Beautiful Sacrifice

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.
     
     
    W HEN H UNTER 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 hopedthat 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