Beautiful Sacrifice

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    Even though none of the men with Carlos had made a move against him or Lina, Hunter’s instincts were up and prowling the dark edges of his mind, howling that something was very wrong. Maybe it was the fact that two of the men had slowed until they were walking behind him.
    Hunter really didn’t like having strange men at his back.
    And maybe it’s just that creepy guayabera Carlos is wearing, Hunter told himself.
    The loose white shirt was heavily embroidered with what had at first looked like blue flowers, as many shades of blue as on his study walls. Only they weren’t flowers. They were skulls set among ragged petals.
    Or is that lightning around the skulls?
    There was no answer to Hunter’s silent question. Like smoke, the designs changed with every movement Carlos made, frustrating any attempt to decipher them.
    “Cool shirt,” Hunter said.
    Carlos ignored him.
    Lina looked more closely. She was accustomed to seeing the pattern within Maya embroidery. Her full mouth flattened.
    Must be skulls, Hunter decided.
    Skulls or flowers, he was glad to feel the weight of a gun atthe small of his back. His neck was itching like it was hosting a chigger reunion.
    Wind flexed, bending the jungle beneath it. The thinly overcast sky hadn’t changed as the afternoon slid toward evening. The air smelled of lightning, a dry storm. Carlos’s shirt rippled and shifted, reminding Hunter of the drawings in the temple, where blue lightning glowed.
    One of the stocky, long-haired men who had come with Carlos opened the front door of the main estate for him. Carlos swept in, trailed by Lina and Hunter, whose silver-blue eyes never rested, checking possible exits and keeping track of the full-blooded Maya around them who wore guayaberas and jeans instead of uniforms but acted more like guards than the men outside clomping around the perimeter of the family compound.
    Another thick-boned, dark-skinned man waited beside the open study door. He was wearing the jeans, boots, and loose pale shirt that Carlos’s other men did. Hunter told himself not to get paranoid about it. A lot of the men in the Caribbean, Mexico, and Central America wore loose shirts and jeans.
    He glanced at Lina, but if she noticed all the men, it didn’t bother her. He wished it didn’t bother him. But it did. He’d rather have had an AK-47 stashed under his shirt than a pistol.
    Abuelita and Celia were waiting inside the study, sitting side by side on one of the couches, silent. A pitcher of water, ice, and lime slices waited within reach on the coffee table. Near the pitcher, fresh fruit and sparkling glasses were lined up like offerings at the feet of a life-size limestone face.
    Celia was turned out like a city woman going to a fancydinner, except for the temper that narrowed her eyes and added years to her looks. She looked even less happy to be there than Hunter was.
    Abuelita’s skin gleamed like polished wood, tight across her skull, hands interlaced like tree roots on her lap. Her face was a ghost of Lina’s, plucked out of time past. The bones were the same, but the years had been pulled across them differently, skin weathered yet still alive, as enduring as the ceiba tree itself. She wore a long ivory dress with pale embroidery that shimmered mysteriously. A shawl lay loosely around her shoulders. The saffron fabric was as radiant as the sun would be tomorrow.
    Two men stood in front of Carlos’s desk. Their cinnamon-brown faces were impassive, their hair long, their hands broad and strong, their bodies thick and patient. The blood of the Maya ran rich in their veins.
    Outside the open window, trees swayed in a wind that was too hot for the season. Despite the wind, the room’s air smelled of copal smoke and something else, something Hunter couldn’t identify.
    Abuelita’s eyes tracked from Celia to Lina. The old woman’s irises were like obsidian caught in the folds of her eyelids. With a gesture, Abuelita told Lina to come closer.
    Lina smiled and took her great-grandmother’s hands in her own. The old woman’s skin was as warm as a lizard in the sun.
    “You are looking well,” Lina said, swallowing her irritation at Carlos. Despite her complaints about Lina’s unmarried state, the older woman had always treated her like a princess, someone to be hugged and petted and fed special tidbits. “Your dress is very beautiful.”
    Abuelita squeezed Lina’s hands and released them. “It isgood you are here.”
    Flanked by