AUTHOR'S NOTE: If you get tired of waiting for chapters, the entire book is avaible on Amazon in print and on Kindle!

  Chapter Ten

  SLURP!

  “Ethan.”

  The Interdimensional Wormtrain rattled on its tracks, making each of the metal balls that made up its cars bounce chaotically as they rolled toward our destination.

  SLURRRP!

  “Ethan!”

  Normally I avoided this lihe way a vegan avoids a triple ba cheeseburger, but its general crappiness meant that there were hardly any passengers. That was good, because it meant fewer people were around to see Ethan lig the windows.

  SLUUUUURRRRRRP!

  “Ethan, cut that ht now!”

  He turned his shaggy head to look at me, grinned, and then gave the window an LLLLLICK!

  “You have no idea where that’s been,” I yelled. Grabbing two big handfuls of his fur, I pulled on him as hard as I could. “Stop! Being! Gross!”

  It was no use. I may as well have been trying to pull the IW itself off course.

  “It should be fine,” Jade said from her seat. “Sasquatches have really strong immune systems.”

  “He ate his chi kabobbing backpack before we got on,” I said, colpsing into the seat o her. “And all the textbooks that were in it, too! How freaking hungry he be?”

  We’d let him take off his N.O.S.E. again as soon as we’d gotten oraiing him run around in all his sweaty hairiness. It should be fine, I told myself every other minute or so. Sasquatches weren’t as onp Mauldibamm as kons or humans, but they weren’t unheard of. As long as we could keep him under trol, and stop him from eating anything he wasn’t supposed to, the worst we’d get was a few weird looks.

  “I think that’s just how they are,” Jade admitted, frowning as Ethan tio go to town on the window. “They metabolize so fast that they need another meal almost as soon as they finish the st one.”

  I slumped ba my seat. “Oh, so he’s a walking famihen. I’m so happy.”

  “At least it’ll only st a few more hours.” Jade offered me a smile. “Right?”

  “Assuming he doesn’t…” I paused, gng at Ethan, then lowered my voice. “…do you know what, it will.”

  The smile fell from her face. “So, what’s the pn?”

  “McGus is the only kon I know who get through a skull that thick.”

  “Okay, but how are we going to get him there?”

  Before I could ahe IW began to shake even more violently than before. Through the spit-smeared window, I could see sparks flying up where the metal sphere ground against the tunnel outside. The train was slowing doere here.

  “No time to expin,” I said, springing to my feet. “Just follow my lead!”

  I raced to the door as the train shuddered to a stop, reag into my backpack with one hand.

  “Hey, Ethan!” I called.

  He turo look just as the door hissed open, and I pulled out…a lunch tray.

  “Henry, that’s a bad idea!” Jade excimed.

  Too te. Ethan’s eyes had already locked onto the red sb of pstic. He licked his lips and took a step forward, rog the entire car. I waved it like I was a bullfighter, ahan was my stupid, stupid bull.

  “e on, you big palooka,” I said. “e a!”

  He took aep toward me, and I took a step back, through the door and out into the station. A few people muttered in fusion as Ethan followed me, but nobody spoke up to stop us. I felt a spike of fidence. I could do this! I just had to—

  "HENRY GIMME!" he roared, and charged.

  My Hunter reflexes saved me, filling my shoes with magid bsting myself up and over Ethan before I had time to think. He crashed into the wall behind me. I spun to look, aumbled backwards, dazed, leaving a perfectly sasquatch-shaped imprint on the crete wall.

  "Told you," said Jade.

  Ethan shook his head, and his eyes immediately locked onto my lunch tray again.

  "I think I should run now," I said as he towered over me.

  "You think?" Jade snapped.

  I turned and broke into a sprint. The thunderous footsteps behiold me that Ethan had given chase.

  "GIVE! ME! SNAAAAAAAACK!” he howled.

  I burst out of the IW station and into Mauldibamm. The ground shook beh my feet with every gargantuahan took. Turning right, I dashed across the street, narrowly avoiding being hit by a passing car. It ho me—and then abruptly stopped honking when a loud CH filled the air.

  "e on, Henry! I'm hungry!" Ethan yelled from somewhere behind me. I didn't stop to look. With legs as long as his, any lead I could get would be hard to keep. And if I lost my tray, how would I get him where I o go then?

  People were screaming now. What a bunch of sissies. You'd think Godzil was rampaging through Mauldibamm from the way they squealed.

  Let's look on the bright side again, I thought with a sudden burst of inspiration. At least Ethan didn't turn into Godzil!

  A pair of massive, hairy arms came in from my left and right, and I ducked into a roll a split sed before they closed around me. As my feet came back down, I thrust the tray underh them. My momentum took over, sliding the tray across the sidewalk just outside of Ethan's reach.

  That's right, just call me Henry Rider: Lunch Surfer!

  Before I could fully appreciate how awesome I was, though, something stopped. It took me a sed to realize it was Ethan's footsteps. The thunderous rhythm he'd been pounding behind me had ceased, and a backwards gold me that he had vanished with them. But where had he gone? How could a creature that big just…

  A shadow fell over me, and I looked up.

  "Turkey s," I muttered as Ethan plummeted toward me like a meteor doing a belly flop!

  "MIIIIIIINE!" he roared.

  Without thinking, I leao the side, swerving my tray out of his path. The moment I was out of his way, he crashed down into the ground. A mushroom cloud of dust exploded out from the point of impact, and a few shattered ks of sideelted me from behind.

  Oooh, barbecue gingersnaps, I thought with a pit f in my stomach. I might be out of my league here.

  Dare I hope that the fall had taken him out? That his manic pursuit of my delicious lunch tray had finally exhausted him, and he'd decided to take a quiap in his newly made crater?

  A hunk of sidewalk twice as big as me came flying out of the dust cloud.

  Nope. I dare not.

  "Cheese biscuits!" I hissed, leaning to swerve out of the way again, a nowhere. "Wait, what the—"

  The tray had finally run out of momentum, leavianding pletely still on top of it.

  "Crap."

  Grabbing the tray, I threw myself to the side, but I wasn't fast enough. The sidewalk boulder smashed into the ground, and paied in my side as it clipped me. It robably just a scratch, but the sheer power behind the throw was enough to send me spinning through the air until I colpsed in a heap in the middle of a nearby street.

  A car came to a squealing stop, avoiding crushing my head by a few inches. I breathed a sigh of relief—which I promptly sucked right ba whehan grabbed the front of the car and flung it out of his way like it was made of paper mache.

  The tray was still in my hand. My grip on it tightened, for all the good it would do. Without it, I had no way to trol Ethan. Who knew what kind of havoc he would wreak on Mauldibamm? How maaurants would he put out of business before the NuYu pill wore off a him with bad memories and the mother of all stomach aches?

  His hand closed around my throat, and he lifted me off the ground. There, with our faces mere inches apart, he bared his teeth at me.

  "Henry…give!" he snarled.

  I gasped for breath, but couldn't. Did Ethan realize he was choking me, or was his hunger blinding him to everything but his snack? I had no choice. I had to give it to him. This wasn't the smelly, hairy hill I wao die on.

  As I raised the tray i, I spied something over Ethan's shoulder. In the near distanot even fifty feet away, stood a squat brick house. I had almost made it. But like McGus loved to tell me, almost only ts in handshoes and hrenades.

  Or maybe the ck of oxygen was making me loopy.

  "GIVE!" Ethan roared into my face, sh me with spit.

  Then a st, desperate idea came to me. Before Ethan could react, I drew on my magid pushed it into the only thing I could: the lunch tray. Instantly, it burst intht blue light. Ethan blinked in surprise as I raised the tray…

  And flung it as hard as I could.

  Like a glowing frisbee, it soared through the air. My magic gave me a little bit of trol over it, and I made it curve to the right until…

  CRASH!

  …it flew straight through the brick house's window.

  Without a word, or even a backwards ghan dropped me and gave chase. I hit the ground hard, dark spots dang ay vision. Gasping and coughing, I dug into my pocket and pulled out my inhaler. Laughter surged into me, immediately setting to work patg up the ouchies and booboos Ethan had inflicted.

  When my vision finally cleared, I saw Jade standing over me.

  "You okay?" she asked, holding out her hand.

  I took it, letting her help me up. "I feel like I just went skydiving off the Empire State Building without a parachute."

  "I told you it was a bad idea!"

  "Fine, I owe you a Coke." I turo look at the brick house, whose front door had been reduced to splinters. "But at least we got him here. He's probably got Ethan hogtied by now."

  Jade didn't look vinced, but she followed as I made my way over. We went inside, where the odor of cigarettes and unwashed old people immediately assaulted my nose. And there, lying on the floor with my lunch tray cmped between his teeth, was Ethan.

  Out cold.

  The wheelchair squeaked as its oct turned around to give me the cold, disapproving stare I'd gotten so many, many times over the past few years.

  “You’d think after this long,” he grumbled, “that Ethan would know I don’t like uninvited visitors.”

  “Master, that’s not really a sasquatch. That’s…” I paused, blinking in surprise. “Wait, how did you know?”

  “When a lunch tray es flying through my window, and a sasquatch breaks down my front door, there’s only one person in the world who could be behind it.” He rolled his eyes. “And since you showed up immediately after without Ethan—who the cil says you’re never allowed to leave aloher you ditched him and came here to turn your hammer in, or somehow you mao turn him into this.”

  Ign the surprisingly sound logic, I walked over and k by Ethan’s prone form. An ugly red lump was f on his forehead, big enough to push all the way through his fur. I began to press my fingers into his neck. How do you check a sasquatch’s pulse? McGus wouldn’t have purposefully killed Ethan, but if he hadn’t known it was him then maybe…

  Etha out a long, loud snore.

  I sat down heavily on the floor, sighing with relief. “I need your help, Master. Ethan’s decided to—”

  “I don’t care.”

  My mouth snapped shut, and I looked up at McGus in surprise.

  “Y- You don’t what?” I asked, vinced I’d misheard him.

  “Maybe you didn’t catch what I just said about uninvited guests,” he said, giving me a dirty green gre. “Whatever mess you’ve gotten yourself into this time, it’s not my problem.”

  “But…But…” I held my hands out toward Ethan. “Look at him!”

  “You're the Ag Hunter, Henry!” he snapped. “When are you going to start taking responsibility for your own mistakes?”

  “But I didn’t do this!” I protested.

  McGus turned his wheelchair around and wheeled himself out of the room. “I’m going to get some air freshener. If either of you are still here when I get back, I’ll put two knots on your head just as big as his!”