had performed this agonizing rite. His hands were too steady, too sure. Blood welled and began to drip down his penis. Bile crawled up her throat. She swallowed hard. Twice.
“With each knot pulled through, I draw closer to Kawa’il,” Carlos said. “When the whole cord is dipped in my life, Kawa’il speaks to me.”
Carlos tugged the twine and more blood flowed as the first knot pulled through the slit in his skin. The cord turned crimson in the candlelight. Blood trickled into the jade Chacmool held by the kneeling Bacab.
Lina forced herself to breathe. From the corner of her eyes, she watched the men dressed as the Bacabs. Three of them were absorbed in the ritual.
No Tomorrows watched only her.
The metallic scent of fresh blood curled through the small room like copal smoke.
Knots kept crawling into the slit and emerging drenched in red.
“Earth lies flat on a field of four colors, black and white and red and yellow. Each of the field’s corners is held up by a man who is becoming a tree, roots plunging down, drinking earth’s blood, flowering in the heavens…the four pillars of creation…hot wind blowing…stars glowing…Xibalba in black pulses reaching for the stars…my breath is his breath, hot, hotter, too hot…agony…Kawa’il…is all…”
Carlos’s words wound through the room with the smoke, and the smoke became a serpent whose blood rippled in feathers the color of rainbows, jaws opening and opening more, until the room was swallowed and the last knot was red and Carlos was ecstatic, held within the pulsing center of agony.
For a long time there was silence but for Carlos’s ragged breathing. Then, at a nod from him, Chak stood and placed the blood offering in front of the pile of red petals at the south corner of the room.
“Now,” Carlos said, his voice transformed by pain and something else, something others called madness and he called transcendent communication. “I am cleansed, renewed, blessed. Kawa’il has spoken. I am ready for the most beautiful of sacrifices.” His voice boomed. “Come. The end of the world awaits us at the Cenote de Balam.”
PAIN SPIKING OUT FROM BEHIND HUNTER’S LEFT EAR DROVE him from the black embrace of unconsciousness.
Hunter tried to sit up. Pain stabbed and he discovered that his hands were taped behind his back, his ankles were taped together, and his feet were bare.
He rubbed his face against the floor to clear blood from his right eye. The pain was breathtaking. He forced himself to breathe anyway. Then he listened.
From beyond a closed door came the voices of two men. They were on guard and they were bored. One of them talked about robbing and raping Cecilia. The other told him that El Maya would have his balls and the balls of every one of his male relatives. Better that they just wait and do what they had been told to do. Soon the wheel would turn, El Maya would come back to the house, and his men would be rewarded for their service.
Hunter smiled unpleasantly.
The subject of conversation in the hallway changed to which of the housemaids had the best ass.
Carefully Hunter looked around as much as he could. Shadows. Rug. Wooden floor. Vine-choked windows outlined by landscaping lights. He was on the second floor and it was night. The weight of the gun at the small of his back was gone. He was tied, defenseless.
Hunter pushed away his fear for Lina. He couldn’t help her until he helped himself. From the corner of his eye he saw his boots about four feet away.
Ignoring the pulsing pain in his head, he inched closer to his boots. He saw the shadow of the black-leather- wrapped knife and grinned despite the surly throb of his skull. He managed to swing his feet over the boots and drag them closer to his bound wrists. Slowly he struggled to get the knife out and position it so that he could saw away at the duct tape coating his wrists. By the time his wrists were free, his shoulders were burning, he was sweating, and the clock counting down in his head was screaming at him.
He pushed aside the pain streaking through his head and attacked the tape binding his ankles. Moments later the silver material gave way. He shoved his feet into his boots and stood.
The dark lure of unconsciousness spiraled around him. He breathed through his clenched teeth until the dizziness passed.
Outside in the hallway, the guards were talking about the Mexican lottery. Both wanted to win it. Neither really expected to. One kicked idly at the wall as he talked. The hollow thud of his boot told Hunter that this was likely one of the banana-clip-carrying elephants brought in from stomping the perimeter to more stationary duty.
Untrained people who carried weapons had a touching certainty of their personal invincibility. Hunter had learned long ago that a trained body was a weapon that couldn’t be taken away or used against him.
Sheathing the knife because it would only get in the way, he eased carefully toward the door. Like all of the doors he had seen so far on the estate, it locked only from the inside, which explained the guards outside.
Listening to the voices, placing the position of each man in his mind, Hunter flung open the door. He took out the guard on the left with a backhanded fist to the throat. The second guard barely had time to put his idly kicking foot on the ground before Hunter’s boot sank into his gut. A second kick knocked the man out.
Someone jumped Hunter from behind. At first he thought he’d missed his mark on the first guard. Then he realized that there had been a third man who had been doing his job rather than jawing with his buddies. Hunter slammed an elbow backward. The third man grunted and let go just enough for Hunter to turn and face him. The guard’s chin was tucked to protect his neck.
But the rest of him was up for grabs.
Fingers hooked, Hunter’s left hand went for the man’s eyes and his right for the man’s crotch. The guard saved his balls but couldn’t evade the fingers digging into his right eye socket. Desperately he threw his head back and grabbed Hunter’s left wrist. With his other hand, the guard pulled a knife and stabbed. As the blade cut through cloth and skin on the inside of Hunter’s leg, Hunter’s right fist smashed into the man’s now-unprotected neck.
Retching, coughing, fighting to drag breath through a ruined windpipe, the guard joined his groaning buddies on the floor. A few swift kicks put them out of their vocal misery. Gutter fighting at its dirty and brutal worst, but it got the job done in reasonable silence.
Hunter felt blood running down his leg. He widened the slash in his pants, saw that the blood wasn’t pulsing and the wound wasn’t to the bone, and set about disarming the guards. AK-47s weren’t his weapon of choice, but they had a way of evening odds in a crowd. He checked one weapon quickly, found it good to go, and slung it across his back. He tucked an extra banana clip in his belt. He left the rest of the weapons behind. The guards wouldn’t be using them any time soon, if ever.
Lightning sheeted through the night, overwhelming the darkness. Thunder rumbled, but no rain hit the windows.
Hunter used the prolonged thunder to cover his footsteps. He didn’t find any other guards on the second floor, or the first. In the kitchen Abuelita sat at her table sipping pepper-laced cocoa from china as fragile as a breath. Philip and Celia were duct-taped to separate table legs. Even if they had worked together, they wouldn’t have been able to jerk the solid mahogany table anywhere useful.
