dared to fire a shot.
But the cats did not attack.
It was as if the humans were protected from them by some kind of invisible wall—a wall which the rapas simply refused to cross. Rather, they just followed Race and the others at a safe distance, paralleling them as they made their way toward the riverside path.
Christ, they're huge! Race thought, as he made his way through the ranks of massive black cats.
The last time he had seen them up close he had been on the other side of the Humvee's glass windows, but now— now that they were all around him, with no windows or doors separating them from him—they looked twice as big.
He could hear their breathing. It was just as Alberto Santiago had described it—a deep-chested braying sound like that of a horse. The sound of a powerful beast.
'Why don't we just shoot them?' Copeland whispered.
'I wouldn't go doing that too quickly,' Van Lewen replied. 'At the moment, I think their dislike of monkey urine overrides their desire to kill us. If we open fire on them, I think it's likely that their desire to survive will override their dislike of monkey urine.'
The eight of them made their way up the riverside path and into the narrow fissure in the plateau, the rapas following them at a distance.
They emerged from the passageway at the bottom of the crater and saw the shallow lake stretching away from them, with the rock tower soaring into the sky from its centre and the thin but incredibly tall waterfall pouring down from the south-west corner of the canyon.
For once it wasn't raining, and the full moon shone down on the crater with all its strength, bathing it in a kind of mystical blue light.
Led by Van Lewen, they climbed the spiralling path, up into the night.
The rapas slunk their way up the spiralling path behind them. With their dark black heads and high pointed ears, they looked like demons climbing up out of Hell itself, ready to yank Race and his companions down into the depths of the earth should any of them make one false step.
But ultimately they just kept their distance, put off by the smell of the monkey urine.
At last the group came to the two buttresses that had once held up the rope bridge.
The rope bridge itself now lay flat against the wall of the tower on the other side of the ravine, exactly where the Nazis had left it.
Race looked across at the tower top. There was no sign of Buzz Cochrane anywhere.
Then, however, instead of crossing over onto the rock towerqwhich, at present, they couldn't do anyway— Van Lewen led them further up the spiralling path, toward the rim of the crater.
The path slid around and behind the thin waterfall at the south-western corner before it rose dramatically, arriving at the rim of the crater.
Race stepped up onto the rim and looked westward— and saw the majestic peaks of the Andes towering above him, dark triangular shadows superimposed on the night sky. Off to his left, he saw the small river that fed the thin waterfall and alongside it, a section of dense rainforest.
A narrow muddy path—created by constant use rather than any deliberate design—ran away from him into the thick green foliage.
But it was what sat on either side of the slender path that seized his immediate attention—a pair of wooden stakes, driven into the mud.
Impaled on each stake was a fearsome-looking skull.
Race felt a chill as he shone his barrel-mounted flashlight onto one of the skulls.
It looked utterly horrific—an effect magnified by the copious amounts of fresh blood and rotting flesh that dangled from its sides. It was oddly shaped too—definitely not human. Rather, both skulls were strangely elongated, with sharp canine teeth, inverted triangular nostrils and wide eye sockets.
Race swallowed hard.
They were feline skulls.
They were rapa skulls.
“A primitive “Keep Out” sign,' Krauss said, looking at the
two filthy skulls impaled on the stakes.
'I don't think they're meant to keep people out,' Gaby Lopez said, sniffing one of the skulls. 'They've been drenched in monkey urine. They're designed to keep the cats away.'
Van Lewen stepped past the skulls and pressed on into the dense foliage. Race and the others followed him, guided by the beams of their flashlights.
About thirty yards beyond the two skulls, Van Lewen and Race came to a wide moat not unlike the one that sur rounded Vilcafor.
The only differences between the two moats were, firstly, that this moat wasn't dried up—rather, it was filled with .water, the surface of which lay about fifteen feet below the rim of the moat. And secondly, it was inhabited by a family of very large caimans.
'Great,' Race said as he watched the giant crocodilians prowling around the bottom of the moat. 'Caimans again.'
'Another defensive mechanism?' Renee asked.
