Cult of the Black Jaguar Read online

  A cenote, an ancient Mayan well.

  “Do it.” Hector Veracruz’s voice.

  The hands pulled and pushed. His body teetered at the edge of the cenote. Ethan closed his eyes again. A final push, then peaceful oblivion. All his pain and sorrow would be gone.

  There’s still time to make the right decision. This time he knew the thought was his own, even if it sounded like the professor’s voice. As always, the professor served as his conscience, his moral compass.

  Damn you, Heathcliff!

  With his last ounces of strength, he clutched at Popi’s shirt just as the two guards let him go, and together they toppled into the blackness.

  Free…

  Rory Amos watched in horror as the two men disappeared into the cenote’s opening. Popi’s wordless scream echoed up from of the ancient tunnel and then stopped, cut off by death or distance. Not that it mattered. Cenotes could be hundreds of feet deep, and usually led to underground lakes or rivers that eventually fed into the ocean. There was no surviving a drop like that.

  “Watch the others!” Veracruz shouted to Luz. He ran to the edge of the cenote and peered into the Stygian darkness.

  “That’s the way, Ethan,” Rory said, anger and sorrow filling his voice. “At least you took one of the bastards with you.”

  Despair washed over him in a black wave. Ethan was gone. The professor was somewhere inside the temple, dragged there by Ix Chel herself, most likely for some sadistic ritual.

  That left him and Elton Harrison, and it didn’t look good for them, waiting their turn to be thrown into the bottomless well.

  Veracruz let out a short exclamation of fear and stepped back from the opening. Dark spatters of liquid ran down the man’s face, and a larger stain stood out on his green shirt. Something flew out of the hole and bounced off the stone wall surrounding the cenote. It took Rory a moment to recognize the object, and even then he couldn’t believe it.

  Popi’s head?

  A bellow of pure rage sounded within the cenote. The insensate anger in the long, drawn-out cry brought terrified howls from the jaguars in the jungle.

  A figure emerged from the pit, flying upwards into the night sky. Wide, leathery wings blotted the stars as the creature banked and turned back towards the gathered humans.

  “Good Lord!” Harrison fell down and threw his arms over his head.

  Hector Veracruz’s shotgun roared once, twice. The smaller, sharper reports of Luz’s pistol followed, both men trying futilely to aim at the swooping, soaring figure overhead.

  There was a pause while the two men reloaded. In that instant, the dark figure landed in front of Luz. Muscular arms, covered in lizard-like scales, shot out and long, curved talons stabbed into the man’s neck and chest. The snarling beast pulled him forward to where a gaping mouth full of triangular teeth waited.

  Luz had time to utter a single bleat of terror before monstrous jaws closed on his neck and tore it away. Blood spurted in all directions. It splashed across Hector Veracruz’s face, and he dropped the shotgun to wipe frantically at his eyes with both hands.

  The creature tossed Luz’s corpse to the side, and Amos was finally able to get a good look at it.

  It stood well over six feet tall, on powerfully built legs. Under the tattered remnants of a tan safari shirt and pants, its chest was broad and hairless. A fine patina of scales covered the entire body, reflecting the torchlight in a myriad of tiny starbursts.

  On top of the thick neck sat a head with a massive, broad snout like a bear’s. Tall, pointed ears rose up on either side of its head. Its eyes burned red as coals, aflame with a malevolent hate that turned Rory’s legs to rubber.

  Veracruz fell to his hands and knees. He scuttled backwards, shouting “Diablo! Diablo!”

  The demonic presence looked past the jaguar cultist and spoke, its rough voice thick and clotted with Luz’s blood, its words bent into strange shapes from being forced out of an inhuman mouth.

  “Rory, go back to the temple. Find the professor and Jenny. I’ll take care of Ix Chel.”

  The creature grabbed Veracruz with one clawed hand, unfurled its wings, and rose swiftly into the air.

  “Did you hear…those clothes…it’s not possible.” Harrison grabbed at the wall of the cenote to support himself, still staring in the direction where the monster had disappeared.

  “We’ve seen a lot tonight that isn’t possible. Whatever, whoever, that thing was, it had the right idea. We’ve got to save Jenny and the professor.”

  “The professor’s dead! And so is Jenny.” Harrison’s voice trembled with a note of hysteria. “What we’ve got to do is get the hell out of here before…that thing comes back for us.”

  Rory wrapped two fists in the scientist’s shirt and hauled him forward. “You can either come with me or stay here. But I’m not giving up yet.”

  He let go of Harrison. Although the cenote lay at the far edge of the city, he could still see the Temple de Sangre rising above the other ruins. Fires burned at the top, a deadly beacon in the darkness.

  As he ran through the ancient streets, he prayed he wouldn’t have to be the one to tell the winged demon the professor was dead.

  At the temple’s peak, Ethan found himself in a scene from Guatemala’s barbaric past. Jenny lay unconscious on a stone altar, her hands and feet tied to iron spikes set into the solid rock.

  Signs of a struggle were evident. Scratches marred her porcelain skin and her robe was in tatters. Her hair, its fiery color enhanced by the blazing torches, spread out beneath her head like a fan of spun bronze.

  Ix Chel stood with her back to Ethan, chanting a prayer to her foul gods. Her raised hands clutched an obsidian blade that appeared blood-red as it reflected the light of the fires.

  Ethan leaped from the window ledge onto the Priestess’s back, knocking her away from the altar. He’d expected his attack to stun the woman, but she twisted underneath him and brought the blade up and into his stomach.

  It wasn’t a disabling blow, but the pain was enough to wring a cry from him as he rolled away from her.

  He quickly rose to his feet, the wound already closing, only to find himself facing a different enemy.

  The diminutive teenager with the beautiful face was gone. In her place was a beast half jaguar and half human, with a flattened muzzle where her nose and mouth once were.

  Ebony fur covered her entire body. Although she stood on her hind legs, her knees and ankles held a feline, not human, shape, lending a pronounced crouch to her posture. Her hands and feet were now tremendous paws, each digit longer than a man’s finger and tipped with a wicked-looking claw as sharp as any blade.

  Her chest still bore the rounded outline of a woman’s figure, but now twin lines of teats poked through the fur of her belly. A long, twitching tail extended behind her.

  In the cat-like visage of her metamorphosed face, her wild, amber eyes finally seemed at home.

  “So the legends are true,” Ethan growled. He held his hands outwards, ready for the were-jaguar’s attack.

  Ix Chel’s response was a wall-shaking howl as she sprang.

  Ethan met her attack, gripping her shoulders with his claws even as her own dagger-like nails gouged his scaly flesh. Her momentum carried them backwards into the altar, and Ethan leaned back, using his leverage to kick out with his legs and send the she-beast across the chamber. She hit the far wall with a grunt and regained her balance with lightning speed.

  A wicked grin spread across her short snout, white fangs standing out against black fur.

  As if by some secret signal, the two mythical creatures leaped at each other once more, claws and teeth fighting to inflict damage. Blood flew and animal voices roared.

  Behind them, Jenny moaned as consciousness slowly returned.

  More than a hundred feet below, Rory Amos and Elton Harrison stared up a
t the epic battle going on in the altar chamber.

  “Jenny’s up there. She’s still alive.” Rory pointed.

  “It will take us forever to reach her. I don’t think my legs can make it up those stairs.”

  “Maybe there’s another way. Don’t these pyramids always have a secret entrance?”

  “How should I bloody know? I’m a doctor, not an archeologist.” Nevertheless, the two of them circled the temple, looking for any sign of a hidden doorway.

  What they found instead was a wide-open entrance set into the rear wall.

  “That must be how they got Jenny up there. C’mon!” Rory grabbed a torch and led the way inside.

  “Mr. Amos, let’s not be hasty. That Veracruz fellow might be somewhere around here…”

  “He is.” Amos motioned with the torch.

  On the floor just past the entrance lay Hector’s body. Blood ran from ragged bite marks in his neck and deep furrows carved into his chest, and one arm sat at an unnatural angle.

  Harrison brought his own torch down for a closer look, then jumped back when the body opened its eyes.

  “Diablo,” Veracruz whispered, before falling back into unconsciousness.

  “Leave him,” Rory said. “We need to get to the top before it’s too late.”

  They moved across the wide chamber, their torches revealing pictographs depicting violent, bloody scenes of battle, jaguars and humans fighting side-by-side against other tribes. The flickering firelight gave the impression of movement and made the brutal carvings come to life. Always in the background of each scene, looming over everything, was the Temple de Sangre.

  The two men ducked through an archway and emerged into a smaller chamber. Dark shapes lay strewn about the floor.

  “Now what the hell?” Harrison muttered. He bent for a closer look. “Jesus! They’re dead bodies. Mummies.”

  “Forget them, I found the way up,” Rory said, motioning towards a staircase carved into the inside walls of the pyramid.

  Unlike the exterior stairs with their narrow, high steps, the interior stairs were of normal dimensions.

  The spiraling ascent left them winded and with shaking legs. Rory was the first to emerge into the sacrificial chamber, and then had to duck as two monstrous shapes rolled past him, locked in combat.

  “Hurry!” He reached down and helped Harrison from the stairs. They hid behind the altar.

  “Now what?” Harrison asked.

  Before Amos could answer, the jaguar creature rose up on its hind legs and dove forward, driving the demon into the staircase opening.

  Together they fell through, their furious cries diminishing as they tumbled into space.

  “Now we untie Jenny and get the hell out of here.”

  Ix Chel’s grip prevented Ethan from unfurling his wings as they plummeted down through the pyramid. With the ground coming up fast, he managed to twist their bodies so he landed to one side instead of beneath her.

  Even so, the impact knocked him senseless. He fought the blackness, knowing that if Ix Chel recovered before him, he was finished.

  He pulled himself to his knees and fought for breath. Around him lay the mummified bodies of ancient Mayans. He also smelled fresh blood. Hector’s.

  “Don’t kill her.”

  The hoarse whisper startled Ethan. He looked around the room until he saw Heathcliff Pascal leaning against a wall.

  “Professor?” Ethan wasn’t sure he could believe his eyes. The smell of the man was different.

  Feline.

  “Ethan, listen to me. I was wrong. She is the last of her kind. Leave her. Take Jenny and others, and just go.”

  “Professor, what did she do to you?” Ethan let his body return to his human form as he moved across the room.

  “The one thing I’d never allowed you to do.” Pascal shook his head. “Hurry. I can feel the changes taking place inside me. Soon I won’t be…I won’t be my own man.”

  Heathcliff held out something. “Here.” It was Ethan’s long-barrel Colt. “Do it, before she awakens.”

  “No. If I kill her now…”

  “You care for the historian.”

  Ix Chel’s voice turned Ethan around. She stood near the stone staircase. Human again, she’d pulled her long hair forward over her shoulders to cover her nakedness.

  “Yes.”

  “He was dying.” She walked slowly around the staircase, keeping her distance. Each step revealed, and then hid, portions of her body.

  Ethan knew it for the truth. He said nothing.

  “I saved him.”

  “You made him a slave.” Ethan’s hand tightened on the gun. Every gift came with a price; Ethan’s was the beast within him, the demon that craved hot, fresh blood. The granting of immortality was a long and painful process for both parties, one he’d have gladly endured to keep his old friend around forever. Except the professor had never craved it, had never wanted to be anything other than mortal.

  Ix Chel’s gift was different, but no less monstrous. The professor would be bound to her forever.

  “No.” The Priestess shook her head. “He is not yet mine. I have the power to bring life from death. All I need is blood. One more sacrifice, and anyone who shares my blood”—she spread her arms at the mummified corpses around them—“will rise again. When they do, your friend will be young and healthy once more, as I have already given him some of myself.”

  A musky scent filled the air, full of dark promises. Ethan struggled against the primeval lust it raised in him.

  “So to save the father you must kill the daughter? I can’t allow that.”

  “I can.” Hearing Jenny’s voice cleared his head. She descended the last few steps into the chamber, Amos and Harrison behind her.

  “No, my child,” Heathcliff gasped. “I couldn’t live with myself knowing it was your death that gave me life.”

  “And I couldn’t go on, knowing you died because of me,” she said.

  Ethan watched as she went to her father. Even Ix Chel’s animal magnetism was no match for Jenny’s beauty. She’d tied one remnant of her robe around her waist in a makeshift skirt, while another draped over her chest, a reverse cape that did little to hide any of her secrets.

  He fought to turn his attention away from her.

  “There must be another way. If it’s blood you need, why not take mine?” He held out his arm to the Mayan Priestess.

  She shook her head, and he could almost believe true sadness shone in her eyes. “It is not just the blood. It is the life energy. Only a virgin will do, for theirs is the most powerful life force.”

  “What happens if you can’t make your sacrifice?”

  “Your friend will die. My people will die. There are limits to what even I can do. Until you came to me, I feared I would live out the rest of my life in solitude.”

  “No, Priestess, I will not fail you!” Hector Veracruz stumbled forward, an obsidian blade in his hand, blood running from his chest. “Her blood shall be yours!”

  Ethan moved as fast as he could, but the distance was too far. Hector lunged. Someone screamed.

  Ethan reached out and twisted Hector’s head back and to the side. There was a wet snap, and the man fell to the floor.

  Next to the body of Elton Harrison.

  The obsidian knife stuck out of Harrison’s chest. Bright blood pumped out, spilling across his shirt.

  Ethan knelt down by the body, touched his fingers to the neck. “No pulse. He was braver than we gave him credit for.”

  “Oh, shit.” Amos’s curse made Ethan look up.

  All around them, the mummies were rising to their feet. Like a film played at twice-normal speed, their dried, wrinkled flesh filled out and grew smooth. Brittle hair regained its youthful luster, and skeletal faces turned into human visages.

  Two dozen sets
of amber-colored eyes stared at them, and then the reborn priests and soldiers knelt and bowed to their priestess.

  Ethan turned to Ix Chel. “You said it had to be Jenny.”

  The priestess appeared as surprised as anyone. “No. I said the sacrifice needed to be a virgin. Your friend…” She stopped speaking, waved a hand at Harrison’s body. “I did not know.”

  “Ethan.” Heathcliff Pascal’s voice, strong and full of vigor, drew everyone’s attention.

  “Professor?”

  “Father!”

  The man Jenny Pascal threw herself against looked much as he had when Ethan first met him, more than thirty-five years earlier. With one small difference.

  His previously sky-blue eyes were now a rich honey-golden color, with tall, narrow pupils.

  The eyes of a jaguar.

  Heathcliff pulled himself away from Jenny’s enthusiastic embrace. “Ethan, we must speak. Alone.”

  Ethan’s stomach dropped. There could be only one reason they needed to talk.

  They walked past Ix Chel’s revived priests and priestesses, already gathering around their goddess and chanting prayers. Outside the temple, Ethan could feel the night nearing its end.

  “Ethan, I’m a young man again, but the future still belongs to you and Jenny.”

  He kept speaking, not waiting for Ethan to respond.

  “I know she’ll be happy with you. You’re the reason she’s never let herself be with another man. But now she’s going to need you as well, need you to do what needs to be done. She’s going to want to come back here, and you can never let that happen.”

  Ethan nodded. Jenny was a strong-willed woman with a volatile temper. Those qualities, together with his desire to please her, could make him susceptible to any demand she might make.

  Centuries of being a man couldn’t change the fact that the love of a beautiful woman could be overpowering.

  “You can’t leave here.” It wasn’t a question.

  “No, not alone,” replied the professor. “My soul is bound to Ix Chel now. This is my home. These are my people.”