The Storm Runner

by J. C. Cervantes

  “It was probably just a coincidence,” Brooks said sharply without looking at me.

  “But I could feel it… in my fingertips, like I was holding on to some rope made up of heat and energy. And it felt dangerous, like I had to control it or it was going to control me.”

  “You should’ve let them take me,” she mumbled.

  “But… why would they want you?”

  Brooks kept her eyes fixed on the sky.

  I sat up. “Are you listening?”

  “I heard you, Zane! You’ve got some godly power….Good for you!”

  “Hey. You okay?”

  “You’ve ruined everything!” She sat up and huddled against the cab.

  “Whoa! What’re you talking about? I saved you!”

  “Saved?” She let out an exasperated laugh, like she was offended or something.

  I wanted to argue, to let her know she wasn’t the only one freaked-out or scared or…

  She fidgeted with the string on her hoodie. I was too afraid to say the wrong thing, so I bit back the words. And waited for the gears in her mind to stop turning.

  It was like she was getting up the courage to tell me something I might not want to hear. I knew if I pushed too hard she’d never tell me anything.

  A few minutes later she said, “Whenever I changed into a hawk, I could feel the sky. It was like a part of me. Even after I changed back, I could still feel it.” She looked up at the stars. “I tried to… I wanted to claw out their eyes, but… nothing worked.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s… it’s gone, Zane.”

  I got an empty feeling in the pit of my stomach. “What’s gone?”

  “I’m… I’m not a hawk anymore.”

  19

  “What? How? You’re a shape-shifter. How can your power just disappear?” My pulse raced.

  “How should I know? But it’s gone and—”

  “Try again. Maybe you were nervous or something.”

  Brooks looked at me, her face like stone. “I told you. It’s gone!”

  “Brooks… what’s going on with you? Why aren’t you telling me?”

  “Forget I said anything!”

  She knocked on the back window to ask Hondo to stop. When he did, we climbed into the truck’s cab. Without saying anything, Brooks made it clear that I wasn’t to join her in the backseat.

  When I first met Brooks, I thought her eyes could hide mountains. I always knew they held secrets she would never tell me. But tonight, her eyes were cold and unblinking, and they made me feel like I was walking on a crumbling stone wall. She wasn’t just hiding something big.

  She was hiding something dark.

  I rested my head against the window, trying to make sense of everything. But Hondo wanted to relive his hammer slam over and over. “And did you see how the claw of the hammer drove right into that monster’s skull? It was a thing of beauty, Zane. A real thing of beauty. Actually, it was kind of creepy, to see a hammer going into my face, or a face that looked like mine, but still…”

  “Yeah, true beauty.” I thought about the shadow magic Brooks said they used to make the imitations of us. What else could shadow magic do?

  “Hondo?” I kept my eyes on the headlight beams shining across the highway.

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks for coming and, er… for spending your money and…”

  “Being a demon-fighting tank?” He chuckled. “You kidding? This is a rush, kid. Better than watching any wrestling match—even better than that time Meat-Grinder stole the title from reigning Dead Thief. Remember? Poor Dead Thief went to work at Home Depot after that.” He shook his head like he really felt for the guy. “Who wants to be a ring-rat when they can actually be in the ring? No one, that’s who.” He slugged me in the arm. “You got guts, kid. Real guts.”

  Did I? I didn’t feel so gutsy.

  “But wrestling’s a sport,” I said. “This is… it’s real life, and we could actually die.” I’d hate myself if anything ever happened to Hondo.

  “Better to die a freaking warrior,” he said, “than a night-crawling janitor.”

  I don’t think I’d ever loved the guy more.

  As soon as I was asleep I fell into a dream. I was back home, walking through the desert toward the volcano. The sky was blood-red and a hot dry wind blew from the east. I looked down and saw that I was pushing a grocery cart, and inside was Ms. Cab in her chicken form, hopping from one foot to another.

  “What’re you doing in my dream?” I asked her as I pushed the cart over the bumpy earth.

  “This is a futile effort.”

  “Are you going to yell at me again?”

  She opened her beak, then closed it like whatever she was going to say, she’d changed her mind.

  I asked, “How’s Mr. Ortiz?”

  She clucked, then said, “These dumb chicken eyes are worthless!”

  “When I kill Ah-Puch you’ll go back to your regular self.”

  “You must attack his blind side.”

  The earth began to shake and sparks flew from the volcano, launching themselves across the desert like mini fire-missiles aimed at my head. A terrible rumbling sound echoed across the land and a stream of lava burst out of the Beast, racing down the mountain right toward us.

  Ms. Cab shook her head. “Time to wake up, Zane.”

  I spun the cart and raced away from the lava. “You can’t outrun it,” Ms. Cab said. The earth turned to quicksand and I began to sink along with the cart. Her beady chicken eyes narrowed. “I said to wake up, Zane. I’m in no mood to be swallowed by the earth.”

  “I’m trying!”

  “And when you do, make sure to remember I’m a chicken!” She leaped onto the cart’s handle and rammed her beak into my hand as the lava licked at my heels. I started to scream, but then I woke up, gripping my hand and kicking my legs.

  The car was parked in a lot off a two-lane highway, and Hondo was gone. Brooks was still asleep in the backseat, thank God. Catching my breath, I looked at the back of my hand. There was a small red spot in the middle of it. First she’d screamed at me, and now she’d pecked me? Definitely needed to smash that eyeball.

  It was barely dawn. The world was foggy and covered in gray.

  I yawned, stretched my arms over my head, and rubbed my eyes.

  Then I saw it. The beach. Right in front of me!

  I sat there staring at it with wide eyes, because I didn’t want to forget what it was like to see the ocean for the first time—the way the white waves rushed out of the fog like they were in a hurry. Or how the jagged cliffs loomed over the water like some kind of guardian.

  “Brooks!” I shook her. “Check it out!”

  She blinked awake, nodded, then closed her eyes again like the ocean was an inconvenience. Whatever.

  Where were we? Out the window, a wooden sign read solana beach. I reached for the road atlas, and my eyes roved over it until I saw we were in San Diego. Just a couple hours south of LA.

  I got down from the truck. The air was cool and wet and salty.

  I spotted Hondo over at a food truck on the other end of the parking lot. He waved at me and I motioned that I was going to check out the beach. A couple surfer guys were sitting on the back bumper of their van, pulling on their wetsuits. A golden Lab danced in place, whining.

  It made me miss Rosie even worse.

  I stepped onto the sand, trying to balance on my walking stick. But it was mushy and uneven, impossible to get a foothold on. The waves were only thirty or so yards away. Seeing the sea wasn’t enough. I had to touch it.

  I kicked off my sneakers and socks. The coarse sand was chilly and damp. Sharp bits of white shell poked out. After a few steps, I realized the stick was worthless. This is no different from balancing on the edge of the volcano, I told myself. One foot in front of the other, placing just the right amount of weight on each foot. I’d come face-to-face with the god of death and killed a demon runner. Surely I could walk across the sand.<
br />
  I was worried Hondo would call me back any second, because once he’d had his breakfast and coffee, he’d want to get on the road. But no way was I going to waste this moment.

  A seagull circled overhead as I took the last few steps between piles of brownish-green seaweed. Ha-ha-ha, it cried.

  The cold waves touched my toes and I couldn’t help but smile a huge goofy smile. Wow! The ocean was seriously a lot bigger close-up. I tossed my stick onto the beach and inched farther into the water. It was like ice, but I didn’t care. I went in up to my ankles, then to my knees. My jeans were soaked and felt like they weighed a hundred pounds. A small white wave rushed toward me, knocking me over. I came up laughing, shaking the water out of my hair.

  “You’re not what I expected,” a female voice said.

  (I guess I should stop here and warn you gods that you are seriously not going to like this part of the story. So prepare yourselves.)

  I turned, peering through the morning fog, but there was no one on the shore, and I couldn’t see past the waves because the mist was too thick.

  “Hello?” I called out.

  No answer.

  “Anyone there?” I shuffled backward toward the shore, shivering.

  I suddenly felt like I was being watched. A tingle ran through me, and I didn’t know if it was because I was freezing or something else. Maybe I’d imagined the voice. Yeah, I know, but a guy can hope, can’t he?

  Grabbing my stick, I dragged it through the thick wet sand. zane was here.

  Then came the weird thing—in the empty space next to my name, new letters materialized slowly, as if invisible fingers were writing in the sand.

  look

  What the…? I scanned the empty beach, did a one-eighty to search the water, but I was alone. I dropped to my knees and wrote furiously with my finger: who are you?

  Holding my breath, I waited. Then…

  look

  I stared hard at the letters until a wave washed them away. Then the wall of mist vanished, and beyond the waves a woman sat on a surfboard, bobbing gently. She had shockingly white blond hair but was too far away for me to see any other details.

  “Come out,” she said, and strangely, I could hear her as if she were standing right next to me.

  Was she delusional? No way was I going to dive under those waves and swim up to some stranger who could write in the sand like a ghost.

  “You must hurry….We only have minutes,” she said.

  “Why don’t you come to the shore?”

  “The time rope won’t reach that far.”

  Time rope?

  “I’ve had enough demons after my head.” I plopped onto the sand. “So whatever you want to tell me, you can do it from there.”

  She waded closer. Then something jerked her back. She took a frustrated breath. “Your father sent me.”

  Okay, she had my attention now. I jumped to my feet. “You know my father?”

  “Shhh….You want them to hear you?”

  I looked around. There was no one else here, unless you counted the seagull and the surfer guys still in the parking lot. “Them?”

  “Time is of the essence, and the longer you stand on that shore, the less time I have to help you in your quest.”

  I inched toward the water suspiciously. “How do I know you won’t drown me?”

  “Because your father would demolish me if I touched a hair on your head.”

  I probably should’ve walked away, but I was curious. Maybe she could tell me who my father was once and for all. Maybe he really had sent her. I hadn’t forgotten the distant image of the guy on the pyramid and how he’d tried to stop me from making a deal with Ah-Puch. But since then? MIA.

  Carefully, I waded in. The first wave knocked me over.

  “Dive under,” she instructed. “Or you’ll never get past the breakers.”

  As the next wave rolled toward me, I dove beneath. The water was icy and dark. The salt burned my eyes and made my skin itch, and my heart raced unevenly, like a skipping stone. I came up for air just as another wave was forming. I dove again.

  Finally, I was past the waves and I swam through the rippling water to where the woman waited, bobbing on her shiny black surfboard. I treaded water, keeping enough distance to vamoose if I had to.

  “Hello, Zane,” she said. Okay, so not only did she have white blond hair with caramel-brown streaks, it was knotted into dreadlocks and looked like she hadn’t washed it in a century. She wore a tattered leopard-skin cape. It had a hood that hung to the side. Her mouth was turned up like she was on the verge of a smile, and her ears were pointed, but instead of being where they were supposed to be, they stuck out the top of her head like a cat’s. And her eyes? They burned green and aqua-blue, constantly changing like a turning kaleidoscope.

  I told myself to take a deep breath as I floated in the water. To be calm. So what if a surfer cat lady wanted to talk to me? Oh God! What if she worked for Ixtab? What if she was Ixtab? I remembered the image of Ixtab in my book—always with a rope around her neck. This woman was clutching a gold rope, its end trailing into the dark waters as if it was connected to an anchor.

  I swept my arms forward, trying to distance myself, but the tide was like a magnet pulling me closer and closer. Okay, so this was a really bad idea. And just like that, the tide stopped and the waves froze in mid-crash. The air went still. It was as if the whole world had stopped spinning.

  The cat-surfer ran her hands through the sea and a silver bodyboard appeared. “Join me before you drown. Quickly.” So she didn’t want to plunge me into the depths of the Pacific. I needed the rest, so I cradled the board and brought myself to a straddled sitting position.

  “You g-g-got a w-w-wet s-suit I c-c-could b-b-borrow?” I shivered.

  She looked around nervously.

  Fine, no magic wet suit was going to appear. I supposed I should’ve been grateful for the bodyboard.

  “Who ar-are y-y-you?” I asked, my teeth chattering. Please, please, please, don’t say Ixtab, I prayed.

  “I am the goddess of time. For now, you may call me Pacific,” she said, arching a perfect brow.

  I didn’t remember ever reading about any such goddess. “How c-c-come I’ve never heard of y-y-you?”

  Pacific’s gaze intensified. “I was erased. From the glyphs, my people’s stories, as if I never existed. I was one of the most powerful of the gods,” she said with a huff. “The great sky-watcher. I taught the people to read the stars, to plant their harvest at the appointed time, to prepare for the seasons. But then I made a grave mistake.” She narrowed her eyes. “I told of a prophecy the gods didn’t want to hear.”

  “P-p-p-rophecy?” My voice hitched in my throat.

  “I have many names, Zane. I am the Great Fate, the soothsayer who foretold of a boy who would be born unlike any we’d ever seen.”

  I gave her a blank stare. Holy crap! She was the soothsayer? My blood started to warm up. “You’re Ms. Cab’s—”

  “Great ancestor. Not by blood, of course, but by secret. But that doesn’t matter now. What matters is that you’re a—”

  “Halfer, I know.”

  “Half…?” She blinked slowly like she was trying to understand what the word meant.

  I tried again. “You know, like a hybrid, a mix? Crossbreed?”

  Pacific scooped a handful of the sea into her hand. “The gods do not measure in human terms. You may be half, or more than half.”

  “Half is plenty, thanks.”

  She sighed. “My prophecy frightened the gods because it brought to mind the hero twins, the very first godborns. Their mother was Sh-keek.” (Spelled Ixkik’—I had to look it up.) “She was from the underworld,” Pacific said. “And some say she was part human.”

  Right. The one who fell for the skull. Wait, did she say godborns? I hadn’t heard that term before.

  Pacific swept a piece of knotted blond hair from her pale face. “The twins inspired jealousy in the gods,” she continued, “
so the gods established a law that never again would such creatures be born. And the punishment for any god who disobeyed?”

  “Vat of boiling acid?” I guessed.

  “A long and torturous death,” she said with a scowl. “Seeing their fear, I knew I could never reveal that not only would you be descended from a god, but you were also the one destined to release Ah-Puch, the very god they had imprisoned. Their rage would have shaken the stars from the sky.”

  Okay, so my dad was a criminal… sort of. He must have heard about the prophecy, and yet it hadn’t stopped him from falling in love with my mom. Talk about hardheaded.

  Then I had another thought. “Hang on. So how does Ms. Cab know?”

  “I shared the prophecy with another seer from the bravest lineage, a lineage I could trust. I asked that she preserve its truth for generations so when the time came for the prophecy to be fulfilled, Ah-Puch could be stopped and your true identity kept a secret. But even she didn’t know that you were to be a godborn.”

  So that’s how Ms. Cab had gotten the gig. I put the events in order: godborn twins, imprisoned god of death, jealous other gods, dangerous secret. That’s where I came in. Ugh!

  She blinked her cat eyes, shifting her gaze to the dark waters. “I only told the gods an ‘innocent’ would be the one to release Ah-Puch,” she went on. “I left out the part that he would be godborn. And you know what the gods did then? They used a powerful magic to ensure that only a god could release Ah-Puch.”

  So Brooks’s guess was right. “They thought they made the Stinking One’s prison foolproof,” I said. “But then I came along—the innocent fool.”

  Pacific laughed lightly. “The gods were the fools. They thought they could bypass my sight?” She shook her head. “They never put the pieces together.”

  “Okay, and what about my dad? Why would he risk torture by getting together with my mom?” I didn’t want to think any more about that. “And… you said you know him?”

  “We have been friends since the beginning. He was the only one who helped me when the gods erased me from memory.” She spoke quickly. “I was to be executed, but your father volunteered to do it himself. Instead, he brought me here, to live beneath the ocean, where K’ukumatz hides me. I owe him.”