bound wrists above her head. Her body was taut, vibrating with life.
Carlos walked forward until he stood at the edge of the Chacmool. He thrust his hands up to the darkness and wind. One hand held the codex. The other held the god bundle. An obsidian knife gleamed from a jaguar-skin belt circling his waist. Torchlight slid across the obsidian mask like oily water. It was impossible to read any expression behind the mask. Blood dripped from his lacerated left hand, smeared over his skin and the god bundle that he held.
Lightning made the mask he wore glow like black water lit from within. It was mesmerizing, terrifying, reaching deep into the primal core that most humans denied even existed.
Lightning turned the darkness brilliant, then plunged everything into a night that seemed twice as deep.
More flutes cried above the droning of the crowd. The sound of the ceramic instruments was close to a scream and still climbing, climbing, climbing toward an unbearable climax, a sound more goading than melodic, driving the crowd to the edge of madness and ecstasy.
The flutes poured out a shattering, terrifying shriek, then fell silent.
“I hold your most sacred objects,” Carlos cried to the sky, to Kawa’il.
“That’s my codex, you son of a bitch!” Philip’s bellow ripped through the night.
Everyone flinched and turned toward the sound.
Lina brought back her knees and then lashed out with all her strength. Her heels sank into her would-be executioner’s crotch. She rolled off the Chacmool on the side closest to the cenote. Running hard past a stunned Bacab, she hurtled off the rim of the cenote and into the dark water below.
The night exploded.
With the strength of madness, Philip shoved and kicked through the crowd, rapidly reaching Carlos. Hunter pointed his rifle up and fired a short burst, magnifying the confusion into chaos. Using the gun butt when he had to and his feet the rest of the time, he circled around the edge of the crowd, heading for the Chacmool, the place he had last seen Lina before worshippers blocked her from his sight.
Carlos screamed “Noooooo!” as he went down under Philip’s attack.
The worshippers shifted, howled, and surged toward the Chacmool, where Philip clawed at the codex Carlos still held. Machetes flashed like teeth as the human wave rolled over the two grappling men. Torches went out when the wave swept to the brink of the cenote, paused…then withdrew, retreated, dissolving into the darkness and jungle with eerie speed and silence.
The few torches still burning showed nothing. No Bacabs, no Philip, no Carlos, no artifacts. Hunter was alone but for the empty altar and the limestone pavers leading up to the rim of the cenote. Even the wind was still.
“Lina!” he shouted.
Nothing answered his cry.
Assault rifle in one hand, flashlight in the other, he ran to the cenote’s brink and shined the light over the black surface of the water. The first thing he saw was two bloody bodies tangled in a shroud of flowers and vines, Philip and Carlos slowly sinking into the dark water.
“Lina!” Hunter called again.
Again silence answered.
He swept the arc of the light back and forth over the dark water. Pieces of the Bacabs’ clothes floated, red and yellow, white and black. He saw dark hair, bound wrists, and the graceful line of a woman’s shoulders. She was struggling against something that was trying to pull her below the water.
He set down the rifle, backed up enough for some running steps, and leaped forward into the cenote. The flashlight was nearly torn from his hand by the force of the water as he plunged deep, but he hung on to it. He opened his eyes, followed bubbles of air to the surface, and probed the darkness with the flashlight, looking for Lina.
He heard her before he saw her, a coughing, strangled sound that was his name. He jackknifed enough to pull his boot knife, put it between his teeth, and then kicked out toward Lina, who was fighting to stay above water with her hands tied and her feet tangled in scarlet cloth. The first thing he touched was her long hair. He used it to hold her head above water.
“Roll onto your back,” he said. “Lie still while I cut your hands free.”
Lina gulped air, coughed, and trusted him despite the water trying to suck her deep and drown her. Awkwardly she rolled over.
“I’ve got you,” Hunter said.
She drew a ragged breath, coughed, and tried to explain. “Had to—be quiet—until I—was sure—” She kept coughing.
“It’s okay now. Everyone’s gone.”
When Lina managed to breathe without her body jerking into coughs, Hunter sliced through the cords tying her wrists. She floated much more easily then, helping him as he carefully cut and pulled away the cloth tangling her legs.
“Any injuries?” he asked when he finished.
“No. You?”
Hunter’s head throbbed in helpful reminder. So did the knife cut on his thigh. “Nothing major.”
“I was afraid I’d never be able to tell you.”
“What?”
“I love you.”
His smile was a pale flash illuminated by the bobbing flashlight. “That makes the night worth it. I love you, too.” He pulled her close enough for a quick, hot kiss. “Come on, sweetheart. Let’s go home.”
Together they swam toward the trail up to the rim of Jaguar Cenote.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Two weeks later
HUNTER SAT IN THE ONLY OVERSTUFFED CHAIR IN THE living room of his apartment. It was almost midnight, he and Lina had barely arrived back in Houston, and Jase had showed up as soon as he saw the light in Hunter’s apartment go on. Jase had an icy six-pack of cerveza under one arm and Ali under the other. Lina had taken one look at Jase’s unusual pallor and dragged him to the couch.
Jase stretched out with his head on Ali’s lap. Lina had liked Jase’s wife on sight; she had the most beautiful smile Lina had ever seen. The other woman’s loosely curled black hair was as shiny as her eyes, and her skin was a rich color that most Anglos broiled on the beach or sprayed out of a bottle to achieve.
“I can’t believe Jase dragged you out of bed to come over here,” Lina said to Ali, handing her a glass of ice water.
Ali flushed. “Um, we weren’t asleep. My sister has the kids. It’s our anniversary.”
Despite the cocky smile Jase gave his wife, he was still recovering from his wounds. He was pale and drawn. And fighting it.
“You knew I was going to grill you like a steak as soon as I got the chance,” Jase said to Hunter. “One lousy phone call to tell me you were both safe doesn’t get it done, old man.”
“We were busy,” Lina said.
“I get that,” Jase said. “You’re not busy now.”
“Some people actually like to sleep, boy wonder,” Hunter said mildly.
“Talk,” Jase said.
Hunter pulled Lina into his lap, settled in, and talked, beginning with Crutchfeldt and going on to Rodrigo, Mercurio, the Reyes Balam estate, and the Temple of Kawa’il. Ali looked both fascinated and repelled by Lina’s family, then horrified at what Carlos had done.
“He was El Maya?” Ali asked.
“Yeah,” Hunter said, breathing in Lina’s presence. “Leader of Los de Xibalba. A killer who even the narcos stepped aside for.”
“You must have been terrified,” Ali said to Lina.
