The Storm Runner Read online

  Copyright © 2018 by Jennifer Cervantes

  Introduction Copyright © 2018 by Rick Riordan

  Cover art © 2018 by Irvin Rodriguez

  Glyph illustrations by Justine Howlett

  Designed by Maria Elias

  All rights reserved. Published by Disney Hyperion, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney Hyperion, 125 West End Avenue, New York, New York 10023.

  ISBN 978-1-368-02684-0

  Follow @ReadRiordan

  www.DisneyBooks.com

  For Mom, my Seer

  And for those who don’t feel like they belong

  CONTENTS

  Title page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Introduction

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-one

  Thirty-two

  Thirty-three

  Thirty-four

  Thirty-five

  Thirty-six

  Thirty-seven

  Thirty-eight

  Thirty-nine

  Fourty

  Fourty-one

  Fourty-two

  Postscript

  Post Postscript

  Glossary

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  WELCOME TO

  THE VOLCANO

  Zane Obispo has a pretty sweet life.

  Since last year, he’s been homeschooled, which means the other kids can’t pick on him anymore. He gets to spend a lot of his time out in the desert of New Mexico, wandering and exploring with his faithful boxer-dalmatian, Rosie.

  His mom loves him like crazy. His uncle Hondo is a fun housemate, even though he’s maybe a little too addicted to pro wrestling and Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.

  As for the neighbors, Zane only has two: friendly Mr. Ortiz, who grows top secret chile-pepper varieties in his garden, and Ms. Cab, who works as a phone psychic and pays Zane to help her out. What’s not to like?

  And did I mention the volcano in Zane’s backyard? That’s right. Zane has his very own volcano. He and Rosie spend a lot of time climbing around on it. Recently, they even found a secret entrance that leads inside….

  Yep, life is good!

  Er, except that Zane was born with mismatched legs. One has always been shorter than the other, so he walks with a limp and uses a cane. He’s learning to deal, though, and is a crazy-fast hobbler.

  Oh, and also… Zane just got accepted to a new private school. He doesn’t want to go, but his mom is insisting. Class starts tomorrow.

  Then there’s the accident—Zane sees a small plane crash into the mouth of his volcano. He was close enough to glimpse the pilot’s face… and either it was a very good Halloween mask, or the pilot was an alien zombie monster.

  On top of all this, there’s a pretty new girl in town—Brooks—who warns Zane he’s in mortal danger. But Brooks doesn’t exist, according to the school records. And how does she know who he is, anyway?

  Soon, Zane discovers that nothing in his life is what he thought. There’s a reason he was born with a limp. There’s a reason he’s never met his father—a mysterious guy his mom fell in love with on a trip to the Yucatán. Something very strange is going on in Zane’s volcano, and Brooks claims it’s all tied to some ancient prophecy.

  How much do you know about the Maya myths? Did you know the Maya have a goddess of chocolate? (Dude, how come the Greeks don’t get a goddess of chocolate? No fair.) The Maya also have shape-shifters, demons, magicians, giants, demigods, and an underworld that may or may not be accessible from the back of a local taco shop.

  J. C. Cervantes is about to take you on a trip you will never forget, through the darkest, strangest, and funniest twists and turns of Maya myth. You will meet the scariest gods you can imagine, the creepiest denizens of the underworld, and the most amazing and unlikely heroes, who have to save our world from being ripped apart.

  Maya myth and magic is closer than you think. In fact, it’s right in our backyard.

  Welcome to the volcano.

  Welcome to The Storm Runner.

  “Believing takes practice.”

  —Madeleine L’Engle

  To Whom It May Concern,

  Here it is. The story you forced me to write, with the details up to the bitter and unhappy end. All so I could serve as your poster boy for what happens when anyone defies the gods.

  I never wanted any of this. But you didn’t give me a choice. I ended up here because of some sacred oath I didn’t even take, and because I made you so mad you wanted me dead.

  I guess you got what you wanted.

  Personally, I think you should be thanking me, but gods never show gratitude, do they?

  I just want you to know I don’t regret any of it. I’d do it all again, even knowing where I ended up. Okay, maybe I do have one regret—that I won’t get to see your shocked faces when you read this. Anyhow, delivery made. See you on the other side.

  Zane Obispo

  1

  It all started when Mom screamed.

  I thought she’d seen a scorpion, but when I got to the kitchen, she was waving a letter over her head and dancing in circles barefoot. After a year of being homeschooled, I was going to get to go to school again. Did you catch that word? Get. As in, someone was allowing me to learn. Stupid! Who put adults in charge, anyway? But here’s the thing: I didn’t want to go to some stuffy private school called Holy Ghost where nuns gave me the evil eye. And I for sure didn’t want the Holy Ghost “shuttle” to come all the way out to no-man’s-land to pick me up. Mine was the last stop, and that meant the van would probably be full when it arrived. And full meant at least a dozen eyes staring at me.

  I smiled at Mom, because she looked happy. She took care of sick people in their homes all day, and she also let her brother, Hondo, live with us. He spent most of his time watching wrestling matches on TV and eating bags of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, so she didn’t wear smiles too often.

  “But…” I didn’t know where to start. “You said I could be homeschooled.”

  “For a year,” she said, still beaming. “That was the agreement. Remember? A single year.”

  Pretty sure that wasn’t the agreement, but once something was in Mom’s head, it was superglued there. Arguing was useless. Plus, I wanted her to be happy. Really, really happy. So I nodded hard and fast, because the harder I nodded, the more excited I’d look. I even threw in another smile.

  “When?” It was September, and that meant I’d already missed a month of classes.

  “You start tomorrow.”

  Crap!

  “How about I start in January?” Yeah, you could say I was super optimistic.

  Mom shook her head. “This is an incredible opportunity, Zane.”

  “Doesn’t private school cost a lot?”

  “They gave you
a scholarship. Look!” She flashed the letter as proof.

  Oh.

  Mom folded the letter neatly. “You’ve been on the waiting list since…”

  She didn’t finish her sentence, but she didn’t need to. Since referred to the day this jerk —a jerk whose face was seared into my brain—had mopped the floor with me at my old school, and I’d sworn never to set foot in any “place of learning” again.

  “What about Ms. Cab?” I asked. “She needs my help. How am I going to pay for Rosie’s food if I don’t work?”

  My neighbor, Ms. Cab (her real last name is Caballero, but I couldn’t pronounce it as a little kid and the nickname stuck), was blind and needed an assistant to help her do stuff around the house. Also, she worked as a phone psychic, and I answered the calls before she came on the line. It made her seem more legit. She paid me pretty good, enough to feed my dog, Rosie. Rosie was a boxmatian (half-boxer, half-dalmatian) and ate like an elephant.

  “You can work in the afternoons.” Mom took my hand in hers.

  I hated when she did that during our arguments.

  “Zane, honey, please. Things will be mejor this time. You’re thirteen now. You need friends. You can’t live out here alone with these…”

  Out here was a narrow, dusty road in the New Mexico desert. Other than my two neighbors, there were tumbleweeds, rattlesnakes, coyotes, roadrunners, a dried-up riverbed, and even a dead volcano. But more on that later. Most people are surprised when they find out New Mexico has so many volcanoes. (Of course, mine was no ordinary act of nature, right, gods?)

  “With these what?” I asked, even though I knew what she was thinking: misfits.

  So what that Ms. Cab was a little different? And who cared that my other neighbor, Mr. Ortiz, grew weird varieties of chile peppers in his greenhouse? Didn’t mean they were misfits.

  “I’m just saying that you need to be with kids your age.”

  “But I don’t like kids my age,” I told her. “And I learn more without teachers.”

  She couldn’t argue with that. I’d taught myself all sorts of things, like the generals of the Civil War, the number of blood vessels in the human body, and the names of stars and planets. That was the best thing about not going to school: I was the boss.

  Mom ruffled my dark hair and sighed. “You’re a genius, yes, but I don’t like you hanging out only with a bunch of old people.”

  “Two isn’t a bunch.”

  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.

  “Mom.” I got real serious and made her look me in the eyes. “No one wants to be friends with a freak.” I tapped my cane on the ground twice. One of my legs was shorter than the other, which meant I walked with a dumb limp. It earned me all sorts of nicknames from the other kids: Sir Limps-a-Lot, McGimpster, Zane the Cane, and my all-time favorite: Uno—for the one good leg.

  “You are not a freak, Zane, and…”

  Oh boy. Her eyes got all watery like they were going to drown in her sadness.

  “Okay, I’ll go,” I said, because I’d rather face a hundred hateful eyes than two crying ones.

  She straightened, wiped her tears away with the back of her hand, and said, “Your uniform is pressed and waiting on your bed. Oh, and I have a present for you.”

  Notice how she dropped the bad news with something good? She should’ve run for mayor. There was no point in my griping about the uniform, even though the tie would probably give my neck a rash. Instead I decided to focus on the word present, and I held my breath, hoping it wasn’t a rosary or something. Mom went to a cabinet and pulled out a skinny umbrella-size box with a silver ribbon tied around it.

  “What is it?”

  “Just open it.” Her hands twitched with excitement.

  I ripped open the box to get to the present that we didn’t have money for. Inside was a wad of brown paper and under that, a shiny black wooden cane. It had a brass tip shaped like a dragon’s head. “This is…” I blinked, searching for the right word.

  “Do you like it?” Her smile could’ve lit up the whole world.

  I turned the cane in my hands, testing its weight, and decided it looked like something a warrior would carry, which made it the coolest gift in the universe. “I bet it cost a lot.”

  Mom shook her head. “It was given to me….Mr. Chang died last week, remember?”

  Mr. Chang was a rich client who lived in a grande house in town and sent Mom home with chow mein every Tuesday. He was also a customer of Ms. Cab’s—she was the one who’d gotten Mom the job to take care of him until he died. I hated to think of Mom hanging out with dying people, but as she always said, we had to eat. I’d tried eating less, but that was getting harder and harder the older I got. I’d already reached a whopping five foot nine. That made me the tallest in my family.

  I ran my hands over the brass dragon head with the flames flying out of its mouth.

  “He collected all sorts of things,” Mom continued. “And his daughter said I should have this. She knew you—” She stopped herself. “She said the dragon symbolizes protection.”

  So Mom thought I needed protection. That made me feel pretty miserable. But I knew she meant well.

  I rested my weight against it. It felt perfect, like it was made for me. I was excited to cruise around with this much cooler cane instead of my dumb plain brown one that screamed I’m a freak. “Thanks, Mom. I really like it.”

  “I thought it would make going back to school… easier,” Mom said.

  Right. Easier. Nothing, not even this warrior dragon cane, was going to make my being the new kid any easier.

  It was a low point, and I didn’t think things could get any worse. But boy, was I wrong.

  That night, as I lay in bed, I thought about the next day. My stomach was all twisted in knots, and I wished I could turn into primordial ooze and seep into the ground. Rosie knew something was up, because she let out little groans and nuzzled her head against my hand, soft-like. I petted the white patch between her eyes in small circles.

  “I know, girl,” I whispered. “But Mom looked so happy.”

  I wondered what my dad would say about the whole thing. Not that I’d ever know—I’d never even met the guy. He and Mom hadn’t gotten married, and he’d bounced before I was born. She’d only told me three things about him: He was superbly handsome (her words, not mine). He was from Mexico’s Yucatán region. (She’d spent time there before I was born and said the sea is like glass.) And the third thing? She loved him to pieces. Whatever.

  It was all quiet, except for the crickets and my guts churning. I clicked on the lamp and sat up.

  On my nightstand was the Maya mythology book Mom had given me for my eighth birthday. It was part of a five-volume set about Mexico, but this book was the coolest. I figured it was her way of showing me my dad’s culture without having to talk about him. The book had a tattered green cover with big gold letters on it: The Myths and Magic of the Maya. It was filled with color illustrations and stories about the adventures of different gods, kings, and heroes. The gods sounded awesome, but authors lie all the time.

  I opened the book. On the endpapers was an illustration of a Maya death mask made of crumbling jade, with squinted lidless eyes and square stone teeth like tiny gravestones.

  I swear the face was smiling at me.

  “What’re you looking at?” I huffed, slamming the book closed.

  I tossed off the covers, got up, and peered out the window. It was all shadows and silence. There was only one good thing about living on the mesa: it was a hundred yards from a dead volcano (aka the Beast).

  Having my own volcano was about the most interesting thing in my short life. (Up until that point, that is.) I’d even found a secret entrance into it last month. Rosie and I were hiking down from the top, and about halfway down I heard a strangled gasp. Naturally, I went to investigate, half expec
ting to find a hurt animal. But when I parted the scraggly creosote branches, I discovered something else: an opening just big enough to crawl through. It led to a whole labyrinth of caves, and for half a second I’d thought about calling National Geographic or something. But then I’d decided I would rather have a private place for Rosie and me than be on the cover of some dumb magazine.

  Rosie leaped off the bed when she saw me slip on my sneakers.

  “Come on, girl. Let’s get out of here.”

  I went outside with my new warrior cane and limped past Nana’s grave (she died when I was two, so I didn’t remember her). I crossed the big stretch of desert, zigzagging between creosote, ocotillo, and yucca. The moon looked like a huge fish eye.

  “Maybe I could just pretend to go to school,” I said to Rosie as we got closer to the Beast, a black cone rising a couple hundred yards out of the sand to meet the sky.

  Rosie stopped, sniffed the air. Her ears pricked.

  “Okay, fine. Bad idea. You have a better one?”

  With a whimper, Rosie inched back.

  “You smell something?” I said, hoping it wasn’t a rattlesnake. I hated snakes. When I didn’t hear the familiar rattling, I relaxed. “You’re not afraid of another jackrabbit, are you?”

  Rosie yelped at me.

  “You were afraid, don’t try to deny it.”

  She took off toward the volcano. “Hey!” I called, trying to keep up. “Wait for me!”

  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. When I begged Mom to let me keep her, she said we couldn’t afford it, so I promised to earn money for dog food. Rosie was cinnamon brown like most boxers, but she had black spots all over, including on her floppy ears, which is why I was sure she had dalmatian in her, too. She only had three legs, so she got me and I got her.

  When we got to the base of my volcano, I stopped abruptly. There, in the moonlit sand, was a series of paw prints—massive, with long claws. I stepped into one of the impressions and my size-twelve foot took up only a third of the space. The paw was definitely too big to belong to a coyote. I thought maybe they were bear tracks, except bears don’t cruise the desert.