Beautiful Sacrifice: A Novel

by Elizabeth Lowell

  The drink of the gods, Hunter thought. In the old days, I’ll bet a woman wouldn’t have been allowed to get any closer to it than preparing it for a man.

  “Abuelita,” Lina said, hurrying across the tile floor. “I thought you would be in the library.”

  Abuelita held out a hand. She was thin as only the very old can be. Her ligaments and tendons had been forged in a jungle village, where women ground corn daily between heavy stones and carried water to the fields.

  “Rosalina,” she said in a voice like wind through reeds. “Finally you are here.”

  “I couldn’t miss your birthday.” Gracefully Lina kneeled to be closer to eye level with the old woman. “How many is it now?”

  “I am as old as the Long Count,” Abuelita said, her laugh a whisper. “I will see the final Turning of the Wheel and the changing of the gods. It is enough.”

  Lina bent and gave Abuelita a gentle hug, putting smooth skin against the weathered teak of the other woman. Abuelita’s hair was white, like her clothes, which had a simple country style that was belied by the intricate white embroidery that glowed against the pale cotton. It was the sheer absence of the vivid colors that most native Maya wore that made Abuelita almost regal, her clothes and hair a white flame burning against rich skin and eyes blacker than any night.

  Looking at those eyes, Hunter understood that Abuelita was indeed different. She lived in the jaguar’s world, where human concerns were like the buzzing of flies. Once she would have been called a wise woman, a bruja, a priestess. Now she was labeled senile.

  “Abuelita, permit me to introduce Señor Hunter Johnston,” Lina said, speaking in Spanish. “Hunter, this is Señora Kuh Chel Balam.”

  “I’m honored, Lady Chel,” Hunter said, tilting his head in acknowledgment of her age and regal presence.

  Abuelita’s eyes sharpened at the formal title “lady,” which was a more exact translation from the Mayan than “señora.” She gestured for Hunter to come closer. When he did, she stared at him with an intensity that would be called rude in other circumstances. But this was Kuh—Owl of Omen—watching him.

  Lina’s subtly pleading glance at Hunter asked him to make allowances for Abuelita’s age. His fingers brushed Lina’s briefly, silently reassuring her that he wasn’t offended.

  “You were born in the wrong time, warrior,” Owl of Omen said in a liquid Yucatec dialect. “The Turning Wheel will crush you.”

  Hunter looked to Lina for a translation. The slight motion of her head was negative. Whatever the old woman had said, he would have to wait until he and Lina were alone for a translation.

  Then Owl of Omen blinked and Abuelita was back. She took a final sip of her fiery chocolate. The fingers that set the demitasse in its delicate saucer had the visible tremor of age.

  “Rosalina, it is time for us to go to the library,” Abuelita said in Spanish, holding out her left hand.

  A gold band set with small rubies gleamed on her ring finger. The ring, like the china, had been passed down through the generations. The thick white embroidery on her clothes was as Maya as her heritage, but the glyphs were impossible for Hunter to make out for lack of contrast.

  As Lina came to her feet, she looked at Hunter with sad eyes and said, “Follow us.”

  It was a plea, not a demand.

  “Of course,” he said quietly.

  He watched while Lina helped Abuelita to her feet—not that she really needed it. For all her appearance of frailty, she was as tough and almost as supple as the flat leather sandals she wore. Lina’s help was a gesture of respect, not a necessity.

  When Abuelita was standing, the top of her head barely came up to the bottom of Hunter’s rib cage. Yet she had a presence that had nothing to do with height. It was in her eyes, her bearing. She might have been born in a jungle hut, but she was born of a royal line.

  Silently Hunter followed great-grandmother and great-granddaughter out of the kitchen and into the main part of the house. The furniture was antique, weighty, with richly woven brocade upholstery. Heavy, gilt-framed paintings of European ancestors were scattered throughout. The Balam side of the family was barely represented—a vase on a side table, the figurine of a Maya noble in a corner display, an ancient ceramic flute in a mahogany niche. If a rug interrupted the handmade tiles of the floor, it was ancient, Persian. Three suits of armor in varying styles—all of them dented in battle—stood at attention in the wide hallway, gleaming beneath crystal chandeliers.

  The Spanish had married into royal Maya lines, but almost all of the furnishings had come on ships. The household was like Mexico itself, an uneven and sometimes uneasy blend of Old World and New.

  Two heavily carved mahogany doors led to the wing where the library was located, the part of the house where Carlos lived. Although the glyphs on the wood were ancient, the doors looked newer than the rest of the house. Hunter wondered if Abuelita had commissioned the doors from native carvers.

  Lina knocked lightly before she pushed open the library doors. Immediately she was swept up in Celia’s conversation, giving Hunter an opportunity to study the room and its occupants.

  The room claimed him. The overwhelming impression was blue on blue, the world viewed in every shade and tint and tone of blue—turquoise, royal, midnight, teal, cobalt, peacock, sapphire, lapis—the whole creating a sense of blue that had no name. Only gradually did he realize that the radiance of blues covered just two of the four walls. The furnishings were modern, with leather-upholstered chairs and low bookshelves of wood stained black as sharkskin. The occasional rugs looked modern, though they held Maya glyphs in shades that echoed the tiled walls. The unique fragrance of burning copal hung in the air.

  Celia was dressed richly, with exquisite attention to detail—crimson silk dress, makeup flawless, nails and lipstick to match, hair expensively casual around her face, stiletto heels over four inches high—but she wore it all naturally, without thought, like her skin. Her jewelry was more aristocratic than nouveau riche. Around her throat was a heavy antique necklace of gold and emeralds in a baroque design, with bracelet, brooch, and earrings to match. They glowed against the rich color of her skin.

  If they ever get down in the pocketbook, Hunter thought, they could always hock the family jewels.

  Or the artifacts, he realized, his attention drawn by their quiet, ancient presence. My God, this room could be in a museum. A world-class one.

  Masks, figurines, Chacmool figures in jade, blocks cut from limestone stelae thick with glyphs, knives, scepters, vases, faces, jewelry, and other Maya artifacts lined glass shelves and filled glass cases that covered two walls of the room. The lighting was subdued, almost reverent, as though not wanting to awaken the very gods that were being illuminated.

  Silently Hunter whistled. As a whole, the room was a staggering display of wealth and position, the abode of a modern king or CEO.

  He looked at Lina.

  She was looking at the people, not the decor. Obviously she took everything for granted with the ease of a woman who had grown up in halls filled with armor, a mother who wore antique jewelry from the Spanish court, and a library that held brilliant fragments of a culture whose books had been burned.

  A man—Carlos, from his richly colored skin and dark eyes—rose from a leather chair behind a mahogany desk that was square and solid enough to hold up the weight of the world. The wood was a red so pure and deep that it glowed. He wore very dark blue slacks and a loose, short-sleeved shirt of the same color. The embroidery on the shirt was silver blue. The Maya glyphs flowing down the center of the shirt and around the hem made a stark contrast with his clothes.

  Hunter doubted he could translate the glyphs even if he stood within touching distance. He made a mental note to ask Lina about them later.

  The man greeted Abuelita with a gentle brush of lips over her cheek and a white smile. Then he turned to Lina. He was the same height as she was, which made him tall for the average Maya male. Carlos’s hair and skin were darker tha
n Lina’s and Cecilia’s, his features more blunt. He weighed probably twice as much as Lina did. Some of his heft came from food and beer. Most of it was simply genes; he was broad-boned and sturdy. His hair was black, straight, almost as long as Lina’s, but held in place by a silver ring studded with blue stones. It was a style few men outside the entertainment business could pull off. On Carlos, it looked as natural as his full lips and broad cheeks.

  It reminded Hunter of a parking garage where bullets sang of death.

  But then, a lot of men he had seen since landing in the Yucatan reminded him of things he’d rather forget. It also made the street name “El Maya” next to useless for tracking down identity.

  “Mi prima,” Carlos murmured to Lina. “I am glad to see that you don’t ignore Abuelita as you do me.”

  Lina smiled. If Hunter hadn’t known her better, he would have thought it was warm.

  “As you know,” she said lightly, “my job at the museum is very demanding. It seems like my last class was only yesterday.”

  “Family is always first,” Carlos said.

  “Of course,” she said, but her eyes said she was biting her tongue.

  Hunter stirred.

  Carlos’s head snapped to the side as though he hadn’t noticed the other man until now. He looked at Lina. “Who is this?”

  Like Celia didn’t tell him two minutes after I arrived, Hunter thought sardonically.

  But he was familiar with the kinks and knots of family life, so he simply waited like a good guest while Lina introduced him to Carlos. Instead of the head-of-the-family grilling Hunter had half expected, Carlos shook hands and turned his attention back to Lina.

  Message received, Hunter thought. I don’t exist.

  Two maids ghosted into the room and put plates of seafood canapés on a heavy coffee table that already held a ragged stone face. Celia complained to Carlos that Philip wasn’t here, yet she knew he was on the estate. She also said she preferred the previous chef, who had been trained in Europe.

  Carlos shrugged and turned to Lina. “Come, mi prima, you must see my latest artifacts.”

  The blue-tiled wall leading to the artifacts glittered like it was underwater.

  Hunter offered to get canapés and drinks for Celia and Abuelita. Celia declined. Abuelita didn’t seem to hear him. He excused himself and went to investigate the food.

  It was going to be a long night.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  THE DISTINCT CRUNCH OF CRUSHED LIMESTONE MEETING hard-soled combat boots came like bizarre jungle calls from around the perimeter of the compound. Hunter waited until the guard closest to him continued on his predictable rounds.

  If I was handling security, Hunter thought, there would be a lot of job openings. These clowns should be dancing with elephants in a circus.

  On the off chance that the guards might be backed up by other, more subtle men, Hunter waited in the shadow of a group of sabal palms whose trunks were buried in flowering vines and gardenias allowed to go feral.

  I’m going to smell like a vase of flowers when I get out of here. Plus fresh blood from the damned insects eating me alive. Good thing all my shots are current.

  There were diseases out in the jungle that were a lot more dangerous than the armed men making their mechanical rounds of the Reyes Balam compound.

  Hunter waited, a semiwilling sacrifice to the insect gods.

  No hidden guards moved. No sharp odor of cigarettes or matches hung in the darkness beyond the lighted paths. Toward the big house, two young women called from the huge kitchen, teasing the men who would rather be romping in bed than stomping around in the dark with guns.

  When the guards had completed two rounds, Hunter picked his moment and ghosted through the landscaping, ignoring the noisy pathways. There were only a few flickering lights on the second floor at the southeast corner of the house—candles beckoning him. The rest of the floor was dark.

  He wondered if the rooms were truly given over to guards, or if Cecilia had used that as an excuse not to let him sleep under the same roof as Lina, princess of the Reyes Balam line.

  The muted, liquid illumination of the candles through screened windows drew Hunter as surely as his hunger for Lina. The landscaping lights around the house provided more ambience than security. It was way too easy for him to drift among the shadows that dipped and danced with every mood of the wind. The ancient bougainvillea was more ladder than barrier. The thorns drew blood he barely noticed. The sturdy wrought-iron balcony was an invitation he took with both hands. He went over the railing like a jungle cat, more imagined than seen in the shadows.

  The French doors leading inside weren’t locked. Hunter dropped to the balcony floor, eased open the doors, and listened.

  Nothing but his heartbeat.

  Silently he went low through the doors, closing them as he slid behind one of the heavy draperies that had been gathered at either side of the door. The sitting area was empty of all but half-consumed candles, the TV silent. A partially open door waited to the side. He stood near the door, listening, watching, wanting.

  The scent of cinnamon and woman curled from the bed to him in a silent caress. The alluring line of shoulder and waist and thigh called to him. The pale, fragile silk of her nightgown revealed and concealed with every shifting breath she took. The dark shadows of her nipples, the shadow between her thighs, her slightly parted lips slid like a knife into his heart. For an instant he couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, could only feel the ache of certainty sweeping over him.

  She was everything he’d ever wanted, ever dreamed, ever hungered for in the loneliness that was his life.

  Abruptly Hunter decided they could talk about artifacts and death later. At this moment other things were more important.

  Lina’s bed was draped in a fragile fall of mosquito netting. A single candle flickered at her bedside, beyond the reach of the netting. Slowly Hunter licked the finger and thumb of his right hand, pinched the wick, and let the room slide into a radiant kind of darkness. Exterior lights glowed beyond the screened windows, turning them into luminous silver.

  With quick motions he stripped off his boots and clothes, making sure his weapons and condoms were within reach. He pushed through the gauze, feeling it slide like breath over his naked body. He put one hand over Lina’s mouth as he let the mattress dip beneath his weight.

  The electric change in Lina’s body told Hunter that she was awake.

  “Easy, sweetheart,” he murmured against her ear.

  He felt her smile beneath his hand, but it was the hot lick of her tongue over his skin as she breathed his name that told Hunter she knew exactly who was in her bed.

  “Go back to sleep,” he said softly. “Don’t mind me.”

  His erection prodded her hip in bold contradiction.

  She would have laughed out loud if his hand hadn’t covered her mouth. As it was, she bit the base of his thumb slowly, deliciously, then sucked one finger into her mouth for a hotter caress, the kind of tasting she wanted to do all over him.

  “Is anyone else on this floor?” he asked.

  Lina savored the unique flavor of his skin—jungle and salt, a metallic hint of blood and dusty thorns—before she reluctantly gave up teasing his finger to answer.

  “Only the night guards, and they’re out making rounds,” she said softly.

  “I noticed. Bunch of clubfooted clowns.”

  “Their guns are clean and loaded. Carlos checked them before they began their shift.”

  “Your primo struck me as a demanding sort of employer,” Hunter said, but his lips and teeth tracing her flaring cheekbone said that there were other demands a man could make.

  Hungry ones.

  “He is. That’s why he’s successful. Celia checked their clothes and fingernails. She won’t abide dirty guards inside the house.”

  “Did Abuelita check their ammo?”

  Lina’s soft laugh was a rush of warmth over his lips. “She’s asleep in her suite off the k
itchen.” Lina’s lips went from the corner of his mouth to the hinge of his jaw. “The suite used to belong to the housekeeper, but when she quit last year, Abuelita took over the job. She even oversees the making of the candles she so loves.” Teeth nipped his ear. “The house has never been so spotless or held so many candles. No one dares displease her.”

  “Her husband must have had huevos.” Hunter’s mouth nibbled Lina’s lips in sweet retaliation.

  “I don’t remember him. He drank himself to death long before I was born.”

  “Huh. Can’t say I blame him.”

  Teeth nipped, then sucked on the pulse in Hunter’s neck. “Abuelita’s soft underneath her armor,” Lina said.

  Hunter doubted it, but he didn’t doubt Lina’s affection for the old woman. “Did the family give you more grief after I left?” he asked.

  Which had been as soon after dinner as was civilly possible.

  “They understood you were tired,” Lina breathed against his hair.

  “More like they were glad to be rid of me.”

  She would have argued, but suddenly didn’t have the breath. Hunter’s warm mouth had found the valley between her breasts at the same moment as his hands had slid around their soft weight. The edge of his teeth on one nipple was sweet lightning ripping a sound of surprise from her.

  “Okay?” he whispered, waiting.

  In answer she shifted her thighs open. The scent of cinnamon and arousal lifted to him.

  “God,” he groaned. “You work on keeping quiet.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’ve always wanted to ravish a princess.”

  Her breath broke as he sucked on one breast, then the other. Her fingers tightened in his hair and she fought to be silent while his mouth worshipped her. Minutes slid by in a breathless silence that ended when small whimpers broke from her. His mouth alternately tormented and delighted her breasts, sending sharp streaks of lightning from her nipples to her womb.

  When she was twisting slowly beneath his mouth and hands, her nipples stiff and quivering, glistening from his tongue, he lifted his head to admire the beauty his slow caresses had created. He kissed one nipple, then the other.