The Deadly Curse of Toco-Rey Read Free Page B

But instead of feelers, it had tiny, black ratlike eyes. On either side of its soft, gooey body, glistening skin extended outward to form winglike fins, much like those of a stingray. Tomás used the tip of his machete to snag a fin and extend it to show the Coopers.
    Lila came in and peered over everyone’s shoulder. “Wow . . .”
    â€œNot a slug, actually,” Dr. Cooper explained to his kids. “But it is a member of the mollusk family— and one of the strangest.”
    â€œDon’t touch it!” Tomás warned. “The slime is deadly poison, the same the Kachakas use to tip their darts.” He glanced quickly around the tent. “See? There is slime on the tent fabric and on some of the clothes. Be very careful. It will burn through your skin and kill you.”
    Without having to be told, they all backed carefully out of the tent and then checked their clothes for any traces of slime.
    â€œMost of it has dried up, which is good,” said Tomás. “It has to be fresh to burn through your skin.”
    â€œWhat was that thing doing in there?” Dr. Cooper wondered.
    â€œIt was probably attracted by the blood. Carvies are flesh eaters: They feed on dead animals, blood, meat of any kind. There were probably others in the tent last night. This one decided to sleep under the rags.”
    Jay shook his head. “So that’s one more thing to worry about—besides the biting insects, the poisonous snakes, and the hostile natives.”
    â€œHow far away is the Kachaka village?” asked Dr. Cooper.
    Tomás shrugged. “I have never been there. It’s somewhere beyond the ruins, I think. But the Kachakas claim all this land, and they aren’t happy that we’re here.” Tomás cocked his head toward the woods just beyond the camp. “The Corys have already learned that. Come this way.”
    They followed him into a small clearing. There, marked with crude wooden crosses, were three graves. “Ben Cory, John Cory, Brad Frederick,” said Tomás, pointing out each one. “Gone in one night, their treasure stolen.”
    Jacob Cooper had seen enough. “All right, let’s get these materials back to the compound and see if we can sort them out. And then we’ll watch a movie.”

    After hiking back to the compound, they ate a hurried dinner—roast pig cooked over the fire by Tomás’s coworkers—and then settled into their trailer to examine the notes left behind by the Corys. In the light of a gas lantern, Jay and Lila carefully cleaned, sorted, and stacked the materials, and Dr. Cooper laid them out in orderly fashion on the dinette table to study them.
    â€œHmm . . . ,” he said, using a small flashlight to illuminate some hard-to-read areas. “I’m impressed. The Corys put a lot of time into mapping out the ruins. Look here: Toco-Rey was built on top of the ruins of a previous city, which was built on top of the ruins of a previous city, and so it goes. It’s only about a mile square and used to be walled like a fortress. It would have been easy for Kachi-Tochetin to hole up there for years and defend his loot from his enemies.”
    Lila spotted a dark, square shape someone had drawn near the map’s eastern edge. “I’ll bet that’s the burial temple Ben Cory wrote about.” She leafed through a pile of freshly scrubbed materials and pulled out a ragged-edged notebook. “Yeah, take a look at this.”
    Dr. Cooper quickly flipped through the notebook, then compared the scribblings and sketches with the map on the table. “Lila, you’re right on the money. It is the burial temple. Ben Cory guessed they’d find the treasure there. He figured since Kachi-Tochetin was such a gold-hound, the old king probably had himself buried with it.”
    Jay produced some smaller maps, roughly drawn with pencil and now faintly bloodstained. “I think these maps