Beautiful Sacrifice (6 page)

He blackmailed me into helping him.

For a friend,
she reminded herself. Hunter wasn’t after personal gain.

Part of her wondered if he would really ruin her reputation. Then she remembered the look on his face when he said that Jase had two kids and his wife was expecting a third. To protect the children, Hunter would do what he had to.

She couldn’t really blame him, but she didn’t have to like it.

Just once, I’d like to be the most important thing in someone’s life.

Lina squashed the thought as soon as it came to her. Her childhood was what it was. Her adulthood was her own responsibility.

She cleared her throat and said crisply, “Yes, ceremonial.”

“Late Terminal Classic?”

“From all appearances.”

“What about the Chacmool?” he asked.

He was so close to Lina now that he could see his breath stirring the tendrils of hair that had escaped the severe bun at the nape of her neck. Goose bumps rippled over her skin, telling him just how sensitive she was, how aware of him.

“Ceremonial.” It was more a husky whisper than a word. Then, “Stop it.”

“What?” he asked, his breath against her ear.

She opened her mouth to tell him precisely what he was doing, then realized how easily he could deny everything, making her feel a fool for noticing him so intensely, allowing him to affect her so much.

It could be an accident,
she told herself.
I’ve often leaned over someone’s shoulder to look at something.

But it hadn’t made her skin feel too tight, her breath too short.

“I have an American’s sense of personal space,” she said. “You must have spent a lot of time in Mexico.”

“Busted.” He moved away just enough that she could no longer feel his breath. “Better?”

She let out a long, almost silent rush of air. “Chacmool figure, including a bowl to catch blood. Ceremonial. New World jade. Jaguar glyphs engraved around the edge of the figure. The glyphs around the lip of the bowl appear to be Late Terminal Classic.”

Hunter barely kept himself from leaning closer. He’d liked the scent of Lina’s skin, the creamy texture, the pulse beating rapidly at the base of her neck.

“So, this represents the god’s mouth?” he asked, pointing to the shallow bowl that was the reason for the Chacmool’s existence.

“Are you sure you need me?”

“Very sure.”

Lina told herself there was no double meaning in his words. She couldn’t quite believe it. But then, she’d never been flirted with in such a bold yet indirect way.

“If you already know the purpose of the Chacmool…” she began.

“Your course work covered it—a reclining man-god figure with knees bent and head raised, providing a rest for a shallow bowl.”

“You missed half the classes.”

“The syllabus was excellent.”

Lina gave up and concentrated on the photo. “The glyphs I can see are what I would expect on a ceremonial object. The date. The royal hierarchy. Man’s reverence. The gods’ awful power.”

“Is Kawa’il a part of the Chacmool and its ritual?”

“Without seeing the entire rim, I can’t answer that.”

“Is it possible?”

“I’m told anything is possible, including the Maya millennium,” she said dryly. “Ask Melodee.”

“Pass. I prefer women who haven’t been cut-and-pasted.”

Lina shook her head, smiling. Hunter Johnston was very much to her taste. Too bad he was little better than a blackmailer.

“You still mad that I twisted your arm to help me?” he asked.

“Are you a mind reader?”

“No. You were smiling, then you looked like someone had asked you to eat a bug. Since I’m the only insect-eating SOB here, it was a logical connection.”

Hunter was entirely too quick, or she was too easy to read. Or both.

“The fifth photo fits with the time frame and ceremonial theme,” Lina said, sticking to what she knew rather than what she feared or desired. “The censer appears to be clay, beautifully crafted so that the incense smoke would seem to be pouring from the mouths of gods.”

“Looks like snakes to me.”

“The feathered serpent was a common Maya theme. If the censer was originally found with the other objects—”

“Unknown.”

“—the assumption would be that you have the trove of a high priest or a king.”

“You keep saying priest
or
king,” Hunter said.

“The English language makes the distinction. There is no proof that the Mayan language did. From all we have learned, it appears that nobility supplied the priest-kings. The duties, if they were separate at all, overlapped so heavily as to make a distinction meaningless.”

“I love it when you go all academic on me. Such a contrast to your—” Abruptly Hunter closed his runaway mouth.

Lina raised one dark, wing-shaped eyebrow.

“Off the subject,” he said. “I’m a man. My thoughts sometimes wander.”

She didn’t ask where they went. She knew. And she liked it, which confused her. He had strong-armed her into helping him, but she wasn’t as mad as she should be. He was flirting with her, and she liked it way too much. She’d slapped down less aggressive males without a thought.

Hunter took thought.

“The Maya believed that a god’s words could be seen in smoke, in dreams,” she said.

“Drug-induced?”

“Perhaps. Peyote enemas are a documented archaeological reality, as are mushroom and other psychotropic substances. But there are other ways to induce visions.”

“Such as?”

“Pain. Enough pain, enough self-bloodletting, can cause what Western people label hallucinations and Maya called communication with the gods.”

The part of herself that was instinctive, bone-deep, knew that the censer in the photo had been used in just such rituals.

“I wonder what the gods told him,” she said softly.

“Him? What about women?”

“Maya weren’t, and aren’t, much for equal opportunity between sexes. A Maya queen could never ascend the throne unless she was pregnant and her husband was recently dead.”

“So women weren’t part of ritual ceremonies?” Hunter asked.

“The queen was, and perhaps the wives of the highest nobles. A 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 until it 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 asked.

Belatedly she realized that she was looking at him again, falling into darkness and light.

“The central part of the mask is human,” she said, her voice low. “The eyes are heavy-lidded, half open. The nose is a blunt blade of nobility, the cheekbones high and broad, the mouth a grim slit of judgment. This is a god on the brink of a catastrophic temper tantrum.”

“Not a gentle god.”

“The Maya revered the jaguar, a climax predator. If tenderness was valued, we’ve seen little indication of it in their religious-civic art.”

“Sounds like the Yucatan I know and love,” Hunter said dryly, thinking of his last assignment. Being a courier in a kidnap-ransom scheme wasn’t his favorite job, but it brought a lot of money into the family business. And saved lives. Sometimes. If he was very lucky, very careful.

“Do you know the Yucatan?” Lina asked, surprised.

“Better than most, not as well as you do. What are these things along the edges?” he asked, pointing to the mask. As he touched the photo, it shifted, making it seem alive, breathing, waiting.

“Symbolic feathers or flames or even lightning. It’s difficult to tell against the flash.” As Lina spoke, she typed into her notebook. “These are very vigorous symbols, incised and brought into relief. Delicate and vivid, polished to the same hard gleam as the face itself. See the drill holes that would hold cord or leather, allowing it to be fastened to a man’s head? Amazing, incredible artisans created this.”

Hunter watched her profile, a more feminine, much more elegant echo of the mask.

“Imagine this in torchlight,” Lina said. “It would be inhuman, terrifying, awesome in the original sense of the word. It’s clearly a ceremonial piece, but who wore it? For what purpose? It must have been traded for, but why and when?”

She made an exasperated sound and smacked her palm on the desk.

Hunter waited.

“This is maddening,” she said. “Without context, my questions can’t be answered. I might get a chemical analysis and be able to match the obsidian to the original quarry site, but that’s such a tiny part of this mask’s history. To date it, I would need to know where it was found, in what layer of dirt, with what other objects or signs of habitation. All I have is this photograph.”

Hunter noted the flush of temper darken her high cheekbones. The lady had passion. It was part of what attracted him to her. Then he watched anger fade into something close to puzzlement.

Silence stretched.

“What?” he asked.

She flinched as though she’d forgot he was there. “I’m not sure. I feel like I’ve seen something similar to this, but I can’t remember where or when. The shining…” She smacked the desk again with her palm. “Damn the grave robber who cared more about money than knowledge!”

“Grave robbers are poor. Only the endgame is rich.”

She blew out a hard breath. “I know. I spent most of my childhood running barefoot through villages that depended on my family’s generosity for food, clothing, everything but water. And sometimes even that. I didn’t understand then. I just laughed and played with the village children while Philip and their fathers dug through the jungle, seeking Maya heritage.”

“You can’t eat heritage.”

The air-conditioning kicked on, a cool breath settling over the office.

Suddenly Lina looked defeated. She shook her head. “I know. If my child was hungry, I’d be in the front line of grave diggers, shoveling hard.”