“I’m not your brother.”

“Aren’t you?” Jordan said. “A brother in a common cause, that is. The final piece…”

Bird shot him a glare, silencing him. The final piece of what? I wondered.

“I’ll never help you!”

Bird paced slowly in front of me, thumbing his scruffy chin. He was enjoying this and, knowing these guys, they were going to draw this out as long as possible. I needed to find Brooks and Hondo. Hondo! A sour taste climbed up my throat when I thought of how they’d nearly killed my uncle last time. Man, if he knew these guys were still around, he’d put up the fight of his life. But they’d tear him to bits without blinking an eye.

I searched the forest for any sign of Ah-Puch or Rosie or Ren. That’s when I noticed that the trees looked odd, their trunks and branches misshapen. The sky was distorted, too, like puzzle pieces put together all wrong.

Look closely.

This place wasn’t real! It was just like the twins’ illusory world back in Los Angeles, and if I was right, this probably wasn’t even the Gila Forest.

Crap!

If this wasn’t the real Gila, how would Ah-Puch and Ren ever find me? The twins really were masterminds (sick and twisted, but still masterful). What was their endgame?

Anger pulsed slowly beneath my skin as my mind went to work, trying to break down their plan. They had tricked me off the island, luring me on a hunt for the godborns. But why? Why did I matter so much? It couldn’t be just for revenge. Hondo would tell me that revenge is built on anger, and anger is irrational, and irrational always loses.

Last time I went up against these guys, I’d played their egos. Maybe it would work again. “You caught me,” I said through gritted teeth. “You caught Brooks and Hondo and the godborns. Good for you. How did you man

age to

do it?”

“When we found out about you,” Bird said, “we knew there had to be others, because the gods are deceitful, and no way did only one god defy the oath. So, we set out to escape, and we finally did with the help of…” He hesitated.

“Who?” I blurted. Who would ever help these jerks? Camazotz?

“That’s not the important part.” He stepped closer. “What mattered was finding the godborns and putting our plan in motion. But guess what?”

“You’re crazy?”

Unfazed, Bird went on. “We didn’t have a clue where to start, and then—”

“Don’t give it all away.” Jordan stretched his neck like a wound-up athlete. “I’d rather watch him squirm.”

“I know all about your plan.” I sat up taller, hoping I could play them stake for stake and ruin their element of surprise. “The sobrenaturals, the godborns, the execution.” Then, just to see how they reacted, I threw in, “The Mexica ghosts.” I stopped short of mentioning the war.

The twins looked at each other, and I could tell I’d hit a nerve. Then, to my total surprise, they busted up laughing. Had I gotten something wrong? My cheeks flushed, and fury boiled beneath my skin.

“You’re halfway smart,” Bird said after he’d caught his breath. “I’ll give you that.”

“You mean he has half a brain,” Jordan muttered.

The twins needed something from me or they wouldn’t have gone through all this trouble to get me there, and they hadn’t gutted me yet. Whatever that something was, I had to use it as leverage to free everyone. And I had to do it in the next twenty-four hours, before my dad was gone forever. Swallowing a boatload of pride, I said, “What do you want from me? You think I’m going to join you? Fight with you? Go against the Maya gods for you?”

Bird wagged a finger in my face. “Not for us. No, of course not. But you’ll do anything for your girlfriend and uncle.”

The forest rippled like water.

The ground shifted and groaned. White and black ashes fluttered like snowflakes from the sky, draining the whole world of color. The forest shrank to a place made of iron and darkness and fear.

I barely had time to blink before I found myself in a cage not tall enough to stand upright in, but at least I wasn’t tied up anymore. The smell of gasoline and old tires hit me first. Was this place an auto shop? I looked around the prison for any clue as to where I was. My cell was positioned above a row of twelve cages about six feet below me on the opposite wall. Their iron bars dripped with a thick substance that looked like honey and crawled with winged scorpion-like insects. On each of the cells’ barred doors there was a dark shield, hiding whoever was inside. I tried to adjust my eyes to the night, to see beyond the tinted glass, but it didn’t work.

Jordan and Bird appeared on a shallow ledge in front of my cell.

Tags: J.C. Cervantes, Jennifer Cervantes The Storm Runner Fantasy
Source: readsnovelonline.net