A scarlet jaguar, boiling hot, leaps into the Continental Detective Agency seeking Doc Caliban. No one admits to being Doc Caliban. Eventually Franks appears and punches it in the throat, allowing everyone else to pile on.
The jaguar was evidently sent by S.V. Vasathana, an Indian gentleman living in Hidalgo, a remote province of Mexico. Monk whistles -- Hidalgo is where Doc Caliban gets his vast fortune! There's a lost valley of Mayans there, all of whom have the Mover power. Doc rescued them from criminals back in the Twenties, and now and then they send a burro-team laden with gold to the port of Hidalgo.
Doc and Monk remain in San Francisco, battling Doc's werewolf self, which has come unstuck since the encounter with Lo Pan. William Harper Littlejohn, alternatively yclept Johnny, accompanies his entourage in Doc's lieu. He is an habitual neoverbalist and polysyllabic sesquatorian, but also an expert archeologist and geologist.
In the city of Hidalgo, a red-haired man observes the team landing. Melody follows him, but is too late to stop him from sending a radio message. She does, however, use her Torch power to prevent him from blowing up the radio equipment.
A scarlet jaguar lands and attacks! And ten minutes later, another, and then another. George blows one up in a gag worthy of Bugs Bunny, but they just keep coming. Melody and Franks apprehend the red-haired man, an Irish soldier of fortune named Ward. His nickname is Amber, on account of he's ambidextrous, with both hands as well!
Ward says Vasathana can Summon red jaguars. Ward told him where the Continentals were, and Vasathana did the rest. He is now, in fact, at that very same Valley of the Vanished which Doc spoke of! Our heroes rush there, as much as anyone can rush on burro-back.
Johnny calls out in Mayan, but the valley folk do not budge the big stone sealing the valley. Francis and Franks, together, manage to move it. Then someone almost shoots Melody in the head. Shimmering strands of silk are threaded among the trees, the work of another of Vasathana's summonings: a terrifying bear-headed spider creature which Amber Ward spoke of. This makes running through the jungle very difficult.
Claire teleports ahead and locates the shooter. He's in a hut with two Dark Elves and three dwarves. Francis manages to knock the dwarves' heads together and Claire returns an electric grenade which one of the Dark Elves throws. The other Dark Elf, however, attacks Francis and would have sliced off his arm were it not for Melody's split-second intervention.
George works around to the side and sees a pale man in bright colored clothes working in a ritual circle. The man sees him, and George summons up a wind to blow the circle's dust away. But by ignoring him and patching the circle, the man finishes his spell and fades away into nothingness. All the stones of the circle shatter at once.
Apparently, Vasathana and the man in the circle, whom Ward knew only as the Changeling, had no interest in the gold, or the Mayan's Power. They wanted to dig up the old stone circle, then use it once. And apparently, they have.
