Jaguar Fever

Chapter 18

Francisco, their guide, and the group were ready to hike to the cave tubing site and anxiously waiting on Maya, her brother, and her sister-in-law.

Maya was staring out her window at the jungle, hoping that the plan to draw Lion Mane out would work, but she thought Wade and his brother had already taken too long to return to the treetop cottages.

She was wearing a bathing suit under her jeans and T-shirt and had a couple of water bottles, a waterproof camera, and a hand towel in her backpack sitting on the table. Connor and Kat would arrive any minute. It was now or never.

A knock at the door gave her a start, and she rushed to ensure it was her brother and Kat. It was. She opened the door. They looked as anxious as she did. Connor had one backpack between them.

“They’re not here,” Connor said, glancing at Maya’s living room and stating the obvious. “We’ve got to go.”

“But shouldn’t we wait for Wade and David?” Maya asked.

“We’ll miss the excursion if we wait. But I had another idea in case David and Wade didn’t arrive on time. You go with the guide, and we’ll join you at the site. At least that’s how I’ve explained it to the guide. Kat and I will go in jaguar form, hidden in the jungle as your personal escort. Stay near the back of the group. We’ll watch for any signs of a jaguar. At the caving site, we’ll shift and join you. I have a change of clothes in my backpack. You can add whatever you had in yours to ours and carry it.”

“The guide won’t like that you’re going to join us at the caves, will he?” she asked, transferring her stuff to Connor’s bag.

“I explained that Kat and I have taken the trip many times, but that I wanted you to have the guided tour. A little extra money convinced him to allow us to join you later.”

“I’d rather it be me hunting down Lion Mane than Kat.”

“If that’s his game, he’d be after you, not Kat. If he thinks you’re not with us and more vulnerable, he might take a chance to tangle with you. Kat can handle the hike better in her jaguar form. And she’s a good fighter. Either that, or we return home and risk having him come after you when we’re least expecting it. He could get reinforcements back home, too. Of course, this is just speculation. He might not be interested in dealing with you at all.”

“What about Wade and David?”

“They know where we’re going. They can join us if they’re able to.”

She hated the dark tone of Connor’s voice.

Kat said, “I think Connor’s right. We can give this a shot and see if it works. Just write Wade a note that you’re going on the tour by yourself. That I’m not feeling well and Connor’s staying at the cottage with me. That you’ll meet him for dinner. That way, when he gets here, he’ll know we left on the tour. He’ll know Connor and I wouldn’t have let you go alone. And if someone else reads the note, they won’t realize that Wade and David intended to watch our backs. Or that we won’t be with you.”

Unsure about the whole plan, Maya hastily wrote a note for Wade and left it on the coffee table.

“Go. The group and guide are ready to hike. We’ll join you in a minute,” Connor said, lifting his backpack to Maya’s shoulders.

Maya kissed him on the cheek, gave Kat a hug, and then Kat said, “Be careful, okay?”

Heading outside, Maya hurried to join the excursion group.

She greeted the guide and the twelve other cave tubers, and then they began their hike through the jungle. The guide, Francisco, had near-black hair and eyes and a big white-toothed smile. The other cave tubers were of various shapes and sizes.

The men and women were quiet as Francisco walked ahead of the party, talking about the jungle, pointing out the importance of the plants, and identifying birds, insects, and reptiles. He guided them along the semi-worn path—as worn as any jungle path could be where the vegetation grew wild and couldn’t be tamed, even by man.

Maya soaked up the feel of the hot, muggy rainforest as she tuned the guide out and watched for any sign of Lion Mane. Her brother and Kat would also be in the rainforest, but they would be elusive, trying to keep out of another jaguar’s sight, if Lion Mane was following her. She would have been comforted to know that they were close by, but she couldn’t stop worrying about Kat.

The tourists in front of them eyed the trees as the tour guide pointed out a bright green, poisonous tree frog, a boa constrictor coiled nearby, and colorful parrots high above. The tourists immediately began plying him with questions, but the chatter died down quickly because the men and women had to save their breath for the rigorous hike.

Maya thought she spied a jaguar’s movement. She stopped, staring into the jungle, but it was too late. Whatever movement had caught her eye was now well hidden in the foliage.

By the time they reached the cave nearly an hour later, everyone was sweaty and breathing hard, except for the guide and Maya. No one had attempted to attack her, and she hadn’t heard any fighting in the jungle.

She left the backpack hidden off the trail for her brother and Kat to find and rejoined the others.

The guide said they had reached the spot, and they could see through the blue-green water clear to the rocky bottom where fish were diving for food. Maya took a deep breath and stared at the pristine beauty.

“For over two thousand years, the Mayans used these caves for ceremonies,” Connor said, taking in the wondrous site.

She whipped around to see him and Kat together, hands entwined and Connor now wearing the backpack. He gave her a small smile.

Maya was so glad to see them safe that she immediately embraced them both. “What did you see?”

“Trees,” Connor said. “Nothing else.”

Then the movement Maya had seen must have been Kat or Connor. She was glad Kat and her brother hadn’t encountered any trouble.

“It’s beautiful.” Kat looked as though the long hike as a jaguar hadn’t bothered her in the least as she peered down at the water.

The jungle and whitewashed cliffs surrounded the river, boulders rising high above where the group climbed before removing their outer clothing and shoving it into packs. They each grabbed an inner tube and tossed it into the placid water. Then one after another, they jumped in to join their tubes. Each also had a life jacket and a headlamp to use in the darker parts of the cave.

The melodious mix of bugs chattered, mosquitoes buzzed, monkeys howled, and colorful birds of paradise sang, while gray doves cooed.

“Ahh,” Maya said, as she settled into the tube and paddled over to where Kat was sitting in her own tube, a big grin on her face. “This feel so good. How are you doing?”

“Wonderfully,” Kat said. “I couldn’t be better.”

“No sign of anyone?” Maya asked.

“No. We didn’t smell any other jaguars in the area.”

“Good.”

They floated with the others into the cave. Water dripped from stalactites hanging down from the cave ceiling, and stalagmites poked out of the water at intervals. Sometimes the water flowed and they didn’t need to paddle. At other times, it was still as glass.

Francisco pointed out stones that appeared to be in the shape of animals and humans. “The Visual Serpent,” he said at one point. “The Celestial Bird,” he remarked later. “And there, pottery shards from ancient civilizations. Do not touch. It is against the law. They are considered national treasures.”

Natural windows carved into the rock allowed sunlight to pour into the cave, penetrating through the wet mist in the air. The tourists continued their way down the river until they reached a waterfall.

Here, everyone played in the waterfall, splashing and having the time of their lives, and then they continued into the crystal cave, where the walls glittered like diamonds.

A small colony of bats clung to the ceiling high above, twittering a little when the people’s voices echoed off the cave walls, and a woman gasped.

“They eat fruit and insects,” Francisco assured the group. “They’re not vampire bats.”

Maya caught sight of a spider crawling across the cavern wall and crustaceans feeding nearby, while catfish swam in a pool of water.

“Jaguars sometimes come in here to drink the cool water rising from underground springs or to hunt a gibnut, a nocturnal rodent,” the guide said.

Maya looked at Connor. He was frowning. Would Lion Mane have come here in search of a jaguar? Certainly not during the day, because jaguars wouldn’t hunt in the cave while people were around. She relaxed. She hated that the shifter had turned against their jaguar cousins and that he might make Kat and Connor worry during their otherwise enjoyable outing.

The group spent the rest of the afternoon exploring and floating on the inner tubes until they had to make the long hike back.

The guide spoke privately with Connor, glanced at Kat and Maya, then nodded at Connor. Francisco didn’t seem really happy, but Connor had paid for their special accommodations. Connor and Kat headed into the jungle with his backpack, just beyond the tourists’ and the guide’s view. Then while everyone finished turning in their life preservers and tubes, Maya hurried off to grab Connor’s bag and return to the group.

Maya was torn between wanting Connor to take care of Lion Mane, should he come after her, and craving one last quiet jungle hike, though she would have preferred touring the jungle as a cat, not stumbling over tree roots and vines as a human.

Wade and David had never arrived, at least that she knew of, and that made her worry even more.

Ever vigilant, she remained at the tail end of the group, watching for any signs of danger.

With the weight of Kat’s and Connor’s clothes and especially his big sneakers stuffed inside, the pack felt fuller and heavier, Maya thought, particularly after the day of exercise. She was unintentionally falling behind.

They still had another half hour or so to go when someone shouted, “Jaguar!”

“Stay together,” Francisco told them. “Don’t run. Just stay together. They don’t go after humans.”

Maya was looking around, trying to see if another cat was in the area besides her brother or sister-in-law—an all-jaguar cat or Lion Mane.

Her heart was already pumping hard from the exertion, but she felt a little hope that the jaguar might be Wade or David.

The pink ribbon of sky peeking through the thick canopy had all but faded, leaving a dark blue ceiling sprinkled with the Milky Way. It was getting darker, and they still had a long way to go, so most of the people were turning on their headlamps.

“Keep talking. Make a lot of noise,” the guide told them. “The cat will stay away. Just don’t run.”

They should stand still if approached by a jaguar. The tour guide opted for getting them back to the resort before the jungle became inky black like the cave had been in sections.

Maya wanted to tell them to be quiet so she could hear where the jaguar was and ensure it was one of her own family that had spooked everyone. But the tourists tromped through the jungle with so much noise that holding their tongues wouldn’t have mattered. She assumed the jaguar had to be a shifter. No all-jaguar cat would come this close to a bunch of noisy humans.

She tried to listen for sounds of a jaguar moving about in the brush that only her jaguar hearing would pick up.

She lifted her chin and smelled the breezeless air, noticing that the temperature was dropping with the coming of night. Nothing but the smell of wet earth, of leafy plants and fragrant flowers, of…

She turned her head just as a woman screamed several yards ahead of her.

People raced along the path far in front of her. She’d fallen behind again.

“Walk!” Francisco commanded them. “Don’t run. If you do, the jaguar will chase you.”

It was too late. Everyone was running to avoid the imminent attack of the jaguar. No one wanted to be the last one trailing behind, the weakest link ripe for the predator’s picking.

Except for Maya. She couldn’t run after them, not with the heavy pack on her back. She wouldn’t run, knowing that was the worst thing anyone could do. Cats loved to chase. And pounce. Then bite. And she was the last one left behind. Easy prey.

A hiss and a growl emanated from somewhere in the jungle, but she couldn’t see what was going on. She stood still, alone now, heart pounding, her blood rushing through her veins.

The guide would get the panicked people back to the resort, hopefully not losing anyone else in the process but her.

She wanted to ditch the backpack and shift. As a jaguar, she would feel a whole lot less threatened.

People were still making a full-scale ruckus as they fled north of where she was, screaming, wailing, and stomping the ground.

“This way!” the guide yelled as some of the panicked people ran in the wrong direction in the dense jungle. She could imagine them being lost forever.

She barely breathed, concentrating on the world close to her, the knocking sound of a frog on a leaf nearby, something scurrying around on the rainforest floor near her foot, something slithering on a branch near her head. She moved then, walking in the direction of the cottage.

She walked slowly. She would not run; she knew better.

Another hiss. A low, growling rumble off to her left. She wanted to stop. She wanted to go. She wanted to shift, feel her balance with the jungle, and be part of it, not stand out like a human did.

A figure moved out of the leaves as if it had been part of the vegetation. “Kat,” she breathed, feeling relief at once to see her sister jaguar, to smell her scent.

Kat grabbed at the backpack strap dangling in front of Maya’s waist with her jaguar teeth and gave a pull. Her urgency made Maya walk quickly with her toward the cottages.

“Where’s Connor?” Maya asked, as if Kat could tell her in her jaguar form.

Kat kept tugging, kept moving her in the direction of where the tourists had disappeared. Kat wouldn’t leave Connor behind unless he told her to go with Maya. So where was Connor? Facing off another jaguar shifter?

Maya’s heart was thudding hard, and she could hear Kat’s heart pounding just as quickly. Connor had to be keeping another jaguar away from them. She kept looking over her shoulder, but Kat wouldn’t let her stop. Her mission, it appeared, was to get Maya safely back to the cottages.

Fine. Maya picked up her pace, hurrying now to reach the resort. She’d make sure she got Kat safely to the cottage and insist she stay behind. Then she’d shift and return to help her brother.

They were getting closer to the resort. Connor still hadn’t joined them, but Maya was walking as fast as she could, watching that she didn’t trip over the liana crisscrossing the path back to the cottages.

Kat was running alongside her until they heard their guide say, “Wait. Don’t go to your cottages or the lodge yet. I’m still trying to get a head count. Two are missing.”

“Can you go around through the jungle and reach your cottage without anyone seeing you?” Maya asked Kat, her voice low.

Kat bumped her with her head and rubbed her leg. Maya took that as a yes. “Okay, go. I’ll let Francisco know that we’re all fine. That you and Connor already returned to your cottage.”

She waited for Kat to leave, but instead, Kat jumped into a tree to watch her.

Maya sighed. “Okay, so you stay and protect me.” She began walking toward the guide, though she still couldn’t see him through the jungle foliage. “Connor and my sister-in-law already returned to their cottage,” she hollered. “I’m coming!”

That’s all she got out before she felt a claw swipe at her arm. She cried out in shock. Her shirtsleeve shredded, and she felt slices of throbbing and stinging pain streak up her arm. Before she could react to the angry cat, the large furry form hit her body, taking her down, his teeth bared.

“Lion Mane,” she gasped, grabbing at the skin at his throat, knowing she couldn’t keep him from biting her with his powerful jaws.

Just as quickly, another jaguar slammed into him, knocking him off her, snarling and hissing. Connor!

The cats’ angry hisses were loud enough that the tourists must have thought Maya was being attacked and torn to shreds. She could hear running feet as the people scrambled to get to their cottages and safety. Forget the head count.

She couldn’t catch her breath as she scooted away from the fighting males. Kat had jumped down from the tree and was standing protectively over Maya, who couldn’t get to her feet because of the weight of the backpack. Before she could get it off, Lion Mane ran away.

Connor poked his nose at her, sniffing her arm and licking at her. “I’m okay,” she said, reaching up with her uninjured arm to stroke his head. Lion Mane hadn’t hurt her badly, just scared the crap out of her. Kat purred next to her, her head bent to inspect the damage.

“All right, everyone’s accounted for,” the guide said, watching for her.

Her heart still thundering, Maya hurried as fast as she could to the guide. She had to let him know she was safe. “Are you sure everyone’s back?” she asked. “You said someone else was missing.”

“Another person whose wife said he’d fled to their cottage before I could count him.”

She could sympathize with the man—truly. “Is the wife okay?”

“She’s about as growly as the cat. Are you okay?” Francisco asked, looking Maya over. “I… I thought maybe it attacked you.” He was waving a stick in his hand, but it wouldn’t have done much if he’d wanted to get the big cat off her.

When he looked down at her sleeve to see that it was torn and blood trickled down her arm, he gasped.

Shaken but trying to appear as though the experience hadn’t rattled her, she clasped her hand over the wound. “Just a scratch.” By morning the claw marks would have faded to scratches.

“Let me take care of it,” Francisco said. “I’ve got a first-aid kit.”

“No, that’s okay. My brother’s got medical training. He’ll see to it.”

“If you’re sure…”

“I’ll be fine.” She hurried to her cottage to clean up, change, and meet Connor and Kat for dinner. They’d eat, and afterward they’d make plans to search for David and Wade, hoping to God that Lion Mane and his companion in crime hadn’t already killed them.

She unlocked her door and walked inside, then shut the door, locking it. She tugged off the backpack and dropped it on the floor, relieved to finally have the weight off her back.

Turning on the light, she could see the claw marks down her left arm. Not pretty. She rummaged through her suitcase, and when she realized she didn’t have any bandages, she hurried to the bathroom.

She yanked off her T-shirt and washed her arm with soap and water, grimacing and gritting her teeth as the claw marks stung. Intending to take a quick shower, she kicked off her boots and had barely yanked off her socks when she heard a key shoved in the lock and the door opened. She twisted around and left the bathroom, figuring it would be Connor.

But it wasn’t. Wade loomed in the door frame, bag in hand, face grim, and his blue-green eyes darkened to nearly black.