Treasure Hunting

by Jenna McDonald

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  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

  577 Mulberry Street, Suite 1520

  Macon GA 31201

  Treasure Hunting

  Copyright © 2008 by Jenna McDonald

  ISBN: 1-59998-920-4

  Edited by Angela James

  Cover by Anne Cain

  All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: April 2008

  www.samhainpublishing.com

  Treasure Hunting

  Jenna McDonald

  Dedication

  For my parents, who never blinked when I said was going to be a writer, and who proudly announced the publication of my romance to their church group.

  And for Sabina, who pitched in at the last minute and kept me from hysterics.

  Chapter One

  The only problem with South America—aside from giant bugs, a lack of air conditioning, and general chauvinism—was that you could walk right past an ancient ruin and never know it.

  Meg had no intention of doing so, but that was easier said than done. Still, she supposed it made her travel guides happy—they were able to set up camp and remain there while she quartered the surrounding jungle one foot at a time. What she really needed, she thought as she whacked through a hanging branch and cleared six more inches, was Tarzan. Yes, Tarzan would be the perfect trail guide. And maybe, just maybe, he’d know a shortcut to any possible rui—

  She stopped, having caught a glimpse of…something out of the corner of her eye. Her feet squished in the soft ground as she leaned back. An insect bit her, and she slapped at it absently.

  There. Between the trees.

  Heart pounding, she turned and began the mad scramble to get through the underbrush. It could have been stone. It also could have been a funny slant of light coming through the jungle canopy. Most times, it was just light, but maybe this time…

  Hope sprung eternal, after all.

  Sweat dripping down her back and between her breasts, her shirt plastered to her body and various cuts and scrapes adorning her arms, she finally forced her way through.

  It was just a slant of light.

  Meg sighed heavily and sat, checking to make sure there was a root rather than slime to sit on. She glared at a mosquito, then squished it when it had the audacity to try and bite her.

  Three more weeks. Three more weeks of leave, and then she had to go back to being a staid college professor. Back to grading papers and helping students through academic crises, trying to convince them that sociology was great. She’d have to give up treasure hunting for a while longer, until the next major break—Christmas. She thought she might be able to wrangle it free without getting a complete guilt trip from her mother. Just a partial guilt trip. Okay, slightly more than “partial”. But it would be worth it, to be able to gather up her savings (frivolously spent, if her father was asked) and hare back down here to South America, braving theft and soldiers and giant bugs from outer space.

  She brushed some kind of uber-large beetle away and glowered.

  Damn it.

  She peered into the heavy green jungle overhead, trying to gauge how much light was left. Probably enough for another half hour of hacking and slicing before she had to hack and slice her way back to camp. She pushed back to her feet, rubbing sweat away with a dirty wrist, and started off again.

  Another fifteen minutes flew by, another few feet were gained. Birds screamed above and animals watched her pass. The jungle was loud in a way the city never could be, filled with animals and bugs and the rustle of leaves against vines, against branches, against bark. Noises that faded into the background until a monkey screeched or a bird exploded out of nearby foliage, and eventually even those became less noticeable.

  Gunfire shattered the noise. In the hair-lifting quiet that echoed afterward, her breath shuddered in her throat.

  Her head whipped around, feet nearly catching in the mud and sending her sprawling. Visions of armed men attacking their camp snarled through her mind, and she felt for the rifle her guides had insisted she take. She raced back toward their base, discarding initial attempts to do so quietly. There was no chance of that happening.

  She was halfway there when a shape darting from one shadow to the next sent her slamming against a tree trunk, trying to hide. A heartbeat passed before she realized that whatever that was, it wasn’t human. Nobody moved with such silence through the heavy jungle, no matter how long they’d lived there. She slid out from her cover, watching for the creature.

  Men shouted, but there were no more shots. Even the yelling didn’t seem frantic—excited, maybe, but not panicked. Not an attack, then? An animal? She moved closer to where the thing had crossed her path, gaze casting through the humid greenery in search of—well, she wasn’t sure, but in search of something.

  A smear of blood caught her eye. She hesitated, logic telling her that whatever they’d shot would likely be dead in a matter of minutes. Probably an animal, probably not a person—or if it was a person, an armed and angry one.

  Despite all of the reasons to leave it alone, she found herself following the thin trail the creature had left. The occasional broken twig—and how anything moved through this forest leaving it so untouched was a wonder—added to the occasional bloody stripe across leaves, marking its path. When she found a paw print as big as her fist, she nearly stopped the search. Her guides were going to throw a fit if she brought an animal back that they’d just shot. But, damn it, at the very least she had to make sure it wasn’t suffering.

  Meg pushed on. All things considered, it wasn’t long before she stumbled across—

  A tail.

  She blinked.

  A really long tail. Shadow-dark, with ebony rosettes and a lethally black tip. This was no little critter needing help. This was large, a predator that could eat her in a single bite. Maybe even half a bite. She really wasn’t that big.

  Cautiously, she pushed aside fronds to see the rest of the animal.

  Jaguar, her mind whispered in equal parts awe and terror.

  The cat lay coiled, a foreleg hanging almost uselessly to one side. Tawny gold eyes regarded her without blinking, ears flat back against its head. Sleek fur stretched, graceful over impossibly perfect muscles. Claws flexed into the dirt, either in threat or preparation to flee—she couldn’t tell. It wouldn’t get much farther on that leg, though. Blood matted the fur, a furrow cutting straight through the powerful shoulder.

  Pausing, she unslung her rifle and aimed carefully through the sights. Her heart sank, staring into gold eyes that glared defiantly back at her. It was going to die—slowly and painfully, if left to the mercy of infection and other animals. What she was doing was a blessing. Really.

  Her finger just wouldn’t tighten on the trigger.

  She cursed and lowered her rifle. With hurried, frustrated movements—what she was doing was insane, and she wasn’t sure she could convince her guides to help—she slung the rifle back over her shoulder and pulled out the tranquilizer gun. She’d told the guides to use them in case of an animal attack, but obviously they hadn’t listened.

  She could do it, though, and she could make them listen.
The jaguar would have to be enough treasure for this trip—hell, rescuing a predator ought to at least make for several years’ worth of stories, right? Right, she decided, then lifted her gun and shot.

  The jaguar screamed, the jungle incarnate. Then it relaxed, eyelids drooping closed as its eyes rolled back in their sockets.

  Perfect. Now to lug several hundred pounds of flesh and muscle back to the camp.

  Maybe she should have thought this through a little more.

  It took the promise of an extra fifty American dollars per person to get her three guides to help. They bound the big cat, tying all four feet together, and then hefted it back to their base. Night had fallen by the time the cat was secured to a downed tree, rope tight enough to reassure the men that it wasn’t going to break free and attack. From the looks they were shooting her, Meg guessed they would be just as happy to tie her up and make sure there wouldn’t be any other surprise pets.

  She spent several minutes feeling around the cat’s legs, looking for a pulse before finally giving up and trusting that the tranquilizer makers knew what they were doing. Then she pulled out the heavy-duty first aid kit she always brought along and prepared to clean the wound. After a moment’s thought on how to avoid claws should the cat wake up and take offense to her help, she positioned herself behind its shoulder.

  It didn’t wake, though, and only twitched when she flushed the injury with alcohol.

  It wasn’t bleeding badly. She stuffed the bullet graze full of gauze and taped the padding to the creature’s fur before finishing for the night. After checking the ropes and making certain they were neither too tight nor too loose—she might feel bad for the big predator, but she wasn’t about to become its next meal—Meg crawled into her tent of bug mesh and curled up to sleep.

  ***

  An engine started. Meg grabbed for her pillow to pull it over her head, determined that the L.A. traffic wouldn’t wake her.

  She couldn’t find her pillow.

  Then she remembered she wasn’t in L.A.

  Curly blonde hair fell in tangles before her face as she jerked awake. Blowing it out of the way impatiently, she scrambled free of mosquito netting and staggered into the jungle.

  By jarring beams of flashlights her guides threw the last of their belongings into a Jeep that idled fifty feet away, on the dirt path they called a road.

  “What are you doing?” Meg yelled, stumbling into the strip of jungle separating their camp from the cars. Her foot squelched in something slimy, her hand smashing into a tree in her attempt to keep from falling. She stopped moving, half afraid of running into something else in her dash forward.

  Then a body brushed by, and she grabbed at a bulky wrist. Peering up, she realized she’d caught her head guide. “We’ve got another three weeks!”

  “Sorry, señora.” He pulled free and shouldered the bag she’d knocked loose. “We’ve left one Jeep for you, to come back when you will. The men—they do not like El Gato.”

  “The cat? This is about my jaguar?” she asked disbelievingly. “It’s trussed up!”

  “Sorry, señora.” Juan shrugged once and tossed his bag to a man already sitting in the back of the auto. “You will be fine. Don’t worry. No one will bother him.” He yanked a thumb back toward their camp and the tied jaguar. Then he vaulted into the Jeep.

  “Juan! Damn it!” Meg shouted, tripping on God-knew-what in the dark and cursing violently as the men peeled away.

  She stood on the dirt path, glaring down it as taillights flickered and were lost in the foliage. Apparently good help wasn’t hard to find just in the United States.

  Muttering under her breath, she staggered back toward the camp. Eventually, she saw the glow of the banked fire, and, relieved that the dark was broken, she headed toward it. All this, for a stupid jaguar. Maybe she should have just shot it. Meg squinted into the blackness where the cat slept.

  There didn’t seem to be a cat there. In fact, it looked like one of the men had stayed behind after all.

  “Fuck,” she growled, indulging in the word her mother hated the most. She stomped to the shadowy figure, drawing back to kick it in the thigh and wake it up—

  And stopped.

  A pristine white bandage was taped to the back of the man’s shoulder. A well-muscled, bare shoulder. If any of her guides had possessed shoulders like that, she would have spent a lot less time in the forest.

  The shoulder led to a gold-skinned arm. A bare chest rose and fell, breathing with a rhythm just slower than resting. Muscles rippled across chest and stomach, shadows filling hollows with soft darkness. The stomach led to narrow hips and—

  Whoa. He was really naked.

  Meg swallowed and dragged her gaze back up, uncertain whether she was grateful or upset that his knees, tucked up against his stomach due to his ankles bound up with his hands, hid the rest of him.

  No, on second thought, she was definitely upset. She valiantly kept her eyes at a higher point anyway—a relatively easy task, since she couldn’t see anything interesting without straddling the man. Maybe if she leaned around—no, no. She forced herself straight again.

  He had black hair and thick, dark lashes lying against high cheekbones. A strong jaw created the slightest of hollows in his cheeks, full lips relaxed in sleep. He was stunning—and a great deal more muscled than the men in her group had been.

  Cautiously, she inched closer and peeled up the edge of the medical tape, wincing when a layer of skin went with it.

  There was a furrow along the shoulder blade, digging into flesh and muscle, looking something like a bullet wound. She glanced around. No sign of the cat. No drag marks. Getting a body that big through this much jungle couldn’t have been done without any sign of passing, and yet…

  Yet there was no cat, just a very large, very attractive man bound where a jaguar used to be.

  This, Meg decided, had to be the South American version of “fool the tourist.” She went back to bed.

  ***

  Angry cat noises woke her. A tabby owned Meg, and she was overly familiar with those noises. Usually, it meant imminent destruction of furniture. When the cat weighed better than three hundred pounds…

  She bolted out of her tent, scrambling to her feet amidst tangles of mosquito netting and mud.

  The jaguar was right back where it had been the night before, struggling against ties and screaming catty insults at her. She knew catty insults when she heard them.

  Rope began to fray.

  With a yelp, she grabbed for the tranquilizer gun, loading a shot and plugging the creature as quickly as she could. After one last flail, it dropped unconscious.

  Hand to her chest to keep her pounding heart inside, Meg stood and stared at the jaguar. Her mind whirled. Why the men hadn’t woken her before the cat freaked out, she couldn’t—

  Then she remembered the night before. A dream. It had to have been a dream. A close inspection of the camp and what was left—or rather, how much was missing—suggested otherwise.

  All right, so a partial dream. Funny light and shadows playing with her vision, combining with entirely too much celibacy, making her think she was seeing a person. Because that—she peered at the jaguar—while beautiful, was no human.

  She glared around the camp, then finally dug out rations—the men had left everything she might need, including food and extra bullets—and ate breakfast. By the time she’d finished and cleaned up, she’d convinced herself this really was some asshole attempt at “scare the tourist,” and decided to play along. She changed the bandage on the cat, then gathered her things and headed out—only to circle back and lie in wait.

  “I’ll catch them this time,” Meg grumbled to herself, falling back into old habits, “and show them they can’t scare me so easily. Assholes.” She grinned. She had male cousins—swapping a jaguar with a man and back again wouldn’t chase her off.

  The day dragged on, heat building under the low canopy. Bugs buzzed, hummed, chirped and crawled. Birds hooted a
nd shrieked and whistled. Small animals crept, climbed and dashed.

  She waited and wished something would happen.

  At first, she didn’t realize what she was seeing. The jaguar seemed changed every time she looked over—legs longer, tail shorter, shoulders broadening. She brushed it off as a trick of the light, fatigue twisting her vision, sheer boredom.

  But it kept changing.

  Meg stared as the transformation continued, fur seeming to melt into the shadows and disappear, leaving behind golden skin. Black hair lay in his face, obscuring strong features, but the body was unmistakable.

  It was the same man she’d seen the night before. No one had moved him.

  “Oh,” she breathed. “Oh, shit.”

  Chapter Two

  Meg had long since crept out of her hiding place and taken up watch roughly six inches from the man’s face. In the light of day shadow and knees couldn’t entirely hide the rest of him, and she couldn’t help but sneak a peek.

  He looked nice. Or maybe, as her younger sister would say, niiiiiiiiiiice.

  Of course, the fact that he was, apparently, some bizarre kind of cat-man made it unsettling. Still, no sign of fur, no tail, no penis spurs—she double-checked those last two items in the interest of science, of course—no claws, the ears were normally rounded, the shoulders were utterly drool-worthy—

  It was a battle to keep her mind out of the gutter. Really.

  Eventually, though, she’d exhausted her search for signs of the jaguar he’d been and realized that this looked like a normal human. So, she sat six inches from him and watched, mind whirling.

  “The Aztec believed that—” Meg paused, the name escaping her. “They had a god that changed into a cat, or something like that,” she said to no one in particular. “And the Olmec and Mayan had similar beliefs.”

  The cat-man slept on, apparently uncaring about the Mayan and Aztec, much less the Olmec.

  She couldn’t bring herself to voice the rest of the thought—that maybe they’d been right. On the other hand, she thought as she eyed the long body, he did have a rather god-like physique.