“We have to move the dead men,” Maya warned.
Rotting bodies in the jungle would soon provide a feast for scavengers. “Yeah, we do. We have to get Kat home, too,” Connor said.
Maya spoke up again. “The hunters know about us. One saw me take the first man and dump him in the river.”
Connor let out his breath. “That’s why the hunters ended up here. But they didn’t try to kill you, Maya?”
“No. It was a young boy. He ran off, and I imagine he went to tell the elders and their shaman. And then they must have followed us back here.”
“We have to go,” Connor reiterated. “The men who came here after Kat most likely would have told others of their plan. And if the natives know what we are, it’s not safe for us here any longer.”
“They killed the men,” Maya said. “They killed them with poisoned darts. They aided us.”
Connor didn’t know what to think. Did the locals feel responsible for telling Manuel about the jaguar god and had come to help him and Maya and Kat if they needed it? They had seen them on occasion, the hunter-gatherers living off the land. But they were almost as mysterious as the jaguars.
Connor looped a curl dangling against Kat’s cheek and tucked it behind her ear. Maya was right that they needed to get rid of the bodies quickly. “I’ll take care of the men. You stay here with Kat.”
Maya looked as though she wanted to object, like she wanted to help him dispose of the bodies, but then she observed Kat’s pale face and nodded. “I’ll stay with Kat, but don’t take long or we’ll both be roaming the jungle to look for you.”
He gave her a stern look. “You stay here. I don’t want to have to try to rescue you both later.” Then he gave Kat a warm embrace and kissed her forehead. “Keep my sister here.”
She smiled up at him, but her eyes were still a bit glazed over, and her smile had only a fraction of the brilliance it usually had. He hated to leave her, to leave either of them behind. But this business had to be taken care of.
Connor left the hut and crossed the bridge to the lookout post, meaning to shift there before he took care of the men. He looked down at the leader’s body, but it was gone. He stared at the location, but no matter how hard he looked, he just didn’t see the body. Where the hell was it? He knew scavengers would come for it, but not this quickly.
Maybe from this vantage point, he was off in his calculations as to where the body rested. He climbed down the steps and began searching for the man and his companion. Neither were there, nor was Manuel. But they had died. He knew they were dead.
He looked up at the forest. The hunters had to have hauled them off. He smelled other men, seven or eight of them. They had moved as silently as he and Maya did.
Connor returned to the hut, and both his sister and Kat stared at him in surprise. Their expressions quickly turned to alarm.
“The hunters removed the bodies. I’ve got to see to the other one I left on the path. I’ll be back soon,” he said quickly, wanting them to know what had happened before he left.
He returned to the lookout post, stripped off his clothes, and shifted into his jaguar form. He leaped from one tree to another, then jumped to the ground and moved swiftly through the jungle to locate the last of the dead men. When he reached the area where he had left the man floating on the water-covered path, he found that man’s body had also been removed. He sniffed the air. Several men had been here.
Connor tracked the hunters’ scents until he reached the river. Hidden in the foliage, he watched the hunters depositing the bodies in the river and chanting over them, condemning them for attempting to kill the jaguar god and his mates. They made it sound like Connor had a royal concubine.
He smiled at the notion. He imagined Maya and Kat wouldn’t.
For now, the natives appeared to be on their side. Maybe they had been angry that one of them had told Manuel about seeing the jaguar god and his woman, and that Manuel had promptly led his thugs to take Connor and the women hostage.
But no matter what, he and Kat and his sister needed to leave. For now. Life was getting too complicated for safety’s sake. Although they would return. This was their second home, and the jungle drew them back as if it were a homing device genetically engineered into their blood.
He wished they could travel as jaguars, but that wouldn’t be a viable option since they needed to get out of the country in their human forms. As jaguars, they wouldn’t have clothes, money, or passports once they reached the States. He loped back toward the hut, and when he arrived, he found Kat sleeping in his bed. He was grateful she hadn’t been wounded or, worse, killed.
After shifting, he took Maya aside. “Are you sure she’s all right?”
“Yes. The fall did her in. She’s also upset about killing Manuel, but she’ll be fine, Connor.”
“Yeah, but can she travel like we need to do to get out of here?”
“She can. What about the men?” Maya asked, changing the subject.
“The hunters took them to the river and dumped them, and now the dead men are feeding the piranhas and a caiman or two. The hunters seem to be on our side for now, thinking I’m the local jaguar god.”
“Jaguar god.” Maya snorted. “If you’re a jaguar god, we’re jaguar goddesses.”
He chuckled. “They believe you’re part of my harem.”
She laughed at that but quickly turned to make sure she hadn’t disturbed Kat’s sleep. She whispered, “I’ll have to pick up my own cache of jaguar men.”
He was glad he knew Maya better than that. He could just imagine her clawing or biting a bunch of Texans and turning them. But she wasn’t that kind of woman.
That night, he had meant to sleep on the porch and make Maya stay in her own bed so that he would be their first line of defense if anyone had a notion to attack. When his sister wouldn’t cooperate, he cuddled with Kat in his bed so that Maya would remain in the hut with them, sleeping on her own cot.
He wanted to keep his “harem” close, in case they had any more trouble.
Chapter 17
Relieved that they had had no more difficulties during the night, they planned to leave early the next morning after they packed their backpacks and dressed for the long trek. Kat was quiet, subdued, and Connor wasn’t sure what was bothering her. Well, besides the fact that Maya had turned her into a jaguar-shifter, men had tried to take her hostage, she’d had to kill one of them, and they still faced the difficult task of getting her back to the States without any further difficulties.
“Anything wrong?” Connor asked for the third time that morning.
She shook her head, but he knew better. He still assumed her concerns had something to do with the man she had killed. The man she had thought highly of. But probably she was also worried about the trek ahead of them. Would she make it to the States before she had the urge to shift again?
Or maybe she was worried about another hostage-taking situation.
He ran his hand reassuringly over her arm. “We’ll be all right.” He meant it, although he wasn’t sure how much trouble they would get into before they truly were all right. But together, the three of them would make the best of their situation. “He would have taken you hostage, Kat. You had no choice.”
Maya had been quietly listening to them. He had hoped maybe she would speak to Kat and see what the problem was, but although they were both women, they weren’t alike. Not when Maya and he had been born shifters. He figured Maya didn’t know what to say to Kat to ease her mind, any more than he did.
“We’ll make it, Kat.” He pulled her into his embrace, but gently, worried she might still be a little sore from her fall the day before, although she had seemed fine when they made love last night.
She squeezed him hard and looked up at him with the determination to see this through. “I’m no longer sore. I won’t break.”
But she seemed fragile to him, despite her strong words.
“You’re just worried about what will happen.”
/> “What if I shift? I can just envision being the Incredible Hulk, tearing out of my clothes to change, but instead of bright green skin, I’d have gold fur with black spots and very big teeth.”
“And you’d be beautiful.”
She snorted.
“You would be. You were.”
She sighed. “But what if it happens?”
“If we’re in the jungle, no problem. We’ll hide our packs in the trees and join you up there to sleep a while until you shift back.”
“And if I do it at a border crossing?”
“You won’t. Think positively.” He wanted to tell her to think like a human, but he had no idea what had triggered the shift in her the first time around.
“I can’t quit thinking about Manuel, either. He seemed so nice and then…”
Maya harrumphed. “He wasn’t nice, Kat. Nice guys don’t come into the jungle armed to the teeth, intent on taking a woman hostage for ransom.”
“I know but… I’ve never shot anyone when I wasn’t on a combat mission. I close my eyes and still see the blood spreading across his shirt.”
“Before or after we heard a ton of shots fired?” Maya reminded her.
“Have you had to kill men like this before?”
“Yes,” Connor said. “They’re a plague on mankind. Rule of the jungle. Eat before you’re eaten. Come on, let’s get on our…”
They heard movement below, and all three of them headed for the window. Flowers encircled the hut, and a tapir, freshly killed and cooked, with pineapples and plantains surrounding it, was laid out on umbrella-sized palm fronds, a peace offering of sorts, it appeared.
“Do you think the natives believe they offended you?” Kat asked quietly.
There was no sign of any of the hunters, but he suspected they watched, waited, and were hopeful that the jaguar people would accept their offering.
“It appears to be so,” Connor said, so surprised that he couldn’t believe it.
“Should we invite them? Like at a Thanksgiving feast?” Maya asked.
Connor rubbed Kat’s arm. “What do you want to do, Kat?”
“What if another one of them tells someone else like Manuel that we exist?”
“We’re still leaving the area.”
She nodded. “Then let’s invite them. Maybe the gesture will give them some peace of mind, and they did come to our aid yesterday.”
“If they appease a jaguar god and his goddesses, that will give the tribe power,” Maya said.
Connor chuckled softly. “No one said anything about jaguar goddesses.”
“No one had to,” Kat said. “Maya’s perfectly right.”
He shook his head. He could see where this was going. Kat and Maya would always gang up on him. Not that he couldn’t handle it. He smiled darkly.
They descended the steps and crossed to the small clearing where the feast was spread out. Kat sat down before the cooked tapir.
Connor brought out a knife and motioned to the jungle, then to the feast. “Come, join us,” he said in Spanish. “Eat with us. Share the feast.”
“Tell them the jaguar god and his goddesses have spoken,” Maya said.
He chuckled and carved off a slice of meat for Kat, then Maya.
“You can laugh all you want, Connor, but goddesses galore exist in South American lore. Not only did the Mayan culture worship the jaguar god of terrestrial fire, but it’s said that the jaguar goddess of midwifery and war might have been his spouse,” Maya said, her chin tilted up.
Even though they half watched to see if anyone would, no one ventured forth from the jungle.
Kat ate a slice of pineapple. “I agree. We’re just as important as any jaguar god.” She whispered to Connor and Maya, “Why don’t they join us?”
Connor cut off another slice of meat. “Most likely they’re afraid. Maybe they think we might still be angry. They’ve never made direct contact with us before. We’ve seen them on occasion, but they have always quickly disappeared as if they believed we’d be angry if we saw them watching us.”
Movement in the vegetation to their right made them all look that way.
An elderly man headed toward them, speaking in some unknown tongue. His gnarled hands were outstretched as if coming in peace and to show he had no weapons at his disposal. Connor was about to stand but thought better of it, afraid that towering over the slightly built man might intimidate him. Instead, he waved to the food and made a motion telling the old man to eat with them. “Sit and eat.”
The man stared him in the eye as if judging Connor’s sincerity, then nodded several times and sat cross-legged before the beast.
Connor handed him the knife. The old man hesitated, then smiled a little. Connor was offering his only weapon. But the old man probably knew that if Connor had felt threatened, all he would have to do was shift. Of course, all the man and his people would have to do was bring out their blowguns.
After the man chewed on a bite of the tapir for several minutes, he glanced back at the woods and motioned for others to join them. Several men came out of the woods and walked toward them, and Connor attempted not to show how much it bothered him that these people knew about them. He was still worried that the natives might take some action against them, and he feared for Kat’s safety the most because she couldn’t shift. Although if the men wanted to take them down with poisoned blow darts, he wasn’t sure their shifter genetics could counter the poison quickly enough to keep it from killing them before they could race off to escape.
But the men sat down and began to eat the meal, nodding and speaking softly to themselves as if they normally shared a meal with a jaguar god. The older man offered Connor a flask to drink from, but he declined and handed it back to the man.
“The drink might be drugged,” he warned Maya and Kat.
“They want to harm us or take us hostage? Is this like the Trojan horse offering?” Kat asked, sounding surprised.
Connor shook his head. “I venture it’s more likely that they want us to feel good and stay. Having a jaguar god—”
“And goddesses,” Maya interrupted.
Connor smiled. “…in residence could improve their status.”
“Improve their fishing, crops, livestock, their living,” Kat said. “Oh yeah, and the first big drought, the first failed crop, the first cow that drops dead, we’d be the ones responsible.”
“That’s true. And it’s another reason we’re leaving. I’ll tell them we’re leaving but we’ll be back, just like we’ve done in the past. I think they’ve watched us for years, Maya. But with Kat joining us, they believe we might be expanding our jaguar clan. Maybe they wanted us to know that was fine with them. I don’t want them to try and keep us here, and I’m afraid that’s what they’ll have in mind.”
After another hour of visiting, Connor stood and everyone else did, too. He told them that he, Maya, and Kat intended to leave and asked the villagers to watch over their home. He suspected now that the villagers had been doing so for years because no one had ever disturbed it while they were away for months at a time.
The elder blessed them, hoping they would be most fertile. He knew Maya understood him as she quickly looked at Kat. Kat didn’t understand, but the look Maya gave her made her suspect something important had been said.
“Come on,” Connor said. “We need to get moving if we’re to make any headway today.”
They thought that was going to be it—the men would take the leftovers back to their village—but instead the men picked up their staffs and began to disperse through the jungle. They were hidden from view, but Connor assumed the men were escorting them safely as far as they could go.
Connor took up the rear, Kat in between, and Maya led the way. He heard some noise behind him and turned to see women from the village carrying away the remaining tapir and other food that hadn’t been eaten. He was glad it wouldn’t go to waste.
Maya sighed. “We can’t fly home this time, can we?”
Th
ey always flew home. Even at that, a flight would be between eighteen and twenty-four hours. He worried that Kat might not be able to control shifting for that many hours or even sit in airports waiting for the next flight out. But going by boat would take forever. “If we took a flight, we’d go from Santa Marta with a stop in Bogotá, Colombia, then on to Houston. That’s where our SUV is,” he said.
“You don’t come here all the time, do you? Just a couple of times a year, right?” Kat asked. She sounded worried. Like she would have to risk doing this a lot with them.
He smiled. “We live near lakes and national forests or state forests in eastern Texas and enjoy visiting them in the middle of the night when we need to. We just come down here a couple of times a year to be one with the jungle like the jaguars are. But until we sort things out with your abilities, we’ll stay closer to home.”
“We can’t fly, can we?” Kat asked, looking as though she thought that was a really bad idea but still wished they could do it. The sooner they could get home, the better.
Connor took a deep breath. “Maybe we could charter a boat. I don’t see any other way around this. We’ve never had a problem with flying, but if you had to shift, I doubt you could do so in one of the lavatories. They’re pretty small. And then what if you weren’t able to shift back for several hours? We’d be in trouble.” He could just envision poor Kat, her tail in the commode, her paws up on the sink, fighting the urge to growl or roar in her distress, and the flight attendants pounding on the door when the line for the other bathroom grew too long.
“Maybe we could travel cross-country,” Maya said. “I know it can be dangerous…”
“And take forever,” Connor reminded her with a hard look. Though he wouldn’t have wanted Maya to turn Kat at any time, he wished she had done so at their home. Not here.
Maya let out her breath hard. “All right, so we have to charter a boat.”
Smugglers and pirates could be a problem, and Maya became deathly ill in a rocking boat.
“Or… what if we could take a short flight to somewhere north of here, maybe Belize or Costa Rica, stop, maybe stay overnight, then take another short flight the next day?” Kat said.