Beautiful Sacrifice: A Novel

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 crowd 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.

He slid from shadow to shadow until his next steps would push him into the kneeling, chanting Maya gathered in the clearing. What he saw over their heads made his heart jerk.

Lina.

She was alive, half naked, wrists bound, lying on the altar. Nothing tied her feet or her body to the stone. Shaped like a Chacmool, the altar had been placed about two yards back from the edge of Cenote de Balam. With each breath she took, the sound the flutes made edged higher, then higher. The wind flexed hard, all but tearing fire from the torches. The drone of massed voices chanting flowed over the cenote, filling it with expectation.

Lina’s body looked taut, not slack with drugs. No blood showed anywhere on her. If Hunter started firing, he hoped that she would be able to flee, or at least take cover behind the altar.

The flutes sang higher with every moment the living sacrifice lay waiting. The Chacmool’s face looked taunting, teeth parted to receive all the sacred fluid it could drink, telling everyone in vast silence that humans were only temporary vessels for blood, and the Chacmool itself was blood’s ultimate destination. The shivering torchlight gave eerie life to the serpents supporting the altar’s legs, snakes winding about one another, twining, devouring, with neither beginning nor end.

The keening wail of the flutes lifted to the night, notes climbing until they were just short of a shriek.

Hunter sighted the AK-47. The weapon hadn’t been designed for accuracy. It had been created to lay down a storm of lead, not to pick off targets one at a time.

No good shot. Too many Maya near Lina. Too much stone to ricochet against. I have as much chance of hurting her as freeing her.

Which one is Carlos? Not one of the Bacabs. Maybe one of the two dressed in glittering chunks of obsidian and feathers.

Wait, the one in the jaguar skin with the black mask. Obsidian. Yes. That has to be Carlos.

Hunter sited down his weapon’s barrel and his finger slowly tightened.

Without warning the crowd stood, blocking Hunter’s shot.

Shit.

Spraying lead might wound Lina, might push Carlos into killing her right now, and would certainly level the crowd until he ran out of bullets. As a last resort, he’d do it.

But not yet.

Cursing silently, steadily, Hunter worked through the jungle at the edge of the clearing, finding a place where the land rose enough to give him a good angle on Carlos. The chanting of the worshippers and shrilling of the flutes rose relentlessly.

Lina lay on her back between the Chacmool’s mocking face and its upraised knees. Slowly she lifted her 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. “Give me the sign.”

“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.” Or dead.

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.