The Shadow Crosser (The Storm Runner 3)

“No one’s going to die,” I said, wishing I could keep that promise.

We took Hondo out to the deck, mostly because I wasn’t super confident that our godborn power experiment wouldn’t accidentally start a fire and burn down my dad’s tree house.

I turned Fuego into a tattoo. Then Marco, Adrik, and I piled our hands o

n top of one another’s like we were about to start a football cheer. “Call everything you’ve got to the surface,” I told them. “All of it.”

The devourer took a deep breath and stretched her small scaly arms out in front of her. A leafy vine crawled up her leg and torso and began wrapping around her wrist.

“What’s the vine for?” Marco asked suspiciously.

The devourer said, “Earth magic. Combined with godborn power, it will heal me, and then I can heal him.” She gestured toward Hondo, stretched out on the deck.

A little hesitantly, still not sure we could trust her and repulsed by her yellow-green crocodile hide, we placed our hands on the goddess. I focused on the fire that lived and breathed inside me, and I knew my friends were concentrating, too, because our fingers started to tremble. A couple of seconds later, our skin glowed a pinkish red, like someone was pressing a flashlight against our palms.

Heat pulsed in my veins.

An electrical energy buzzed through me and zipped out of my fingertips right into the goddess’s body. A wicked wind rushed the deck, swirling all around us. The vine on the devourer’s wrist glowed with a pale green light as it wound up her arm and around her throat. She let out a blood-curdling scream, threw her head back, and released a dark shadow from her mouth.

“What is that?” Adrik stumbled backward.

The form rose up, its wings spread wide. I gasped.

It was the bat god.

All I could think was NO! We did NOT just use our powers to release our enemy!

But hang on—it gets weirder. Or maybe more awful, depending on whether you’re a glass-half-empty person or a glass-half-full person.

Like the other gods, Zotz was not in his usual form. He was a teenager. As his eyes settled on me, confusion swept across his young face and he tugged his shivering black wings close to his thin body. I kind of felt sorry for the guy, this weak and puny version of our once-formidable foe.

“Ixkik’,” he snarled. “Trap—” With that, he collapsed next to the other zonked-out gods.

Willing Fuego into my grasp, I inched closer for a better look. Yep. He was out for the count. At least for now.

The full weight of Ah-Puch’s words hit me in that moment: Camazotz is a natural-born killer. He is cunning and smart, but he’s not this smart. He’s working with someone.

Zotz had been duped by Ixkik’!

Marco nodded as Adrik’s mouth fell open. “Is…is that…?”

“Adrik, meet the mighty bat god.” Marco’s voice was filled with hate. “How about we roll him off the deck? Or skewer him with your spear.”

I gave Marco a don’t-even-think-about-it glare. We would need to interrogate Zotz about Ixkik’ as soon as he woke up. I turned to the devourer to ask what the holy Xib’alb’a had just happened, but the words got stuck in my throat. The goddess was bent over Hondo, and she was no longer in the form of Jabba’s twin. She was an older lady with white-streaked dark hair that hung down her small back. Placing her gnarled hands on my uncle’s shoulders, she chanted some words I didn’t recognize. A white aura surrounded Hondo, flecks of sparkling dust floating in the light.

I held my breath.

Please work. Please. Please.

We heard a moan and hurried over. At first, the aura was so bright I couldn’t see if he was still the dried-up wrinkled dude. Gradually the glow faded and I saw…

Hondo was Hondo!

Relief flooded every cell in my body.

My uncle shifted, struggled to open his eyes.

“I have fulfilled my debt,” the toad/monster/goddess said. The leafy vine she was wearing expanded and twisted around her until she looked like a shrub. In an instant, the leaves blew up, leaving nothing behind except dust.