Elsewhere in the jungle, hours earlier, another small fire had been steadily burning.

Ixa pulled the ancient, leather-bound book out from the group's pack of supplies and sat down with it. "There must be something we can use in here…"

Maria looked up from tending the fire. "What's that?"

"A book Ofelia found. There's a map inside it." She undid the crumbling straps, removed the loose scrap of paper and began to sift through the pages. "I thought the rest might prove important as well."

Manolo had been sitting a short distance away from the rest of the group. Now he got up and sat down beside Ixa, watching the pages turn. "How old is it?" he asked. It was the first thing he had said since they had left the ramshackle village.

"A few centuries, I should think," she answered. "I've seen others like it." She flipped back to the first page of the book, where a distinct number lay amidst the jumbled handwriting: 1532.

"Looks like there's a name, too," Joaquin said, pointing from over her shoulder at a sentence written above the date.

Ixa ran her fingers over the words. "It says 'Journal of Javier Dominguez,' I think," she finally said. "He must have been one of the Old World men who sailed here." A small frown crossed her face at the memory.

"So what does his journal say?" Maria asked.

Ixa looked back through the first several pages. "Nothing much. Plants found, food eaten, that sort of thing…wait, look at this!"

A crude drawing of a jaguar accompanied the long note on the page marked June 12th. Native men very frightened of something they saw a few nights ago, the writing said. We have been asked to join some of them on an expedition. There was a small gap, and then the note continued in much more unkempt letters. I must write down what happened here at once, or else I shall never believe it afterwards. I have seen the Devil's work with my own eyes tonight.

The note went on. The conquistador wrote of following jaguar tracks deep into the jungle until he and his men happened upon a valley full of crumbling temples. They were made of black rock and stretched high into the air despite their ruination. Their steps were covered in dirt and blood, and creatures that were neither man nor cat crawled out from within them to watch the procession of doomed children dragged through the streets. Watching the tallest pyramid from afar, he described the same ceremony that the travelers had heard whispered about in the village. The children who cried the loudest were slaughtered and eaten. Those who made no sound at the sight were given hooded cloaks of jaguar skin and led one by one to the altar. The chief of the monsters bound them to the stone with ropes and spoke an incantation, then seemed to call down a beam of the red moonlight to strike the little ones. Then they became as the demons who had captured them were, and were unleashed upon their old companions. Here the ink lines grew thicker and petered out, as though the man was so overtaken by the terrible memory that he could no longer write. A few final sentences followed, in slightly neater handwriting. Tonight we strike against the demons. Before we depart, I leave here a map I have drawn that will lead to their temple. If our army succeeds, they will have been wiped from the face of the earth. If we fail, then perhaps these notes will be of use to those who take up our holy cause. There were no more entries in the little book.

"Well," Joaquin said, looking at the yellowed map, "I guess that means this is for us."

Manolo abruptly looked up, stiffening. "Did you hear that?"

They all looked. Something was rustling in the foliage above and around them. Joaquin hid the book and map, then stood up and grabbed a sword from the group's pile of weapons. "Who's there?"

The jaguars crawled out from the bushes and dropped from the trees, hissing as their eyes gleamed in the firelight. They kept to the edges of the clearing, growling and pretending to pounce at the mortals. All except one, who strode directly into the camp and around his frozen prey. Finally he sat down and looked at them one by one, letting his gaze linger on Manolo before coming to rest on Joaquin. Then he smiled. "Didn't I eat part of you some years ago?"

Ixa felt Joaquin shudder and put a hand on his arm. "You are not welcome here, Pax."

The beast sneered. "I not welcome in my own territory? I fear it is you who are not welcome."

"You know why we've come."

"To partake in the festivities, no doubt. They will be grand this year. It's been such a long time since we had a new warrior join our ranks." His eyes flickered up towards the moon, which was growing darker as though slowly bleeding out.

"We'll trouble you no further if you give us back the girl now," Ixa continued. "We swear."

For an almost invisible moment, something seemed to unsettle Pax. He seemed to shuffle in place and look around towards his warriors, who refused to meet his gaze. It was gone just as quickly as it had come, and he looked back at the humans with newly narrowed eyes. "No."

"You'll get no satisfaction from taking her," Ixa said. "Not in the long run. She's too pure of heart to be one of your hunters. Even your arts can't change that."

"You think I care about how the girl will fare with us?" Pax growled. "I can dispose of her whenever I wish. She'll only be the first. Besides…" His gaze rested on Manolo and Maria. "…you know why she was chosen."

"If it's revenge you want, go after Xibalba," Ixa said, stepping between the jaguar and the couple. "Punish him instead."

"You and I both know this is as close to laying a hand on him as I can get."

"What, so you'll make a family suffer for the crime of being your lord's playthings? The way I see it, you and your men are no better off than - "

Pax let out a shriek and leapt forward, knocking Ixa over and pinning her to the ground. The other humans froze in their rush to attack the beast by the sudden shrinking of the deadly circle that surrounded them. The jaguar leaned down, breathing the stench of rotting meat into the woman's face. "Never," he snarled, "equate us with mortals."

"Right, sorry," Ixa choked out. "Doing us mortals a disservice."

Pax reared back and raised a paw, letting his long claws slide out from their sheaths. But before he could bring them down, there was a flash of movement in the corner of his eye. In the same moment two loud shots rang out, and the jaguar fell over screaming as blood dripped from the pair of wounds in his arm. The rest of the pack recoiled and fell silent, stunned by the near-forgotten sound. Manolo stood with one of Joaquin's pistols gripped in his shaking hands, smoke wafting from the barrel as he took aim at the jaguar once more.

"You," Pax hissed, struggling back to his feet. "Your girl will pay dearly for that, human."

"If you've hurt her, I'll - "

"Oh, don't bother. It wouldn't kill me. "

Manolo's burst of bravery was starting to falter under the jaguar's stare. "I don't want any more of this. I just want - "

"To see your daughter again?" Pax finished. "Oh, you certainly will. Not in the form you remember her, of course, but perhaps that will be better for you both. I can't imagine she would want to remember her father after what he did to her." He sidestepped another gunshot. "Come to our temple in a few days' time, human. There you shall look upon the result of your…assistance."

And just like that, he was gone. The monster's shape melted back into the dark, along with those of his men. Manolo dropped the gun and sank to his knees, his fists clenched as he fought back a fresh wave of hot, angry tears. Maria knelt at his side and began whispering into his ear, a hand on his chest as she urged him to breathe. Joaquin scrambled towards his wife and helped her up, ran his hands over her torso and neck, stammered as he asked over and over again if she was alright.

"I'll be fine," Ixa said, gently pushing him aside. She was staring out into space, as though trying to imagine where the jaguars had gone. "We need to speak with him again."

Her husband stared at her in bug-eyed disbelief. "What for?"

"He's hiding something," she answered. "Something he hadn't planned on."

Maria pressed her forehead to Manolo's, trying to will him to relax. "Listen to me, he wants you to be angry, that's why you need to stop and think…"

"I am," he answered. He pulled away from Maria, then took her hands in his and looked up at her. "I'm thinking of how I'm going to kill him."