The Storm Runner: Chapters 1–8

I guess I'd sort of been hoping Mom would forget our deal. Or maybe Holy Ghost (who named that school, anyway?) would disappear off the face of the earth in a freak cataclysmic accident.

Instead I decided to focus on the word present, and I held my breath, hoping it wasn't a rosary or something.

My stomach was all twisted in knots, and I wished I could turn into primordial ooze and seep into the ground.

There was only one good thing about living on the mesa: it was a hundred yards from a dead volcano (aka the Beast).

I'd found Rosie wandering the desert four years ago. At the time, I figured someone had dumped her there. She was all skin and bones, and she acted skittish at first, like someone had abused her.

To the east was a glittering night sky rolling over the desert, and to the west was a lush valley dividing the city and the flat mesa.

Her hands went to the Maya jade pendant dangling from a leather cord around her neck. She'd told me once that a protector spirit lived inside the jade. Seemed a pretty lame (and claustrophobic) place to live.

Rosie howled like a banshee.

When I climbed onto the Holy Ghost shuttle the next morning, I had a pounding headache and bleary vision.

Rosie had come with me to the end of the road, and when I got on the bus, she sat on her haunches and crooned.

Rosie had come with me to the end of the road, and when I got on the bus, she sat on her haunches and crooned.

I'd asked him once what he would've studied if he'd gone to college. He'd smirked and said, Business, so I could become a tycoon and own the bank instead of clean it.

He drove an old Cadillac, the big gas-guzzling, V-8-engine kind. It was black and looked like an undertaker's car, but he loved it.

"First, I definitely think you should tell me about the demon pilot and exactly what you mean by danger," I insisted. "Like, is it you’re-going-to-die kind of danger, or a-storm's-coming kind of danger?" I was really hoping it was the latter.

Hawks have keen eyesight.

With a light laugh, Brooks quirked her left brow and said, "Okay, then, come on. Do you want to know the truth or not?"

The switchback trail was steep and rocky, bordered by clumps of wayward weeds that, in the dark, could definitely be mistaken for hairy sea creatures.

"That's why it's a prophecy, a divination. Seeing the future."

"Of course they're real," she said nonchalantly.

"Right. Okay, there was this Great Soothsayer—the first seer of all time. She was very powerful, and her prophecies were never wrong."

"Right. Okay, there was this Great Soothsayer—the first seer of all time. She was very powerful, and her prophecies were never wrong."

Brooks tucked a stray hair behind her ear. "Like I told you, Ah-Puch was imprisoned. The gods placed him in a magical artifact they created to make sure he never got out."

You gods really tried to cover all contingencies, didn't you?

"What...what happens if Ah-Puch gets free?" I asked. "He'll cruise back to hell? To reclaim his kingdom and be a king or god of the dead or whatever, right?"

We came to a sharp downward slope that opened up into a larger, cavernous space.

Brooks sounded like she might start hyperventilating.

I realized the demon was creating an opening in the wall by methodically removing rocks one at a time and stacking them on the ground. It must have been really tedious work.

Her flashlight's beam turned red and she shone the light on the creature's face. It writhed and screamed as its skin sizzled.

She clambered back up the way we'd come, passing me on the slope, because she was faster on her feet.

With my good leg, I swept the demon's ankles (Hondo's favorite double-leg takedown) and sent it sprawling.

"I've got to go," Brooks shouted as the rain subsided.

Its penetrating gaze held me frozen as it said in a woman's raspy voice, "The prophecy has begun."

"Oh good, you're awake," she said as she sidestepped the piles of paper and books strewn across her cluttered living room.

"Magic is so mercurial," she said.

One can never fully gauge its temperament or understand its logic.