Beautiful Sacrifice: A Novel

by Elizabeth Lowell

  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.

  Carlos is in the temple now, consecrating himself so that he will be favored to make Lina holy.

  Make holy.

  Sacrifice.

  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.

  Guess everyone is in the temple, getting ready for the main event.

  The blood sticking Hunter’s pants to his thigh pulled free in a slash of pain. Blood ran down his leg to his boot.

  It’s a long way from my heart, Hunter told himself.

  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.

  This has to be the right place, he told himself. Those vehicles didn’t just fall out of the sky.

  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.

  Carlos is in the temple now, consecrating himself so that he will be favored to make Lina holy.

  Hunter hoped Carlos’s hand had slipped and he’d cut off his own dick.

  “Okay, he’s consecrated now, but he doesn’t finish the ceremony here,” Hunter said, talking aloud because he was tired of hearing nothing but candle flames. “He must have another holy place.”

  An image of Cenote de Balam shimmered in Hunter’s mind, the huge mound of flowers, the natives weaving through the jungle like snakes, watching Lina.

  Watching their beautiful sacrifice.

  But the vehicles are still here. There must be a trail.

  Hunter walked back out into the jungle quickly, limping now, not caring. The clock in his head beat harder and faster than any pain.

  Recklessly he swept the flashlight around the clearing, looking for any sign of where everyone had gone. The new cuts in the surrounding jungle leaped out. Someone had hacked an opening.

  A trail.

  Ignoring the blood seeping down his leg, he ran.

  Lina will be at the cenote.

  Alive.

  She has to be.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  DRESSED ONLY IN A WRAPPED SKIRT OF RED COTTON HELD in place by an obsidian pin, Lina should have felt exposed, even humiliated as she followed Carlos across the freshly swept limestone pavers leading to the cenote. She was too busy calculating her best chance for an escape to worry about being half nude. In any case, breasts weren’t a Maya fetish; they were simply a means of feeding babies.

  As she walked between lines of men to the waiting altar, none of them leered at her. If anything, there was respect in their attitude. She was their gateway to the creation of the next Maya world. Her head was high and her hair was unbound, lifting and falling in the unpredictable wind.

  She wished her hair was shorter than her little finger. Hair was too easy to grab, to use as a binding, to imprison her as surely as the lines of short, muscular men standing close to her.

  She had to escape.

  Somehow.

  I waited all my life for Hunter. I’ll be damned if I lose my future to
my nutcase cousin and his equally crazy followers.

  Without moving her head, Lina looked for a chance to run. No matter how many slow steps she took, escape seemed farther away.

  As she walked out of the jungle toward the cenote, a feeling of dreamlike unreality condensed around her, a combination of torchlight, ancient costumes, the dry wind making the jungle bow, and lightning clawing the night with thin, incandescent fingers. There was a surreal beauty to seeing Cenote de Balam as it had been dreamed by her ancestors, the edge thick with worshippers, the water a portal to another world, silently waiting for the beginning of a new age.

  Her naked feet barely noticed the flat, cleanly swept limestone pavers that led to the edge of the cenote. When the wind paused, there was no sound. The silence was as dreamlike as the cenote, darkly shimmering, waiting. Then the wind blew again. The cenote became a vast open mouth breathing in and in and in, drawing reality with it. When the cenote finally exhaled, all would be a dream.

  A nightmare.

  The four Bacabs walked to a mound near the edge of the cenote. They surrounded it, then bent and lifted as one. What had looked like a pile of flowers when Lina had seen it from the other side of the cenote turned out to be a cape made of vines and flower petals.

  From the edge of the crowd, conch horns blew, sounding a long, low note. The four Bacabs moved like dancers to the brink of the cenote and flung the petal-thick cape into the waiting water.

  The cenote sucked the offering down.

  The conch horns went silent.

  Where the cape had been, a long, waist-high Chacmool altar made of deeply carved limestone blocks stood gleaming in the torchlight. Sturdy legs carved to resemble serpents supported the altar. Torchlight made the painted legs twist and writhe like snakes. Copal smoke lifted on the returning wind, seeping from a huge censer that stood at each end of the Chacmool.

  Both censers had the same design as the one Lina had seen in Hunter’s photos. She had never seen the altar before, which likely meant that it had been concealed in the jungle and brought piece by piece to the cenote for this ceremony.

  I’d feel flattered by all the preparations, but it’s nothing personal. Just blood.

  Mine.

  The four Bacabs, dressed in white and black and yellow and red, took their places at cardinal points around the reclining Chacmool. The stone face looked alive in the torchlight, with the faintest smile of satisfaction or amusement. Most of all, the face looked expectant.

  Carlos turned toward her. The long, exquisite feathers in his headdress quivered delicately with each breath of wind, yet they had been strong enough not to break during the walk from the temple to the cenote.

  Still looking at Lina, Carlos held his left hand out from his side. Immediately a bone scepter with obsidian blades set like rows of black teeth was brought to him, resting on a piece of jaguar skin. His hand clenched around the scepter until his flesh ran with blood.

  The expression on his face didn’t change.

  “It took me many years to understand the sacrifices Kawa’il required to make me worthy,” Carlos said. “The disappointments, the blood, even my manhood. But agony…that I learned to accept most of all. It is Kawa’il’s gift.”

  Lina watched in a combination of fascination and horror as Carlos lifted the rod high, so that everyone could see the glistening of fresh blood running down his arm. A sigh of agreement, almost release, went through the gathered crowd.

  Slowly, fist clenching to increase the blood flow, Carlos turned in a circle, showing everyone his willingness to give his own blood. Lina expected him to pull off his loincloth and reveal his bloody penis, too, but apparently that wasn’t part of the ceremony.

  She let out a breath of thanks for small favors. She had seen more than enough of her cousin’s body in the temple. His eyes were still wild with pain, his body still riding the high of agony.

  Carlos completed his circle and placed the sacred scepter back on the skin.

  “You may choose to put yourself upon the altar,” he said to Lina in English, “or my men will carry you respectfully and bind you in place.”

  Don’t want to bruise the sacrifice, she thought with bleak humor.

  But the sacrifice sure wanted to bruise them.

  “I choose not to be bound,” she said through her teeth. Can’t run if I’m tied to the damn altar.

  Carlos closed his eyes and tilted his head toward her in something very close to reverence. “You please Kawa’il greatly. You are worthy in every way.”

  Fire swept over Lina, a kind of anger she had never felt before. Thanks so much for complimenting me on being scared stupid. I can’t wait for the moment when I kick your useless balls into the new age.

  “To the altar,” Carlos said in English to Lina. “Go alone, that all may know your willingness. Lie down on your back, with your arms above your head and your feet touching Chacmool’s thighs.”

  Lina didn’t argue. The sooner she got Carlos close to the altar, the sooner she would have him within striking distance of her feet.

  I will escape.

  I have to.

  She took a step toward the grinning stone and climbed unaided into the Chacmool’s deadly embrace.

  Carlos sank to his knees. A group of men closed around him, hiding him. When they stepped back and he stood again, he was wearing the obsidian mask.

  It transformed him into something terrifying.

  From beneath his elaborately embroidered wrappings, Carlos withdrew what looked like a box. Lina realized she was looking at the Codex of Kawa’il. Blood from his cut hand seeped into the cover of the codex, adding to other dark stains. Carefully, reverently, he unfolded a panel and began to read.

  “The four Bacabs shall don the faces of the gods and their clothes so that the Four Corners shall hold for the sacred night.”

  “And the blood of the offering blood shall be primeval,” chanted the Bacabs.

  “The sacred copal smoke shall lift and the sacred light of Venus shall inhale it into the darkness.”

  “And the offering shall be a personage.”

  “The sky shall be manifest in incandescence and the earth shall tremble with the grinding of the Great Wheel’s final turn.”

  “And the offering shall be precious.”

  “He who tends the ah mun, the green shoot of maize with its roots in the underworld and frail tassels reaching to the heavens—”

  “And the offering shall be prepared.”

  “He who planted the kernel—”

  “And the offering shall be pliant.”

  “He who kept the covenant—”

  “And the offering shall be at peace.”

  “He who received the sacred truths of the gods—”

  “And the offering shall be perfect.”

  “He shall wield the sacred black knife.”

  “And the offering shall be made holy.”

  “The Chacmool shall feed Ah Puk, who shall be sated. Xibalba shall become one with the middle world,” Carlos said, his voice carrying across the expectant silence. “Kukulcán shall allow the skies to fall. Once destroyed, all will be remade in perfection.”

  Everything was silent, even the wind.

  “I know who my master is and what is required,” Carlos said. “His promise will be kept.”

  When Carlos held the codex high in his right hand, the worshippers made a hissing sound, like an ancient serpent waking.

  Lina shivered and wished Carlos stood a few yards closer to her, within reach of her unbound feet. She watched two men dressed in trailing loincloths and finery in the ancient style approach him with their heads bowed. They brought something wrapped in jaguar skin with them.

  “You may reveal it,” Carlos said to the men in Mayan.

  With trembling hands, one of the men unwrapped the cloth, revealing a roughly heart-shaped bundle of cloth.

  The cenote seemed to inhale air, then exhale wind with a low, hollow sound. Torches shivered.

  The cr
owd waited raptly.

  Carlos reached out with his bloody left hand. As he grasped the cloth, he was utterly tender, as though holding the beating heart of a hummingbird in his grasp. When he held his hand up high, revealing the bundle, all but the most richly dressed worshippers made a moaning sound and went to their knees.

  “This,” Carlos said in Yucatec, his voice carrying across the faithful, “this is the promise given form. This is the essence of Kawa’il, waiting to be joined with the first priest-king of the Age of Kings.”

  The worshippers moaned in awe.

  Lina saw a piece of the cotton bundle lift on the air, then dissolve and fly away. She wanted to cry out at the exposure of the ancient cloth to blood and wind, yet she didn’t make a sound. She knew she had very little time left. She had to hold herself in silent readiness for the single instant of her revenge.

  “This has endured,” Carlos said, looking into Lina’s eyes, “waiting for my hand while the wheel counted down the time of man. It has already begun. The lightning is Kawa’il’s ax blade chopping at the Bacabs, gnawing away their strength, readying everything. I am key. You are lock. Together we will open time.”

  A low, monotone exhalation rose from the crowd, like the shifting of a vast stone door deep beneath their feet.

  WHEN HUNTER SAW THE TORCHLIGHT AHEAD, HE TURNED off his flashlight and slowed from a painful run to a more cautious walk. His breathing was rapid, hard. He readied the AK-47 for firing and eased forward, letting his eyes adjust and his breathing slow. From what he had seen this morning, the cenote had a cleared area large enough to hold more than a hundred people. The new trail he had followed entered the cenote clearing at a right angle midway between the path he had taken this morning and the broad limestone-lined walkway leading to the Reyes Balam compound.

  A low, sustained sound, rhythmic, like the panting of a great beast, spread through the jungle around the cenote. Ceramic flutes began to play from somewhere close, but out of sight. The notes seemed to lift from the cenote itself, echoing and reinforcing the sound of the crowd.

  The hair on Hunter’s neck and arms raised in primal response.