“So how do you know where these places are?” There weren’t any names on the map, only strange unrecognizable symbols, hieroglyphs of some sort.
“That’s easy. The map corresponds with the cosmos, and it shows the four directions—east, west, north, south—in four different colors. But you have to be trained in reading the lines and the various glyphs. Right now, the closest”—her finger traced one of the black lines to a bright blue square that was barely flashing—“is in Lola’s Taco Shop in Tularosa.”
“There’s a gateway to another world in a taco shop?”
Ms. Cab blinked as if that was the stupidest question she’d ever heard. “Yes, and it will deliver me to the sixth layer of the Ceiba Tree, also known as the World Tree. From there I’ll reach out to some contacts. It’s been a long time since I’ve traveled in this way. So I’m a bit rusty.”
I’d read about the Ceiba Tree. It starts in the underworld, grows through the middle of the world (that would be Earth), and reaches all the way up to paradise. But I’d never imagined it was a real thing.
I started to say something else when she held up her hand. “No more questions tonight. Your head is likely to explode. Now, you must repeat your promise to me.”
I never liked the sound of promises I might not be able to keep.
“Repeat after me. I, Zane Obispo,” she began, “promise not to leave my house for any reason until Ms. Cab returns tomorrow.”
Good thing tomorrow was Saturday and I didn’t have to go to school. “What if a demon runner comes to my house? Can I leave then?”
She tapped her foot impatiently. “Those dim-witted monsters are too busy duplicating like cockroaches, probably crawling all over Ah-Puch’s resting place. Trust me, they’re waiting for you to come to them.”
So that was a totally gross image. They could wait until the end of time. No way was I going near that volcano before Rosie was back, prophecy or no prophecy.
“Speaking of those monsters,” I said, “how come my mom couldn’t see the demon runner the other night and I could?”
“It’s a demon thing. No human can see them unless those monsters want to be seen. It’s the same way with gods—they too are camouflage kings. You were able to see the demon runner because you’re a—”
“Supernatural. Right.” No way was I ever going to get used to that idea.
“Now”—Ms. Cab clapped once—“I’ve put a bit of magical protection around your house so no other supernaturals can get in, which is why it’s the only place you’ll be safe. Do you hear me?”
I said the words she wanted to me to say.
Ms. Cab walked me to my doorstep and made sure I went inside. As I started to close the door, I jerked it back open and said, “Hey, Ms. Cab?”
“Yes?”
“Buena suerte.”
With a huff, she said, “Seers don’t need luck. Just remember your promise.”
10
The house was quiet.
It took me a few seconds to remember it was Friday night, and that meant Mom was helping Hondo at the bank. Eight o’clock. They wouldn’t be home for another hour or so.
I had a million questions for her, starting with: Who the heck is my dad? I was hoping he wasn’t a demon, because that would mean my life was officially over. Ms. Cab had told me that supernaturals come in many different forms. Some could be normal-looking, even handsome like Hollywood actors or NFL quarterbacks.
Question number two: How come you never told me I’m only part human? Just thinking those words made me want to jump out of my own skin. And the third question: Were you ever going to tell me?
I went to my bedroom and stood in front of my closet, trying to get up the nerve to open the door and retrieve my Maya book. What if one of those demon illustrations came to life and jumped off the page? “Get ahold of yourself,” I muttered. “It’s only a book.”
After I fished it out of the dirty clothes pile, I sat on the edge of my bed and opened the book slowly. I started reading from the beginning. Some pretty treacherous stuff was described in there, but nothing as bad as Xib’alb’a, the underworld, aka the Place of Fear, aka Where Rosie Was. My stomach turned.
The book confirmed everything Ms. Cab had told me, including that Ah-Puch was the jefe of all of hell’s lords. I took some notes to help me keep them all straight, though I hated to write their creepy names down. Let’s see what I can remember….
Flying Scab and Blood Gatherer—sicken people’s blood. (Gross!)
Pus Demon and Jaundice Demon—make people’s bodies swell up. (Seriously, who named these guys?)
Bone Staff and Skull Staff—turn humans into skeletons.
Sweeping Demon and Stabbing Demon—stab you to death.
Wing and Packstrap—make people die by coughing up blood until they drown in it. (Definitely a worse way to die than Hondo’s suggestion of being thrown into a vat of acid!)
If those names weren’t nasty enough, the pictures were even worse, and I’m not talking about a bad hair day. I’m talking rotting teeth, bloated guts, bleeding ribs, and bulging eyes. The demon runners were basically these guys’ hit men.
I kept turning the pages, and as I read about all the horrors of Xib’alb’a, my insides collapsed slowly. I should’ve been the one to have to cross Blood or Pus River. Not Rosie.
The house felt empty and awful without her. It was hard to even remember a time she wasn’t here, bouncing, wagging her tail, and dropping a ball at my feet so we could play fetch. Did I tell you how easy she was to train? Never jumped on the furniture or begged for food at the table. And when I was sick, she lay in my bed like she was sick, too.
Rosie was the truest friend I ever had, better than any human, and I couldn’t protect her. I couldn’t run fast enough, kill the demon runner fast enough, do anything fast enough. All because of my stupid leg. Which—let’s get real—doctors couldn’t fix, because I was the son of some monster!
I took a deep breath as I turned the page to Ah-Puch: Maya God of Death, Disaster, and Darkness. According to the book, ancient Maya were terrified of death, and I didn’t blame them if they had to spend eternity with this guy.
His picture took up a whole page. He looked like a bloated zombie with decomposing gray skin with nasty black spots, and he had a dark, twisted smile. That wasn’t even the grossest part. He wore this weird helmet that had eyes hanging off it, the eyes of the people he’d recently killed. Around his fat neck was a red cape made of human skin, and stitched to the hood was an owl’s head. My eyes froze on that image. It looked exactly like the black yellow-eyed owl that had whispered to me and shook me up earlier.
The prophecy has begun….
My pulse pounded in my ears, but I couldn’t look away. It was like driving by an accident you know is going to be awful and you don’t want to look but you do anyway. Apparently, the mangy black owl was Puke’s evil pet, Muwan, which acted as his messenger and spy. Could she have helped the demon runners find him at the volcano?
In the days when Ah-Puch roamed free, he used to go to the houses of the sick and dying and wait outside, his rusty laugh echoing in the wind. The guy was about as evil as you could get.
I slammed the book closed. No way would I ever let him out! I didn’t care what the Great Soothsayer thought she saw. Or how strong the magic was. It could call me all it wanted, but I wasn’t going to answer.
That was it. No more wasting time. I hated to break my promise to Ms. Cab about staying put, but I couldn’t wait another second to get the truth out of my mom.
A minute later I crossed the street toward Mr. O’s house. It was the biggest one on the road—two stories with a red-tile roof, huge windows, and a giant stone wall that surrounded the place. But the best part was the spiral staircase that led to the roof, where he let me keep my telescope. In the summer, we’d hang out up there, eat tacos, drink virgin strawberry margaritas, and stare at the constellations. I tried to teach him their names, but he never cared about the details. He simply w
anted to see the stars.
A pack of coyotes cackled in the distance—they sounded like a group of witches. I kept my eyes open for demon runners, but even more open for Brooks. I was hoping she would slip out of a shadow—okay, maybe not in a surprise-attack kind of way, but in a hi-sorry-I-bailed kind of way. I admit it. I really wanted to see her again. I had so many questions for her, but mostly, how did she know about the prophecy? And where had she gone?
When Mr. O opened the door, he stepped aside, gesturing for me to come in. The smell of fresh-roasted green chile wafted from inside. My stomach growled.
“Dinner’s ready,” he said.
Then I remembered. He was supposed to show me his discovery tonight. I’d forgotten all about it. I tugged up the zipper of my jacket. “Sorry, Mr. O, but can you drive me into town?”
“Now? The caldillo is ready. And my secreto. I’m so excited to show you.”
“Can we do it tomorrow? I… I need to talk to my mom.”
We were in the car two minutes later.
“Are you in trouble?” he asked as we drove down off the mesa’s dirt roads and into the valley.
I almost laughed. Yeah, I was knee deep in the stuff without a shovel. All of a sudden I wondered if going to the bank was such a good idea. Maybe I should’ve waited for Mom to get home.
We parked next to Mom’s little Honda at the Land of Enchantment Bank. The lot was dark and eerily quiet.
“You can leave me here,” I told Mr. O. “I’ll go home with Mom.”
“It must be muy importante for you to come here,” he said. “Maybe I should wait.”
“Nah, that’s okay.”
“Just until you get inside,” Mr. O insisted.
I got out of the car slowly, suddenly unsure of myself. Heaps of worry filled my head. What if she didn’t want to talk about it? What if she lied? What if she told me the truth, and it was that I was part demon? What if I didn’t really want to know? Did that make me a wuss?
I lumbered to the glass doors and peered inside. Mom was vacuuming the lobby in a dancing kind of way. She had on earbuds and was singing to some song I couldn’t hear.
I banged my old cruddy cane on the locked door.
She kept vacuuming. I pressed my face to the glass. Where was Hondo? Wasn’t he supposed to be here? He’d probably gotten sidetracked by some girl, or maybe he’d signed up for a wrestling match down at Chachi’s bar. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d bailed on Mom for a “better deal” only to end up with a black eye.
I looked over my shoulder at Mr. Ortiz. He smiled and waved. The bank was tucked away from the road beneath a canopy of huge oaks. If it weren’t for the neon sign, it would be easy to miss the place. When I turned back, Mom was opening the door and tugging her earbuds loose. “Zane? Is everything okay?”
Okay? No, everything was not okay. Rosie was gone. I’d killed a demon runner and spit up a million lies all over my magical neighbor’s floor. Definitely not okay! But all I said was, “We need to talk.”
Mom waved at Mr. Ortiz, then looked back at me. “Is there an emergency?”
“You could say that. Where’s Hondo?”
“We needed some bleach wipes. What’s wrong?”
I stepped inside. “Why didn’t you tell me I was only part human?”
Mom’s face fell. But to her credit, she didn’t walk away or try to lie. “How did you—?”
“Find out?” I finished her sentence, feeling a little bolder.
“Ms. Cab…” she said softly. “I was supposed to be the one… She promised me.”
“When, Mom? When were you going to tell me?” I gripped my cane and took a deep breath. “Please tell me I’m not part demon.”
A hideous cry sounded outside. Mom and I looked out the window, and on top of Mr. O’s car stood a strange figure. It was two feet tall and looked like some kind of goblin with patches of dark hair poking out of its abnormally large head. It peered at me with yellowish eyes and a sinister smile, and between its pointy teeth it clutched a dagger.
Mom grabbed hold of me, pushing me behind her as she locked the front door.
“Mom! We can’t leave Mr. Ortiz out there!”
“Something tells me it’s not here for him.”
I looked back and the thing was gone. Mr. O was nodding off, oblivious. Mom grabbed me by the shoulders. “Zane, do you trust me?” That was not the right question. But I guess even after everything she was still my mom, so yeah, I trusted her.
“We need to get to the car and get out of here,” she said. “So I need you to be faster than you’ve ever been.”
My mom was freaking me out. I’d never seen her like this—so stern, so commanding, so afraid. As she reached for the front door, the lights went out in the bank and we stood in total darkness.
Mom jumped.
I looked around. Past the lobby there was nothing but desks, chairs, teller windows, and eerie shadows cast from the moonlight on the trees outside.
“What is that thing?” I whispered.
“An alux,” she whispered. She pronounced it ah-loosh. “And it’s very dangerous.”
Yeah, I got that just by seeing its nasty face and sharp teeth. Mom’s breathing filled the darkness. Then came the sound of small but heavy footsteps approaching, and I suddenly felt like I was in a horror movie, about to get chopped into bits.
“It’s inside,” Mom whispered.
I tried to open the front door, but for some reason it wouldn’t budge. “What do we do?”
“Run!” And with that Mom was dragging me through the main part of the bank. “Get to the cage!” she cried. We raced toward the back wall. I knew what she was thinking. If we could lock ourselves inside the safety-deposit-box cage, then maybe we stood a chance against the little monster.
In the same instant, I heard Hondo’s voice behind us. He had just come in from the parking lot. “What’s going on in here?”
“Hondo!” Mom cried. “Get out!”
A terrible wind whipped up outside, hard and fast, and a tree branch crashed into a window, breaking the glass. Lamps flew off desks. Paintings fell from the walls. I grabbed the edge of a table for balance.
The creature stepped into our path right before we reached the cage door. “You cannot run,” it said in a high, screechy voice.
Up close, I could see the bulbous nose and the gray sharp teeth. Its skin was pitted and puffy and it had a lazy eye that roamed too far to the left. The wind blew its dark mangy hair back.
“What do you want?” I asked, jabbing my cane in its direction.
“Please,” Mom cried. “Leave him alone. He’s only a boy.”
“He’s more than a boy,” it said.
Hondo appeared from the lobby and leaped on the creature, letting out a warrior cry like I’d never heard. “Get out of here!” he screamed at us.
“Hondo!” I hurled myself on top of him, but Mom pulled me off. While my uncle tussled with the alux, she hauled me back through the bank and out the front doors then stuffed me into her car.
Mr. O waved at us as we sped away.
“Hold on tight!” Mom commanded me. She gunned down the road. Only problem was, the Honda couldn’t go past sixty.
“We have to go back! We can’t leave Hondo there.”
Mom ignored me, shaking her head and mumbling words I couldn’t hear. Then came a thud on the roof. The thing had caught up to us. But how? And where was Hondo?
Mom whipped the car around a median, doing a one-eighty like some kind of pro stunt driver. But the creature hung on, laughing a sick sort of cackle that was definitely going to give me nightmares.
“Leave us alone!” I shouted, banging my fist against the roof.
Barreling down the road, Mom took the first turn on two tires. “I can’t shake it off!”
The creature climbed onto the windshield. Its eyes glowed, and I decided it might’ve been only a hair less ugly than the demon runner. They were definitely neck and neck in the contest for the nastiest-lookin
g thing on the planet.
We were going max speed on a back valley road, whizzing past farmland and cow pastures. When the heck had she learned to drive like this?
Suddenly, the engine choked. We came to a crawling stop next to a field of sleeping cows.
“You can’t escape me,” the alux said through the glass. Then it hopped down to the ground.
I heard footsteps on gravel outside the car. Mom reached under her seat and pulled out a crowbar. Whoa! Did I even know this mujer?
“Wait here.” She opened her door and jumped out.
“No way!”
But Mom was outside before I could stop her.
“You cannot have my son!”
She stood in the headlights, swinging that crowbar like a champ.
“Mom!” I tumbled from the car.
“Run, Zane!” she hollered.
Run? Was she kidding? Even if I could run, what was I supposed to do, hide between the cows?
I got to my feet, holding my cane in front of me like a sword. “Come out, you… you mangy dwarf!”
From the shadows, the thing pounced. It leaped onto Mom’s back and held the knife to her throat. Her eyes were wild with fear.
“Let her go!” I shouted. “She doesn’t have anything to do with this!”
The alux dangled its legs casually over Mom’s shoulders like it was just some kid on a stroll through the park.
“Please,” Mom begged. “Leave my son alone!”
The alux jerked Mom’s head back by her hair and mimicked her desperate voice. “‘Leave my son alone!’” Then it focused its wicked beady eyes on me. “What’re you going to do?” The creature pretended to tremble. “Hit me with your cane?” It smiled. “My job is becoming way too easy. Sent to kill a half-breed nothing of a—”
Mom growled, “That ‘half-breed’ is the son of—”
A loud kee-eeeee-arr interrupted her, and Brooks the hawk swooped down, picking up the monster by the back of its neck. It kicked and screamed, clawing at her with its gnarled hands. Brooks shook it hard like it was her mouse prey and she was trying to break its neck.
The Storm Runner Page 8
