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When I first met Brooks, I thought her eyes could hide mountains. I always knew they held secrets she would never tell me. But tonight, her eyes were cold and unblinking, and they made me feel like I was walking on a crumbling stone wall. She wasn’t just hiding something big.
She was hiding something dark.
I rested my head against the window, trying to make sense of everything. But Hondo wanted to relive his hammer slam over and over. “And did you see how the claw of the hammer drove right into that monster’s skull? It was a thing of beauty, Zane. A real thing of beauty. Actually, it was kind of creepy, to see a hammer going into my face, or a face that looked like mine, but still…”
“Yeah, true beauty.” I thought about the shadow magic Brooks said they used to make the imitations of us. What else could shadow magic do?
“Hondo?” I kept my eyes on the headlight beams shining across the highway.
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for coming and, er… for spending your money and…”
“Being a demon-fighting tank?” He chuckled. “You kidding? This is a rush, kid. Better than watching any wrestling match—even better than that time Meat-Grinder stole the title from reigning Dead Thief. Remember? Poor Dead Thief went to work at Home Depot after that.” He shook his head like he really felt for the guy. “Who wants to be a ring-rat when they can actually be in the ring? No one, that’s who.” He slugged me in the arm. “You got guts, kid. Real guts.”
Did I? I didn’t feel so gutsy.
“But wrestling’s a sport,” I said. “This is… it’s real life, and we could actually die.” I’d hate myself if anything ever happened to Hondo.
“Better to die a freaking warrior,” he said, “than a night-crawling janitor.”
I don’t think I’d ever loved the guy more.
As soon as I was asleep I fell into a dream. I was back home, walking through the desert toward the volcano. The sky was blood-red and a hot dry wind blew from the east. I looked down and saw that I was pushing a grocery cart, and inside was Ms. Cab in her chicken form, hopping from one foot to another.
“What’re you doing in my dream?” I asked her as I pushed the cart over the bumpy earth.
“This is a futile effort.”
“Are you going to yell at me again?”
She opened her beak, then closed it like whatever she was going to say, she’d changed her mind.
I asked, “How’s Mr. Ortiz?”
She clucked, then said, “These dumb chicken eyes are worthless!”
“When I kill Ah-Puch you’ll go back to your regular self.”
“You must attack his blind side.”
The earth began to shake and sparks flew from the volcano, launching themselves across the desert like mini fire-missiles aimed at my head. A terrible rumbling sound echoed across the land and a stream of lava burst out of the Beast, racing down the mountain right toward us.
Ms. Cab shook her head. “Time to wake up, Zane.”
I spun the cart and raced away from the lava. “You can’t outrun it,” Ms. Cab said. The earth turned to quicksand and I began to sink along with the cart. Her beady chicken eyes narrowed. “I said to wake up, Zane. I’m in no mood to be swallowed by the earth.”
“I’m trying!”
“And when you do, make sure to remember I’m a chicken!” She leaped onto the cart’s handle and rammed her beak into my hand as the lava licked at my heels. I started to scream, but then I woke up, gripping my hand and kicking my legs.
The car was parked in a lot off a two-lane highway, and Hondo was gone. Brooks was still asleep in the backseat, thank God. Catching my breath, I looked at the back of my hand. There was a small red spot in the middle of it. First she’d screamed at me, and now she’d pecked me? Definitely needed to smash that eyeball.
It was barely dawn. The world was foggy and covered in gray.
I yawned, stretched my arms over my head, and rubbed my eyes.
Then I saw it. The beach. Right in front of me!
