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Up close, I could see the bulbous nose and the gray sharp teeth. Its skin was pitted and puffy and it had a lazy eye that roamed too far to the left. The wind blew its dark mangy hair back.
“What do you want?” I asked, jabbing my cane in its direction.
“Please,” Mom cried. “Leave him alone. He’s only a boy.”
“He’s more than a boy,” it said.
Hondo appeared from the lobby and leaped on the creature, letting out a warrior cry like I’d never heard. “Get out of here!” he screamed at us.
“Hondo!” I hurled myself on top of him, but Mom pulled me off. While my uncle tussled with the alux, she hauled me back through the bank and out the front doors then stuffed me into her car.
Mr. O waved at us as we sped away.
“Hold on tight!” Mom commanded me. She gunned down the road. Only problem was, the Honda couldn’t go past sixty.
“We have to go back! We can’t leave Hondo there.”
Mom ignored me, shaking her head and mumbling words I couldn’t hear. Then came a thud on the roof. The thing had caught up to us. But how? And where was Hondo?
Mom whipped the car around a median, doing a one-eighty like some kind of pro stunt driver. But the creature hung on, laughing a sick sort of cackle that was definitely going to give me nightmares.
“Leave us alone!” I shouted, banging my fist against the roof.
Barreling down the road, Mom took the first turn on two tires. “I can’t shake it off!”
The creature climbed onto the windshield. Its eyes glowed, and I decided it might’ve been only a hair less ugly than the demon runner. They were definitely neck and neck in the contest for the nastiest-lookin
g thing on the planet.
We were going max speed on a back valley road, whizzing past farmland and cow pastures. When the heck had she learned to drive like this?
Suddenly, the engine choked. We came to a crawling stop next to a field of sleeping cows.
“You can’t escape me,” the alux said through the glass. Then it hopped down to the ground.
I heard footsteps on gravel outside the car. Mom reached under her seat and pulled out a crowbar. Whoa! Did I even know this mujer?
“Wait here.” She opened her door and jumped out.
“No way!”
But Mom was outside before I could stop her.
“You cannot have my son!”
She stood in the headlights, swinging that crowbar like a champ.
“Mom!” I tumbled from the car.
“Run, Zane!” she hollered.
Run? Was she kidding? Even if I could run, what was I supposed to do, hide between the cows?
I got to my feet, holding my cane in front of me like a sword. “Come out, you… you mangy dwarf!”
From the shadows, the thing pounced. It leaped onto Mom’s back and held the knife to her throat. Her eyes were wild with fear.
“Let her go!” I shouted. “She doesn’t have anything to do with this!”
