was there now. Maybe the temple gods were trying to help me.

  I struggled to my feet and ran with everything I had toward that hole in the floor. I felt an eagle’s talon shred a tear along my spine, but I didn’t stop. I couldn’t. Now, diving into a magically appearing hole in a temple floor would probably not be a good idea to some people—or most people—but for me at that moment, it was the only choice I had if I wanted to live to fight another day. Dying was not an option—I had to get out of there alive!

  Finally I reached the hole and saw a set of stairs leading down beneath the temple. I didn’t think twice. I galloped down the stairs, hearing the eagles beat their wings uselessly against the floor above. Some force was keeping them at bay. When I reached the bottom, I collapsed, drinking in deep breaths. But only a second or two passed before a pair of rough hands with long nails grabbed me by my neck and threw me across the room—hard.

  I saw stars and let out a whimper. My back felt like it was on fire, and blood oozed from a dozen wounds all over my body. If the eagles hadn’t been able to come down here, then who had grabbed me? I slowly opened my eyes and stumbled to my feet, hissing in pain. All around me were wire bars. I was in a cage! Beyond the bars was a small room, lit by torches that filled the place with a cloying heat. I could see the engravings on the walls, some of them wooden panels—giant serpents swallowing men whole, people being stabbed with pitchforks by gleeful little pixie demons, pushing them off a cliff into the flames below. . . . And words in many languages were etched deep into the walls, some stained with blood. And just beyond the stairs, half-hidden in shadow . . .

  A wooden throne sitting atop an altar of white stones and dark wood. No, not stones, I thought, focusing my eyes. Human skulls and bones.

  No, no, no, no . . . , I cried in my head, pawing at the bars. I was in a temple that belonged to the Brotherhood of Chaos. How could I have been so stupid? All the signs had been there—the artifact found in the wrong place, the temple already endowed with spiritual power. . . . What had I been trying to prove by coming here alone, just to confirm what was so obvious? I’d walked right into their trap!

  I had gotten myself into this mess, and now my only hope was to get rescued. I didn’t know if the others would be able to hear me from so far away, especially if they were in their human forms right now, but I had to try. Doli, Ana, Lin, Ixchel . . . HELP!

  I could smell the rancid scent of rotting flesh. Behind me I heard metal clinking and something locking into place, like a key being turned. I spun to see what it was—hoping against hope that I wasn’t about to see what I thought I was going to see. But there, in all his evil glory, was a creature that had haunted my dreams for weeks before I’d gotten to school—and then had appeared in the Brotherhood’s HQ beneath Temple. The clawed feet of a beast, the muscular legs and broad dark chest of a man wrapped in filthy gauze strips, and the head of a jackal wearing a glimmering Egyptian head dress. Anubis!

  “Well, well, well,” he said, leering at me with an evil smile that showed off two rows of razor-sharp teeth. “We meet again, Wildcat. And without all your little friends. Pity.”

  He held up the skeleton key he’d just used to lock me in.

  I growled and clawed at him through the bars, but he backed away, his long nails scraping against the stone floor. He was out of reach. If only I could reach him, I would . . . I would . . . Probably get killed. I let out a roar full of anger and despair.

  He laughed, as if my rage were music to his ears. “Now, now,” he said. “No need for that. You’re trapped now, you see. I’m so glad you were able to find my temple, though I daresay you had some help from friends of mine who steered you in the right direction.”

  I thought of the dogs, the birds, the girl who’d stood beside me in front of Shiva. They were all in on it. Had my seeing the newspaper article a
bout the artifact being found at the temple even been an accident? Maybe Kiah had laid it out for me to find, knowing it would lead me here.

  “Centuries ago,” Anubis continued, “the lion Wildcat helped lock the Hindu god Shiva inside the statue you saw upstairs. It was a wrong that I will soon make right. At midnight I shall bring Shiva back to life to take his rightful place among the Brotherhood of Chaos! And you, my captive lion”—he reached one long clawed finger between the wires of the cage and scraped his disgusting black nail down my face—“you will help me make it happen.”

  chapter 13

  Ana

  WHEN THE PLANE TOUCHED DOWN at a small private airport in Mumbai that night, the tingling in my spine returned with a vengeance. It had taken a whole day to fly there from Cancún, so it was a relief to feel Shani’s presence. We’re coming, Shani, I thought, hoping she could hear me.

  Antonio maneuvered into a hanger barely bigger than the plane and came to a stop.

  “Please tell me we’re here,” Lin said. “This tingling in my spine is driving me nuts. The sooner we find Shani, the better.”

  “Seriously,” Doli added. “Next time one of you sister cats needs me, just pick up a phone and call.”

  “Look, I know this magical connection stuff is annoying,” I replied, looking at the night sky through the small oval window, “but as long as we feel it, it must mean Shani is alive. And if my instincts are right, we need to get to her right away.”

  After Antonio escorted us off the plane, he looked around uncertainly, as if he were reluctant to let us go. “So you’re going straight to Mr. Massri’s house now, yes?”

  “Yes, and Ms. Benitez said she’ll be meeting us here as soon as she can,” I said.

  “You know, to help us with our, um, research project,” Lin added.

  Antonio quirked his lip, tilting his head and regarding us from the corner of his eyes. “Right, research project,” he said, as if he knew exactly what we were up to. Ms. Benitez had been the one to call him and tell him to take us to Mumbai, so maybe he really did know. It wasn’t easy figuring out who we could trust, but I had a strong feeling that Antonio was on our side. I hoped so, since I was leaving the vase along with our bags on the jet. We didn’t know what we’d be facing, but it seemed best to travel light.