The Storm Runner

by J. C. Cervantes

  The demon emerged from the tunnel. Brooks hollered, “Take that!” Her flashlight’s beam turned red and she shone the light on the creature’s face. It writhed and screamed as its skin sizzled. And here I’d thought the smell couldn’t have gotten any worse.

  Rosie snarled.

  Brooks drew closer to the demon runner, really letting it have it with her flesh-eating flashlight. Then the beam flickered, dimmed, and died completely.

  Seriously? Didn’t she know you always have to check the batteries before going demon-hunting?

  She smacked the flashlight against the palm of her hand as the demon shook off the pain—and its headphones—and came at us again.

  “Brooks, hurry! We gotta get out of here.”

  She clambered back up the way we’d come, passing me on the slope, because she was faster on her feet.

  Loose rocks tumbled down after her, hitting my cane. I lost my footing once, then again, cursing my stupid leg, but I managed to keep my balance. The demon’s shrieks of “Ah-Puch!” bounced off the cave walls, making me shudder.

  Rosie was going crazy, slipping and sliding as she climbed ahead of me. I kept stumbling, maybe because of sheer panic, or the fact that the demon was only steps away and its skin was now slick with some kind of yellow ooze.

  “Zane Obispo,” it hissed. “Zane Obispo.”

  Hearing that, I tripped and nearly fell. How did this monster know my name?

  “Hurry!” Brooks cried as she rushed on toward the tunnel that led out of here. “Don’t let it touch you—its slime is poisonous!” Then she morphed into a hawk. Her flashlight dropped to the floor.

  In that moment I knew I wasn’t going to make it out of there. I figured maybe I could distract the demon runner long enough to give Brooks and Rosie a bigger head start.

  Once I reached the top of the path, I pressed my back against the wall and shielded Rosie behind my legs. I extended my cane in front of me, wishing it were a monster-killing sword.

  Rosie barked and howled, then slipped out from between my legs. Using her powerful back haunches, she leaped right into the beast’s chest, sinking her teeth into its throat.

  “ROSIE!”

  The beast staggered and tried to rip Rosie off with its slime-covered hands. Her jaws maintained their tight grip.

  “Don’t touch her!” I screamed.

  Brooks swooped in to help. She clawed at the monster’s eyes, her cry of kee-eeeee-ar piercing my skull.

  I picked up a rock and threw it at the demon runner, but I missed by a mile. The demon finally succeeded in tearing Rosie from its chest and it tossed her into the wall. She yelped as she smacked against the rocks, then landed with a terrible thud on the floor below.

  “NO!” An uncontrollable rage flooded my heart. I launched myself at the beast and it grabbed me by the arms, sinking its long claws into my flesh. I screamed in pain and fell to the ground, dropping my cane.

  Brooks circled above and the demon swatted at her like she was a mosquito.

  A burning sensation radiated through my body. In agony, I rolled to my knees and inched toward Rosie. Slime sizzled through my shirt sleeve, burning my skin like acid.

  The demon grabbed hold of my short leg. Its claws ripped through my jeans and into my calf muscle.

  “Get off of me, you slime-bag!” I shouted, twisting onto my back as the demon dragged me across the ground.

  “You. Free Ah-Puch,” it hissed.

  It headed toward the dead-end tunnel we’d come from, not caring that my head was bouncing against rocks along the way. Brooks flew overhead with my warrior cane in her mouth. She dropped it next to me, but my arms felt like noodles as I reached for it. An effect of the slime? I wondered dizzily. I managed to snag the cane and I clutched it tightly to my chest.

  We reached the wall the demon runner had been dismantling before. With its free hand, the demon began clawing at it again. I knew what I had to do, and I’d only get one chance.

  “Hey!” I screamed. “I’ll help you. Just let… let go of my leg, so I can stand.”

  The demon looked over its shoulder at me. Long nasty fangs curled over its bruise-colored lip. Slime oozed from the holes where a nose should’ve been. Lumpy ears drooped with the weight of round wooden earrings that stretched its lobes like tortilla dough. I couldn’t tell what it was thinking, but fortunately, it complied.

  As soon as the demon runner released me, I wriggled away on my back, repositioning myself. With my good leg, I swept the demon’s ankles (Hondo’s favorite double-leg takedown) and sent it sprawling. I scrambled to my feet and raised my cane as the demon awkwardly got back to a standing position.

  When it turned to face me, I used the last of my strength to thrust the end of my cane into its belly. It sank right into the creature’s gel-like body, and there was a disgusting sucking sound as the cane disappeared inside.

  The creature howled.

  I jumped back, expecting a strike.

  But instead it collapsed, clutching its gut with an ear-piercing cry. I blinked as the monster dissolved into a dark pool of thick mucus, cane and all.

  8

  In that millisecond, everything I knew or thought I knew was reduced to one word: poison. I fell to my knees and cradled Rosie to my chest. I didn’t care if the slime on her fur burned off every ounce of my flesh. “Rosie!” I ran my hands along her body, wiping off as much of the slime as I could. Her breathing was shallow and she whimpered quietly. “I’m sorry, girl. So sorry.”

  Brooks was back in human form. She knelt next to me, shaking her head and apologizing over and over. It was like her voice was lost in a dark tunnel somewhere. Muffled and distant.

  “How do I heal her?” I asked. It didn’t matter that I sounded like a baby or my eyes burned with hot tears. Rosie trembled in my arms. “BROOKS!”

  The nawal seemed lost, scanning the ground as if the miracle answer were there to be plucked from the cave. Rosie looked at me with those big brown eyes like she was pleading with me to make it all better. I hated myself for breaking my promise, for letting her get hurt.

  “Hang on, girl,” I said, standing up. I started to carry her out. All the muscles in my legs screamed. I could do this. One careful foot in front of the other, like walking the volcano’s rim.

  Rosie’s breathing grew heavy. A deep, awful kind of heavy that made me want to punch a hole through this stupid world. And then she shuddered for the last time. Her body lay there in my arms, still. I fell to my knees. I couldn’t even inhale.

  Then… in a single instant, Rosie vanished into a shimmering stream of blue dust.

  I stared blankly at my now-empty hands. “Rosie? Where’s Rosie? What just happened?”

  Brooks looked as stunned as I felt.

  “Brooks! Where did my dog go?” I was angry now. A freaking-out kind of angry.

  She shut her eyes and shook her head slowly. “Xib’alb’a. The underworld.”

  “No! How?”

  “She was… killed by a demon runner, and that means—”

  “It’s a real place? Where is it? I need to go find her!” I was shouting now.

  “You… you can’t go there.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’d have to be dead.”

  My anger turned into a terrible heat that raced through my blood like lava.

  “We have to get out of here!” Brooks cried. “More demon runners will come and try to—”

  “Not without Rosie.”

  “She isn’t here, Zane! It was hard enough getting rid of one demon runner. Imagine fighting half a dozen of them.” Brooks grabbed me by the arm, making me look her in the eyes. “Please.”

  “What about your big quest?” I said, shrugging her off.

  Brooks’s bottom lip trembled. “The prophecy is supposed to come to pass during the eclipse.” Her voice was quiet and small. “We still have a day left to… find the artifact. But right now I have to get you out of here. This isn’t the right time….”

&nbs
p; I heard thunder boom outside. My heart didn’t want me to leave, but my brain knew I had to. If I was going to help Rosie, I needed answers, and they weren’t in the cave. Puke, his stupid artifact, and all his demons could rot for all I cared.

  “I won’t forget you, Rosie,” I said into the darkness. “I’ll come for you.”

  Back outside, a sudden rain slashed the desert, soaking us in an instant, washing away the slime and soothing my skin. My bum leg was bleeding from the puncture wounds in my calf. My head throbbed, and every inch of me ached.

  Brooks could’ve left me behind, but she didn’t. She followed as I stumbled to the bottom of the muddied trail.

  I turned my hands over, assessing the poison’s damage. My palms looked and felt like someone had scalded them with hot water.

  Brooks rubbed her own hands together in the rain. “When a demon runner is… threatened, they… their skin oozes venom. It’s a defense mechanism.”

  “How come it… killed Rosie but not us?”

  Brooks didn’t look at me. “Rosie is just a dog.”

  “She’s not just a dog!”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Brooks said hastily. “I meant… I’m a nawal, a supernatural, so the poison couldn’t kill me. And you’re—” Her voice cut off.

  “What?!”

  “You’re a supernatural, too.”

  “Supernatural?” I echoed in disbelief.

  Headlights shone from across the desert. Someone was driving toward us.

  “I’ve got to go,” Brooks shouted as the rain subsided.

  “First tell me how to get Rosie back!”

  Brooks pushed her sopping-wet hair off her face. “I don’t know.” Her voice was wobbly and I thought she might start crying, but no tears came—or maybe the rain hid them. “It’s my fault,” she said. “I thought I could do this. I thought I could make everything better.”

  “Better? Make what better?”

  The headlights were only twenty yards away. Whoever was coming already had us in their sights. I dragged myself forward, determined to find my dog as well as some answers. If Brooks didn’t have them, maybe my Maya book would. I’d read about the underworld before, and I sort of remembered a story about someone who’d gone there. Or come back from there—I wasn’t sure which.

  When I turned back to ask Brooks if she knew that myth, she was gone. She must have flown off.

  A scratching sound nearby caught my attention. I lifted my gaze to see an owl blacker than ink perched on a boulder above me. It was the same one from the other night. That couldn’t be Brooks, could it? The owl’s yellow eyes glowed like two flickering flames as they peered at me. No, Brooks only knew how to turn into a hawk. And she wouldn’t choose the form of an owl even if she could. Mom said they were omens of death and to stay far away from them.

  The headlights shone across the space and the owl spread its wings. Its penetrating gaze held me frozen as it said in a woman’s raspy voice, “The prophecy has begun.”

  A talking owl? After the day I’d had, why not? I picked up a rock and launched it at the bird, missing its glistening body by a long shot. “I’m not part of any stupid prophecy. I only want my dog back!”

  The owl let out a single cry (it was more of a screech than a hoot) and took off into the sky.

  I recognized the little red truck as soon as Ms. Cab stepped out. It was a hunk of junk that had sat in her driveway ever since I could remember. It took a second for my brain to click. Blind people don’t drive. How was she here? I wondered. How had she known where to find me?

  “Zane, you need to come with me,” she said.

  My stomach suddenly felt queasy. My knees buckled, and then I passed out.

  When I woke up, I was in Ms. Cab’s house. The ceiling fan turned in lopsided circles above me.

  “Oh good, you’re awake,” she said as she sidestepped the piles of paper and books strewn across her cluttered living room. I’d never understood why she had so many books, her being blind and all. I sat up on the yellow velvet sofa. It was where I always sat when I answered her psychic hotline. Her place smelled like wet desert and pencil shavings. Probably because the walls were made of little mud bricks with straw poking out.

  She sat in her usual red leather chair with the nailhead trim. ”I’ve applied some healing ointment to those burns.”

  I looked at my hands, thinly layered in a goop like aloe vera. Already I could see the red burns diminishing.

  The phone rang and Ms. Cab picked it up with a sigh. “On vacation until further notice,” she said, then set the receiver back down. “Tell me what happened, Zane.”

  Ms. Cab’s voice sounded like a slo-mo recording. I stared up at the ceiling fan for I don’t know how long, and then reality came crashing down on me. According to some stupid prophecy, I was going to release the god of death, darkness, and destruction into the world. I’d cleared a path to the cave, setting everything in motion. That demon runner—it had said my name… and killed Rosie. She was really gone. Tears stung my eyes.

  Ms. Cab folded her wrinkled hands in her lap. “Zane?”

  I sat up, studying Ms. Cab. “How’d you know I was out there? And how did you drive blind?”

  “All will be revealed in time,” she said. “First, though—”

  The teapot screamed, making me jump.

  “Hold on,” Ms. Cab said. She went into the kitchen and brought back two cups of brew. I wasn’t in the mood for tea. Actually, I was never in the mood for the stuff, but I knew better than to argue with Ms. Cab, so I took a sip. It was worse than licking a dirty ashtray. I scrunched up my nose and stuck out my tongue.

  “It’ll heal your insides and help you relax,” she said. “You took quite a beating. I told you to stay away from that dreadful place.”

  If only I’d listened. Rosie would still be alive.

  Ms. Cab took off her glasses. Her eyes were milky white with no irises. “What happened at the volcano, Zane? Why were you with that nawal? What did she tell you?”

  A bitter anger pulsed beneath my skin and I wanted to say, You’re a psychic, figure it out. But instead, I said, “Rosie’s gone.”

  Ms. Cab shook her head. “I’m sorry about that. Hand me that box next to you, would you?”

  My hands trembled as I gave her the black shoe-size box. I’d never seen it around the house before. It was light and made of rough balsa wood. On its lid were Maya hieroglyphs painted in red: a bug-eyed skull, a large-beaked bird, and a pointy-tongued snake.

  Ms. Cab opened the box slowly. When I saw what was inside, my stomach lurched and I thought I might throw up.

  There were two rows of eyeballs. Yeah, that’s right. Real live eyeballs! She leaned over the box, plucked out her existing eyes like they were contact lenses, and replaced them with a new pair. She shut and opened her eyelids, revealing new gray irises. She placed the plain white ones in the box.

  I was definitely going to be sick.

  “Ms. Cab! You—”

  “Calm down, Zane. Drink your tea.”

  So this was what shock felt like. Pure, buzzing, sucking-wind shock. I could only nod and blink. I blinked a lot, as if I were one blink away from all this being some bad nightmare I was going to wake from safe in my bed with Rosie next to me. I sipped mindlessly at the nasty tea.

  Ms. Cab’s new gray eyes followed me.

  Even though the tea tasted awful, it was making me feel calmer. “Your eyes still look creepy,” I said, and as soon as the words were out I could hardly believe I’d said something so rude. “Sorry. I—”

  Ms. Cab adjusted the belt on her flowery dress and chuckled. “It’s a side effect of the healing tea. Makes you speak the truth. Now tell me every detail.”

  My brain was all fuzzy, but I couldn’t stop the words from spilling from my mouth. I might’ve even told Ms. Cab that I thought Brooks was beautiful.

  After I spat out the dreadful facts, she nodded and stood. “So it really has begun.”

  I had a million and one
questions, but the only ones that mattered right now were focused on my dog. “I need to find Rosie. Why’d she disappear like that?”

  Ms. Cab gave me a sad, kind smile, like she really did feel bad about Rosie. “Magic is so mercurial,” she said. “One can never fully gauge its temperament or understand its logic. But if a demon runner killed her, well, she belongs to the underworld now. Oh dear, you look green.”

  The world tilted. “I don’t feel so good.” Then I tossed my cookies all over her tile floor.

  She didn’t even seem to mind, simply patted me on the back. As she cleaned up the mess, she told me that the healing/truth tea makes everyone throw up.

  When I was done I felt physically better but emotionally worse and more confused than ever. I sat down on the sofa and rubbed the back of my neck. “I don’t get it. What do you have to do with all of this? Did you see that demon coming?” I swallowed the words I really wanted to say: And if you did, why didn’t you help me before my dog got killed?

  Ms. Cab walked over to the bookcase and brought out a long scroll of yellowed paper from the shelf. “I’m a nik’ wachinel,” she said. “A Maya seer.”

  Brooks had called the Great Soothsayer a seer, too….No wonder Ms. Cab worked as a psychic.

  But why was I suddenly meeting all these Maya?

  I thought about the prophecy: A powerful innocent with ancient blood… I’d been so focused on the word powerful, I hadn’t considered my having ancient blood. Was my dad Maya? Then I remembered the last thing Brooks said to me: You’re a supernatural, too. I didn’t even know what that meant.

  My head spun as Ms. Cab continued. “It’s my job to watch over you, and… Don’t look at me like that.”

  I was about to ask Like what? when she added, “So what if I don’t always see the future clearly? It’s these blasted eyes! I’m going to have to have a serious talk with my supplier.” She shook her head and her left eye drifted a little. “The point is, I came as soon as I got the vision of you fighting a demon runner. And as for how I could drive, my foresight might be compromised sometimes, but my regular eyesight is just fine, thank you very much.”

  “You mean those white eyes are fake?” I couldn’t believe she’d fooled me all this time.