Beautiful Sacrifice: A Novel

Hunter touched her back lightly, reminding her that Carlos’s words weren’t the only reality in the room.

“I took my most holy objects and went to a new place, a place already dedicated to death,” Carlos said. “There I sought Kawa’il in blood and smoke, but the tools I used to cut, to bleed, to worship, were inferior. Yet by Kawa’il’s grace it was enough. His sacred objects came back to me. They were beautiful, powerful. I gave glad sacrifice to my generous god and came home to Quintana Roo.”

That’s one way of looking at it, Hunter thought sardonically. My view of reality is different. Snakeman twists LeRoy to steal the artifacts from ICE’s evidence warehouse, good old LeRoy loses his heart to Kawa’il, and Carlos beats feet back to Mexico. Nothing holy about it.

“But still you didn’t come to me,” Carlos said to Lina. “Still Kawa’il tested me.”

Air moved like a dry river through the open window. Without looking away from her, Carlos coughed and held out one hand. Water Bat gave him a glass of cold water with translucent green lime slices floating beneath ice. The wind swelled again, bringing the smell of lightning and the malaise of a storm that would not break.

“You’re thirsty,” Hunter said very softly in English to Lina. “Hold out your hand for a drink.”

Before he finished, she was asking for water. Apparently the same thought had occurred to her—a broken glass could be a weapon.

Two Shark brought Lina a glass of liquid. He and Water Bat withdrew, watching everyone in the room equally.

Despite the dryness in her throat, Lina’s stomach knotted at the thought of swallowing anything, even water. She sipped anyway. The liquid coolness and the fragrant kiss of lime made her feel better. When she took another small drink, Carlos began talking again.

“When my men failed to bring you to Quintana Roo, I knew that somehow I had continued to displease Kawa’il.” Carlos swallowed water, sucked on a stray piece of ice, and watched Lina with leashed anticipation, waiting for her to understand.

She fought for control by counting the tiny beads of condensation that formed on the outside of her crystal glass. The taste of lime went metallic in her mouth.

“I came here, to Tulum, to Kawa’il’s land, his people,” Carlos said when Lina stayed silent. “I studied the twenty panels of Kawa’il’s instructions.”

“The codex,” Lina said despite herself. “You have it.”

Carlos kept talking. “I realized I must have misinterpreted one of the panels. I sacrificed my blood until I knew the ecstasy within the soul of agony. Each time I used the sacred stingray spine, pulled the knotted twine, breathed the sacred copal smoke, I came closer to knowing Kawa’il. With his wisdom, his guidance, I learned until the god found me worthy.” Ice crunched between strong teeth. “Kawa’il brought you to me. Who am I to refuse the gift of Death himself?”

For Lina, reality narrowed to the jagged chunk of limestone sitting on the coffee table. The stone’s edges looked chewed, signature of having been chain-sawed off its anchor wall in some unknown ruin. The stone face with its empty eyes stared at the world serenely, eyes relaxed and easy, mouth open, with just the hint of a broad tongue touching the lower lip.

No one had taken a piece of the fruit heaped like flowers around the limestone face that ruled the coffee table.

She watched the stone, half expecting it to comment on what was happening in the room. That would be no less crazy than Carlos, calmly waiting, standing on a small rug that looked like a pool of turquoise water lapping around his feet.

Bare. His feet were bare. Strong. Clean. His toenails gleamed from a recent pedicure.

Lina swallowed laughter she was afraid to release. She knew there would be no end to it until she was as mad as her cousin.

The warmth of Hunter’s hand moved slowly on Lina’s back, pulling her away from her cousin, anchoring her in something that wasn’t crazy, wasn’t murderous.

Death or love. The choice was simple, terrifying, because she knew her life and her love were in the bloody hands of a madman.

“Rosalina,” Carlos said, his voice almost hissing, echoing the sacred snake with the human tongue. “Our people have been hiding for five hundred years. Abuelita and our ancestors are descendants of priests and kings. Instead of waging a losing war against the Europeans, or signing over their souls to the invaders, our people took their knowledge and disappeared into the jungle. We survived. And we waited.”

Without moving anything but his eyes, Hunter watched the men in the room.

They watched him in return, dark eyes alive with the patience of a jaguar.

Not good, Hunter thought. He had hoped the English ramblings of their boss would bore them, make them careless.

It hadn’t.

“The hidden people kept the covenants with the gods,” Carlos said, his voice resonant with time and certainty. “During the years, priests of Kawa’il filtered out of the jungle. They helped villages, showed the people how to bend the required worship of the European Christ so they could escape the Spaniards and still appear to have bowed to them.”

“The Vatican allowed it,” Lina said, feeling like a sapling engulfed in a deep wind, fighting to hold the very earth she was rooted to.

“The pope believed his god would overcome ours in time,” Carlos said, satisfaction in his voice. “Foolish. While we kissed the European beads in churches built on the ruins of our temples, we planted our crosses of corn and blood and kept the true gods alive.”

Her throat too dry to speak, Lina just shook her head.

“The truth of the world was written down,” Carlos said, his eyes burning. “The Codex of Kawa’il is not only a celebration of the real gods. It instructs us in the proper ceremonies to keep them alive, to keep the bargain that the gods made with their new creation so many thousands of years ago.”

Lina looked at her mother. Celia was shaking her head in silent denial while tears ran down her cheeks, leaving dark trails of mascara.

“The Chel family was first and highest among the hidden priests,” Carlos said. “Like the Balam side of my family, Chel blood is older than Palenque, as old as the first breath. We have not only the blood of priests and kings, but of the gods themselves infusing our lines with greatness. The gods will reward those of their children who have honored them.”

“Carlitos,” Celia said, her voice breaking.

He ignored her, focusing only on Lina. “Imagine the gods’ gratitude when the Great Wheel turns, the Long Count ends, and we present them with a sacrifice that honors both them and the Balam line.”

His eyes gleamed but Lina could only see black emptiness beneath their glow. Like obsidian. All that kept her from freezing into stone was the warmth of Hunter’s hand.

Am I as warm to him? Am I his anchor in Carlos’s mad storm?

Hunter’s hand caressed, reassuring both of them that there was a reality beyond madness. A reality he held on to as surely as she did. A reality they held between them.

Carlos reached beneath his shirt to a sheath of leather bleached white as bone. He drew out an ancient knife.

Obsidian.

Lina’s breath froze.

“How can you not believe?” Carlos asked Lina. “Could mere man make such as this? Never. It was the hands of our ancestors, the very gods, Kawa’il himself, that shaped this blade.”

Hunter didn’t need Lina’s sharply indrawn breath to recognize the knife as the one in the photos. The blade shimmered and seethed with an extraordinary light, as though life had somehow been trapped within.

Delicately, Carlos’s long fingers traced the lines of the knife. “Look at the proof of Kawa’il. The blade is smooth and even, flawless in comparison to other obsidian blades. Its like has never been seen before or since. Kawa’il’s sigil wasn’t carved into the blade, it was breathed there by gods, again and again, until the stone itself accepted the mark. To hold this blade is to hold black lightning, the power of Kawa’il and Kukulcan, living as one. This is the key to the end of our corrupt age.” Carlos pinned Lina with his obsidian gaze. “And you, Rosalina, you are the lock to be opened.”