The Fire Keeper

by J. C. Cervantes

  “Can’t blame the guy,” Brooks said. “The gods would gut him if they ever learned he was helping us.”

  I lay the black glass on a rock and jabbed it with Fuego in spear mode, splitting it in two. In the middle was a dark strip of paper that unfolded once, twice, three times until it was the size of a three-by-five notecard. I stumbled back. It wasn’t that I was afraid of paper—it was that this was exactly how Ah-Puch, the god of death, had sprung to life before my eyes a few months ago.

  My heart pounded as I picked up the message to check it out more closely.

  “Well?” Brooks said.

  “It’s blank!”

  “No way.” Brooks snatched it away but held it out so we could both see it. That’s when the paper began to shimmer silver, like flecks of twirling stardust. Then, slowly, words appeared on it as if an invisible hand were writing them.

  WaTiki Indoor Waterpark Resort

  314 N Elk Vale Rd, Rapid City, SD 57703

  Midnight

  March 24

  Three demons

  “My dad’s hidden in a water park in South Dakota? Is this some kind of joke?”

  Brooks frowned. “Three demons. That’s nothing. We can totally take them.” She tapped her fingers on her chin one at a time like she was counting. “Today is the twentieth, right? So that gives us four full days.”

  Rosie appeared on the playa just then, slinking over all chill like. She lowered her head, tucked back her ears, and let out a little whine. It was impossible for me to stay mad at her. Brooks was right—hunting was part of my dog’s nature.

  I’d been trying to retrain Rosie for the last seven months, and no matter what I tried, she refused to obey me, especially when it came to the commands for turning her flame throwing on and off. Ixtab had taught her to breathe fire every time she heard the word dead. It was handy whenever I needed to borrow some of Rosie’s flames. But it wasn’t so great when the word came up in casual conversation….

  Rosie spat out a Milk Dud–size fireball and knocked it my way with her nose as a peace offering.

  Snatching it up, I launched it down the beach. She raced after it so fast, she looked like a black streak of lightning.

  “She’s the best hellhound I’ve ever seen,” Brooks said. “I mean, her speed is, like, off the charts, and the way she can expand fire? Did you see how Rosie almost incinerated that bird? And while she was swimming!” Brooks looked at me, smiling like a proud mom at an art competition her kid had just won. She’d come a long way since the day she’d first met Rosie. “She’s ready…and you’re ready, Zane. We got this. You got this.”

  “Right,” I lied. I imagined my dad worming around some tiny dark space, getting weaker and weaker, and it made me sick with guilt.

  “I know you’ve been struggling with the fire thing. Maybe you’ve been trying too hard,” Brooks said, digging a tube of mint ChapStick from her pocket and applying some. She smacked her lips together. “Or maybe you have to be, like, stressed out or in danger or something. Do you want me to shift into a hawk and attack you?”

  “Uh—nice offer and all, but I’m good.”

  “Fine,” she said with a shrug. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To check out that invisible wall.” Then she became a hawk and flew away.

  “I’ll…uh…just be here waiting.”

  Rosie raced back with the fireball, groaned, and dropped the small flame at my feet. I reached up to scratch between her eyes (yes, she’s that tall). Thanks, girl, I said. A side benefit to Rosie being a hellhound (other than breathing fire) is that I can talk to her telepathically, too.

  She knew I needed to try harder. The problem was, I couldn’t just make fire the way Rosie could. I’d practiced for hundreds of hours, trying the exact way Hurakan had taught me in our one and only lesson on that day in the Empty.

  Being with him, in a place he had literally created from scratch, was so mind-blowing I can’t be totally sure, but I thought he’d said something about there coming a time when I wouldn’t need an exterior source of heat—I’d be able to create my own. (Dumb me had thought that would happen the moment he claimed me in front of the other gods. Nope.)

  He’d motioned toward the sun. Draw on its power. Call it to you.

  I’d focused on what I used to call my bum leg, the one that’s shorter than the other and carries all my godborn power. Hurakan was right. When I isolated my thoughts to this one part of me, what he called my “serpent leg,” a strange energy had pulsed through my entire body. Of course, I’d been a jaguar in that moment, which may have had something to do with it.

  Now feed the flame with your life source, he’d said.

  When I’d tried, a terrible heat had overtaken me. Smoke came out of my nose. The burning snaked its way through me at unimaginable speed. I totally panicked.

  Things hadn’t gotten much better since then.

  Rosie rolled the fireball onto her snout and tossed it to me. I caught the flame and spun it, letting it dance across my fingertips.

  The moment felt tight as I let the heat seep beneath my skin so I could feed it with the power that pulsed in my leg. That was the only way to make fire bigger, stronger.

  Rosie let out an encouraging whimper.

  I focused hard until the flame grew to the size of a lemon. Sweat trickled down my neck. I took a deep breath, knowing concentration was the key. My trembling hands were engulfed in the flames, but my skin didn’t burn.

  I got this.

  I got this.

  I could still hear Hurakan’s voice tangled in the wind of that memory like it was just yesterday: The fire will destroy you if you don’t release its power.

  I flung the fireball, letting out the searing heat inside me along with it….

  It fizzled over the waves like a dying sparkler. I stared down at my hands in frustration, wondering if I’d ever master fire.

  A few minutes later, Brooks landed and shifted back.

  “I just flew around the island,” she said, catching her breath. “There’s definitely some kind of barrier I can’t get through, but…”

  “What?”

  “On the east side, I found a tiny hole…. I dragged my talon down the center, and it gave just a little.”

  “Perfect!” I said. “So, we can rip through it?”

  Brooks pressed her lips together. “Not exactly. It closed up instantly.”

  “How…?”

  My mind shuffled through all the possibilities: Ixtab put up the wall to (a) protect us, (b) keep us on the island, (c) keep the gods out, or (d) all of the above. Whatever her reason, it didn’t matter. I was getting off Isla Holbox, shadow magic or no shadow magic.

  Ixtab had arranged something else, too. She’d transported a dormant volcano—my favorite, which I’d nicknamed the Beast—from where we used to live in New Mexico. She’d told me that inside it was my very own gateway to the underworld, in case of emergency. Ixtab had stressed (okay, maybe she’d threatened) emergency as in only if the gods descend and try to gouge out your eyes, so thankfully, I’d never had to use it. For half a second, I considered marching through that gateway to confront her directly, but then she’d know I was trying to leave and she might whip up even stronger magic to keep me here forever.

  “Once they move Hurakan, we’ll be back to square one, and Jazz already risked so much to get this intel,” I said. “This might be my only chance to save my dad. We have to find a way off the island.”

  “What about the gateway map?” Brooks’s eyes flashed with excitement.

  Ms. Cab, my neighbor and a great Maya seer, had given us a magical map that revealed secret portals to other layers of the world. Correction—we’d borrowed it for our last quest, but we’d never been able to use it, because the lousy gods went and shut down all gateways.

  “That’s it!” I practically shouted. “Maybe the shadow magic is only around the perimeter of the island and not any gateway!” The thought of outsma
rting Ixtab sent a thrill down my spine.

  “I’ll check when we get home,” Brooks said, looking a little worried. “I just hope the shadow magic doesn’t jam the map’s frequency.”

  “We’ll leave at dawn,” I said with a lot more confidence than I felt.

  “And if we can’t get through?”

  I gritted my teeth. “Then we’ll storm hell.”

  At the mention of hell, Rosie whined and danced on her paws.

  “Yes, you can come, too, Rosie,” I said, patting her chest. “But you have to promise to listen. We have to work as a team. Got it?”

  I didn’t want to admit it, but I wasn’t sure Rosie had ever forgiven me for letting her get turned into a hellhound. I mean, I was the one who had taken her into the volcano, where she’d been killed by a demon runner, sending her straight to the underworld. Deep down I was worried that some kind of trust had been broken between us. And that scared me.

  At the same moment, Hondo called us from the back patio. “Yo, dinner’s up. I cooked, so you get dish duty, Diablo!”

  I turned to the palapa-roofed house where we now lived—Brooks included, except she got the casita attached to the courtyard, because, as Mom said, Young girls need their privacy.

  Mom was on the patio, setting straw place mats on the table. She smiled and waved at us. She was happy—happier than when we lived in New Mexico. She loved Isla Holbox, with its sandy streets, brightly colored cafés, open-air shops, and the fruit and vegetable market. Me? I liked the beach and the Yum Balam nature reserve (named after the Maya jaguar lord), which also happens to be where my volcano is.

  Little did Mom know I was about to incinerate her happiness by taking off on a mission that could mess up everything. I told myself it would all be okay. We’d find a way off the island in the morning—rip a hole in the sky if we had to. We’d fly under the gods’ radar all the way to South Dakota, and everything would go as planned.

  I was so wrong.

  Brooks’s gateway map turned up nothing. Zilch. Nada. The nearest gateway was in Cancún, and that was beyond the shadow magic barrier.

  I lay in bed that night with a supersize headache. I thought I’d gone through every option, but then my mind landed on another. The last one—the jade. I still had the jaguar tooth my dad had given me, hanging around my neck on a brown leather cord. The amulet was fused with the most ancient and potent magic in the universe. I could use the tooth to spirit-jump to the Empty, and also to grant any power to whoever I gave it to. That was the irony, I guess. The power came in giving it away, which, to be honest, was so ungodlike.

  I could give Brooks the ability to cancel Ixtab’s shadow magic. But what if Hurakan’s totem wasn’t as strong as Ixtab’s spell and we blew our one chance to use the jade’s power?

  That night my dreams were foggy, filled with faces and places I didn’t know. Everything so out of reach. Until I heard a man’s voice:

  Time for the story to escalate.

  I bolted upright, wide-awake. I peered through the dark. “Hello?”

  There was no answer.

  It must have been a dream, I told myself as I punched my pillow, ready to lie back down.

  She’s here.

  Okay, that was definitely not a dream.

  Throwing back the covers, I looked around. I could hear the waves crashing in the distance. That’s when I felt a tug down in my gut, like the tide was pulling me closer.

  I headed out to the beach.

  Alone. (Unless you counted Fuego.)

  Just a few months ago, Rosie would’ve been trotting happily beside me like on many restless nights back in New Mexico. But ever since she’d become a hellhound, she preferred sleeping inside the Beast. By the gateway. Near Ixtab. Maybe Rosie just wasn’t meant to be with me anymore. Had we both changed that much? It was too painful to even think about.

  Outside, the air was cool, and the moon was a milky half circle of gloom. The Caribbean glowed as if millions of blue stars burned under the water, thanks to bioluminescent phytoplankton—or what Brooks calls sea sparkle. It’s a pretty awesome sight.

  I rubbed the goose bumps off my arms as I dropped onto my butt on the empty shore, unable to shake the whispers. Time for the story to escalate. She’s here. What was that supposed to mean?

  Waves lapped within a few feet, and the horizon was black. I wondered if Pacific, the exiled goddess of time, was still out there. Was she okay? I knew she’d had to go deeper into hiding after delivering messages to me from Hurakan, but I wasn’t exactly sure what “deeper” meant. I gripped the jade tooth she’d given me from my dad. I hadn’t spirit-jumped back to the Empty since I’d demolished Ah-Puch, and even though I sort of wanted to check the place out again, I admit I was scared. Scared of what or who I might find there.

  Shivering, I fished a matchbook from my pocket. My time was up. I had to master my fire skills—now. No way did I want to be the weak link in our rescue crew.

  I struck a match, but a sea breeze blew out the flame. I tried again, cupping my hand around it. Playing with fire wasn’t the hard part. It was pulling its energy inside and making it bigger, more useful.

  A spark flew onto my jeans but left no mark. Thankfully, fire didn’t incinerate my clothes. Ixtab had told me that my skin and anything touching it was nonflammable. Yeah, that was handy.

  The tiny flame danced in the center of my palm. I tugged its energy into my hand, connecting to the power within my serpent leg while I willed the flame to grow bigger and bigger until it was the size of a lemon. That seemed to be my range—lemons!

  With a deep breath, I expanded the fire another inch and then another. Strength pulsed in my back and arms as smoke streamed from my nose and eyes. My skin glowed as though lava were running through my veins. Heat seared my bones, growing so hot I thought I’d combust any second. And let me just say for the record that igniting into a blazing one-man bonfire is not my idea of a fun Friday night.

  I panicked and quickly launched the mini meteor out over the water. I watched it sail across the endless dark and…caught a glimpse of something.

  What the…?

  I blinked and got to my feet. The fireball floated for a split second, like someone had caught it. Then it fell into the sea.

  Using the night vision I’d been born with, I could spot a rowboat just beyond the breakers. The vessel rode the waves closer and closer until I saw that there was something in the boat. A hunched figure, wearing a hood. I peered closer. Was it a fisherman?

  When the boat rode up onto the sand, the hood dropped away to reveal a mop of short dark hair. A girl.

  Breath hitched in my throat.

  I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

  Wait. That didn’t sound right. I mean, it was not like when I first met Brooks and saw her hundred-watt smile. This was different.

  The girl (she looked close to my age) just sat there, staring absently like a mannequin. Pale moonbeams cast dark shadows across her thin face and wide catlike eyes. The boat rocked as the waves hit it.

  That’s when Rosie came thundering down the beach, snarling and growling like a maniac.

  “Down, girl. Down!”

  Her huge fangs glistened in the moonlight as she raced ahead. In typical Rosie hellhound fashion, she wasn’t listening to me. So I dropped Fuego and side-tackled her. “Stop!” I hollered, my arms barely halfway around her thick body as we rolled across the sand. “I said, DOWN!”

  Still snarling, Rosie easily broke free of my grip, but she didn’t advance any farther. Her black fur was sticking straight up along her spine, and for a second, I thought she might ignore me and incinerate this girl.

  But then Rosie did something weird. She sniffed the air, relaxed her pose, and wandered over to the boat’s bow, letting out breathy little whines.

  If this girl were a threat, Rosie would for sure sniff it out. Just to be on the safe side, I picked up Fuego, ready to change my cane into spear mode. “What is she, Rosie?” I whispered, getting to my feet.


  Rosie just kept sniffing and whining. Okay, so that meant the girl wasn’t some assassin of the gods or a demon in disguise. Hopefully. Then I remembered the whisper I had heard….She’s here.

  “Uh…you lost?” I asked, hoping the girl would snap out of it and say something. Anything. But she just kept staring ahead blankly. She had on a gray NASA T-shirt, some flannel pajama pants, and red cowboy boots. Who goes rowing in cowboy boots?

  Was she even breathing?

  I edged closer.

  The girl collapsed like an empty pillowcase, smacking her head on the edge of the dinghy, where a long nail stuck out.

  I leaped into the boat to check out the damage. Her forehead had a two-inch gash that was now bleeding. My stomach turned. (Yeah, I still hated blood.) Whimpering, Rosie leaned into the rowboat and pawed the girl gently. The she sniffed the wound and began to lick it.

  “That’s seriously disgusting,” I told her as I watched the wound vanish. “Okay, that part’s cool. But the whole licking thing? So gross!”

  Ixtab had told me she’d discovered Rosie’s “special” saliva when she was training her. No other hellhound can do what she does. They’re built to kill, not heal.

  A cool breeze swept across the beach as the girl opened her eyes slowly. I’ll never forget the color—silvery blue, like a winter sky.

  Oh boy, that’s when things got tense. She shoved me away, scrambled out of the boat, crouched down, and, with a wave of her skinny arm, said, “AWAY!”

  Come again? “Uh, you hit your head. Maybe you should sit down.”

  “Why are you still here? Where am I? Who are you? How…?” Her eyes darted around the dark beach. Her bobbed hair was jagged at the ends, like it had been cut with a razor. Then her eyes landed on Rosie and I expected her to go into freak-out mode, but instead she gasped. “Oh my gods! Is that Rosie? The hellhound?”

  My defenses went up like a stone wall. “How do you know Rosie?”

  Her expression went from fear to I’m-going-to-Disneyland excited in a single blink. “I don’t believe it! If that’s Rosie, then you’re Zane, and I found you! I really found you. Just wait until Abuelo hears about this. He’s going to go bananas.”