The Storm Runner

by J. C. Cervantes

  Brooks leaned against me and I kept one arm wrapped tightly around her.

  A second later, she was in my head.

  Where’d you go? When you spirit-jumped?

  I was…

  How could I explain the Empty? And hadn’t Hurakan said he’d created it? That made it feel like a secret. Did all the gods create their own hideouts?

  “I met my dad,” I said out loud, because right then I was feeling powerful and I didn’t care if wicked ears were listening.

  The Turbo made a sharp right down a busy street lined with small shops, cafés, and yoga studios. A stoplight was coming up, but the Turbo zoomed right through it. A couple of pedestrians jumped out of the way.

  “Sorry!” Hondo shouted to them.

  They shook their fists at us. Someone might’ve thrown their coffee in our direction. Hondo hooted and howled like he was having the time of this life.

  “Did you say you met your dad?” Hondo shouted over his shoulder.

  “Who is he?” Brooks asked.

  I tilted my head back and watched the first stars zip by. “Hurakan,” I said.

  Brooks tried to face me, but she couldn’t turn around. “One Leg?”

  Hondo let out a light laugh. “He’s a one-legged god?”

  “No,” I argued, feeling my face flush. Why did it matter to me what they called him? “He has one serpent leg. Supposedly.”

  And so did I, apparently. Whatever that meant.

  Hondo hollered over his shoulder, “Screen says two minutes. It’s up ahead.”

  But those two minutes were cut short by a siren and red flashing lights.

  “Don’t stop!” Brooks warned.

  We didn’t have much time, and if we got arrested, we’d never get to the party.

  “I can’t shake him!” Hondo shouted.

  A very big voice that I was sure belonged to an even bigger dude sounded over the cop’s loudspeaker: “PULL OVER IMMEDIATELY!”

  “What do you want to do, kid?” Hondo called to me.

  I glanced over my shoulder. The cop was a few feet away. Crap! With a deep breath, I sent a prayer up to the saints and anyone else listening. Then I said, “Hit the Turbo button.”

  “Are you deranged?” Brooks said. “Jazz only thinks he fixed it.”

  “Thinks is good enough for me,” Hondo said. Then, “Adiós, sucker!” And without hesitation he hit the red button marked turbo.

  It felt like the atmosphere burned up around us. There was an explosion of white, as if we were hurtling through the Milky Way. The air got cold and I could no longer feel the ground beneath us. All the breath was sucked from my lungs.

  We came to a sudden stop. We were thrown off the Turbo and as I spun through the air all I could think was Please land in a soft spot. Luckily for us, that spot was a thicket of bushes spread out across a lush green lawn.

  I lay still for a second, blinking, waiting for the terrible pressure in my head to disappear. Slowly, I sat up. “Brooks? Hondo?”

  Brooks was next to me, catching her breath, plucking branches out of her messed-up hair. Hondo rolled to his feet, moaning and cursing. We were in front of a pink building with a grande sign that read: beverly hills hotel.

  “You guys okay?” I asked, glad I hadn’t broken anything.

  Hondo wasn’t so lucky. He was clutching his left arm. “Might’ve busted a bone or two.”

  Brooks and I hurried over.

  “Give it a minute,” she said, lightly touching his arm. “The enchantment will fix it.”

  Hondo raised a single brow and tried to smile but grimaced instead.

  “You mean… nothing can hurt us while we’re enchanted?” I asked.

  “Technically, you could die,” Brooks said. “But as long as that doesn’t happen, the enchantment fixes all imperfections.”

  She was right, because in the same instant, the grass stains on her white dress faded and her hair readjusted itself, weaving back into perfect braids. We all waited, held our breath. Except Hondo, who was still cursing. Then he straightened and looked down at his arm. He shook it out, threw a punch at the air, and laughed. “Someone seriously needs to market this stuff.”

  Brooks let out a breath. “It’s the reason enchantment doesn’t last for long and you can only use it once a year. Imagine what people would do to get their hands on something like this if it could be made permanent.”

  Yeah. Imagine.

  A part of me regretted wasting it on the dumb twins. If I’d waited, I could’ve used it to run with the storm and take down Ah-Puch. But then I wouldn’t have gotten an audience with the twins, the only other godborns in existence, and I was still convinced they had intel I needed. I simply had to learn what they did to defeat Pukeface. Then I would bolt to the Old World. Man, Hurakan was going to be seriously impressed.

  We made our way to the front of the hotel, where exotic cars were lined up at the valet: two Teslas, a Maserati, a Ferrari, and a Bentley. Hondo let out a low whistle. “So this is where the other half lives!”

  The valet smiled at us as we passed, and some of the rich people getting out of their cars waved like we were old friends. I waved back, but it was super weird to be accepted as one of the elite.

  We made our way under the striped canopy and across a red carpet into the lobby. Hotel guests and employees nodded and waved, some said hello. It was like we were movie stars or something.

  Everything was made out of white marble. Shiny, perfect marble. A massive chandelier hung from the ceiling, which was held up by four glossy round columns. And as strange as it sounds, the lobby smelled like pink. Pink flowers, pink sugar, pink berries.

  Hondo spun in a circle, looking up. “Whoa. This place must cost a gazillion bucks a night.”

  Brooks pulled us through the lobby.

  “You know where you’re going?” I asked.

  She paused to tighten one of the gold sandal straps that wound all the way up her shin. “Jazz gave me directions.”

  We headed to a door marked stairs. “Third floor,” Brooks said. “Hurry.”

  We raced up the staircase (yeah, that made me feel pretty cool) and when she came to the door for floor three, she stopped. “Hurakan, huh?” So she was still thinking about it.

  I nodded. “You know him?”

  Brooks let out a light laugh. “Are you kidding? He’s sort of… royalty. I mean, you do know he’s a creator and—”

  “A destroyer,” I finished.

  Hondo shoulder-bumped me. “Don’t even try to get me to call you king of anything. You still get dish duty.”

  Brooks pointed to the wall. “Here it is.”

  Inscribed there was a faded image, so faint you’d have to be looking for it to find it. Underneath the word kings’ was a Maya glyph like this:

  “What’s it mean?” I asked.

  “Sky,” Brooks said. Her voice was on the edge of a tremble.

  “Kings’ Sky?” I muttered, thinking there were some seriously grande egos around here.

  “Your obsidian,” she said with her hand out. “Place it there.” She pointed to the center bottom edge of the glyph.

  I tugged the magician stone from my pocket. “What did Jazz mean about what the twins did to you? And what games was he talking about?”

  “Remember when I told you they were tricksters?”

  I nodded.

  “They play head games. They play them expertly, and by the time you know what they’ve done, you’ve already lost.”

  “Man,” Hondo moaned. “I was hoping it would be wrestling or even football. Some kind of contact, head-butting, face-pounding sport.”

  “Didn’t they beat the gods in a ball game?” I said, remembering the legend from my book.

  “Pitz,” Brooks said.

  “Huh?” Hondo raised his brows.

  “Basketball,” Brooks said. “Or their version of it. It’s their favorite game, and no one’s ever beat them.”

  After everything I’d read and heard, they didn’t seem
like the kind of guys who played games without stakes.

  “So what do people play for?” Hondo asked.

  “Most don’t play. They know they can’t win, so instead they come to trade. With whatever they’re willing to lose,” Brooks said.

  “What do you mean, trade?” I asked.

  “The twins pretty much only trade in magic.”

  But I don’t have any magic to trade, I thought.

  It was too late to turn back now. I set the obsidian where Brooks instructed. It locked into place. At first nothing happened. Then slowly, the door began to glow blue, and it creaked open.

  And we stepped inside.

  24

  In spy movies, all bodyguards are identical, with crisp black suits, massive shoulders, and murderous stares. They even wear their hair slicked back the same way, and their square faces look like they were carved from marble.

  That’s exactly what was waiting for us behind the door. A half dozen guys who could either be pro wrestlers or well-paid thugs. They stood shoulder to shoulder and didn’t even blink when we walked into the dim classroom-size space.

  I thought maybe the guards didn’t breathe, either, it was so quiet. Except for the bom bom bom of a drum so far away I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t my heartbeat.

  “Where are we?” Hondo murmured.

  “Security pit stop,” Brooks whispered. “Shhh… just follow my lead.”

  In front of us was a ticket booth lit with a sickly yellow glow. There was an opening in the glass but no ticket-taker behind it. Brooks stepped up to the window, set the obsidian stones on the counter, and mumbled some words that were definitely not English.

  An instant later, a gray-bearded skeleton materialized. Out of thin air! Eyeballs floated in his eye sockets, and he wore a long white tuxedo jacket with a dead red rose pinned to one of his silk lapels.

  Hondo gasped. “What the…?”

  The bearded skeleton was weird enough, but on his shoulder was a small brown monkey with reptilian eyes. Its long tail thrashed through the air and it clasped its hairy little paws together like it was smothering something between them.

  “You have inveetation?” the skeleton said with a deep raspy voice.

  Brooks pushed the obsidian stones toward him and said, “Just let us in, Flaco.”

  “No inveetation, no travel to top, even for you,” Flaco said. “Them the rules.”

  Brooks wasn’t going to give up so easily. “I’ll be sure to tell Jordan and Bird you turned away fresh meat.”

  Hondo gave me a sideways glance and mouthed slowly: Fresh meat?

  “Do you see what I see?” he whispered to me. “That esqueleto’s wearing a tux!”

  “Seriously?” I whispered back. “How about the fact he’s a living skeleton! Or that he’s got an evil little monkey that probably has fangs?”

  Hondo folded his arms across his chest and leaned closer. “You think it has fangs?”

  Flaco studied the stones, then handed them back to Brooks. “No entrance with no inveetation.”

  Brooks propped her elbows on the booth. “Listen, Flaco, I lost it. And this is a surprise visit. So I can wish them a happy birthday… in person.”

  Stroking his silvery beard, the skeleton eyed me. “You a gimp? Is that why you here? You want favor?”

  Brooks turned to me and whispered, “He can see through the enchantment. It’s why he’s got this job.”

  I wanted to whack Flaco upside his bony head, but I held my cool.

  “He’s a magician,” Brooks said casually to Flaco. “It’s part of the birthday surprise.”

  The monkey clapped and smiled. Its silver chompers were huge, and when it clicked them together it sent chills down the back of my neck.

  Flaco eyed us, glanced at the row of guards, then looked back to Brooks and grunted. “Fresh meat. Hmmph. Magic. Hmmph.” He gripped a pen. “They got names?” he asked her, like we weren’t even there.

  Brooks spat out some made-up nicknames. “El Rey and R-rana,” she sputtered.

  Hondo shoulder-bumped me, mouthing I’m the king. I had to admit my uncle looked good tall, but it felt super weird to peer up at him, even if it was only a couple of inches.

  The monkey screeched, making Hondo and me jump at the same time.

  Flaco scratched under the little beast’s chin. “Neither looks like a king or a frog… Well, maybe that one there…” He was pointing at me with his bony finger. “He might be a frog,” he said with a chuckle.

  Rana? That was the best Brooks could come up with?

  The skeleton jotted down the names, then reached under the counter. “It’s your funeral,” he muttered as the wall to our right opened with a groan.

  Before we could go in, three guards stepped forward to pat us down. My stomach roiled when my thug found the jaguar jade and motioned for me to hand it over.

  Brooks and Hondo peered closer.

  Holding it up for the guy’s inspection, I said, “Lucky tooth. Except it hasn’t been very lucky.” I tried to laugh casually but ended up sounding like a big phony.

  The guy held up the stone, examined it, then handed it back to me with a grunt. I let out a long breath as I set it safely back in my pocket and entered the opening.

  When Brooks pressed a button on the wall, I realized we were in an elevator. But it wasn’t an ordinary elevator. It was a gold cage illuminated by a pale blue glow.

  “What’s that tooth?” Brooks asked.

  How could I answer without breaking my promise to Pacific not to tell anyone about her? She’d never said how long I had to keep the secret, though, so I guess I could have told Brooks that I’d met the goddess of time, who was in hiding under the ocean….But it might be dangerous for Brooks to have that kind of information. In the same way she had tried to protect Jazz, I needed to protect her.

  “I got it from Ms. Cab,” I said, thinking quickly.

  “How come I’ve never seen it before?” Hondo asked.

  Brooks’s eyes bored into me with an intensity that made me dizzy.

  “So,” I said, wanting to change the subject, “Jordan and Bird are the twins?” Yeah, I was a little slow on the uptake. “If they’re so tough, why do they use pseudonyms?”

  Brooks looked up, watching the exposed cables carry us. “They changed their names to fit in when they came to the US. I guess they’re named after some basketball stars from back in the day.”

  “Best clutch players ever,” Hondo mumbled.

  “What’s clutch?” Brooks asked.

  Hondo glanced at me, then away quickly. “Just… er… they work perfectly under pressure and, um… they always find a way to succeed at the last possible moment.”

  My mouth went dry. I didn’t want to think about the twins’ super strengths anymore. Turning to Brooks, I said, “Frog? Really?”

  “You know what a group of frogs is called?” she asked.

  “A herd?” Hondo guessed.

  I shook my head and adjusted my cuffs. “An army.”

  Brooks smiled softly but kept her gaze straight ahead. Okay, maybe being a frog wasn’t so bad after all.

  A terrible pressure began building in my chest as the elevator climbed. Wait a second. I could’ve sworn this building wasn’t tall, so how…? I peered at the buttons for the first time. Instead of numbers, there were dots and lines. Three dots in a row, a single dot over a straight line…

  Brooks caught my gaze. “Maya numbers,” she explained.

  “How far up does this thing go?” Hondo wondered aloud.

  “All the way to the top,” Brooks said.

  “Er… the building is, like, only a couple stories high.”

  With a shrug, Brooks said, “Magic.”

  The higher we went, the more I worried. What if Brooks was right about the twins? I mean, why would they want to help me? No one gives secrets away for free, and if I wanted their secrets for defeating Ah-Puch, I was going to have to earn them—except I didn’t have anything valuable to trade.


  The doors pinged open to a domed chamber. And at the center? A huge stone statue of two guys, at least ten feet tall.

  “Let me guess,” Hondo groaned. “Jordan and Bird?”

  I drew closer to get a look at their massive muscles, chiseled faces, defiant eyes, and broad shoulders. I’d seen a photo of the statue of David once. That’s what this reminded me of, except the twins had clothes on and looked a whole lot meaner. A falcon sat on the shoulder of one of the brothers, its wings spread, ready to take flight. These guys definitely didn’t look anything like the illustrations in my book.

  The statues’ eyes were raised like they were encouraging visitors to look up at the domed ceiling. It was brightly lit, and every inch was covered with images of the twins in action: running down a ball court, standing on top of a mountain with spears raised, cutting off the head of a demon runner. This was their story, painted in vivid full color, for all their opponents to see before they walked in. Talk about psychological warfare.

  Brooks stood in front of a pair of carved wooden doors. Music and chatter boomed from the other side. “Whatever you guys do,” Brooks said, “don’t make them mad.”

  Hondo bounced in place. “Yeah, well, maybe they shouldn’t make us mad.”

  “What happens when they get mad?” I asked, not sure I really wanted to know.

  “They usually throw you off the building,” she said, like it was the most normal thing in the world.

  “Oh,” I said. “Is that all?”

  Brooks pushed open the doors. It was party city! The enormous multitiered terrace was packed with people mingling, laughing, and dancing to some really bad techno music that blared from all directions. And they all wore these weird lifelike masks of lions, sharks, snakes, and skeletons.

  There were palm trees that swayed in the night breeze. A few shirtless fire-jugglers flung torches toward the sky; they rotated back down at a frightening speed, casting strange shadows across the oblivious crowd. The sickening smell of kerosene filled the air as my eyes scanned the masked faces.