The caped man who had been leading the ritual chose this moment to try to escape down the stairs that fronted the pyramid. Before he had taken two steps, the sleek, all-black jaguar that was Teresa launched itself into the air. The cat sank the claws of its forepaws into his chest, bit savagely at the cultists’s neck, and then rode his body down the stairs, lashing out with hind legs and raking his lower body with its rear claws. Feathers from his shredded cape flew everywhere as the pair tumbled, and when they reached the bottom of the pyramid the leader lay in a bloody heap. Teresa sprang away into the night, still in jaguar form.