“I was thinking that.”
“This is creepy, Hunter. Can’t you feel…something out here?”
The wind picked up, making the wall of vegetation rustle and shake as if something large slithered through the undergrowth. Wind whistled over the snakeskin, a sound like thin reptilian wings. The head of the snake appeared to be swallowing the cross from the top down.
For a moment everything felt dry, a forest fire or a desert riding on the restless wind.
“This is wrong,” she said.
Hunter agreed. “Not a quaint little roadside shrine. Someone around here is really into ancient gods.”
The snakeskin twitched in the wind, pulling like an animal wanting to be free.
Lina made a low sound.
“What?” Hunter asked instantly.
“This is an altar to Kukulcán. The cross isn’t here to pay lip service to Catholicism.” She shivered, though the temperature was warm. “This represents an ancient Maya belief system.”
There was no photo or name to honor a relative killed along the highway. The only writing was crudely drawn glyphs painted on snakeskin or inked onto paper and tacked into place.
It was silent except for the random swish of traffic.
No one pulled off farther down the road. No one even paused. The intermittent parade of ancient cars and trucks was splashed with the shine of rich people’s vehicles and the duller gleam of rentals.
Insects crawled among the shrine’s offerings. Wind stirred restlessly, carrying the scent of old blood, old flesh.
“Roadkill?” Lina asked, wrinkling her nose.
“Smells like it, but I don’t see any. Would the locals get upset if I looked more closely at the shrine?”
“As long as you don’t deface anything, it should be okay.”
Hunter went to the shrine and sat on his heels. Very carefully he lifted a mound of flowery offerings. Dull eyes stared back at him. The smell of carrion became overpowering.
“What is it?” Lina asked.
“Monkey head. Maybe a cat. Hard to tell at this point.”
Her breath came in hard, coated with the odor of death. “Blood offering.”
“Looks like it.” Gently Hunter replaced the flowers and tried to ignore the memories of a basement where human blood had flowed red and dried black. The gun he had stuffed into the back of his jeans felt better than it had since Rodrigo had sold it to him. “You recognize any of the glyphs?”
Carefully she leaned down, breathing through her mouth in an effort to minimize the smell. “They’re very rough.”
He grunted.
“Blood. Power.” She stood suddenly. The smell was making her stomach twist. “This shrine calls the powerful old gods, but most of all, the gods of knowledge and death. Kukulcán and Kawa’il.
“I was afraid of that. You think the others along the road are the same?”
“Not all of them. At least one had a picture nailed at the center of the cross, and the arms were shorter. That usually means a Christian commemoration of a dead friend or a family member.”
“But most shrines were like this?” he asked grimly.
“Yes. Kawa’il. Death.”
Hunter straightened swiftly. “Want me to drive?”
“No. I’m okay. Just…” She shrugged.
“Yeah, me, too. Wonder what Mercurio de la Poole thinks of this?”
“I’ll be sure to ask.”
Lina and Hunter got back in the Bronco and drove through a green tunnel of jungle punctuated by flaring shrines.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO DO THIS?” LINA ASKED Hunter after a silence lasting many miles.
“What?”
“Be here right now,” she said bluntly. “You’re used to dealing with people who are driven by money—kidnap, extortion, outright theft, that sort of thing. Jase is used to drug cartels and poor, ambitious civilians who want to find work by crossing illegally into the U.S.”
Hunter saw a flash of color against jungle. Another shrine or altar or whatever the hell was going on.
“Whoever left that blood sacrifice,” Lina said, “is different. He or she is owned by gods and a way of life you don’t understand. What you think of as good or evil doesn’t matter right here, right now.”
“And you do understand?”
“I not only know the sources of Maya religion, I feel it. I was a child in isolated villages. I understand that spirits own the night, jaguars walk with kings, and humans live on the thinnest thread of approval from capricious gods.”
“You’re a believer?” Hunter asked.
She laughed, but it wasn’t a sound of humor. “No. But I’ve felt believers. They’re different. What repels us elevates them, brings them closer to the beating heart of divinity, the very breath of the gods infusing everything. We hear wind in the jungle or the cry of birds; believers hear gods, and they act on what they hear.”
Hunter was silent, watching her, seeing both past and future in her striking profile. “So the blood and shrines aren’t new to you?”
“No. But the intensity and amount of both is new.” She tucked a piece of her unraveling hairdo behind her ear. Before she lifted her hand, the wind pouring through the open windows undid her work. “In Houston, I believed the messianic fervor around 2012 was a fad, a diversion for people who had too much money and too little life. But here…”
Hunter watched Lina’s teeth sink into her lower lip and wished they were back in bed, where needs were clear and the celebration of life was direct.
“The altar we stopped at wasn’t the product of some easy New Age belief,” Lina said after a moment. “The altar was real blood, real flesh, real death. The giving of blood and the pain that came with it, the first and oldest sacrifice.”
“So you’re saying that the blood and flowers are a recognition of the turning of the Great Wheel, baktun, the end of the Long Count, of Maya time.”
“To us, perhaps. To a believer it would be the beginning of a new world,” she said. She slowed for an old pickup truck hauling a rickety crate of frazzled chickens in back. She went around the truck with a smooth surge of speed. “If there really is a resurgence of native Maya belief around here, then any calculations you make based on New World power and drugs and money won’t be valid. Someone you expect to do one thing will do something entirely different. The past won’t be a predictor of the present.”
“Gods change. Human nature doesn’t.” Hunter’s hand stroked her tensed right arm in a slow, lingering caress. “I’m staying with you, Lina. Tomorrow night we’ll celebrate the Maya baktun together with champagne or blood, whatever gets it done. Then we’ll see who walks and who rides in the brave new Maya world.”
She flicked a glance at Hunter. His face was as hard as anything she’d ever seen carved in stone.
And as compelling.
A THIN, HIGH HAZE HAD COVERED THE SKY WHILE THE SUN came closer to dropping into the jungle. The air was unusually dry for what was technically the end of the rainy season. Not desert dry, but not ocean-and-jungle humid either.
The Museo de Antropología de Tulum was located on the northern edge of Pueblo Tulum. It was as much a compound as a pure museum. Several modest residences were situated across a courtyard garden from the museum itself. The area was walled, with ancient stelae rising among the flowers. The museum’s reception area had been designed like the anteroom to an ancient temple. Framed photos of local Maya ruins competed with colorful rubbings taken from a temple wall describing Jaguar Claw’s victory over an ancient priest-king.
A black-haired woman dressed in a long skirt and a colorful native blouse stopped tapping on an old computer when the front door opened. With the ingrained training of a woman in Mexico, she passed over Lina and asked Hunter in soft Spanish how she could help him.
“Tell Mercurio that Lina Reyes Balam is here to see him,” Lina said, stepping into a shaft of light from a high, vertical window.
The woman’s eyes wi
dened and she stood up with what could have been a subtle bow.
“But of course. Immediately.” She hurried out through a side door.
Hunter waited until she was out of earshot. “Not royalty, huh? She didn’t bow to me.”
Lina rolled her dark eyes, but before she could think of a comeback, a handsome man rushed out of a shadowed hallway and engulfed her in a hug.
“Lina, querida, you should have told me you were coming,” Mercurio said.
His voice was as deep as his hair was black. Eyes almost as dark as his hair watched Lina with something that could only be called possessiveness. Like Lina, he was a mixture of Maya and European, an inch taller than she was and a lot stronger.
Hunter didn’t enjoy watching Mercurio hug her breathless one damn bit, but he knew better than to show any emotion. Mercurio was making a statement. Now it was up to Lina to make one of her own. Impassive, Hunter watched her struggle politely to get some distance from Mercurio without being insulting about it.
“Sorry about the lack of notice,” she said, finally managing to step back from the embrace.
“No, no.” Mercurio held on to her hand and kissed it too long for politeness. “Such a sweet surprise you are.”
Color appeared high on Lina’s cheekbones, anger or embarrassment. She wasn’t nearly as comfortable with Mercurio’s affectionate display as he was. Nor did she like the way he was ignoring Hunter. Mercurio was usually polite to a fault.
She felt like a bone being mauled by a dog.
“Dr. Mercurio ak Chan de la Poole,” Lina said crisply, “I would like to introduce Mr. Hunter Johnston. We’re both very interested in the artifacts I mentioned when I called you.”
Reluctantly Mercurio turned to Hunter with a meaningless smile. “Good to meet you.”
Hunter murmured something polite and shook hands in the gentle Mexican way.
Mercurio had been north of the border. He ground down on Hunter’s hand with enough force to establish machismo.
Hunter’s smile didn’t change. He waited patiently to be released. When he was, he slid his hand over Lina’s and laced their fingers deeply together.
“You’ve come a long way from Texas,” Mercurio said to Hunter.
“Lina knows I’ll go anywhere with her.”
She shot Hunter a look from under long, dark eyelashes, but kept her mouth shut. She didn’t want to insult Mercurio before she saw his new acquisitions.
“I would do the same,” Mercurio replied coolly, “go anywhere for her.” His dark eyes shifted to Lina, caressing her and ignoring Hunter like a buzzing fly. “What may I do for you, beautiful one? What has brought you all the way to my humble place of work?”
“Humble?” Lina’s hand gestured to the timbered vault of the ceiling, and the Maya-inspired designs carved into the hardwood that must have taken hundreds of hours of exacting work.
“One tries,” Mercurio said.
She smiled brightly. “You succeed. I know how valuable your time is, so I’ll try not to take much of it.”
“For you—”
She kept talking. Ruthlessly. “We’d really love permission to see your recent acquisitions. Perhaps you have some items that would be suitable for trade with my museum.”
“But of course, querida.” He took her arm and led her to the acquisitions room.
Lina kept hold of Hunter’s hand like a lifeline. He decided that if Mercurio called Lina querida—darling—one more time in that deep, possessive tone, there might just be an unhappy moment or three while Hunter shoved Mercurio’s grasping fingers where the sun doesn’t shine.
But only after Hunter got what he came for. He was liking better and better the idea that Mercurio was good for illegal artifact trading, attempted murder, and attempted kidnapping. At least Hunter’s emotions liked the idea. His mind wasn’t cheering quite as happily.
“Did you come down for Abuelita’s birthday?” Mercurio asked, plainly not caring if Hunter could hear.
“I’m surprised you remembered,” Lina said.
“This year, it would be difficult to forget. To have a Reyes Balam birthday on the day the wheel will turn is a magnificent thing, a source of much celebration. Some of the village people have prepared shrines.”
Lina almost missed a step. Hunter steadied her with a hand at the small of her back. Then he nearly sent her to her knees with a slow, loving caress over her backside.
“Shrines?” she asked. Then she cleared her throat and tried again. “Shrines with Abuelita’s picture?”
Mercurio shrugged with a male grace that was unconscious.
Hunter considered tripping him.
“I look only at the flowers,” Mercurio said. “From a distance, they are beautiful, yes?”
“You never got close to one of the shrines?” Hunter asked.
“The peasant beliefs are not mine,” Mercurio said without looking away from Lina. “I am a civilized man educated in the civilized world.”
“Have you heard that the people are getting fanatic about their gods?” Hunter asked. “You know, baktun and all.”
“There are rumors.” The distaste in Mercurio’s voice was clear. “The villagers are very unsophisticated.”
“What kind of rumors?” Lina asked before Hunter could. “Anything that might threaten my family?”
Mercurio’s laugh was as richly masculine as his voice. “Their jungles might be short a few monkeys, but the villagers hold the Reyes Balam line in reverence. Not quite gods, but close. Priest-kings, as it were.”
“Priest-kings often came to a bloody end,” Hunter pointed out.
“That was long ago,” Mercurio said. “Like the artifacts in this museum. Beautiful reminders of a past that is no more.”
Hunter thought of the blood-drenched basement, the stone altar with the face of a god brooding over it, shots echoing in a parking garage, and Jase’s shirt with a terrifying stain of blood.
“Some people still take it seriously,” Hunter said. “Like death.”
“There are crazies in every society,” Mercurio said.
“Have you ever heard of El Maya?” Hunter asked casually.
“Superstitions, but I’ve heard something. The peasants think he is a god.”
“Yeah? Is he local?”
“He’s a god,” Mercurio said. “He’s everywhere. And nowhere.”
“I haven’t heard of him,” Lina said.
Mercurio made a dismissing motion with his hand. “El Maya is a combination of Robin Hood and the Grim Reaper. He’s a hope and a fear. Hot air, I believe you Americans say.”
“So you don’t think he’s real,” Hunter said, remembering Rodrigo’s silence.
“No,” Mercurio said, focusing on Lina as he opened the door to the acquisitions room. “You have strange friends, querida.”
Hunter wanted to show Mercurio just how strange he was—but not until Hunter was sure that he’d wrung all possible information out of the man.
Lina’s breath came in swiftly as she saw the room beyond Mercurio. Shelves and tables filled every space. Most surfaces were covered by artifacts waiting to be cataloged.
“As I said, I need more help.” Mercurio’s tone was wry, but not apologetic.
Lina didn’t take the bait.
“Good help is hard to find,” Hunter said blandly.
Mercurio kept on acting as if he were alone with Lina.
She headed for the artifacts. There was a tug at her arm before Mercurio slowly, reluctantly let go. If she hadn’t needed to look at his artifacts, she would have given him the kind of cold female shoulder that left ice burns.
Silently Hunter’s glance raked over artifact after artifact, looking for something that matched the photos in his cargo pants.
Lina was looking just as intently. “Nice incense burner.”
“Nice?” Mercurio laughed. “The censer is beautiful and you know it.”
“Of course,” she said, studying it.
The pottery’s central motif was
an intricate cutout of an idealized Maya skull, mouth open. Snakes wrapped around the cranial dome, heads pointed up to the heavens. The figure was repeated three more times around the pottery. The inside was black with smoke, probably from sacred copal, the hardened but not fossilized remains of tree sap. The outside showed traces of blue that could have been painted glyphs, faded now.
There was no piece missing in the censer that would match what Hunter and Jase had found in the murdered janitor’s room. None of the glyphs had the squared, jagged lines, a sigil sacred exclusively to Kawa’il.
The blackware vases were perfect—suspiciously so to Lina, but it wasn’t her collection, so she said nothing. Their glyphs were outlined in red. Kawa’il’s sigil was absent.
Hunter absorbed each artifact in turn. The ornamental carved stones were new to him.
“What’s their purpose?” he asked aloud.
“Perhaps good luck, perhaps simple offerings flung into a sacred cenote,” Mercurio answered. “I haven’t had time to translate the glyphs, which appear to be Terminal Classic on first look.”
Hunter switched his attention to tiny pottery faces, misshapen and broken, as though cast aside. “These?” he asked.
“Supernatural faces,” Lina said when Mercurio didn’t answer. “Some of the many, many gods of the Maya. They look like imports from the highlands. Anywhere from Classic to Late Terminal Classic. Probably cenote offerings.”
“Very good,” Mercurio said in surprise. “But then, you always had an enviable eye. Are you certain I can’t lure you to the Yucatan full-time?”
“Quite certain,” Lina said absently.
Her attention was on pots with knobby animal feet at the bottom. Again, probably made as offerings to one god or another. But it was a string of pale, carved jade beads that made her breath stop. The beads looked like a snake swallowing its own tail. Some of the beads were chipped or cracked, but it didn’t detract from the impact of the whole.
Lina had seen only one thing like the beads—a big jade medallion of a jaguar head wreathed in a feathered snake devouring its own tail. The piece probably had been part of a priest’s regalia. She had found it at one of her father’s digs.
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