Beautiful Sacrifice: A Novel

“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 Antropologia 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 widened 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