Cult of the Black Jaguar by JG Faherty

Cult of the Black Jaguar
    Ethan Foster smiled as a tortured, undulating wail shattered the relative stillness of the sultry jungle night. On the other side of the fire, Elton Harrison’s cup fell from his hands, spilling hot coffee onto his boots.
    â€œBloody hell! What was that?” Harrison stared into the darkness, his eyes wide.
    â€œJaguar.” Hector Veracruz nonchalantly tossed another branch into the crackling campfire.
    â€œJaguar? It sounded like someone being murdered.” Harrison mopped a thin, shaking hand ineffectively at his pant cuffs.
    â€œ Balam ,” whispered Popi from the smaller fire he and his brother, Luz, had made for themselves off to one side of the main group. Ethan wasn’t used to having porters sit separately on his expeditions, but he figured it was their choice if they wanted to be anti-social.
    â€œEh? What?” asked Harrison.
    Ethan, who’d been humming the latest song by Glenn Miller, put down the long-barreled, pearl-handled Colt .45 he’d been cleaning and wiped his long fingers on the front of his pants, leaving streaks of oil that quickly blended into the myriad stains on the fabric.
    â€œ Balam is Mayan for jaguar,” he informed the expedition’s diminutive physician. Lighting one of the foul-smelling black cheroots he preferred to cigarettes, Ethan continued his explanation, the cigar bobbing between his lips as he spoke.
    â€œThe Mayans revered the jaguar the way the Egyptians worshipped the sun, or that big dog-headed thing that guarded their temples.”
    â€œAnubis.”
    At the sound of Dr. Jennifer Pascal’s voice, Ethan paused so he could watch her emerge from the tent she was sharing with her father. His body instantly responded to her presence, the same way it always did when she was near.
    As the only woman in a months-long expedition comprised of eight people, it was inevitable that all eyes would follow her every move in camp, but even if they’d been in the middle of Manhattan, Jenny Pascal would command the interest of every man around her. Like a glowing light calling to love-starved moths, she couldn’t help drawing attention to herself.
    Completely unaware of the effect her presence had on the rest of the party, she reached back with both hands and untied her hair from its usual ponytail. Long, curling waves of flaming red cascaded around her thin shoulders like molten lava flowing down a hillside. In the fire’s light, each strand glowed as bright as the embers themselves.
    Ethan felt his heart come to life, his pulse speeding up and thumping like war drums in his veins. During the day, her field vest and pack had done an adequate job of hiding her womanly assets, but now her plain t-shirt and hiking shorts accentuated her pinup-girl figure to its fullest.
    The tall, sandy-haired guide smiled to himself as he noticed the way the other men, even the native help, stared at her. Most guides believed bringing a woman on an expedition was bad luck. And he had seen instances where that was the case; a woman could be a dangerous distraction in the field. As far as Ethan was concerned, though, if you had to have a woman in your camp, you could do a lot worse than Jenny Pascal, with her long, toned legs and innocent, Midwestern girl-next-door looks.
    Of course, if the girl next door happened to be a double-Ph.D. and an expert on ancient Central American civilizations, like Jenny, then you were doubly lucky.
    Taking a seat by the fire, Jenny continued her impromptu lecture. “The Mayans held great reverence for the jaguar. Jaguar spirits, called balamobs , guarded the people from harm.”
    The tent flaps opened again and Dr. Heathcliff Pascal, senior archeologist of the expedition and one of the world’s greatest authorities on paleo-Indian civilizations, emerged to join his daughter. The gray-haired historian might as well have been invisible for all the notice anyone paid him. Jenny Pascal’s