Beautiful Sacrifice

birthday?” Mercurio asked, plainly not caring if Hunter could hear.
    “I’m surprised you remembered,” Lina said.
    “This year, it would be difficult to forget. To have a Reyes Balam birthday on the day the wheel will turn is a magnificent thing, a source of much celebration. Some of the village people have prepared shrines.”
    Lina almost missed a step. Hunter steadied her with a hand at the small of her back. Then he nearly sent her to her knees with a slow, loving caress over her backside.
    “Shrines?” she asked. Then she cleared her throat and tried again. “Shrines with Abuelita’s picture?”
    Mercurio shrugged with a male grace that was unconscious.
    Hunter considered tripping him.
    “I look only at the flowers,” Mercurio said. “From a distance, they are beautiful, yes?”
    “You never got close to one of the shrines?” Hunter asked.
    “The peasant beliefs are not mine,” Mercurio said without looking away from Lina. “I am a civilized man educated in the civilized world.”
    “Have you heard that the people are getting fanatic about their gods?” Hunter asked. “You know, baktun and all.”
    “There are rumors.” The distaste in Mercurio’s voice was clear. “The villagers are very unsophisticated.”
    “What kind of rumors?” Lina asked before Hunter could. “Anything that might threaten my family?”
    Mercurio’s laugh was as richly masculine as his voice. “Their jungles might be short a few monkeys, but the villagers hold the Reyes Balam line in reverence. Not quite gods, but close. Priest-kings, as it were.”
    “Priest-kings often came to a bloody end,” Hunter pointed out.
    “That was long ago,” Mercurio said. “Like the artifacts in this museum. Beautiful reminders of a past that is no more.”
    Hunter thought of the blood-drenched basement, the stone altar with the face of a god brooding over it, shots echoing in a parking garage, and Jase’s shirt with a terrifying stain of blood.
    “Some people still take it seriously,” Hunter said. “Like death.”
    “There are crazies in every society,” Mercurio said.
    “Have you ever heard of El Maya?” Hunter asked casually.
    “Superstitions, but I’ve heard something. The peasants think he is a god.”
    “Yeah? Is he local?”
    “He’s a god,” Mercurio said. “He’s everywhere. And nowhere.”
    “I haven’t heard of him,” Lina said.
    Mercurio made a dismissing motion with his hand. “El Maya is a combination of Robin Hood and the Grim Reaper. He’s a hope and a fear. Hot air, I believe you Americans say.”
    “So you don’t think he’s real,” Hunter said, remembering Rodrigo’s silence.
    “No,” Mercurio said, focusing on Lina as he opened the door to the acquisitions room. “You have strange friends, querida .”
    Hunter wanted to show Mercurio just how strange he was—but not until Hunter was sure that he’d wrung all possible information out of the man.
    Lina’s breath came in swiftly as she saw the room beyond Mercurio. Shelves and tables filled every space. Most surfaces were covered by artifacts waiting to be cataloged.
    “As I said, I need more help.” Mercurio’s tone was wry, but not apologetic.
    Lina didn’t take the bait.
    “Good help is hard to find,” Hunter said blandly.
    Mercurio kept on acting as if he were alone with Lina.
    She headed for the artifacts. There was a tug at her arm before Mercurio slowly, reluctantly let go. If she hadn’t neededto look at his artifacts, she would have given him the kind of cold female shoulder that left ice burns.
    Silently Hunter’s glance raked over artifact after artifact, looking for something that matched the photos in his cargo pants.
    Lina was looking just as intently. “Nice incense burner.”
    “Nice?” Mercurio laughed. “The censer is beautiful and you know it.”
    “Of course,” she said, studying it.
    The pottery’s central motif was an intricate cutout of an idealized Maya skull, mouth open. Snakes wrapped around the cranial dome, heads pointed up to the heavens. The figure was repeated three more times around the pottery. The inside was black with smoke, probably from sacred copal, the hardened but not fossilized remains of tree sap. The outside showed traces of blue that could have been painted glyphs, faded now.
    There was no piece missing in the censer that would match what Hunter and Jase had found in the murdered janitor’s room. None of the glyphs had the squared, jagged lines, a sigil sacred