The Shadow Crosser

by J. C. Cervantes

  “You couldn’t have also thrown them into a time loop,” Hurakan put in. “Not simultaneously.”

  “Bird!” I shouted, remembering that Brooks had gone after him, which meant he was still a threat. “He’s still free!”

  “Bird’s in a cage.” Hondo’s voice reached us before he walked in, hoisting an ax over his shoulder. His eyes darted everywhere before he let out a huge whoop. “I don’t see the rest of the wicked familia around, so does that mean the plan actually worked?”

  Actually? I wasn’t about to ask how many time-loop practice runs Ren had been through. Probs none. I shuddered thinking how poorly all this could have turned out.

  For the next couple of minutes, everyone talked over each other, telling me what had happened after I left Hurakan’s tree house.

  Ren said, “Rosie found your dad, and he told us that the only way to trap Ixkik’ was to make her show her face, and that led us to figure out how to trap her, which led to Pacific giving up the time rope—”

  Hondo cut in, “And Adrik was a boss. He took control, called his sister telepathically, because, man, we needed our friends to round up all the gods.”

  “And when I found out you were in trouble,” Mom said, “I knew I had to come, too.”

  Just then, a loud roar from above caught all of our attention. We looked up to see a massive dragon, blue and shimmering, flying our way.

  “Itzamna!” Ren shouted.

  He had a teen passenger, and from the blazing eyes and murderous expression, I knew it was Ixtab.

  The dragon perched on the remains of the roof, claws extended, and threw his head back to release a wave of fire that looked like it could incinerate the entire universe.

  Hurakan said to me, “He wants to talk to you alone.”

  “You speak Dragon?”

  “You don’t?” Hurakan asked, and I couldn’t tell if he was kidding or not.

  Almost everyone took off toward the jungle. Mom, who’d been clinging to me, stretched my shirt as she left. My dad hung back.

  “I thought he wanted to talk to me alone,” I said.

  “Who cares what he wants,” Hurakan said. “I’m sticking around.”

  With a fiery snort, Itzamna floated down and shifted into his godly form. Teen Ixtab stormed over, glaring. “Zane Obispo! You are impossible to communicate with.”

  Whoa. Seeing the goddess of the underworld as a kid was weird. I felt like I shouldn’t look directly at her, in case I laughed or something. But I didn’t have a choice, because she was only inches from my face.

  “Didn’t you see I was inside Rosie?” she growled. “Can’t you read hellhound signals? Howls? Fire colors in the pupils?”

  “The orb,” I whispered.

  “Yes, the orb, you fool!” Steam practically rolled off Ixtab’s head and I was super glad she didn’t have her goddess powers right then. “I used the hellhound to keep an eye on things here, not knowing she would be my very lifeline, but getting you to listen to me was harder than turning a demon vegan!”

  Hurakan said, “Zane rescued you.”

  Ixtab’s eyes flicked to my dad, then back to me. “By the skin of his teeth.”

  “But you were rescued,” Itzamna reminded the goddess. “We all were.” Then, turning his attention to me, he added, “There’s someone else we need to thank. Your uncle is the greatest shadow crosser I have ever seen. He truly saved us all.”

  A huge balloon of pride expanded in my chest. The greatest shadow crosser ever. Knowing Hondo, he was definitely going to have that printed on new business cards.

  Itzamna went on. “This is a glorious day. Let’s not ruin it with what might have happened and how close we were to annihilation, both literally and in the history books.”

  “Easy for you to say, Itzamna,” Ixtab complained. “You aren’t…” She glanced down at herself and groaned. “You aren’t an adolescent!”

  “You weren’t in such great shape earlier,” I said to the moon god, remembering his sickly gray self. “How’d you get better?”

  “The gods might be in a weakened state,” Itzamna said, “but with so many of them awake now, the Tree has been powered up, and me as well.”

  That gave me hope that everyone else would return to normal, too. I never thought I would say this, but I wanted that to happen soon, because hanging around with a bunch of angry teen gods might be worse than being with the angry old gods. “How long will…?” My eyes darted between Ixtab and Hurakan.

  “We be like this?” Ixtab hissed. “It better not be long! I have an underworld to run, a spy network to oversee, demons to punish.”

  “There is no way to tell,” Itzamna said, throwing a chill-out glance Ixtab’s way. “But we are facing a bigger problem.”

  I clung to Fuego, wishing I never had to hear the word problem again. “What?”

  “Our written history—the truth—has been completely destroyed.”

  Nodding, I said, “Ixkik’ was going to make me rewrite it, to change sobrenaturals’ memories, all because—”

  “You are my chosen scribe with the power of the dragon,” Itzamna said.

  “Dragon this or that,” Ixtab said, flipping her hair over her shoulder. “Who cares? Someone just needs to reconstruct what was lost. Looks like that’s you, godborn.”

  All six god eyes were on me. “You want me to write the history? What do I know about it? Nothing! There…there has to be someone else.”

  “You’re the only one who can,” Itzamna said. “Well, technically, I could do it, but I am in serious need of a vacation and a float through some healing stardust.” With one finger, he pulled on the lower lid of his left eye. “Look at these eyes. Puffy and bloodshot!”

  “You need a vacation?” Ixtab growled. “I haven’t had one in three centuries!”

  As annoying as the gods were, and as tedious as it sounded to have to record centuries of history, seeing all those books go up in flames and knowing the truth could be stolen made me want to bring it back. “Okay, okay. I’ll do it. But I’m going to need some help….”

  “That’s my boy,” Hurakan said, which sounded really weird coming from a guy my age. “In the meantime, we will continue what we started at SHIHOM. But the godborn training will be incomplete without the truth, and our history will be in danger until we replenish it.”

  “There are other dangers,” Itzamna said.

  I rubbed my eyes and wished I was back on Isla Holbox, where I could toss all these problems and dangers to the bottom of the sea.

  “Don’t tell him all the horrors at once,” Ixtab said, grinning.

  I looked at the moon god expectantly.

  He sighed and said, “Well, it does make for a more exciting ending to this tale.”

  I felt a pounding headache coming on. “Just tell me.”

  “Some of the godborns took off from Montana. We don’t know where they went.”

  I was totally unsurprised. After all, Serena and a few of the others had publicly declared that they wanted to take down the gods, steal all the power and magic for themselves. But where had they gone? Did they really think they could hide from the gods? Okay, maybe they could at the moment, but that moment wouldn’t last forever. “How many?” I asked.

  Ixtab scowled, holding up five fingers. “I cannot wait to find the traitors and give them a long cruise down Blood River.”

  “You’re offering cruises in the underworld now?” Ah-Puch popped out from behind a wall. He eyed Ixtab and covered his mouth like he might start laughing.

  “Another word,” she said, “and I will rip out your spine one vertebra at a time.”

  Ah-Puch held up his hands in surrender, a corner of his mouth curled up in a sly smile. “I was just going to say it’s time for a serious party!”

  Turns out the god of death meant it when he said serious party. It took two weeks to organize. The good news was that Itzamna postponed his vacation in order to attend, and in the meantime, he healed the scorched jungle. The bad news was tha
t Ah-Puch was constantly hollering at the air spirits, whose “party standards were appalling at best.” But once he told me he hadn’t been invited to a fiesta in over a thousand years, I kind of understood why it was such a big deal for the guy.

  When Ah-Puch wasn’t party-planning, he and Hondo were prison-planning for Bird and Zotz. Let’s just say they made a deal with Sipacna and the Four Hundred Boys. Yeah, the giant and ghosts were more than happy to take the villains off our hands, and something told me it was going to be pretty hellish for Bird and the teen bat god.

  The godborns returned from Montana, except the rogue bunch that I really hoped someone else found waaay before Ixtab did. Blood River is pretty creepy—take it from someone who knows. Anyhow, they made us tell them the story of how we rescued the gods so many times I decided to write it all down. It only took a single night, thanks to magic paper and my having the power of the dragon. Ixkik’ had lied about the paper being destroyed. At first, we couldn’t find it, but then Itzamna discovered that the monkeys had stolen the stash during all the chaos. I felt kind of bad for the rascals when he reclaimed it, so I let them keep a few sheets. Sorry, Itzamna.

  I also began rewriting true history, which should have taken a thousand years, but with the aid of Itzamna’s magic, I would be done in a year, tops. To be honest, it wasn’t half bad.

  I had collected all the ashes from the bonfire and stuck them in a dozen huge stone vases. Whenever I sat down to write, the ashes would float into the air and whisper their stories to me. Rosie lazed about the biblioteca while I worked, perking her ears over every whisper. I guess hellhounds don’t like ghosts too much.

  The day of the party, Rosie seemed more restless than usual. She sniffed around all the library’s corners and then lay down next to me with a sigh. She turned over and kicked her legs in the air, demanding a belly rub.

  “I’m almost done,” I said, writing the last sentence from the ash whisper: and the great land formed from the belly of the sea, glittering with gold. I set down my pen and scratched my dog as her eyes rolled back with pleasure.

  “She’s a fine hellhound,” Ixtab said as she walked into the temple.

  I blinked. “You’re…you’re you again!” I said excitedly. “Are all the gods back to normal?”

  With a groan, Rosie jumped to her feet and went over to Ixtab, nudging the goddess with her nose.

  “Only a few of us,” Ixtab said, patting Rosie’s chest.

  “Is my dad—”

  “No,” she said. “He’s still an annoying teen, as is Ah-Puch. I really hope they return to godly status soon, because I’m tired of looking at a bunch of kids.”

  Rosie pawed Ixtab gently like she was trying to tell her something. My heart sank. What if she wanted to go back to Xib’alb’a with Ixtab? The goddess nodded at my dog, then zeroed in on me. “Are you going to the fiesta dressed like that?”

  I glanced down at my SHIHOM uniform. “Isn’t everyone?”

  “Didn’t you get the memo?” Ixtab said. “The air spirits are giving everyone a makeover. Well, as much as they can, given that you all are disgustingly part human.”

  “I’m good with how I look.”

  Ixtab smirked. “I came to say good-bye.”

  “You’re not coming to the party?”

  “I have an underworld to repair and demons to punish,” she said. “And then there are the sobrenaturales who never got Itzamna’s message. So I’m the only one capable of improving emergency response systems.” She shook her head regretfully.

  “But Adrik and Alana—”

  “Will be just fine without me,” she said, shifting her gold bracelets up and down her arm. “Besides, I already spoke to them, not that it’s any of your business. They told me how brave you were, how…Well, it doesn’t matter. You were there for them. So I have a parting gift for you.”

  “A gift?”

  Just then, a circle of light surrounded Rosie—pink and gold with flecks of deep green. Oh no. What was Ixtab doing to her this time?

  In a flash, Rosie was transformed.

  My heart leaped into my throat.

  It was my dog! My boxmatian!

  “Rosie?” My voice squeaked, but I didn’t care. I dropped to my knees as my dog bounded toward me, tongue hanging out of her mouth. I had missed that sweet face, that medium-size wiggly body. She sat down on her haunches and licked my face and neck excitedly, pawing my chest with her one front paw.

  Tears filled my eyes. I looked up at Ixtab. “Thank you.”

  “She’s still a hellhound,” she said coldly. “Can change whenever she needs to. I couldn’t risk her being defenseless, now, could I?”

  I didn’t care what Ixtab’s reasoning was—or whether it was a thank-you to me, to Rosie, or the whole universe. I had my dog back. I had Rosie!

  Dance music boomed across the jungle as Rosie and I made our way to the party. She leaped and loped like she had missed her old dog self, too.

  Green and blue lights twinkled in the trees to the precise beat of the music. Monkeys leaped from branch to branch above me, smacking their lips and jabbering.

  We came to the edge of the clearing, and I blinked in surprise. I didn’t know the god of death had it in him, but man, the place looked awesome. New thatched-roof huts lined the borders, each lit up with torches and filled with tables of food and drink. The first two shacks were full of godborns. At least I thought they were godborns—it was hard to tell them apart from the teen gods.

  At the center of the clearing was a glass dance floor with flashing blue, pink, and green lights. No one was dancing, but some kids were eyeing the space like they might take the risk. To my right was a waterfall, tumbling in slow motion so you could see winged golden fish leaping out of it in a coordinated dance.

  Rosie startled as teen Pacific came up behind me. “Aren’t you going to join the party?”

  I patted my dog’s head, hardly believing she was mine again. “Aren’t you?” I asked as I leaned against Fuego and took it all in, thinking how differently things could have turned out. It led to thoughts about snags in destinies, and how I might have ruined mine when I was inside of K’iin. Before I knew it, I was spilling my worries to Pacific about getting snagged in my destiny thread.

  “Ah,” she said. “And you didn’t want to see?”

  I shook my head. “Not if I couldn’t change it.”

  “What if it was a good snag?” she asked. “A twist in the road that leads you to something you might have never found otherwise.”

  A good snag? “Oh…I just assumed…”

  Rosie settled onto her side and began licking her paws. Have I mentioned how beautiful she is?

  “Maybe you should stop assuming.”

  It felt like a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders, and I turned my gaze back to the party with a totally different outlook. Good snag. I liked the sound of that.

  “And what about Ren?” I asked. “The favor she owes K’iin.”

  “She made an honest deal, so that will be up to K’iin to collect when the time comes,” she said casually. “But perhaps I can help alleviate the weight of the favor.”

  “That’s good,” I said. I mean, who wants to owe a mighty all-seeing calendar anything?

  Ixchel and Ah-Puch were barking orders at the earth and air spirits, who had given up their strike when the gods gave them a raise and more vacation time. But clearly the spirits hadn’t earned any more respect.

  Speaking of spirits, I kept my promise to Kip and asked the gods to give him a bigger greenhouse. Hopefully it wouldn’t come with bigger centipedes, too….

  My mom and dad were sitting at a table, sipping some gran blue drinks out of straws. They were talking and laughing like they hadn’t seen each other in a millennium, and maybe this sounds corny, but I was happier in that moment than I think I had ever been.

  Quinn and Hondo made their way to the dance floor, and let me just tell you that Hondo can’t dance. Like at all. He jerks his arms and legs around l
ike a badly strung puppet. But Quinn didn’t seem to mind. Maybe because Itzamna had told them Jordan’s date with a time loop meant she was no longer married to him. Plus, the moon god was going to bend the law about humans and sobrenaturals mixing, since Hondo had shown “sobrenatural bravery.”

  Ren, Marco, Adrik, and Alana headed to the floor next, jumping up and down to the beat. Louie joined them, doing a moonwalk with a monkey on his shoulder. I realized then that we were a family, and it had taken everyone’s talents to beat our enemy: Louie’s snow, Alana’s gateways, Adrik’s memory stealing, Marco’s cloning, and Ren’s time rope.

  And Brooks’s water powers. Without her, we never could have gotten the devourer out of that tank. I scanned the crowd until I spotted her on the far end of the clearing, glancing around like she was looking for someone.

  Rosie whined. Her ears perked sharply as her eyes landed on Brooks, too. Brooks was wearing a white tank-top dress and she had her hair in a loose ponytail draped to one side like she couldn’t decide if she wanted to let her hair down or not. Pacific must have seen me watching her.

  “Did you ever wonder why you connected with her so quickly when you first met?” the time goddess asked.

  Her question threw me off guard. My cheeks flared. How did she know that? Was anything secret from the gods?

  “Nah,” I said, shrugging it off. “She had a drawing of a demon on her folder.”

  But it was more than that. I knew it then, and I knew it now. Brooks got me, like, really got me, even though I annoyed her half the time. We always had each other’s backs. And no matter how much time we spent apart, our link only grew stronger. As soon as she walked (or flew) onto the scene, I felt like everything would turn out okay no matter what. Even when monsters and gods were trying to crush us.

  “Maybe there was a connection because you had already met her,” Pacific said in a way that told me she already knew the answer.

  “Huh?”

  “I couldn’t figure it out at first,” she said, tapping her chin. “But then you went to 1987, and it made me wonder: Did something happen there?” she asked. “Something strong enough to create a bond with Brooks way before the two of you were born?”