Barely above a whisper, she said, “I…Who—” She blinked. Her eyes darted from face to face before landing back on mine. “Why do you have goose feathers in your hair?”
Quinn let out a breath. “Can you sit up?”
“I think so.” Brooks rubbed her head groggily as we propped her against the tree.
“How do you feel?” I asked.
“Woozy. The dart…Thankfully, it only clipped my wing. I’m sorry I couldn’t fly.” Brooks studied the wound on her arm, wiping the blood away. “I…I feel so weird. Like I’m in a dream. Am I dreaming?”
“You mean having a nightmare?” Adrik muttered as he glanced toward a rustling sound in the bushes. “Are there any alligators in this jungle?”
Just then, a wall of black mist rose up from the sand. Out stepped Rosie. She bounded toward me on her three legs, her tongue lolling out of the side of her mouth, her nub tail wagging.
“I missed you, too, girl.” I embraced her, scrubbing her ribs.
“That’s a huge…uh…Is that a bear?” Adrik asked while his sister just stared wide-eyed, studying Rosie’s every move. Only a sobrenatural could see Rosie for what she was: a hellhound the size of two lions. To the human eye, she was just a regular black dog with three legs.
“Bear?” Quinn snorted. “Try the world’s finest hellhound.”
Rosie’s soft brown eyes studied my face, landing on the cheek wound I’d already forgotten about. One slobbery lick and I could feel the healing properties of her saliva going to work immediately. “Brooks needs you, too,” I whispered, wiping off some of her drool.
Rosie went to Brooks and, with a small whine, began to lick her arm. Brooks stroked her between the ears. “You’re the best, you know that?”
Here’s what I had finally figured out about my dog: She didn’t need training; she didn’t require orders to pull her weight. I could trust her to figure out what had to be done. That meant adiós to the commands Ixtab had taught her. We no longer had to yell STEAK! to get her to stop, and DEAD! to make her breathe fire. Those were just ordinary words to her now, which made conversations much easier.
Bright lights suddenly appeared in the jungle.
“What’s that?” Alana stepped back, alarmed. She shielded her eyes as if the sun was blinding her.
Then came the familiar sound of wheels running over the earth. A second later, Hondo’s tourist tram emerged from the trees, coming to a stop a few feet away from us. My uncle killed the engine but left the headlights running as he jumped off the vehicle and ran over. Ren was close behind, hollering my name.
I didn’t realize how much I had missed them until I saw them in the flesh.
“Zane!” Ren squealed, hugging me and then Brooks, who had staggered to her feet.
Rosie threw back her head and let out a happy howl.
Hondo pulled me into a headlock and squeezed. “Good thing we have the location tracker, Diablo. What’s up with the feathers? You been cleaning birdcages?”
He’d grown out his hair to just below his ears, and I guess Quinn must have liked it, because she smiled when she saw him. But the second he looked at her, her face returned to ice-queen mode. “I have to go see Ixtab. Give a full report,” Quinn said before shifting into her giant eagle self and flying off.
Hondo’s grin vanished. “Does she ever stay put?” Then he slung his arm over Brooks’s shoulders. “Admit it,” he said. “You missed me, Capitán.”
A small smile crept over Brooks’s face. “Not as much as you missed me.”
“Could someone please kill those headlights?” Alana tugged a pair of silver sunglasses out of her pocket and planted them on her face. With her red-tipped hair, she looked like the kind of person who might be famous.
“What’s with the shades?” I asked.
“I’m super sensitive to light,” she said.
Was that the gateway to her godborn power? The weakness that was really a strength, like my limp or Ren’s trances?
Hondo went over and turned off the headlights as I created a small bonfire in the sand. “Is that better?” I asked.
Alana nodded. “It comes and goes,” she said, tugging off her glasses.
When Hondo returned, he pointed at Adrik and Alana. “I thought there was only one godborn left.”
After Brooks and I filled in Hondo and Ren about everything that had happened, my uncle said, “Two-faced demon…” Okay, he said a lot more than that, but my mom would kill me if I wrote down all that cussing.
“We didn’t do anything to those monsters,” Alana complained. Then, as if the reality of it all was just now washing over her, she whispered, “They…they could have killed us. You saved our lives.”
“Let’s not get carried away,” Adrik said. “How do we know the demons weren’t after them and we just got stuck in the cross fire?”
“Because my sister and I have been tracking Ik,” Brooks said, raising a single eyebrow. “She could have killed Zane at any moment over the last three months, but she waited until tonight to turn on him. Until Zane led her to you.”
“Good point, Capitán.” Hondo rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Demonio estúpido. ¿Por qué join the losing team?”
Excellent point. Why would Ik choose to leave Ixtab’s army, the most powerful in the universe, to join a bunch of loser gods who’d already had their butts whipped?
“And why would Ik want these godborns and none of the rest?” Ren asked.
Something told me Ik hadn’t been after Adrik. And she hadn’t even known about Alana. She wanted whatever it was they had lifted from that store. More specifically, Camazotz and Ixkik’ wanted it.
“Look…” I began, addressing the twins. This part was never easy. And now that I also had my friends’ eyes on me, I felt like I was taking a test I hadn’t studied for. “Before we point fingers, I need to know who might be waiting for you back in New York. Ik could do something….” Iktan wouldn’t hesitate to hurt someone the twins cared about. Not if it would get her closer to whatever her bosses wanted.
“What he means,” Brooks explained, “is that we need to cover all our bases, make sure there are no loose ends.”
“I know what he means,” Adrik said stone-faced. “There’s no one waiting for us.”
Alana blurted, “Unless you count the Wicked Witch of the West.”
Rosie collapsed onto her belly with a groan I translated as This is going to take a while. Peace out.
“You live with a witch?” Ren asked.
“A wicked witch,” Alana repeated. “And believe me—”
Adrik cleared his throat, cutting her off.
Brooks drew closer, mirroring his scowl. “We can’t help you or protect your family unless we know what’s up.”
Adrik clenched his fists. “Alana’s right.”
“That you live with a bruja?” I asked. Was that why Alana seemed so chill about all of tonight’s supernatural weirdness?
“Whatever you want to call her,” Alana said, “she for sure won’t be looking for us.”