But they weren’t working together.
Philip was ranting about treachery and his career and the codex. Tears and mascara ran down Celia’s cheeks. She was screaming at him to shut up, his daughter was in danger.
“I never wanted a damned brat!” Philip yelled back.
“Then you should have kept your cock in your pants! I was an innocent!”
“You were the biggest whore since Lilith!”
Obviously it wasn’t the first time they’d had this discussion. They flung insults and accusations with the ease and timing of actors in the fourth year of a Broadway play.
“Where is Carlos?” Hunter demanded, cutting across the old argument.
“I don’t know,” Celia said. “His men kept Philip and me out of the way until Carlos had gone.” Then she wailed, “He took Lina with him!”
Hunter had already figured that out.
Sheet lightning blazed through the night. The blackness that followed was absolute, all electricity gone. The house creaked and groaned and trembled under a blast of wind and thunder.
A wooden match flared, followed by the biting smell of sulfur. Abuelita lit the first of four candles that were set at cardinal points around her table.
“It is too late for words.” Abuelita said in Spanish. Her voice was as dry and thin as the flame touching each candlewick in turn. “The gods are with Carlos. He will be reborn as the ruler of the Age of Kings.”
Philip turned his invective on Abuelita.
She blew out the match and drank her cocoa as though she was alone. Her eyes gleamed with reflected fire.
Hunter would get the truth from Abuelita somehow, but he would try sweet reason first.
“Lina told me your name means Wise Owl,” Hunter said.
Abuelita’s black eyes focused on him. She nodded.
“You know where Carlos has taken Lina,” Hunter said.
“It cannot be stopped.”
“Then there is no harm in telling me, is there?”
She laughed.
He stared. With her dark, glittering eyes lit from beneath by candles, she didn’t quite look human.
“Carlos lived among you ghost men,” Abuelita said, “but only enough to earn the wealth to buy the old secrets that had been stolen from his people. He listened to me. I told him who he was and who he could become. After the wheel turns, a new generation of kings will come from his loins.”
“He’s sterile!” Celia screamed.
“The wheel has not yet turned,” Abuelita said calmly. “Carlos is in the temple now, consecrating himself so that he will be favored to make Lina holy.”
Lightning flashed again, this time so close that the feeling of electricity playing through the air made Hunter’s skin ripple.
“Where’s a flashlight?” Hunter asked Celia.
“In a bracket by the back door.”
He bent, slashed the knife blade through Celia’s wrist restraints, and handed her the weapon.
“You can free Philip or cut his throat, your choice,” Hunter said, not caring which she decided on.
Celia closed her trembling hands over the handle of the knife.
Hunter ran to the back door, grabbed the bulky, waterproof flashlight, and headed for the Bronco. Lightning blasted across the sky. For an instant everything looked frozen. Then thunder rode on the back of a wind that felt desert-dry. Blinded, half deaf, Hunter put the AK-47 in the passenger seat and climbed into the Bronco by touch more than sight. He fumbled several times before he jammed the key in place.
The Bronco started, died, started again. Hunter hit the lights and accelerator at the same instant. Wheels churned through crushed limestone, sending white gravel spitting out from beneath the tires. Following the map in his mind, he raced down the main estate road, then made a series of turns that ended in a small track. The Bronco lurched, bounced, banged, and scraped, but held to the track.
Hunter’s leg burned and his head was on fire. He set his teeth and took the punishment, wishing only that he could be faster. He didn’t know what personal witching hour Carlos had chosen, but Hunter didn’t want to be late for the ceremony. Not with Lina the central attraction. He kept hearing Abuelita’s words ringing in his head, louder than pain, more urgent.
The knowledge was like fingers beneath Hunter’s ribs, in his guts, digging, twisting. He drove faster than even a fool would think safe, but it still seemed like a month before he saw a Land Rover and several trucks blocking the narrow track.
The vehicles were empty. Just beyond them was the trail to site nine, the Temple of Kawa’il. He killed the lights, half expecting shots to explode around him. Opening the door, he went out low.
No shouts. No shots. Nothing but trees thrashing beneath the wind like drunken dancers.
The blood sticking Hunter’s pants to his thigh pulled free in a slash of pain. Blood ran down his leg to his boot.
He turned on the bulky flashlight, slid the AK-47 over his shoulder again, and headed for the concealed trail to the temple. Except it wasn’t concealed anymore. Sap bled and recently cut branches gleamed like bones in the flashlight. The pain banging in his head was his heartbeat, routine, barely noticed. It wasn’t the first crack on his skull he’d taken. He knew he had at least a mild concussion, but he saw mostly one of everything, so he wasn’t worried.
His head was a long way from his heart, too.
In every pause of the wind Hunter expected to hear voices—shouts or incantations or screams—anything but the silence that filled the usually noisy jungle.
Before the jungle gave way to the small clearing, he turned off the light. He knew he should wait for his eyes to adjust, but there wasn’t time. He slipped the AK-47 off his shoulder, readied it, held the darkened flashlight along the barrel, and continued down the path.
He smelled the torches before he saw them. They burned on either side of the temple doorway. He froze, listening, listening.
Not one human sound.
The image of Lina lying bloody on the temple floor was a knife in Hunter’s guts. He shoved the thought away. It couldn’t help him, but it could bring him to his knees.
A shadow in the darkness, he hurried over the open ground. Every uneven step made the pain in his head flash lightning. If anyone noticed his approach, no one cared. That should have been good news.
It wasn’t.
With growing fear, he went into the temple entrance. Candle flames bent as he rushed by. There was no sound but his footsteps, nothing but the mixed scents of vanilla and cinnamon and blood. He hoped it was just the blood from his leg he was smelling. Candles burned in the temple room.
He was alone.
Wildly Hunter raked the room with his flashlight. No sign of Lina. No sign of Carlos. No sign that anyone had ever been there.
Then he found the Chacmool in front of the petals. Blood, yes, but not enough for a severed artery, a beating heart ripped from a chest. Next to the Chacmool was a bloody stingray spine and an even bloodier piece of knotted twine. Hunter remembered Abuelita’s words.
