Beautiful Sacrifice

appeared from a long cut on Carlos’s cheek.
    Hunter spun and took out the nearest man with a backhand that sent him tumbling into another man. “Run, Lina!”
    One high, one low, two other guards jumped Hunter. Lina turned to help him, the broken glass held in her fist. Carlos struck from behind, sending the wicked crystal spinning away. A gun flashed in a guard’s meaty fist and the barrel slammed into Hunter’s head. He fell forward in a boneless sprawl.
    Lina screamed until a guard took her from Carlos and silenced her with a broad hand across her mouth. Celia wept. Abuelita smiled.
    Outside, lightning raged over the horizon and the dry wind whipped. The burned smell in the air increased.
    Carlos felt the familiar heat and texture of the liquid running down his cheek and smiled with white teeth whose gums were rimmed with blood. “Kawa’il is pleased.”

C HAPTER T WENTY-THREE
     
    W HEN W ATER B AT PARKED C ARLOS’S L AND R OVER NEAR the Temple Four site, Carlos seemed to come out of the trance he had been in. Lina had been watching her cousin warily, waiting for him to break out in tongues or froth at the mouth, or both. He had done neither, simply sat silently, swaying with the rough road, his black eyes searching the dark, dry night.
    Lightning arced and branched and sheeted in awesome display around the Rover, followed by the hollow applause of thunder. Yet no rain came down to bless the thirsty land.
    Two Shark opened Lina’s door and pulled her out. As he bent down, his knife flashed in the gleam of the headlights.The duct tape hobbling her ankles came apart. She held her wrists out in front of her, expecting to be freed. She wasn’t.
    The headlights went dark.
    With a grunt Two Shark sheathed his knife. Water Bat and the other men who had come with Carlos had already vanished, nothing but shadows among the handful of torches suddenly flaring in the jungle.
    Carlos appeared at her side. The mark she had left across his cheek looked black in the weak light. He’d done nothing to clean his face.
    “Follow me,” Carlos said.
    “My hands—” she began.
    “If you fall, Two Shark will carry you.”
    The thought of Two Shark touching her made Lina shudder. She turned away from the silent guard and followed Carlos. She had been dreading taking the path in the dark with her hands bound, but more torches were lit as soon as his guards told people that Carlos was on the way.
    Within minutes they had arrived at temple grounds that were alive with the movement of flames. They danced to the music of the wind that was whispering and calling through the night, bending trees as easily as it did fire. Another line of torches went beyond the temple, in the direction of Cenote de Balam. Mixed with copal smoke from the torches, Lina smelled bruised leaves and sap from recently chopped branches.
    They’ve cut a new trail to the cenote since Hunter and I left, she thought. There was no sign of it earlier.
    For every torch there was a Maya standing solid as stone, reflected fire licking over each face. She didn’t see warmth, or welcome, or even curiosity. She saw only the expectation of a jaguar that had finally seen its prey.
    But not in Carlos. His eyes were alive with something else, more fierce and less human than his followers. His expression could have been a god’s confidence or a devil’s satisfaction, or both together, burning like flames in the wind. His fingers touched the wound on his face. Like the night, it was dry, waiting.
    As he walked into the temple, Lina slowed and tried to slide away among the shadows and wind, into the bottomless darkness of the jungle. Two men appeared to block her, a wall of flesh short enough for her to see over but too strong for her to break through. Each man grabbed her by an arm. Without a word, they pulled her in the direction of the temple, making it clear that she could go with them willingly or she could be dragged like a donkey.
    Lina looked longingly at the scarred steel machetes each man wore. They were stained and scented with the blood of the plants they recently had hacked through. Her palm itched for the feel of a machete handle.
    Not yet, she told herself fiercely, fighting the fear that made her want to panic. Wait for them to get careless. They aren’t warriors or guards. They’re simple farmers. They expect nothing but obedience from a woman.
    Wait.
    Just wait.
    And don’t think about Hunter.
    But he was there, always, part of her heartbeat,