Beautiful Sacrifice: A Novel

As he walked into the temple, Lina slowed and tried to slide away among the shadows and wind, into the bottomless darkness of the jungle. Two men appeared to block her, a wall of flesh short enough for her to see over but too strong for her to break through. Each man grabbed her by an arm. Without a word, they pulled her in the direction of the temple, making it clear that she could go with them willingly or she could be dragged like a donkey.

Lina looked longingly at the scarred steel machetes each man wore. They were stained and scented with the blood of the plants they recently had hacked through. Her palm itched for the feel of a machete handle.

Not yet, she told herself fiercely, fighting the fear that made her want to panic. Wait for them to get careless. They aren’t warriors or guards. They’re simple farmers. They expect nothing but obedience from a woman.

Wait.

Just wait.

And don’t think about Hunter.

But he was there, always, part of her heartbeat, part of her fear, part of her hope.

Promising herself a panic attack when she could afford one, Lina walked at the same speed as the men beside her, wanting to appear willing or cowed, anything so that they wouldn’t watch her so closely. The men walked slowly, more slowly than Carlos, who soon disappeared into the open mouth of the temple.

By the time Lina reached the short hallway inside the temple, Carlos was out of sight. The candles that lined the narrow passage were the color of fresh, pale cream, and smelled like vanilla and cinnamon. The thought of Abuelita making each one of them with loving hands for this night sickened Lina.

She could understand the madness of her cousin wanting to be priest-king; she couldn’t understand the madness of her great-grandmother wanting to worship him.

The inner temple room was both cool and ablaze with clumps of blue candles, every shade of blue from light to dark.

Carlos was naked.

It was the last thing Lina had expected. It was too much. Throat straining around screams she refused to voice, she closed her eyes and tried not to break down completely. As she fought for self-control, she heard rustling sounds, footsteps leaving, returning, echoing her wild heartbeat.

You can’t get away if your eyes are closed, she told herself. Stop acting like a child. You’ve seen a naked man before.

An image of Hunter suddenly consumed her mind—male, hard, reaching for her as she reached for him and they joined bodies in a lush tangle of pleasure. Hot. Alive. Everything she had ever wanted.

I love you, Hunter. I never let myself know, never told you how I felt. I was afraid it was too soon.

But it was too late, and that was something else I didn’t know.

Lina set her teeth and opened her eyes. Somehow she would free herself, find Hunter, and tell him.

Then the memory of him falling bonelessly to the floor flashed through her mind like icy lightning.

No!

He’s alive. I’d know if he were dead.

Wouldn’t I?

Don’t think about it, she told herself fiercely. Think about getting away from Carlos. It’s the only thing you can do right now that matters.

Hunter ran like blood through Lina’s body, her bones, strengthening her. She forced herself into the moment, the crazed modern man in the ancient temple, and her own eyes alert for any opportunity to escape.

Carlos was now wrapped in a long loincloth of fine, midnight-blue cotton. On his head he wore the cured skin and skull of a jaguar. The cat’s eyes were gleaming obsidian, eerily alive. The rest of the jaguar’s spotted skin swirled down Carlos’s back, the back paws nudging against his legs, the front paws clasped around his shoulders in a horrifying embrace. Beneath the long, curving claws, two necklaces held a jade pectoral representing an openmouthed jaguar surrounded by lightning.

The jade was spectacular, fully twice the size of the one Lina had found. One of the heavy necklaces was made of carved, thumb-size obsidian beads. The other was of jade. Both felt as ancient as the temple to her.

One of the men stepped forward, using his fingers to paint Carlos in all the colors of ritual—black, red, yellow, white. When he was finished, another man stepped forward with a headdress of feathers that rippled like blue- green lightning. Their jobs complete, both men left the room. Carlos opened the small bag he had been given. His movement and the candlelight made the feathers of his headdress, the paintings overhead, and the jaguar skin writhe with terrifying life.

Stubbornly Lina refused the awful allure of the scales and the endless serpents, the supple cat skin mocking life.

“Who do you think you’re fooling?” she asked Carlos in English, afraid if she spoke the native Mayan dialect she would be sucked deeper into the nightmare. “You hear the echoes in your own head, not the voices of the gods.”

Carlos ignored her. Slowly Two Shark approached him. Like everyone in the room except Lina, he had switched to ancient Maya dress—loincloth and bare feet, paint and decorations topped by feathers. Their drapes were of cotton rather than jaguar fur, their costumes less noble than their leader’s. As the men moved, jade and obsidian objects sewed onto their clothes caught light. The cloth Two Shark wore was the color of Kan, the east, the yellow blaze of sunrise. He held a small, carved box in his hands.

Water Bat was dressed as Chak, the red of the south, the color of fresh blood. His burden was the sacred jade Chacmool that had been among the stolen artifacts that had brought Hunter to Lina. Silently Water Bat kneeled in front of Carlos.

No Tomorrows wore the black of sunset, Boox. Another man wore white, Sak, the north.

The four pillars, the Bacabs, Lina realized, separating heaven and hell.

In the ancient belief, when the Bacabs fell, Xibalba would rise to the gods and everything in between would be cleansed, destroyed, a storm of change that would make room for the next creation, the next age.

The Age of Kings, which Carlos believed he would lead.

Grimly Lina looked around the temple. Its shadows were empty, no man-size limestone altar lurking nearby.

He won’t be killing anyone here. So why are they posed like costumed actors waiting for the director to appear?

As though Carlos had heard her silent question, he spoke to her in soft English. For all his men responded, it might as well have been the wind rustling.

“I regret that I didn’t have time to make you understand,” he said. “But know this, it is not only your blood, your pain, that Kawa’il needs today. I will bleed, too, an act of reverence to strengthen me for what comes.”

“Really? Last time I checked, you weren’t the one dying.”

“Silence, or I will tie knotted twine in a loop through your tongue and yank on it each time you speak.”

Put that way, silence had definite appeal. She shut up.

Carlos went back to preparing himself to turn the key that would open the lock on the Age of Kings. As he did, he continued to instruct her in English.

“The twine I hold in my right hand is from a wild cotton tree growing near my natal village, gathered as our people have for over six thousand years. I wound the twine myself and knotted it twenty times, following the instructions in the Codex of Kawa’il. On one end of the twine is the barb from a stingray I hunted and killed myself with a stone knife.”

Lina found herself unable to look away from the ancient ritual Carlos was reenacting. The stingray barb was almost as long as his hand and nearly as thick as his little finger. At either side of it were curved spines that had only one purpose—to dig into flesh and not let go.

Carlos set the box on the floor, moved his loincloth aside with his left hand, and pinched a deep fold of foreskin between his thumb and forefinger. He plunged the barb through the hypersensitive skin, stopping only at the first knot.

Lina didn’t know whether he gasped or she did. She did know that it couldn’t have been the first time Carlos