Beautiful Sacrifice

female let blood through her tongue. Knotted twine was pulled through a vertical cut.”
    “Ouch.”
    “They were a visceral people. And are today. Only the ceremonies change. Not that the Maya lacked intellectual accomplishments,” Lina added quickly. “Their mathematical system understood the necessity of a zero. The fact that their numerical system was based on twenty rather than ten makes it difficult for us to fully understand and appreciate. Our problem, not theirs. Their astronomy was superb, the equal of any world culture.”
    “You admire them.”
    “Don’t you?”
    “The more I know, the more there is to admire.”
    Not touching that one, Lina thought. He will not suck me into a world of double meanings.
    “The last photo,” she said, forcing her thoughts away from Hunter’s temptations, “is as incredible as the cloth bundle. Perhaps more so.”
    “I’m ready.”
    Lina barely resisted the temptation to check out the fit of his jeans.
    Focus, she told herself.
    It was hard.
    Like him.
    “This.” She cleared her throat and tried to remember all the reasons she should be angry with him. But breathing in his male scent, sensing the muscular warmth of this body, made anger as impossible as her attraction to Hunter Johnston. “This is as unique as the cloth bundle.” She let the photo of a mask draw her in and down, back into a past that was as fascinating as it was lost. “Maybe more unique. If it’s real.”
    “Looks real to me.”
    “Frauds are real, too,” Lina murmured.
    “Are you saying that the mask is a fraud?”
    “I’m saying that I can’t be sure until I’ve examined it under a microscope for machine marks.”
    “Somebody killed to keep its secrets,” Hunter said. “Assume it’s real.”
    “Killed?”
    “The driver. Maybe others. Life is cheap.”
    “Not to me.”
    “Or me.” An echo of Suzanne’s death twisted through him, scraping his soul. “We’re creatures of our culture. Other cultures, other creatures.”
    “Assuming this is real,” Lina said, “it’s the single most extraordinary artifact I’ve ever seen. Obsidian is rare in the Yucatan, though not in what became Mexico.”
    “So the object isn’t from the Yucatan?”
    “Trade was commonplace. The Maya had huge canoes that ferried merchandise along the Gulf and around the Yucatan peninsula. I’ve seen a fragment of a mask so intricately inlaid with obsidian that the artifact was a complex mosaic of black with silver-gold light turning beneath. But I don’t see any sign of inlay in this photograph of the mask, just a solid, unbroken surface.”
    “Could it have been made of a single chunk of obsidian?” he asked.
    “If you’re asking if obsidian comes in pieces this large, yes. I’ve seen obsidian boulders as big as a car. But…”
    Hunter waited. He was good at it.
    “The time and effort that would go into flaking and polishing a piece of obsidian into a mask is extreme,” she said finally. “Obsidian is friable, it shatters. It’s very difficult to make it smooth.”
    Like your skin, Hunter thought, leaning close again. Smooth.
    “Making this would be the same as taking a ragged hunk of glass the size of a washing machine and slowly working it into a mask the size of a human face,” Lina said, breathing him in, wanting him to understand just how astonishing the mask was. “Chipping, flaking, grinding, polishing. Starting all over with a new chunk when something came apart. Big pieces of obsidian have natural flaws that make the material fracture in surprising ways.”
    He watched her with eyes the silver blue of a glacier beneath the sun, framed in the darkness of a winter past.
    A woman could get lost in those eyes. Lina felt a shiver go over her at the thought. She tried to believe that it was fear, not desire, cold rather than heat. But she had been curious about Hunter for too long, and he was so close to her now.
    “The Chinese worked jade,” Hunter said. “Some pieces took generations to finish. It’s not impossible that the Maya did the same.”
    “No,” she said huskily, “it’s not impossible.” But you are, Hunter Johnston. You’re the most impossible thing about this whole situation.
    Lina forced herself to look away, to concentrate on the obsidian mask, volcanic glass lovingly worked and polished untilit shone like a gold-tinted mirror beneath the harsh flash used to take the photo. Hunter’s like that. The surface isn’t what is important.
    “Lina?” he