The twins spun around to find themselves facing a shadow grizzly bear. Ren and Adrik emerged from the gallery door and snuck past it, running toward the stern. Rosie galloped after them.
To get the twins off their tails, I cut through a passage to the port side and went the wrong direction, toward the concert. “Hey, fellas!” I taunted. “You’re missing the best song!”
A group of Stormtroopers turned their attention from the music. “Stop!” they shouted.
Jordan and Bird burst out of a door behind me. I was trapped.
Suddenly, the deck behind the twins exploded in flames. Rosie had doubled back and was trying to barbecue them. As much as I wanted to get away from Jordan and Bird, I for sure didn’t want Prince and all the innocent people on board to get hurt.
That’s when I saw a row of sprinklers lining the overhang. I hurled a wave of smoke to activate them, and the twins recoiled from the spraying water.
I flew past them, toward the stern and my friends.
As I did, Jordan yelled, “You’ll die on this boat!”
He hit me with an electrical current so strong it ran through my veins at blinding speed and threw me off my feet. I spun in midair and crash-landed on my back. Out of pure instinct, I willed Fuego into spear mode and aimed it at the twins. The moment the weapon left my hand, regret pounded its fists against my bones.
Rosie had me by the collar, dragging me away as Fuego slammed into Jordan’s chest. The twin fell to his knees, blood trickling from his mouth.
His eyes met mine, and I could tell my face was imprinting on his brain.
No! You can’t die!
If Jordan died now, Quinn would never get mixed up with him, and Brooks wouldn’t come to my school to tell me about the prophecy I was a part of. It would mess up the future for sure!
Bird drew some kind of light around his brother and helped him to his feet. Did that mean he was going to be okay?
The next thing I knew, Rosie had leaped off the side of the boat with me in tow. As we soared through the air, I saw Prince on the bow, gazing up at the stars as if he was clueless about the chaos that had erupted all around him.
Rosie and I splashed into the cold sea. The water gripped me hard as Fuego circled back into my grasp. Jazz pulled Betty alongside us and hauled me up while Rosie scrambled into the boat. The others were already there—Ren shivering under a blanket, and Adrik standing at the stern, hollering up at Prince, “Diamonds and Pearls forever!”
“They had security cameras!” I shouted at Jazz.
He nodded. “I totally took care of that. Scrambled their feed.”
Heart pounding, I took a quick look around. “Where’s Brooks?”
“Not here, and we can’t wait any longer,” Jazz said. “The twins are already getting into their speedboat.”
I grabbed his shirt. “We can’t leave her. She’s got the devourer.”
“The what?” Jazz raised his eyebrows in confusion.
Just then, Brooks burst out of the water in hawk form with the devourer clinging to her back. She let out a piercing cry of triumph right before she blended into the inky sky.
“Never mind,” I said to Jazz.
We sped away across the water, reaching airborne speeds, but it wasn’t fast enough. Within two minutes, the hero twins were racing behind us. It was as if Fuego hadn’t done any damage to Jordan at all. Electrical bolts flew at us like bullets.
I created a wall of smoke, obscuring their view.
“They saw me,” I told Ren and Adrik, careful not to let Jazz overhear.
“Maybe they won’t remember you later,” Ren said.
“Maybe they will.”
Adrik leaned in as the wind whipped all around. “They’re too far away for me to steal a memory. You need to let them catch up.”
“We’ll get fried!” Ren said.
Rosie roared with the ferocity of five lions. She shook her head and flashed her fangs.
“How close do you need to be?” I asked Adrik.
“I have no idea,” he said, shrugging. “Maybe fifteen, twenty feet?”
I waved my arms above my head, hoping Brooks was paying attention.
“What are you doing?” Ren shouted.
A few seconds later, Brooks landed on board. She was so well camouflaged against the night sky, I hadn’t even seen her descend. The devourer slipped off the hawk’s back, unconscious. Ren squatted and cradled the toadlike head in her lap.
Jazz glanced over his shoulder with wide eyes. “Great costume! That looks just like Jabba the Hutt!”
Brooks shifted back to human form and man, I wanted to hug her for being so brave. But there wasn’t time. “Can you get Adrik and me close to the twins so he can do his thing?”
“Seriously?”
“We can’t risk them remembering me in the future,” I said, still trying to catch my breath. “Ren, you and Rosie keep Jazz on course for the beach. We’ll meet you there.”
With a sigh, Brooks turned around. Adrik and I gripped her shoulders, and she shifted into a hawk beneath our hands. She launched herself into the darkness with the two of us hunched over her back, trying to remain undetected by Jordan and Bird, whose focus was still on Jazz’s boat.
We soared across the sky, keeping our eyes on the enemy below.
Brooks glided lower and lower. She was in serious stealth mode.
My heart rammed up my throat. We would have one shot at this—a single shot to save the future.
I watched as Betty broke through the waves, Jordan and Bird a mere fifty-ish yards behind.
“They’re still too far away,” Adrik said.
Brooks’s wings flapped silently as we sailed closer and closer to the twins.
Just as Jazz’s boat skidded onto the beach, I whisper-shouted, “Now!”
Adrik lifted a hand to blow a breath and lost his balance. As he began to slip off Brooks, he cried out. I grabbed him by the waistband of his drawstring pants, gripping it so hard I thought my wrist was going to snap. Adrik made a choking sound, which I could only assume meant I was giving him the worst wedgie of his life.
Jordan looked up. His eyes searched the sky and zeroed in on us.
White bolts came flying at us, some slamming into Brooks’s ribs. She screeched and rotated too far to the left, nearly tossing me and Adrik.
Brooks! I yelled telepathically.
I’m okay, she said with a shaky voice. Just hurry.
I felt helpless. I couldn’t put up a smoke screen because it would block Adrik’s view, and I couldn’t scorch or spear the evil jerks, either.
Then an idea occurred to me. Carefully, I created a thin stream of smoke and directed it toward the twins. It was enough to blind them, but not so wide it obscured Adrik’s line of sight. We swept by, slowing down and getting so close I could reach out and touch the brothers. Adrik blew a breath across his palms.
The motor of their speedboat cut out. Jordan and Bird looked at each other and shook their heads like they were disoriented.
We did it! Adrik shouted telepathically as Brooks rocketed toward the shore, where the time rope awaited. A thrill wave washed over me. Had we really done it? Had we really traveled back in time and stolen the gods out from under the twins’ noses?
You okay? I asked Brooks.
Just a little shocked, she said.
Ha, ha.
Right?
As soon as Brooks set us down on the sand, I saw Ren, Rosie, and the now-awake devourer. Ren came running over. “He’s gone. Marco’s gone.”
“Gone?” Fire erupted across my knuckles. “How can he be gone?”
“We checked the bench!” Ren cried. “He’s not there.”
I was flooded with relief. “He moved,” I said as Brooks changed into her human form. I was glad there were only a few loiterers on the beach, far away and not looking in our direction.
“He’s buried!” Brooks shouted as she ran across the sand. “Over here.”
We all followed as she made her w
ay to Marco. His face still poked out of the sand, and his eyes were closed. When we approached, he opened them, and they went wide. With one mighty heave, he launched himself out of his makeshift grave. Then he danced around us, fists up. Thankfully, the time rope was still gripped in his hand.
“You can’t have it!” he shouted with crazed eyes.
“What’s the dude’s deal?” Jazz asked.
The devourer studied Marco’s face. Her scaly skin looked slick in the moonlight. “He’s in shock,” she said with a voice as soft as velvet. It wasn’t the sound I expected from the Mexica goddess, who did kind of resemble Jabba the Hutt.
I wished she could expel the gods right then and there, but we had agreed that they should be released in the future they came from.
With her hands out in front of her, Ren approached Marco slowly, carefully. While Marco’s attention was on Ren, Rosie came up from behind and began licking the back of his neck.
I thought Marco would scream or try to fight, but instead he collapsed to his knees. After a few seconds of catching his breath, he looked up at us with calmer eyes. “You guys took too long.”
“Are you okay?” Brooks asked.
“Okay?” Marco repeated. “This stupid rope has a mind of its own and…” His gaze landed on Jazz. “Can we just go home?”
Jazz started to say something, when Adrik closed the distance.
“Wait!” Brooks said, stepping between them. She whispered to Adrik, “Can you let him keep one memory? Of when you told him about his future?”
Adrik shrugged. “I can try.”
“Thanks for everything, Jazz,” I told my future giant friend. “You’re a real hero.”
He beamed and stood three feet taller. “Will I see you guys again?”
“You can count on it,” Brooks said with a knowing grin.
We all hooked arms. I kept one hand on Rosie. Adrik turned to Jazz, blew a breath toward the boy, and said, “Remember the demon-burning flashlight, Mr. Inventor.”
And just as his words landed, the rope tugged us back to the present.
We stepped into the Old World, keeping a strong hold on one another. Sharp branches stabbed at our arms, necks, and faces as we weaved through a tight path toward the place where we had left Hondo.
He wasn’t alone.
The Sparkstriker stood over his slumped form.
“Hurry!” the Sparkstriker said. That’s when I saw she was carrying Itzamna’s sunglasses.
Hondo, shivering and moaning, still held tight to the thread. I rushed over and jerked it out of his hands. The rope burned my palm as I tossed it away. It ricocheted off the metallic trees with a loud snap and burned itself into the sand.
“Hondo!” I pried off the warrior mask, and it turned to ash. Beneath it was the face of an old man—wrinkled and hollow, sunken and sickly. His eyes stared off into space like his mind was gone.
Everything inside me turned to mush.
Brooks was instantly at my side. Rosie was right behind her, and she immediately began licking Hondo, trying to heal him. But he stayed the same zoned-out old man.
“Why isn’t it working?” I choked out.
Panic dug its stupid claws into me as Ren ran up. Waves of fear and pity washed over her face as she stooped in front of Hondo and gripped his hand. Tears sprang to her eyes. “Come back to us,” she whispered.
“I waited here with him,” the Sparkstriker said, “to make sure he didn’t let go.”
“He’d never let go,” Brooks whispered, wiping her eyes with both hands.
The Sparkstriker said, “We’ve run out of time. I talked to Itzamna.” She held up his glasses. “The enemy has landed in SHIHOM.”
Gasps rose up around me, followed by “How?” “When?” “No!”
Marco said, “How ’bout the devourer gives us back the gods before we go storming SHIHOM?”
The goddess was hunched over, gripping her stomach like she was going to hurl.
“I’m trying,” she moaned. “It’s not working.”
“Maybe it’s like having a baby,” Ren said, “and you just have to let it happen on its own time.”
Adrik’s mouth fell open. “Please say that was just a joke.”
“We must get to SHIHOM now!” the Sparkstriker yelled. She dashed toward a metallic tree and slammed her ax into it. The reverberation rang so hard my spine and skull trembled. Itzamna’s glasses dropped from her grasp.
“What are you doing?” I shouted.
“Summoning my warriors,” the Sparkstriker said.
As if once wasn’t enough, she banged her ax against another tree and another until I was sure all my bones were shattered and the world had broken into a million tiny pieces.
I tugged Hondo into a protective hug as the trees vibrated violently. The Old World became a colossal blur as brutal winds raged against us.
The ground quaked. My friends clung to me. The warriors arrived, their capes fluttering. Rosie howled fire. Waves of flame rolled across the sky, making it burn red.
Yeah, it pretty much felt like the apocalypse. But I didn’t yet know how bad the apocalypse could look.
After a dizzying few minutes, we found ourselves inside a tree house. Everyone had made it except the Sparkstriker’s warriors—I guessed she had sent them somewhere on the ground.
It was daytime, but the air was thick with ash and the smell of smoke. Gray light spilled into the large room where we stood. A thin white trunk poked up through the floor and extended all the way through an opening in the ceiling. Above us, plump green leaves drooped from bowing branches. The space was decked floor to ceiling with books and furnished with modern sofas and chrome tables.
Before I could ask where we were exactly, the Sparkstriker said, “This is Hurakan’s place. Hidden from any eyes below. We will be safe here.”
“Safe?” The word came out in a long shuddering breath as I laid down my uncle on one of the couches. I didn’t think we would ever be safe again.
“No such thing as safe,” Marco muttered, looking around.
“Gods have tree houses?” Adrik asked.
A lump formed in my throat. “Hurakan?” My eyes landed on the open book set facedown on the coffee table: The Book of Questions by Pablo Neruda. I thought two things: My dad reads? And: He has questions?
That didn’t exactly inspire confidence.
I glanced at the devourer goddess asleep on the rug. “What’s she waiting for?”
“I bet it takes a lot of time and energy to throw up that many people,” Adrik said.
“She’s not going to vomit them.” Marco’s expression twisted into one of disgust. “Is she?”
The Sparkstriker said, “I don’t know how one releases a bunch of gods stuck inside. They didn’t cover that in my training.” Her eyes diverted to Hondo. “And I’ve never seen anyone in his condition, either.”
“But my uncle’s going to be okay, right?” I asked, by which I meant not old. And not dead.
“We just have to wait and see,” the Sparkstriker said like we were waiting for a stupid steak to thaw.
Brooks muttered something under her breath as she went over and parted the window curtains. “Guys?” she choked out.
My gaze trailed beyond the drapes and the glass entryway, past the huge balcony. Gray ash clung to hundreds of blackened trees. Pillars of smoke rose into the sky.
“Ohmigod!” Ren breathed.
In that moment, I swear it felt like the Earth’s atmosphere had been sucked into space.
“They’re burning the jungle to the ground,” Marco growled.
The Sparkstriker cursed a few times under her breath. “We need the gods now!”
Ren glanced over her shoulder at the devourer. “We have to help her release them.”
Rosie, who was standing protectively next to Hondo, groaned. She turned and gently pawed the toadish-looking monster, but the devourer didn’t respond.
“The World Tree!” I blurted. It wasn’t a question, but everyone seeme
d to get my meaning: Is it still standing?
The Sparkstriker rushed onto the circular balcony outside. We followed, careful to avoid the wide hole where leafy vines and branches reached up through a thick layer of mist.
The Sparkstriker tapped her ax along a vine that was growing across the deck. At once, the World Tree came into view at the far end of the jungle. Its bark was scorched, and its leaves had withered or fallen off. The lights on its trunk flickered so faintly my heart stopped.
Brooks sucked in a gulp of air. Ren cried out, “It’s dying!”
Fire raced through me, pulsing hot in the center of my chest, spreading down my arms and out my fingertips. A strange thrumming began in my ears like a distant drumbeat. And then there was a terrible primal cry like nothing I had ever heard.
The bells in the Sparkstriker’s hair rang. She gasped, then removed Itzamna’s broken shades from her pocket.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
She set the glasses on the deck and tapped them with her ax. An image immediately formed before us like a hologram.
It was the Red Temple. A huge bonfire blazed in front of it. Dozens of demons were carrying books and scrolls out of the library and throwing them onto the burning heap. Bits of ash floated into the air, but strangely, there was no smoke.
Then I saw Itzamna. He was in dragon form, but this time no bigger than a cat. He flew above the fire, flapping what looked like injured wings as he dashed into the flames and tugged out a libro with his mouth. But it was too late. The book was smoldering.
He was circling very low. Get out of there! I thought. And just as he came in for another pass, a lurking demon plucked him out of the air.
“No!” I shouted as the image vanished.
The Sparkstriker snarled, revealing some very yellow teeth. “We must act quickly.”
“They’re trying to erase history,” Ren said shakily. “Like they did with my mom—like…” Her voice trailed off, or maybe we just got distracted by the brilliant light that suddenly illuminated the balcony.
I spun to see the devourer standing in the tree house doorway. She was on her knees with her head thrown back. A thick shaft of white light flooded from her mouth. It stretched into the sky and broke into dozens of glowing pieces, falling back to the earth like shooting stars.
The Shadow Crosser Page 26