The Storm Runner (The Storm Runner 1)

Rosie howled like a banshee. I gripped my cane, ready to stab the thing in the eye. Anything to keep it away from Mom.

In the same moment, the monster groaned and disappeared into a thin trail of smoke that curled into the sky.

My heart double-punched my ribs. “Did… did you see it?”

“See what?” Mom felt my forehead. “You’re scaring me, Zane. Maybe we should get that scan.”

“I’m fine. Really. It was just… a coyote.”

Except I wasn’t fine. Not even close.

I patted Rosie to calm her—no, both of us—down. At least my dog had seen the monster, too. But why hadn’t Mom?

“Necesitas rest,” she said. “Let’s get you to bed.”

The second my mom left my bedroom, I checked my Maya book. I found an illustration that looked pretty close to the creature, down to the hairy knuckles and bulging eyes. I read the caption twice to be sure. “A demon of Xib’alb’a, the underworld,” I whispered to Rosie. “But how can that be? These are just stories, not real life….”

She pawed my leg and whimpered.

“Yeah, I’m creeped out, too, girl.”

I slid the book beneath my bed and hopped under the covers. Rosie groaned.

“Right. Get rid of it.”

I retrieved the book, then got up and went to my dresser, where Mom made me keep a vial of holy water. I splashed some on the picture of the demon, then shoved the book under a pile of dirty clothes in my closet and shut the door.

Once I was back in bed, Rosie settled against me and I could feel her heartbeat thudding, telling me she was still scared.

It was impossible to fall asleep. Seeing the plane crash had been terrible, and thinking Rosie could’ve been burned was pretty bad, too. Seeing that evil thing had been… well, beyond horrible.

And then there was the weirdness with Mom. Why hadn’t she been able to see the demon, too? What if it had attacked us? I wondered. Could Rosie and I have protected her?

I squeezed my eyes closed, but I couldn’t escape the terrifying image.

But something else terrified me even more: knowing that with my bum leg I’d never be able to run fast enough to escape the monster.

3

When I climbed onto the Holy Ghost shuttle the next morning, I had a pounding headache and bleary vision. Weird dreams will do that to you, especially when they’re about your dog talking to you, telling you things like You’re in danger.

Yeah, danger from a brain-drain at lousy Holy Ghost Catholic School. There were eight kids on the van. That was sixteen eyes. Rosie had come with me to the end of the road, and when I got on the bus, she sat on her haunches and crooned. It made me feel ten kinds of miserable. But even worse were the kids’ whispers.

What’s wrong with his leg?

What’s up with the cane?

What happened to his dog’s leg?

The freak probably ate it.

I loosened my dumb plaid tie and untucked my white button-down shirt, keeping my gaze on the long stretches of desert outside. Over breakfast I’d tried to tell Mom I had post-traumatic stress disorder from the plane crash, and I almost had her… until Ms. Cab came over to wish me good luck. She told Mom I looked “superb” in my new uniform and convinced her that I needed to be in sc

hool to get my mind off crazy things. Right. Because hanging with nuns all day would somehow erase the monster’s face from my memory.

It took twenty minutes for the shuttle to get to school, ten minutes for me to get my schedule, and five minutes for me to get sent to Father Baumgarten’s office. I had promised Mom I’d try my best to make friends and stay out of trouble, but when the freak-probably-ate-it dude knocks you into the lockers and elbows you in the gut “by mistake,” and a bunch of stupid lookie-loos crack up, any self-respecting guy would launch his cane at the dirtbag’s head. Accidentally, of course. It was either that or risk getting knocked around all year. No one was laughing after that.

I was sitting outside Father Baumgarten’s office, tapping my cane against the floor, staring at the pope’s framed picture on the wall, and trying to figure out how I was going to explain whacking a dude with my new cane to Mom, when the most beautiful girl on the planet (maybe in the universe) walked over and sat next to me. She smelled like rain, and her skin pretty much glowed. She had on a pair of black leggings, a zipped hoodie, and short lace-up boots that appeared to have seen a century of battle. I guess you could say she looked like an assassin-for-hire who took really good care of her skin. Where was her uniform? I wondered.