Beautiful Sacrifice: A Novel

Philip made a rude sound. “That crazy old bitch will live forever.”

Lina shook her head and wondered if her father had always been this self-absorbed or if being unable to translate the glyphs from the codex had rubbed him raw. Or maybe he was just imagining the codex all along, a way to get back the academic respect he’d lost.

She didn’t know she had spoken the last thought aloud until Hunter caught Philip’s hand just before it landed on her face.

“You’re trying my patience,” Hunter said to Philip. “Now either fight me or put your hands in your pockets and grow up.”

Philip glared at the younger man. When it came to strength, whether of will or body, there was simply no contest. He didn’t like it, but he took it. He lowered his hands and shoved them in his pockets.

“It is good that you did not strike her,” said a voice from the doorway. “That would have displeased me.”

“Carlos?” Lina said.

He tilted his head in a gesture of respect. “It is time, mi prima.”

“What—”

“You have many questions,” Carlos said over her voice. “I will give you the answers.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

WHAT’S GOING ON?” LINA DEMANDED THE INSTANT the casita door shut behind them.

“Abuelita and Celia are waiting in my study,” Carlos said. “We will talk there.”

“But—” Lina began.

Carlos made a sharp motion with his head. “Patience, mi prima.”

It wasn’t a request.

Irritated, silent, Lina followed Carlos along the path of crushed limestone that led to the main house. The feel of Hunter’s hand resting at the small of her back was an anchor in the storm of questions and emotions seething inside her. She didn’t even notice the estate guards standing discreetly aside for them.

Hunter did. Back at the casita, the six full-blooded Maya who had arrived with Carlos had neatly separated Philip from Lina and Hunter. Then the guards had shut the door in front of Philip’s face. Two of the men had stayed behind to make sure it stayed shut.

Maybe they didn’t like the way Philip acted, Hunter thought. Or maybe Carlos ordered them to beat the hell out of him once Lina was gone.

The men looked more than tough enough to do the job. In fact, several were bruised and scraped like they had been in a fight recently.

Even though none of the men with Carlos had made a move against him or Lina, Hunter’s instincts were up and prowling the dark edges of his mind, howling that something was very wrong. Maybe it was the fact that two of the men had slowed until they were walking behind him.

Hunter really didn’t like having strange men at his back.

And maybe it’s just that creepy guayabera Carlos is wearing, Hunter told himself.

The loose white shirt was heavily embroidered with what had at first looked like blue flowers, as many shades of blue as on his study walls. Only they weren’t flowers. They were skulls set among ragged petals.

Or is that lightning around the skulls?

There was no answer to Hunter’s silent question. Like smoke, the designs changed with every movement Carlos made, frustrating any attempt to decipher them.

“Cool shirt,” Hunter said.

Carlos ignored him.

Lina looked more closely. She was accustomed to seeing the pattern within Maya embroidery. Her full mouth flattened.

Must be skulls, Hunter decided.

Skulls or flowers, he was glad to feel the weight of a gun at the small of his back. His neck was itching like it was hosting a chigger reunion.

Wind flexed, bending the jungle beneath it. The thinly overcast sky hadn’t changed as the afternoon slid toward evening. The air smelled of lightning, a dry storm. Carlos’s shirt rippled and shifted, reminding Hunter of the drawings in the temple, where blue lightning glowed.

One of the stocky, long-haired men who had come with Carlos opened the front door of the main estate for him. Carlos swept in, trailed by Lina and Hunter, whose silver-blue eyes never rested, checking possible exits and keeping track of the full-blooded Maya around them who wore guayaberas and jeans instead of uniforms but acted more like guards than the men outside clomping around the perimeter of the family compound.

Another thick-boned, dark-skinned man waited beside the open study door. He was wearing the jeans, boots, and loose pale shirt that Carlos’s other men did. Hunter told himself not to get paranoid about it. A lot of the men in the Caribbean, Mexico, and Central America wore loose shirts and jeans.

He glanced at Lina, but if she noticed all the men, it didn’t bother her. He wished it didn’t bother him. But it did. He’d rather have had an AK-47 stashed under his shirt than a pistol.

Abuelita and Celia were waiting inside the study, sitting side by side on one of the couches, silent. A pitcher of water, ice, and lime slices waited within reach on the coffee table. Near the pitcher, fresh fruit and sparkling glasses were lined up like offerings at the feet of a life-size limestone face.

Celia was turned out like a city woman going to a fancy dinner, except for the temper that narrowed her eyes and added years to her looks. She looked even less happy to be there than Hunter was.

Abuelita’s skin gleamed like polished wood, tight across her skull, hands interlaced like tree roots on her lap. Her face was a ghost of Lina’s, plucked out of time past. The bones were the same, but the years had been pulled across them differently, skin weathered yet still alive, as enduring as the ceiba tree itself. She wore a long ivory dress with pale embroidery that shimmered mysteriously. A shawl lay loosely around her shoulders. The saffron fabric was as radiant as the sun would be tomorrow.

Two men stood in front of Carlos’s desk. Their cinnamon-brown faces were impassive, their hair long, their hands broad and strong, their bodies thick and patient. The blood of the Maya ran rich in their veins.

Outside the open window, trees swayed in a wind that was too hot for the season. Despite the wind, the room’s air smelled of copal smoke and something else, something Hunter couldn’t identify.

Abuelita’s eyes tracked from Celia to Lina. The old woman’s irises were like obsidian caught in the folds of her eyelids. With a gesture, Abuelita told Lina to come closer.

Lina smiled and took her great-grandmother’s hands in her own. The old woman’s skin was as warm as a lizard in the sun.

“You are looking well,” Lina said, swallowing her irritation at Carlos. Despite her complaints about Lina’s unmarried state, the older woman had always treated her like a princess, someone to be hugged and petted and fed special tidbits. “Your dress is very beautiful.”

Abuelita squeezed Lina’s hands and released them. “It is good you are here.”

Flanked by two men, Carlos went to stand in front of his desk. At his signal one of the men began serving iced water with slices of lime. As the man moved, Hunter noticed that he was dressed like the others, walked like he had a sore gut, and in addition to a bruise or two, he wore what looked like a bulky bandage around his ribs under the loose shirt. All of the men had hair as thick and black as night, worn pushed back over their shoulders like a mane.

Hunter assumed they were armed because it would be stupid to think otherwise.

The man offered Carlos the first glass of water, Abuelita the second. When he held a glass out to Lina, she shook her head. Much to Hunter’s disappointment, no one else was offered a drink. Broken crystal had intensely sharp edges.

“Who are these men?” Lina asked Carlos, her voice caught between impatience and unease.

“They are my people. The one with the bandaged hand is called Blood Lily,” he said in the local Mayan