The Shadow Crosser (The Storm Runner 3)

I reached for the best Hondoism I could come up with in the humiliating moment: Keep it frontal. Don’t go limbic. In other words, I couldn’t let the limbic part of my brain go berserk, because I’d lose control and power.

I gripped Fuego and was muy glad for the dark. “I guess you graduated past busting noses.”

“I told you I would get stronger,” he said with a smirk. “Just took some practice.”

I felt smoke drift from my eyes, and I walked away quickly so Marco wouldn’t see it. I started back toward the barbecue area.

Marco kept pace. “Dude, it was just a joke. Everyone knows you’ve got it bad for her—you could read it between every line of those books.”

I stopped in my tracks and turned to face him. Flecks of moonlight sifted through the trees. “Great. While you’re obsessing over me and Brooks, I have to go tell the godborns that Zotz has pretty much won,” I said. “That we’re about to do something no human has ever lived through, and if we don’t make it back, their lives are going to—”

“Why would you do something so stupid?” Marco asked, suddenly serious.

“It’s rotten to keep lying to them.”

“Rotten?” He bit back a laugh. “Dude, that’s the worst strategy I’ve ever heard. Wait—you’re serious?” He shook his head. “They’ll freak, and you know what happens when a big group of people freak? They do stupid things. They feed off one another’s worst fears and do anything to survive.”

I jammed Fuego into the soft earth. “I told them they’d be safe at SHIHOM, and now I’m supposed to lie to them? They need to know so they can be prepared.”

“No one is safe anywhere,” Marco argued. “Especially not godborns. So yeah, lie to them. Let them think this is still part of their training.”

For half of a second, I considered taking Marco’s advice. I mean, he was a pretty awesome strategist. But as the son of war, he was also a master manipulator who was probably trying to manipulate me right now.

Fire rushed through me in waves, but I couldn’t tell if it was directing me to listen to Marco or stay on my own path.

“That was a really good impersonation of Brooks,” I said as I took off for the barn, using Fuego to create a quick distance between us.

Marco called after me, “Zane, you don’t know what you’re doing!”

When I got to the barn, Hondo took me aside and asked, “Are you sure about this?”

I nodded, and he leaped onto an empty picnic table to announce that I had news. Everyone went quiet. Then a few whispers floated across the meadow:

“It’s Zane.”

“What’s he going to say?”

“Is this part of our training?”

Brooks and Ren looked at me, and for half a second, Brooks’s eyes blazed, which I knew was her way of telling me Good luck or maybe You’re a bonehead for telling them the truth.

Adrik and Alana stood nearby, their faces obscured by shadow. I looked around for my mom, but she was nowhere to be seen. Rosie stalked the perimeter, her gaze glued to me.

I climbed onto the table and gripped Fuego with sweaty palms. My blood rushed through my veins like hot lava and my pulse roared in my ears. Seeing all those eyes on me, waiting, expecting me t

o say something, was worse than terrifying. It reminded me of the days when I was the last kid to get on the school bus and everyone stared at me, judging me solely on my limp.

“Uh…” Yes, that is how I began my impressive speech. “We’re, uh…I mean, this isn’t a training exercise. The gods…they’ve been abducted, Zotz and Ixkik’ have taken over Xib’alb’a, and demons are crawling up the World Tree.”

Murmurs broke out.

“You lied to us!” someone accused.

Ren shouted, “We’re trying to protect you, to—”

“By keeping us in the dark,” said a short guy with blond hair. I recognized him from my godborn search and rescue in Washington State. He’d been a runner.

“No,” I said. “I mean, we were trying to figure stuff out. Trying to—”