He slid from shadow to shadow until his next steps would push him into the kneeling, chanting Maya gathered in the clearing. What he saw over their heads made his heart jerk.
Lina.
She was alive, half naked, wrists bound, lying on the altar. Nothing tied her feet or her body to the stone. Shaped like a Chacmool, the altar had been placed about two yards back from the edge of Cenote de Balam. With each breath she took, the sound the flutes made edged higher, then higher. The wind flexed hard, all but tearing fire from the torches. The drone of massed voices chanting flowed over the cenote, filling it with expectation.
Lina’s body looked taut, not slack with drugs. No blood showed anywhere on her. If Hunter started firing, he hoped that she would be able to flee, or at least take cover behind the altar.
The flutes sang higher with every moment the living sacrifice lay waiting. The Chacmool’s face looked taunting, teeth parted to receive all the sacred fluid it could drink, telling everyone in vast silence that humans were only temporary vessels for blood, and the Chacmool itself was blood’s ultimate destination. The shivering torchlight gave eerie life to the serpents supporting the altar’s legs, snakes winding about one another, twining, devouring, with neither beginning nor end.
The keening wail of the flutes lifted to the night, notes climbing until they were just short of a shriek.
Hunter sighted the AK-47. The weapon hadn’t been designed for accuracy. It had been created to lay down a storm of lead, not to pick off targets one at a time.
No good shot. Too many Maya near Lina. Too much stone to ricochet against. I have as much chance of hurting her as freeing her.
Which one is Carlos? Not one of the Bacabs. Maybe one of the two dressed in glittering chunks of obsidian and feathers.
Wait, the one in the jaguar skin with the black mask. Obsidian. Yes. That has to be Carlos.
Hunter sited down his weapon’s barrel and his finger slowly tightened.
Without warning the crowd stood, blocking Hunter’s shot.
Shit.
Spraying lead might wound Lina, might push Carlos into killing her right now, and would certainly level the crowd until he ran out of bullets. As a last resort, he’d do it.
But not yet.
Cursing silently, steadily, Hunter worked through the jungle at the edge of the clearing, finding a place where the land rose enough to give him a good angle on Carlos. The chanting of the worshippers and shrilling of the flutes rose relentlessly.
Lina lay on her back between the Chacmool’s mocking face and its upraised knees. Slowly she lifted her bound wrists above her head. Her body was taut, vibrating with life.
Carlos walked forward until he stood at the edge of the Chacmool. He thrust his hands up to the darkness and wind. One hand held the codex. The other held the god bundle. An obsidian knife gleamed from a jaguar-skin belt circling his waist. Torchlight slid across the obsidian mask like oily water. It was impossible to read any expression behind the mask. Blood dripped from his lacerated left hand, smeared over his skin and the god bundle that he held.
Lightning made the mask he wore glow like black water lit from within. It was mesmerizing, terrifying, reaching deep into the primal core that most humans denied even existed.
Lightning turned the darkness brilliant, then plunged everything into a night that seemed twice as deep.
More flutes cried above the droning of the crowd. The sound of the ceramic instruments was close to a scream and still climbing, climbing, climbing toward an unbearable climax, a sound more goading than melodic, driving the crowd to the edge of madness and ecstasy.
The flutes poured out a shattering, terrifying shriek, then fell silent.
“I hold your most sacred objects,” Carlos cried to the sky, to Kawa’il. “Give me the sign.”
“That’s my codex, you son of a bitch!” Philip’s bellow ripped through the night.
Everyone flinched and turned toward the sound.
Lina brought back her knees and then lashed out with all her strength. Her heels sank into her would-be executioner’s crotch. She rolled off the Chacmool on the side closest to the cenote. Running hard past a stunned Bacab, she hurtled off the rim of the cenote and into the dark water below.
The night exploded.
With the strength of madness, Philip shoved and kicked through the crowd, rapidly reaching Carlos. Hunter pointed his rifle up and fired a short burst, magnifying the confusion into chaos. Using the gun butt when he had to and his feet the rest of the time, he circled around the edge of the crowd, heading for the Chacmool, the place he had last seen Lina before worshippers blocked her from his sight.
Carlos screamed “Noooooo!” as he went down under Philip’s attack.
The worshippers shifted, howled, and surged toward the Chacmool, where Philip clawed at the codex Carlos still held. Machetes flashed like teeth as the human wave rolled over the two grappling men. Torches went out when the wave swept to the brink of the cenote, paused…then withdrew, retreated, dissolving into the darkness and jungle with eerie speed and silence.
The few torches still burning showed nothing. No Bacabs, no Philip, no Carlos, no artifacts. Hunter was alone but for the empty altar and the limestone pavers leading up to the rim of the cenote. Even the wind was still.
“Lina!” he shouted.
Nothing answered his cry.
Assault rifle in one hand, flashlight in the other, he ran to the cenote’s brink and shined the light over the black surface of the water. The first thing he saw was two bloody bodies tangled in a shroud of flowers and vines, Philip and Carlos slowly sinking into the dark water.
“Lina!” Hunter called again.
Again silence answered.
He swept the arc of the light back and forth over the dark water. Pieces of the Bacabs’ clothes floated, red and yellow, white and black. He saw dark hair, bound wrists, and the graceful line of a woman’s shoulders. She was struggling against something that was trying to pull her below the water.
He set down the rifle, backed up enough for some running steps, and leaped forward into the cenote. The flashlight was nearly torn from his hand by the force of the water as he plunged deep, but he hung on to it. He opened his eyes, followed bubbles of air to the surface, and probed the darkness with the flashlight, looking for Lina.
He heard her before he saw her, a coughing, strangled sound that was his name. He jackknifed enough to pull his boot knife, put it between his teeth, and then kicked out toward Lina, who was fighting to stay above water with her hands tied and her feet tangled in scarlet cloth. The first thing he touched was her long hair. He used it to hold her head above water.
“Roll onto your back,” he said. “Lie still while I cut your hands free.”
Lina gulped air, coughed, and trusted him despite the water trying to suck her deep and drown her. Awkwardly she rolled over.
“I’ve got you,” Hunter said.
She drew a ragged breath, coughed, and tried to explain. “Had to—be quiet—until I—was sure—” She kept coughing.
“It’s okay now. Everyone’s gone.” Or dead.
When Lina managed to breathe without her body jerking into coughs, Hunter sliced through the cords tying her wrists. She floated much more easily then, helping him as he carefully cut and pulled away the cloth tangling her legs.
“Any injuries?” he asked when he finished.
“No. You?”
Hunter’s head throbbed in helpful reminder. So did the knife cut on his thigh. “Nothing major.”
“I was afraid I’d never be able to tell you.”
“What?”
“I love you.”
His smile was a pale flash illuminated by the bobbing flashlight. “That makes the night worth it. I love you, too.” He pulled her close enough for a quick, hot kiss. “Come on, sweetheart. Let’s go home.”
Together they swam toward the trail up to the rim of Jaguar Cenote.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Two week
s later
HUNTER SAT IN THE ONLY OVERSTUFFED CHAIR IN THE living room of his apartment. It was almost midnight, he and Lina had barely arrived back in Houston, and Jase had showed up as soon as he saw the light in Hunter’s apartment go on. Jase had an icy six-pack of cerveza under one arm and Ali under the other. Lina had taken one look at Jase’s unusual pallor and dragged him to the couch.
Jase stretched out with his head on Ali’s lap. Lina had liked Jase’s wife on sight; she had the most beautiful smile Lina had ever seen. The other woman’s loosely curled black hair was as shiny as her eyes, and her skin was a rich color that most Anglos broiled on the beach or sprayed out of a bottle to achieve.
“I can’t believe Jase dragged you out of bed to come over here,” Lina said to Ali, handing her a glass of ice water.
Ali flushed. “Um, we weren’t asleep. My sister has the kids. It’s our anniversary.”
Despite the cocky smile Jase gave his wife, he was still recovering from his wounds. He was pale and drawn. And fighting it.
“You knew I was going to grill you like a steak as soon as I got the chance,” Jase said to Hunter. “One lousy phone call to tell me you were both safe doesn’t get it done, old man.”
“We were busy,” Lina said.
“I get that,” Jase said. “You’re not busy now.”
“Some people actually like to sleep, boy wonder,” Hunter said mildly.
“Talk,” Jase said.
Hunter pulled Lina into his lap, settled in, and talked, beginning with Crutchfeldt and going on to Rodrigo, Mercurio, the Reyes Balam estate, and the Temple of Kawa’il. Ali looked both fascinated and repelled by Lina’s family, then horrified at what Carlos had done.
“He was El Maya?” Ali asked.
“Yeah,” Hunter said, breathing in Lina’s presence. “Leader of Los de Xibalba. A killer who even the narcos stepped aside for.”
“You must have been terrified,” Ali said to Lina.
“You can’t imagine,” Lina said, shivering, “and you don’t want to.”
“How could you be so brave?”
“Brave? I was shaking.”
“But you did what had to be done,” Ali said quietly. “That’s brave.”
“Hey, don’t forget Hunter,” Jase said. “He was good, really good.”
“Of course,” Ali said. “He has been trained, been in battles. He’s a cop.”
“Ex-cop,” Hunter reminded Ali.
She sniffed. “Like your job is any safer now.”
Amused, Lina bit her lip against a smile and realized that Ali must have been Hunter’s friend for almost as long as Jase had.
“Put it on pause,” Jase said, interrupting them. “The baby kicked. Damn! I know it’s a girl now.”
Ali just shook her head and ran her fingers through Jase’s hair. “It’s too soon.”
“It’s a girl,” Jase repeated, smiling a very satisfied kind of smile. “About time, too.”
Ali stroked his cheek and said to Hunter, “Go on.”
“Not much more to tell,” Hunter said, smiling when Jase’s hand settled on Ali’s rounded stomach. “We walked out of the cenote, and walked back to the main house. Didn’t see anyone on the way.”
“When we got there,” Lina said, “Abuelita was dead. Heart attack, stroke, old age. Nobody official cared. Celia—my mother—was frantic. She had stayed with Abuelita until the end.”
“So the local authorities really bought your no-frills version of what happened?” Jase asked, looking at Hunter again.
“Two men settled old grudges with machetes at the edge of the cenote during the end of the Maya year. Both were injured. Both fell in. Both drowned. Too bad, how sad, count your money, and on to the next job.”
“Did they recover the bodies?” Jase asked.
“Celia told the authorities to leave Philip and Carlos in peace in the cenote,” Lina said. “After a suitable amount of money changed hands, the authorities did. Abuelita had a private burial in the family cemetery. Celia assumed the reins of the Reyes Balam businesses and disappeared into her work.”
“Nothing floated up in the cenote?” Jase asked, cop to the core.
Lina winced.
Hunter took it in stride. “Nope. The disappointed worshippers cut everyone so thoroughly they sank like limestone blocks and stayed at the bottom.”
Remembering a rain of bodies as she struggled to stay afloat, Lina closed her eyes. That time seemed unreal, like a nightmare.
And yet it was as real as her own heartbeat.
“None of the artifacts were found?” Jase asked.
Lina opened her eyes. “Nothing. By sunrise, even the altar had vanished.”
“So the cause of all the fuss got swept into the cenote with the two wack jobs,” Jase said.
“Jase,” Ali chided.
“What? They were crazy and now they’re dead as Geronimo. Tiptoeing around it won’t change it.”
“I’m sorry,” Ali said to Lina. “He’s hopeless.”
Lina smiled sadly. “He’s also right. Carlos and Philip weren’t sane. And they’re dead.”
Sometimes she wept over the loss of the man she would never please. Sometimes the child in her refused to believe he was dead. And Abuelita, the woman whose smile and affectionate pats were like bright embroidery stitching through her childhood…
Maybe it was a nightmare after all.
Yet Lina knew it wasn’t.
Gently Hunter stroked her hair. He could feel the wave of sadness in the tension of her body. The waves would come further and further apart, but they would never go away entirely.
“Some of the villagers live in the same Maya fantasyland that Carlos and Abuelita did,” Hunter said.
Lina sighed. “They believe there will be a new Maya world someday.”
“They’ll have a long wait,” Jase said.
“They’re patient,” Lina said. “Frighteningly so.”
“Or nuts.”
Hunter shook his head. “They’re just different, Jase. It’s a whole other world back in the jungles of the Yucatan.”
Lina ran her fingers through Hunter’s hair. He kissed her palm and pulled her even closer, breathing in the scents of cinnamon and heat and woman.
“Are you done with the cross-examination?” Ali asked, caressing her husband’s cheek.
“For now. I’m a cop, after all. I always have more questions.”
“Make a list. We’re going home,” Ali said firmly. “You’ve been up too much.”
Despite his drawn face, Jase grinned and said, “You never complained before.”
Ali punched his good shoulder lightly, got to her feet, and turned to help him stand.
“I’ve been out of the hospital for a week,” he grumbled. “I’m not an invalid.”
“The doctors really wanted to keep you.”
“Shows you what they know.” Jase stood carefully. “You’re the best medicine for me.”
Ali stood on tiptoe and whispered something in Jase’s ear. His smile made him look years younger. His hand stroked her rear. She swatted at him and blushed.
“Why don’t we go to bed so these nice people can go home?” Hunter asked Lina dryly.
With a smile and a wave, Jase and Ali headed for the apartment door. The door shut behind them.
“They’re good people,” Lina said, snuggling closer to Hunter.
He rumbled agreement as his hand went to the first button of her blouse. Her breath broke. The second button gave way. She started to turn toward him, but he held her in place.
“Let me just touch you,” he said. “I still see you laid out on that damned leering altar.”
“And I still see you falling unconscious to the floor at my cousin’s feet.”
“Not my best moment.”
The catch of her bra came undone. His fingers savored the warm, soft flesh they had revealed.
“My beautiful Amazon,” Hunter breathed, stroking her.
Her breath came out on a sigh
. “That’s Brazil, not the Yucatan.”
He laughed softly and licked her neck where it curved into her shoulder. “Now, tell me what’s been going on behind those gorgeous eyes of yours.”
“Hmmm?”
“I can feel you thinking.”
“That’s not my brain you’re feeling,” she said as he teased one nipple.
“I know. What I don’t know is what you’re thinking.”
She smoothed her cheek against his chest. “I love you.”
He pinched her nipple delicately. “And I love you, but I can’t read your mind. You’ve been chewing on something ever since we crawled out of that damned cenote. It’s not grief or fear, yet half the time your mind is somewhere else. Is it the lost artifacts?”
She arched into his touch. “You’re a mind reader.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“I just feel that the artifacts didn’t end up in the cenote. And I’m worried that’s crazy, like Philip.”
He lifted one breast and bit her neck gently. “You don’t feel crazy to me. You feel all woman.”
“Hunter…”
“Don’t worry, sweetheart. You won’t be going off any deep end without me right there with you.”
“But…”
Both of his hands slid beneath her breasts, supporting and caressing them at the same time.
“I mean it,” he said. “You’re stuck with me. What do you think—feel—happened to the artifacts?”
At the moment all Lina thought or felt was Hunter’s hands, his breath, his body hot and hard wherever she touched him. She held her hands against his, stilling him, while she caught her breath and unscrambled her brains.
“You said that the villagers just broke over Philip and Carlos like a tidal wave, and when everyone retreated, there was nothing left but the altar.”
“Mmmm,” Hunter said, tasting her neck.
“I think in all the confusion, some of the worshippers took the codex, the god bundle, the mask, all of it, and disappeared back into the jungle. I think they put the sacred artifacts in a very safe place and went back to their usual lives. They’ll stay like that, apparently normal, working and waiting until their belief burns out or the Maya renaissance comes.”
Beautiful Sacrifice: A Novel Page 33
