“We’re leaving,” Naylor said. “Stay together, keep it tight, all the way back to the boat and we’re gone.”
“Copy that.”
The roar sounded again, closer now.
“It’s picking us off, one by one,” Lowe said.
“So stay together. Don’t give it that chance.”
They stumbled through the debris-strewn room towards the stairwell. Naylor nearly tripped a couple of times but didn’t dare take his eyes from the holographic sight of his rifle and the arc he was scanning back down the hall.
He saw movement, a subtle shifting of the shadows. Whatever this thing was, it had a jaguar’s stealth. The shadows embraced it, pooling around it like a liquid cloak. He saw the gleam of yellow eyes and loosed a few rounds at it, drawing out another roar, a deep animal noise that plucked a bass note in his guts. Suddenly he became very aware of his place on the food chain and knew that it was not the top.
The old dance, predator and prey, but this time they were on the wrong side.
“We need to go faster,” Naylor said.
The creature rose onto its hind legs. This was no jaguar; this was like no animal Naylor had ever seen before. It had the head of a big cat complete with yellow eyes and snarling lips pulled back to reveal long, interlocking fangs. But the head and powerful, sinuous neck rested atop human shoulders and long, muscular arms. Naylor could see the muscles on the thing’s chest. It was built like a power lifter, but under the sleek, black fur the musculature was human. Only below the hips did the cat-like form reassert itself with long, seemingly double-jointed legs ending in huge paws.
It roared, jaws opening impossibly wide, fangs glistening.
Naylor fired; he flicked his MP5 onto full auto and mashed the trigger. The creature hardly seemed to notice. Lowe turned around and opened up; Naylor could see the creatures flesh rippling where the rounds struck it, but they were as ineffective as a handful of thrown pebbles.
It kept coming.
Naylor’s gun ran dry; he quickly popped the magazine and slammed a new one home, knowing as he did so that it would do no good. Eleven men had tried to kill this thing and eleven men had failed.
The creature swiped at them with one clawed arm. Naylor heard Lowe scream, felt blood splash hot against his skin and then the creature’s follow through picked him up and hurled him into a broken display cabinet. Splinters of wood and glass stabbed into him and his desperate, outstretched fingers stubbed painfully into something heavy lying in the shards.
The creature stepped over the moaning form of Lowe as he writhed on the floor and reared up before Naylor. He could smell it now: a warm, animal smell, like the steam off the jungle floor after rain. He could see the rosettes of its mottled fur, black against the deep purple of its pelt. He saw its yellow eyes on him and its paw raised, claws extended for the killing blow.
“Get down!”
It was McDowell. He was standing at the base of the stairs, cradling the big MG4. The muzzle flash stabbed out into the darkness and tracer rounds hammered into the creature. It screeched in rage and covered its face with one huge arm. Naylor could smell burning hair where the hot tracer rounds hit it, but just like the nine-millimetre slugs from the MP5, McDowell’s barrage didn’t seem to be penetrating at all.
Naylor had to get out from under the thing. He clutched the weight under his hand, not caring what it was, and swung upwards. Gold glittered and the thing in his hand carved a bright arc upwards through the green-tinged darkness and bit into the creature.
It screamed with rage and clutched at the bloody stump where its right arm had been. It looked at Naylor with an expression of pure hatred and then it was gone.
“What the fuck was that thing?” McDowell asked.
“That was Ramirez,” Naylor replied. Crazy as that sounded, he was certain it was true. Naylor had seen some weird shit in his time. He knew the world wasn’t quite the way most people thought it was, but the differences could only be seen around the edges, in extreme situations in off-the-grid locales. The kind of places he found himself in more often than he liked.
Miller had not been delirious; Ramirez had changed. Somehow after his guards had been defeated the cartel boss had become that creature. He had killed the rest of the squad and now he was after them.
McDowell helped Lowe to his feet. His uniform was shredded from hip to shoulder, the ragged torn edges were soaked in blood. The creature’s claws had bit deep into the muscle of his chest and stomach, but he was still alive.
“Good job,” Lowe said nodding towards the thing Naylor still clutched, white-knuckled in his hand. It was a knife, a golden knife. Blood flecked the ornate curved blade, as rich and as red and the rubies that studded its hilt.
“Looks like you hurt it,” McDowell said. He was right; the creature’s severed arm lay where it had fallen among the splintered remains of the display cabinet. Only it wasn’t really the creature’s arm. Naylor looked at it closely: the fur was patchy and dry, flaky leather showed though the many bald patches. It was smaller, too; a dry, desiccated thing, quite unlike the powerful, vital creature that had nearly killed him.
Naylor picked it up. The skin came away in a roll and a human arm fell out onto the floor, leaving him holding the paw and tanned hide of a jaguar’s forelimb. The skin tingled in his hand. Naylor could feel the power in it just waiting to be set free again.
“What the fuck!”
Naylor quickly searched the shattered display cabinet. So far the golden knife had been the only weapon able to injure the creature. Maybe there were more. He found nothing but torn velvet cushions and broken glass.
He searched the floor until he found what he was looking for: a laminated card about eight inches by six, the label from the display case. It showed a picture of the knife and what looked like a full jaguar pelt, complete with fanged skull and paws.
“It’s an Olmec artefact,” he said, reading from the card. “Olmec shamans worshipped the jaguar and wore its skin during their religious rituals. It was said that some shamans could use the pelts to become skinwalkers, manifestations of the Olmec jaguar god.”
“Are you saying we’re fighting a god?”
“You saw that thing. Bullets just bounced off it. So far the only thing able to hurt it has been a three-thousand-year-old ritual skinning knife. That thing is Ramirez!”
“God or not, we’ve hurt it. We need to get the fuck out of here before it comes back.”
Naylor flexed his fist around the golden knife. He thought of all the good men lying dead on the villa’s upper floors. He thought of all the evil Ramirez and his network of drug dealers had done. Yes, he had hurt it and it had felt good. He wanted to hurt it again. He wanted to go back and report mission accomplished. He wanted Ramirez’s head on a plate. The jaguar pelt tingled in his hand. Maybe now they had the chance to do it.
They hurried out of the museum. There was no sign of the creature, but that didn’t mean it had given up. The jaguar was a stealth predator. It hunted in silence, pouncing on its prey.
The night seemed lighter now. Naylor flipped up the night vision goggles and found he could see pretty well without them. They were getting close to the exit: he could smell the scent of the jungle wafting in through the shattered front door. It smelled like… like everything. He could smell the moisture in the air and tell you how long it had been since the rains. He could tell the season from the type of pollen on the breeze, he could smell the myriad creatures of the jungle night. If he listened closely, he thought he could hear them, hear their nocturnal burrowings and scurryings. He could almost taste them. The old dance again, but this time he was the hunter.
They made it outside. Naylor could see the path to the boathouse as clear as day. He could smell the sweat on his companions and hear the pulse of their beating hearts as McDowell helped the injured Lowe towards the boat.