They were made to place their weapons in a pile on the ground. When that was done, the jaguars bound their wrists behind their backs and pushed them along, following the rest of the gathering pack. Maria glared at her husband the whole time; Manolo's own gaze remained carefully trained towards the ground, every once in a while darting up to something tucked within his vest.
It didn't take long for the mortals' presence to be noticed. Jaguars began crowding around for a glimpse of these hated creatures that their master spoke of so often. Some laughed at how pathetic they appeared now. Others leapt forward while gnashing their teeth and swiping their claws inches from flesh. Ixa yelped and kept close to Vicente. Manolo and Maria flinched, but that was all. Their minds were elsewhere.
By the time the base of the hideous temple came into view, the remainder of the pack had formed a single growling, advancing mass centered around their prisoners. They cried out as though bringing offerings to their master, or to sate the hunger of their future companion.
At the bottom of the pyramid, with his retinue at his sides, was Pax. He stood upright, a lit torch grasped in his clawed hand. It seemed he had dressed for whatever part he intended to play this night; a long red cape was draped over his shoulders, and colorful beads and jewels hung from his neck. He wore a large headdress adorned with more jewels and the front half of a man's skull, from which long, deep green feathers spread out in all directions. He had been watching the movement of the moon with a hungry look in his eyes, but when he heard the commotion behind him, he returned his attention to the approaching pack. He smirked as he caught sight of Manolo.
A thought entered his mind. But where are the last two? Xibalba's favorite and the other girl, and those foolish spirits. He shook his head. They must have been disposed of already, and if not, they were too late to stop him now.
"I knew you would arrive," he said to the four mortals, who by now had been herded to the front of the pack and stood a few feet away from him. "Kneel before me."
They remained on their feet and glowered at him until his soldiers forced them down. "There," he said, "much better." Stepping down from his perch on the temple steps, he approached Manolo, grasped the man's chin in his hand and jerked his head upward to stare into his eyes. "Don't you agree?"
Manolo took a deep breath and tried not to concentrate on the claws pricking his skin. "Don't do this, Pax."
"Are you begging me or warning me?"
"Whichever one you'd like."
The jaguar sneered at him and chuckled. "Not even your gods have the power to stop me now."
"I know what you really want," Manolo said. "Just let her go and you can have my life instead."
Maria tried scrambling to her feet, but the jaguars held her down and clapped a paw over her mouth.
Manolo tried paying no notice to the muffled protests behind him. "…It'll be better that way. For all of us."
The glint in Pax's eyes flared up as he pulled his lips back and snarled. Grabbing Manolo by the neck, he hoisted him back to his feet and held him dangling just off the ground. "You think the spilling of your worthless blood would pay for all of my kind that you and yours killed that day?" he said. "Or that you could ever be one of my warriors?"
Manolo was gasping for air. "Neither could she - "
Pax threw him to the ground, reveling in the cry the human made as he landed. "So many mortals like you would tell me that," he said, looming over Manolo. "But it was always the purest ones that lost their minds first."
"My lord!" one of his retinue shouted. "The moon is nearly in position!"
He looked and saw that it was so; the red light was creeping up the side of the temple towards the altar on the top. "Bring the girl forward!" As the group gathered behind him parted, he motioned for Manolo to be restrained again. "A sight of your daughter, as promised."
Something was already wrong with her. She walked out from the shadows as though unaware of all gathered around her, one slow footstep after another. Her face was expressionless, as though wiped clean; there was nothing behind the glassy, unblinking eyes. A long, thin, hooded cloak of jaguar fur had been draped over her shoulders, looking as though it would swallow her up.
Manolo froze. "Mija?" he choked out. "Mija! Ofelia!"
She did not look at him, or even make a sound.
In an instant he had turned his rage on Pax. "What have you done to her?!"
'She is no longer your concern," the jaguar said. He pointed to a fallen tree trunk nearby. "Tie them up there. They mustn't be allowed too close."
Several jaguars immediately descended upon the four mortals, who tried in vain to pull their hands free and land a kick on their captors. Their screams grew louder as they were dragged away from the temple.
Pax paid them no heed; the plan was almost complete now. He started to walk up the temple steps, motioning for the girl to follow him. "You have no need of them anymore, cub. Come along now."
Ofelia took a few steps in his direction, but then suddenly halted. Her brows furrowed as she blinked a few times and then withdrew as though beckoned by an invisible force.
The jaguar growled. "Do as I say, child. We haven't much time."
Instead she turned back around, stared at the struggling mortals below. A shudder ran through her body, and she squeezed her eyes shut. When she opened them again, the haziness had vanished. "…Mama? Papa?"
She remembered barely anything from the moments just after she had let the jaguars take her away; only sharp teeth and claws and trees flying past her in a dark green blur. Somewhere along the way her glasses had fallen off, and then there was truly no chance of seeing anything. All of a sudden she stopped; first she was aware of rough stone against her back, and then of a paw pressing down on her chest to keep her in place.
"Make her drink this," a voice said. "We'll have no trouble with her then."
She clamped her lips together, determined to keep them that way. A pair of hands reached down and tried to force them apart. She turned her head away, holding in the screams that were building in her throat. But the monsters were cleverer than her. They grabbed her nose and held it shut until she had to gasp for air, then forced a splash of thick, bitter liquid into her mouth.
She choked. It felt like bugs swarming inside her, smelled like rotten fruit and blood. As soon as it hit the back of her throat, a tingling numbness blossomed there and started to spread through the rest of her body. Her limbs fell asleep one by one, and her eyelids began to feel heavy. There was no use in trying to shout, or even move her jaw. When the fuzziness reached her head, everything faded into darkness.
She was someplace else when she was able to open her eyes again. Someplace better? Too hard to say. The world around her seemed to shimmer like air on a hot day. Dark spots against gold glided past her in every direction; after a moment she was able to make out what they were. More jaguars, a whole cave of them, writhing about in the darkness as they growled to each other in low tones.
The first thought in her head was that she ought to run, but another quickly took its place. They aren't going to hurt you, it said. Why would they? You're one of them.
Was she?
She looked down at her hands, but found stubby paws instead. It dawned on her how small she had suddenly become, how she was standing on four legs rather than two, how she could feel fur on every inch of her body and a tail swishing behind her.
None of it was right! Or was it? A new feeling was creeping over her, the feeling that things had always been this way.
"Are you well, cub?" It was the voice of Pax.
She looked up and saw him beside her, yet he did not seem as frightening as he had been before. Instead there was something about him that was warm - fatherly, almost.
"Yes," she told him, the tone of her voice growing more flat. "Yes, I am well."
"Good. Now follow me, cub. There are some things we have yet to do."
He walked ahead. She followed him, her tiny claws clicking on the rocks underfoot. She thought she remembered some other place, some other faces, but now they all seemed like some distant, quickly fading dream.
"Mija? Mija! Ofelia! What have you done to her?!"
She stopped. Where had that voice come from? It sounded familiar somehow. And what was the name he had spoken? She thought she had heard that before, too.
"She is no longer your concern." That was her master's voice, but it seemed faint and far away. "Tie them up there. They mustn't be allowed too close." What was he talking about? Who did he mean?
She winced as her ears filled with screaming, more anguished than before. They were weeping and begging, whoever they were. And they kept saying that strange name over and over. Ofelia, Ofelia. Come back, Ofelia.
"You have no need of them anymore, cub," Pax said to her. "Come along now."
"But who are they?" she asked. "What do they want?" Part of her seemed to already know the answer to that - it was her they called out for.
Something was wrong with her eyes, or perhaps something was wrong with the world around her. Shapes and colors were blurring together. She thought she saw the walls of the cave beginning to crack and tear, and that new shapes and colors were spilling in to overtake the old.
It's not real, she realized. None of this is real.
And then she remembered.
"Do as I say, child. We haven't much time." Pax was towering over her now, growing angry. The jaguars growled in low tones as they stalked forward, surrounding her, forcing her deeper into their master's clutches.
"No!" she shouted, and the whole world shattered like glass. Suddenly she was a girl again, standing on the steps of one of those pyramids with the jaguars all around her and her family just out of reach.
"Mama? Papa?" Even with her poor eyes, she could make out their forms.
Her father cried out again at the sound of her voice. For a moment he threw off the jaguar dragging him away and moved as though to run towards her, but then a whole mass of the creatures leapt on him and pulled him back.
"Papa!" she shouted and tried to leap down the stone steps. She screamed in anger and kicked as Pax snatched her out of the air and held her aloft.
"Kill the mortals!" the jaguar said, beginning to ascend the temple steps with haste. "I shall take charge of the - "
A gunshot rang out. Pax yowled in pain and collapsed, holding his arm. He dropped Ofelia, who sprang back to her feet and ran towards the trees when the jaguars' backs were turned.
Everyone's back was turned by now, staring on in shock. Joaquin simply blew the smoke from the barrels of his shotgun, reloaded it and took aim. "Alright, which of you is next?"
With a shout, Manolo struggled free from the jaguars pinning him down and leapt to his feet. The bonds around his wrists were frayed by now; he broke them with a single jerk, whipped out the knife he had hidden in his vest and slashed the face of the first monster that pounced at him.
The rest of the group that had attacked rushed towards him, but halted and retreated as another figure came running out from behind him. It was Maria, yelling curses as she brandished a sword. The monsters fled, but not before she felled one of them with a blow to the neck that stained the shimmering blade with dark blood.
For half a second, Manolo was too confused to be angry. "How did you - "
"Hola, Uncle Manolo!"
He turned and saw Gabriela with a smile on her face, a sack of the discarded weapons from before at her side and a wide-eyed bird perched on her shoulder. She had freed Ixa and Vicente as well, both of them already hurrying towards Joaquin. Now she held out a sword - the conquistador's sword, the one with the rosary on the handle.
"Papa said this one was yours," she told him. "Well?"
He looked back. The only thing between him and his daughter now was a wall of snarling, bloodthirsty beasts - it almost didn't seem fair to them.
In one swift motion, he grabbed the sword, raised it over his head and charged.