The Shadow Crosser (The Storm Runner 3)

I had mere seconds, and all of them mattered. I closed my eyes, searching deep for a flame, for any ounce of my godborn powers. Just one spark…And then I remembered: The sludge hadn’t touched the top of my head. Or my eyes.

Fire. Fire. Fire.

“Zane!” Hondo shouted.

I opened my eyes. Zotz’s gnarled claw was within inches of swiping Brooks. A stream of blue flame burst from my eyes, shooting directly at the god’s neck. He clutched his burning throat in a silent scream as two bats raced out of it in a terrified frenzy.

The bat god fell to his knees, heaving. Steam rolled off his hairy back.

I lunged for the stone, but a frantic small bat got in the way, accidentally knocking it out of the vortex and over the edge of the platform, where it sank into the darkness.

“Oh, how those you love will pay, Zane Obissspo,” Ixkik’ hissed. “I promise you they will pay.”

Suddenly, jagged stripes of lightning split the sky into a hundred pieces. Rain lashed down violently. Thunder crashed. The world felt like it was colliding with the sun.

Ixkik’ shouted, “They’re here!”

They?

A thin spiral of dark fog spun into the sludge as Zotz beat his hairy wings furiously. His eyes were burning with rage and pain and lust for revenge. In that moment, I swear the world stopped spinning under the weight of my enemies’ threats.

Zotz flew closer to the black sea, desperately searching for the stone. Dark water splashed higher and higher like angry lava, driving back the bat god as tentacles lashed out.

The sky trembled, exploding in blasts of violent white.

“There is nowhere you can hide, son of fire!” Zotz screeched. “Nowhere you will be safe. I swear by the darkness, I will hunt you.” Then he disintegrated into a million specks of dust.

The tentacle holding Adrik vanished, too, and the godborn crashed down onto the platform, which groaned, then tilted.

There was no doubt about it: we were going down.

I jerked my gaze to my uncle. He put on the jade mask.

“Hondo!”

“The stone!” he shouted as he jumped into the roiling darkness.

As the platform sank under our feet, the last thing I heard was Blood Moon’s faint whisper:

“At last it is mine.”

I expected freezing wet darkness, not miniature monkeys.

Wait. I need to back up. The scene was like some kind of dream sequence. You know, the kind you feel like you’re looking at from outside your body?

We had fallen into the water/sludge/bubbling blackness. I squeezed my eyes closed and then—bam!—the next thing I knew, I was waking up drenched but clean on a fluffy white bed, staring up at a big ole opening in some thatched roof. Little greenish-gold eyes peered down at me from leafy branches above the hole. I blinked a few times, not sure I was seeing what I thought I was seeing. Blackish-brown critters that couldn’t have been more than ten inches tall perched on the boughs, babbling away and smacking their lips.

My first thought was I must be in Xib’alb’a and stuck in Monkey House. Then I remembered that there is no Monkey House.

“Welcome to SHIHOM, Zane.”

Hurakan?!

I turned my neck to see my dad standing on the other side of the room, which wasn’t very far away, since we seemed to be squeezed into some kind of wooden dollhouse. Everything came back to me in a whoosh. I sat up, swinging my legs over the side of my bed. “What happened? Hondo and Brooks! Are they okay?”

Hurakan’s dark eyes looked through me as if he could read my past, present, and future. He probably could. “Everyone is fine. But if the turtles hadn’t sent those messages…” He drew in a deep, painful-sounding breath.

So that’s what those glyphs were? Telegraphs to my dad?