Dear Reader,
You were probably expecting this letter to be from Zane Obispo, our young hero. But this book is different from the other two. Zane, a worthy scribe, could not write the introduction this time. There is a reason—one you may or may not like, depending on the type of narrative you prefer.
I, for one, did not enjoy parts of this account—neither the tragedy and sorrow, nor the terror and darkness. Like the other Maya gods, I was ripped from my life and thrown into the middle of this twisted, sordid tale. Sadly, none of us saw the end coming. I doubt you will, either.
Nevertheless, like all stories, this one must be recorded and preserved. By reading it, you are giving energy to the words on the page and feeding a much greater magic for all storytellers everywhere. Thank you for doing your part. Truly, I am sorry for what you are about to experience.
Yours in story,
Itzamna
My life pretty much tanked the night I left home with a two-thousand-year-old demon.
Wait. Tanked isn’t the right word. It was more of a slow unraveling, like a thread that comes loose in an old sweater and can never be fixed, no matter how hard you try. All you can do is wait for the dumb hole to get bigger one centimeter at a time.
I should have seen the signs, but in my defense, I was distracted. You would have been, too, if you had spent the last three months, two days, and sixteen hours sleeping in fleabag motels, eating cardboard hamburgers and soggy tater tots, and catching nasty whiffs of Iktan’s demon breath. For the record, demons don’t brush their fangs. And two thousand years is a long time to go without Colgate!
As if that weren’t bad enough, my mom had told me that, regardless of the fact that I was godborn-hunting, I had to do all my distance education homework, which meant hours hunched over my iPad. I had also spent way more time than I wanted to admit looking over my shoulder, expecting Camazotz (Mr. Bat God) to appear out of a trail of black fog so he could rip off my head with his iron claws. I was pretty sure he had dreamed of nothing else since our battle in the junkyard.
So, yeah, I was ready to go home. Back to Isla Holbox, where everything was sun and sea and safety. I was so close, I felt like I could practically fall over the finish line. Because, tonight, Iktan had tracked down the very last godborn I was trying to find: lucky number sixty-four.
The night had started like this:
I tumbled headfirst out of a gateway into a dark alley littered with aluminum cans, Chinese-food take-out boxes, and a sofa hemorrhaging its stuffing. The air was thick and muggy. “Just this once,” I groaned to Ik, “could you make a gateway that doesn’t spin me on extra high and smell like leftover death?”
Tonight, the demon had taken the form of an eleven-year-old human girl with a gap-toothed smile and braided reddish hair. She wore denim overalls and a shirt patterned with little red hearts. But I knew what lay underneath all that.
A green neon sign on the wall above us gave her a sickly glow. If I looked super close, I could see her natural blue pallor underneath the fake human one. Iktan altered her appearance as quickly as someone might change a mask, constantly seeking a disguise that wouldn’t make her itch all over, which was never going to happen, because she was allergic to human flesh. The best part of her allergy? She couldn’t eat humans.
“Death is an acquired smell, Zane,” Ik said, scratching her dimpled chin. “Urgh. Human skin is like poison ivy. What a stupid invention.”
“Skin, or poison ivy?” And, technically, neither is an invention, but I wasn’t about to have that convo right then.
She growled. “Both!”
Whatever. Nothing was going to put me in a bad mood. If all went as planned, in a couple of hours I would be rid of Itchy Ik and her reeking, churning gateways. I grunted, getting to my feet with the help of Fuego, my cane/spear. I was born with a limp—one leg is shorter than the other—and my cane helps me bolt when I need to, like if I’m about to be sliced open by some bloodthirsty monster. Fuego also conveniently turns into a spear when I have to defend myself against said monster. It was a present from my dad, the Maya god Hurakan.
“So, where are we?” I asked.
“Hell’s Kitchen. Hardly hellish, if you ask me.” Ik gave a hard grunt. “To be more specific, New York City.”
“This is New York?” I stabbed a wedge of discarded Styrofoam with my cane, thinking that this dark, seedy alley looked like none of the pictures I’d ever seen of the shining city.
Iktan kicked an empty soda can under the sofa with a huff. “I know. How could a place this nice be Murderers’ Row? What a big fat disappointment.”
“At least we won’t be here long,” I said.
Tugging on a braid, Ik said, “Anything to eat in this place? I’m starving.”
“We ate, like, ten minutes ago.”
“Yeah, well, you don’t have a demon’s appetite, do you? And I’d hardly call chicken fingers eating. No blood, no bones…” She scrunched up her face in disgust. “And why do they call them chicken fingers, anyway? Chickens don’t even have fingers! Only tasty, crunchy feet…”
“I think it’s because we eat them with our fingers?”
Just then, Ik’s head snapped up, her eyes burning red, a snarl curling her lips. C
rap! I knew that look—she was getting ready to hunt. My stomach squeezed tight.
A white cat leaped off a rusty dumpster and zipped down the alley. My arm shot out to prevent the demon from following, but I wasn’t fast enough.
Ik streaked toward the cat like a tornado.
“No!” I shouted.
A few seconds later, I reached the demon at the dead end of the alley. She was hunched over with her back to me. Breathless groans erupted from her throat, and I swallowed hard. I did not want to see matted cat fur stuck between her teeth. I’d seen it before, and believe me, it was muy disgusting. But when she turned around, she was empty-handed.
My very first thought was: Yay! No blood anywhere.
“It disappeared.” She panted, and her pupils expanded so big her eyes looked black. I wished hard that she wouldn’t dress up like a kid. It was seriously disturbing.
I looked around. How had the cat escaped?
She pushed her bangs off her big forehead. “It must have fallen into a gateway.”
“Cats don’t just fall into gateways,” I argued. Heck, nothing accidentally tumbles into the magical portals that gods and sobrenaturals use.
“It’s happened once or twice,” she said with a huff.
I had a hard time believing her. She was probably trying to save face for failing to catch a skinny gatito.
“I don’t make the gateways. They’re all around us.” She let out a forced laugh. “Oh, that’s right—you can’t see them, because you’re not as powerful as I am.”
I ignored her 183rd insult and, since I’d never met a demon who knew how to kid around, asked, “Really? People and animals can just, like, disappear into them?”
“It’s rare.” She glanced up like she was trying to recall something. “Everything has to align just right. Something about angles, rising planets, unflossed teeth, and other stuff. I never paid attention, because I don’t really care what happens to humans. It’s depressing enough that I have to hang out with you.”
“So that’s how you’ve been getting us everywhere so fast.” I’d always wondered how come Iktan never needed a gateway map like the one my friend Brooks and I once had to use.
“How many times do I have to tell you?” Ik growled. “Demons are superior to godborns.”