Adrik kicked and squirmed against the giant tentacle’s strength.
A hateful laugh came from deep within Zotz when Alana was tossed into the air like a coin. We all watched in horror as she fell toward the dark churning sea of sludge. Hondo and I scrambled and clawed our way across the platform like fish out of water.
Out of nowhere, Brooks swooped in. Ren, now awake, was on the hawk’s back, her blue eyes fierce and angry.
Zotz’s thick neck swiveled in Brooks’s direction, but before he could raise a claw, Brooks snatched up Alana and rocketed her out of the bat god’s reach. Then they were gone, as if the sky had swallowed them whole.
How was that possible?
Zotz stared at the silvery sky with a look of surprise that disconcerted me as he folded his wings. “Zane, Zane, Zane,” he said. “I suppose I will have to kill you all one at a time until I get what I want. And I was so looking forward to the thrill of the hunt. Oh, well.”
Hondo reached into his boot and pulled out something. That must be the stone! I thought. It was the size of a silver dollar and glowed red like a hot coal. “You want this?” he shouted. “Then come and get it!” He threw it high into the air.
The moment shrank down to a slo-mo tunnel view.
“Noooo!” Ixkik’ and I screamed simultaneously.
Hondo, taking advantage of the distraction, hurled his ax at Zotz. A wing lashed it away. I’m pretty sure Zotz would have bitten off my uncle’s head if he hadn’t been so focused on the stone still spinning toward the sea.
Brooks reappeared, the edges of her wings silvery blue, matching the sky. That’s when I realized she had never disappeared. She’d just used some sort of camouflage, like that night in New York. But how? Ren and Alana clung to her back.
Brooks dove toward the spinning red glow and nearly snatched it up…. But it slipped from her grasp and fell back toward the platform.
With a flick of his wrist, Zotz trapped the stone in a vortex, spinning it toward his outstretched talon. “Finally,” he said with a sigh. “And now for the disrespectful little thugs. I’ll start with the hawk.” He sniffed the air. “A ha’ nawal?” He traced a long claw across his jaw as he shook his gigantic head in amazement. “It’s been more than a century since we’ve encountered one of those, right, Ixkik’? Which will make her a valuable addition to my legion.”
“Our legion,” said Blood Moon.
Ha’ nawal?
I knew that Mayan word! Ha’ meant water. But…what was a water shape-shifter? Brooks had always hated the stuff!
“We have the stone,” Ixkik’ said. “Now, let the suffering begin!”
I had mere seconds, and all of them mattered. I closed my eyes, searching deep for a flame, for any ounce of my godborn powers. Just one spark…And then I remembered: The sludge hadn’t touched the top of my head. Or my eyes.
Fire. Fire. Fire.
“Zane!” Hondo shouted.
I opened my eyes. Zotz’s gnarled claw was within inches of swiping Brooks. A stream of blue flame burst from my eyes, shooting directly at the god’s neck. He clutched his burning throat in a silent scream as two bats raced out of it in a terrified frenzy.
The bat god fell to his knees, heaving. Steam rolled off his hairy back.
I lunged for the stone, but a frantic small bat got in the way, accidentally knocking it out of the vortex and over the edge of the platform, where it sank into the darkness.
“Oh, how those you love will pay, Zane Obissspo,” Ixkik’ hissed. “I promise you they will pay.”
Suddenly, jagged stripes of lightning split the sky into a hundred pieces. Rain lashed down violently. Thunder crashed. The world felt like it was colliding with the sun.
Ixkik’ shouted, “They’re here!”
They?
A thin spiral of dark fog spun into the sludge as Zotz beat his hairy wings furiously. His eyes were burning with rage and pain and lust for revenge. In that moment, I swear the world stopped spinning under the weight of my enemies’ threats.
Zotz flew closer to the black sea, desperately searching for the stone. Dark water splashed higher and higher like angry lava, driving back the bat god as tentacles lashed out.
The sky trembled, exploding in blasts of violent white.
“There is nowhere you can hide, son of fire!” Zotz screeched. “Nowhere you will be safe. I swear by the darkness, I will hunt you.” Then he disintegrated into a million specks of dust.
The tentacle holding Adrik vanished, too, and the godborn crashed down onto the platform, which groaned, then tilted.
There was no doubt about it: we were going down.
I jerked my gaze to my uncle. He put on the jade mask.
“Hondo!”
“The stone!” he shouted as he jumped into the roiling darkness.
As the platform sank under our feet, the last thing I heard was Blood Moon’s faint whisper:
“At last it is mine.”
I expected freezing wet darkness, not miniature monkeys.
Wait. I need to back up. The scene was like some kind of dream sequence. You know, the kind you feel like you’re looking at from outside your body?
We had fallen into the water/sludge/bubbling blackness. I squeezed my eyes closed and then—bam!—the next thing I knew, I was waking up drenched but clean on a fluffy white bed, staring up at a big ole opening in some thatched roof. Little greenish-gold eyes peered down at me from leafy branches above the hole. I blinked a few times, not sure I was seeing what I thought I was seeing. Blackish-brown critters that couldn’t have been more than ten inches tall perched on the boughs, babbling away and smacking their lips.
My first thought was I must be in Xib’alb’a and stuck in Monkey House. Then I remembered that there is no Monkey House.
“Welcome to SHIHOM, Zane.”
Hurakan?!
I turned my neck to see my dad standing on the other side of the room, which wasn’t very far away, since we seemed to be squeezed into some kind of wooden dollhouse. Everything came back to me in a whoosh. I sat up, swinging my legs over the side of my bed. “What happened? Hondo and Brooks! Are they okay?”
Hurakan’s dark eyes looked through me as if he could read my past, present, and future. He probably could. “Everyone is fine. But if the turtles hadn’t sent those messages…” He drew in a deep, painful-sounding breath.
So that’s what those glyphs were? Telegraphs to my dad?
Hurakan stepped out of the shadows and into the light. I hadn’t seen him for three months, not since the Council of Gods had signed a new treaty making everyone promise to get along and quit killing each other. Seeing him felt really good, even under the circumstances. He adjusted the collar of his gray jacket. As usual, he was dressed casually, in dark jeans.
He held Fuego in his hands.
I jumped up so fast I got woozy, but not before I grabbed my cane/spear and fell back onto the bed. “How…? Where did you find…?” My mind was a jumble of memories, nightmares, and too many questions to count.
“Once the darkness fled with Zotz and Blood Moon,” Hurakan said, “the sea reverted to its usual state and the cane was freed. I didn’t find it—Fuego found you.”
I clutched Fuego tight, like it was a living thing. To me, it sort of is. “How did they find us?”
Before Hurakan could answer, the truth slammed into my brain at a million miles an hour. If I was remembering right (and I’m pretty sure I was, even though I’d almost drowned in bubbling black ooze, and that’s a real brain drain, believe me), Hurakan, god of fire, wind, and storms, had singed Zotz’s sorry butt with some wicked lightning. “Wait—did you knock Zotz into tomorrow?”
My dad folded his arms across his chest. “Knock him into tomorrow?” he echoed, raising his eyebrows.
“Yeah,” I said. “It sort of means to obliterate someone.”
“No, I did not obliterate Camazotz. I was more interested in saving you.”
Oh.
“Because my mom would kill you if you didn’t?
”
He half grinned. “Something like that.”
I pushed back my wet hair and stood. Was I supposed to hug my dad? Shake his hand? Give him a high five? Tell him Ah-Puch is the worst travel planner ever?
“I opened an emergency gateway,” he said. “It was rough. You’ve been unconscious for an hour. Maybe you don’t have to tell your mom about this?”
“Ha! Okay.”
Just then, a small creature dropped from the trees above, knocking a couple of miniature monkeys out of the way. She was about three feet tall, with enormous eyes and elongated fingers like a tarsier. Two membranous ears poked out of her short ocher hair, which looked more like fur, and she wore a red, blue, and green feather dress. The monkeys clicked their teeth and squealed with annoyance.
“Oh, be quiet,” she said to them as she gripped a clipboard. “You don’t own the place.”
That only sent the primates into a chorus of shrieks and howls, and they began to throw toilet paper rolls at us.
“Hey!” I threw up my hands for cover as the rolls bounced off my head. The monkeys were smart enough to avoid hitting my dad, who I figured could obliterate them with one stare.
The little rascals snickered and retreated into the shadowy trees.
“Thieves,” the creature muttered, shaking her head. Then, with a pained smile, she said, “Zane Obispo, how good of you to wake up. How do you like your tree house?” She glared up at the branches, which were shaking with monkey glee. “Make sure to keep all your belongings locked up.”
“This is a tree house?” I was going to spend the summer here? Cool! Except for the toilet-paper-throwing monkeys.
“That’s what I said.” The creature wrinkled her nose and eyed me up and down. “You really smell.”
My dad covered his mouth like he might laugh. I threw a glare his way as I sniffed a pit. “Really? I really smell?”
The creature rolled her eyes. “Why are you asking him? I’m an air spirit, the most trustworthy, honest creature in the cosmos. Much more so than earth spirits, or those sneaky mountain spirits.”
“Hang on,” I said, remembering Ah-Puch’s note. “I thought you air spirits were on strike.”
“Not all of us. Some of us need to earn a living. You think these imported feathers are cheap?” She glanced down at her clipboard. “Anyway, you don’t have a lot of time. Ixchel’s attendants will have to do their magic,” she said, peering up at me with a scowl. “You certainly can’t go to the claiming ceremony looking and smelling like that! Everyone is already there except you, and—”
“I thought the claiming ceremony was tomorrow night,” I said to Hurakan.
“We moved it up,” he said solemnly.
Oh man, I knew that expression. It meant We moved it up and you aren’t going to like the reason why.
“Zane can get cleaned up here,” Hurakan said.
The air spirit started to argue until my dad twitched an eyebrow (a tiny little twitch!), which pretty much sent her into hyper adiós mode. Where could I learn to do that trick?
After she left, Hurakan turned to me. “We need to talk.”
That was the understatement of the century. “Yeah, I have tons of questions…. But shouldn’t we do it on the way to the ceremony?” I felt kind of responsible for all the godborns I had found, like maybe I should be there to cheer them on or something.
“I have something to show you first,” he said. “And not until you clean up. You really do smell.”
Whatever. Outside my tree house bedroom was a little sitting room. And I mean little, with a small desk and chair, and that was about it. No TV, no mini fridge…I guess godborns didn’t have the luxury of lounging around.
The door in the sitting room led to a narrow hall with two other bedrooms, and an exit to the outside. Ugh! Housemates. I was kind of hoping I’d have my own pad. There was one bathroom, which I could barely squeeze into without hitting my head against the ceiling. I took a quick shower under a warm waterfall that sprang out of a wood-paneled wall and chirped like a million birds.
Back in my bedroom, the dinky dresser had only two drawers. One was labeled PAJAMAS, and the other CLOTHING. I opened the pajama drawer to find a pair of gray sweatpants and a matching T-shirt that read SHIHOM. In addition to some new underwear and socks, the clothing drawer offered three pairs of black drawstring pants, a pair of basketball shorts, and five black tees with SHIHOM on the front in white block letters. Did we really need so many reminders of where we were? There was also a black baseball cap that read HURAKAN. Seriously? We had to wear parent-branded stuff? No gracias.
I threw on a tee and the shorts. At the foot of my bed was a pair of black tennis shoes. I had to give credit to whoever had ordered all this stuff, because the right shoe was smaller than the left, to accommodate my different-size feet.
I met my dad in the sitting room. He was pacing around the cramped space like a restless jaguar. And I should know—I’ve seen him in that form.
Sometimes I forgot he was a god. And sometimes I forgot he was my dad. The whole thing was pretty confusing, but in this moment, I thought he looked like both.
“How did Zotz and Ixkik’ track us down?” I asked again.
He turned, kind of startled, and said, “Your journey should have been top secret. No one knew you were traveling a day early.” He rubbed his chin. “Come on. I want to show you something.”
We walked down the hall to the exit, a screen door that opened to an outdoor platform. We were high up in a ceiba tree that had been strung with tiny lights. They flickered green and blue, casting a soft glow on the leaves. An intricate network of suspension bridges and ladders connected us to dozens of other shimmering tree houses. I noticed that some of the houses had full wraparound porches and floor-to-ceiling windows. Figures I would get the low-rent version. But where was everyone? The place was silent except for branches rustling, birds chirping, insects buzzing, and monkeys lip-smacking.
We descended a series of ladders and crossed a few bridges until we came to the edge of a stone arena. It was an obstacle course complete with flags, cones, wrestling mats, horizontal step equipment, and punching bags (painted with faces that looked a lot like Zotz, Jordan, and Bird). Stacked on an iron table were all kinds of weapons: spears, daggers, dart guns, throwing stars, and other stuff I couldn’t even identify.
“This is all Hondo’s design,” Hurakan said as we looked around.
So that’s what Hondo had been doing while I was away. Who knew? I felt a surge of pride. “It’s awesome!”
“The godborns will do their training drills here,” my dad went on as we made our way around to the other side.
The words sank in slowly. Training drills. All I heard in my mind was war games.
“This is what you wanted to show me?” I clutched Fuego, wondering why all the mystery. “It’s cool, but…”
Hurakan stopped at a rugged stone wall at least fifty feet high. Six thick ropes hung from the top, and he tugged one of them.
“What I have to show you is at the top. Maybe it will answer some questions. Or maybe it will only create more.” He gestured to some steep zigzagging stairs. “We can take the steps, or…”
Our eyes met. My dad was the only sobrenatural I could communicate with telepathically when we weren’t touching. Maybe it had something to do with our blood tie. The words formed in my mind and flew outward before I could stop them. Is that a challenge?
I blame my boldness on the near-death adrenaline still churning inside me.
I would never challenge a godborn, especially after what you’ve just been through.
My bones did feel like they had been pounded with a sledgehammer. Hurakan inched closer, igniting a flame on his right palm. I started to back up, but he closed the distance and placed the fire on my shoulder. The pain relief was instant.
Okay, I’ll climb the rope, I said. On one condition.
Gods don’t do conditions.
I vanished Fuego. I wouldn’t want to
have to tell my mom about the whole sludge disaster….
A small smirk tugged at his mouth. What’s the condition?
No god powers.
He thought for a moment, then nodded. No god powers.
I grabbed hold of the rope with both hands, pulling myself up while anchoring my feet against the stone. Hand over hand, I walked up the wall, using both upper and lower body strength. I knew I should pace myself, but I was curious about what Hurakan wanted to show me up top, and I really wanted to get some questions answered.
Hurakan scaled the rock, matching my stride, but let me tell you, without his godly powers, he looked like a regular wall-climbing guy. I take that back. There was nothing “regular” about him, but he for sure didn’t fly up the course like I know he could have. He actually seemed to be having a hard time! (Sorry, if you ever read this, Dad, but it’s totally true.)
“Not easy being human, is it?” I huffed, trying to hide my toothy grin. There was something very satisfying about seeing Hurakan, the great creator god, struggling up a stone wall with nothing but a rope, his muscles, and his will.
He scowled. “You’re cheating.”
“Am not.”
“You’re using your storm runner leg.”
“We said no god tricks,” I reminded him. “No one said no godborn strength.”
“You test my limits, kid,” Hurakan said. But he was smiling a little.
Truth be told, I hadn’t used much of the power that ran through my storm runner leg, thinking I’d wait until I really needed it, which was pretty much about now. I let the power surge through my blood faster than lightning as I raced up the wall.
I gotta give Hurakan credit. He wasn’t going to go down easy. He redoubled his efforts and scrambled over the edge a respectable three seconds behind me.
My heart pounded. My muscles burned. My smile split my face in two. Had I really just beaten the great Hurakan?
I glanced over at my dad, who rolled to his feet. By the time he stood, his godly self had returned. “That was truly terrible.” He wiped his hands together. “I actually feel sorry for humans. On second thought, not really.”
The Shadow Crosser Page 8
