The Greatest Power (7 page)

“Holy hurling
habañeros!”
Sticky cried as they dropped down, down, down through the vast, eerie darkness. But just as Dave began thinking he’d spun through the Doorway of Death, he landed with a great
thump-bump-bump
on something rubbery-soft and began sliding.

They had, in fact, not passed through the Doorway of Death (although there were several such doorways in the mansion). Quite the opposite. This passageway, this
route
, was the one Damien took when he was in a grand mood. (It was also the one he took when he was in a foul mood, in hopes of cheering up.)

The whooshing doorway swept whoever pushed
it out onto a slide. A giant pitch-black inflato slide, with big air-filled bumpers on the sides, and swooshy twists and turns, all cloaked in complete darkness.

For Damien, the slide through the darkness was always over much too soon.

For Dave and Sticky, it lasted an eternity.

(The actual time was thirteen point seven seconds, which just goes to show that time is relative, especially when traveling through the fifth dimension—fear.)

At precisely thirteen seconds, Dave and Sticky went airborne for a second (well, for seven-tenths of a second, to be precise) and landed with a
flooop-bloop-whoop
onto small plastic orbs of air.

“A ball pit?” Dave asked, for he was, in fact, up to his neck in lightweight red plastic balls (although, being in total darkness, the color of the balls was relevant only to the demented mind of Damien Black). Dave waded forward.
“Now
what?”

This was a good question. A very good question, indeed. For every direction Dave waded led to a wall.

A dead end.

A no-way-out.

And while Dave waded, Sticky waited.

He rolled his eyes.

He shook his head.

He crossed his arms.

He sighed in the way only exasperated kleptomaniacal talking gecko lizards can sigh.

At last, he’d had enough.

“Señor
. Are we going to wade around in a sea of balls all day? Or are you going to use the night-light?” (The night-light was not a little plug-in-the-wall doogoodie, but another one of Sticky’s many words for flashlight.)

“I didn’t want to give us away!” Dave whispered.

This was, in fact, a good thing to consider as,
although the flashlight itself was invisible in Dave’s hand, the Invisibility ingot had no control over the actual beam of light. (Once again, the whys of Invisibility are not entirely understood. It appears to have something to do with the distance from the powerband and the conveyance of the wearer’s body heat, but no matter. We’ll just deal with the reality, and the reality was that the light beam was visible.)

After wading around in the vast sea of plastic balls for another few minutes, however, Dave decided that using the flashlight might be a good idea after all.

“Here,
hombre,”
Sticky said, handing it over.

Dave shined it around and almost immediately discovered a ladder.

A tall, narrow ladder that led out of a swimming pool of balls.

Dave began climbing.

Up, up, up he climbed.

Up.

Up.

Up.

The ladder ended, at long last, on a long, bouncy platform.

“A diving board?” Dave whispered as he inched forward. He shined the light down at the sea of red balls (which looked to him like a sea of blood). He inched another foot forward.

And another.

“Not a good idea,
señor,”
Sticky whispered, for the trip down looked to the little lizard like it would end in one nasty splat.

“I’m not going to dive!” Dave whispered. “What do you think I am, crazy?”

“So why are we out here?” Sticky asked, and he was now quivering, as Dave had inched out to the forward end of the diving board.

“Because there’s got to be a way out of here!” Dave replied.

Above them, there was, indeed, a way out: a
triangular trapeze bar that slid along a wire (by the power of a good push forward) to a seemingly solid platform by a blood-red door. All Dave had to do was
boing
up to the bar and swing over to the platform.

And if he missed?

Into the sea of blood he’d fall.

“Ready?” Dave whispered after he’d stared at the trapeze bar long enough to develop a kink in his neck.

“Uh,
señor
? Why swing like a monkey, or maybe die trying, when you could just switch to Gecko Power and climb the wall?”

Dave turned to Sticky and blinked.

Then he stared.

Then his eyebrows went all rumply.

Sticky shrugged. “Just a suggestion,
señor.”

“What was I
thinking
?” Dave muttered, and, lickety-split, he switched ingots and climbed the wall to the doorway platform.

“See? Easy-sneezy,” Sticky said with a very self-satisfied smirk. “Someday you’ll start thinking like a gecko,
señor
. Then you’ll
really
be the Gecko.”

“I don’t
want
to be the Gecko!” Dave snapped. “I want to be … I’m still thinking of a name. Invisibility Man, Disappearing Dude … something like that.”

“Disappearing Dude?” Sticky’s face twisted in disgust. “Why not just call yourself Lame-o Bandito?”

“Because I’m
not
a bandit!”

“But you
are
lame-o?”

“No! I just don’t want to be the Gecko!”

Sticky shrugged. “Too bad,
hombre
, because that’s what people call you.” He eyed Dave. “And you should be proud. Gecko Power is
asombroso!”

“Yeah?” Dave said as he put away the flashlight. “Well, I’m switching back to Invisibility right now because it’s
asombroso’
er!”

After the switch was made, Dave squared his invisible shoulders.

He took a deep (and, yes, invisible) breath.

He faced the very visible blood-red door and said (a very audible), “Here goes nothing.”

Then he boldly twisted the cold black door-knob and entered the mansion.

Damien Black’s security system was exactly what you might expect from a dangerously demented villain.

Patched together.

Complicated.

A haphazard hodgepodge.

It was, in fact, a messy web of amplifying, echoing tubes that Damien had woven together bit by bit as the mansion’s size (both aboveground and below) had continued to expand.

Why echoing tubes and not, say, a regular ringy-dingy alarm?

Well, having an unfounded (or, if you will, un-
ground
ed) fear of blackouts, Damien did not think
it wise to rely on electricity. Instead, he’d rigged up the triggering of different sounds for each en-trance to the mansion. One door activated a tinkly-winkly bell (which then tinkly-winkled throughout the house via the echoing tubes). Another door activated the string of a ukulele (which then ukulele’d through the entire mansion). The door that Dave and Sticky had just tippy-toed through activated a rattle.

Now, by rattle, I do not mean a baby’s rattle.

Or the rattle produced by, say, a loose muffler bracket on the underbelly of an old jalopy.

No, by rattle, I mean
snake
rattle.

This particular rattle had been cut from an eight-foot sidewinder (which Damien had stalked and killed while on a snake safari in the Mojave Desert), and the spittery-spattery sound it made was fast and frightening.

Dave spun around quickly when he heard it, for although he was invisible, he was, in fact, quite
solid and knew that snakes rattle when frightened and are masters at detecting odor.

He was, he feared, within both striking and smelling distance. Sticky, however, pointed to the rattle (which was dangling in front of a flared receiving horn that fed into dozens of echoing tubes) and simply said, “That,
señor
, means trouble.” It did, indeed, mean trouble. Four rooms (and one convoluted corridor) away, Damien Black was completely absorbed in the counting of stolen cash when the alarm rattled. “… Four thousand six hundred and sixty. Four thousand six hundred and
eighty. Four thousand
seven
hundred. Four thou—huh?” Damien’s dark eyes darted about, a twenty-dollar bill poised mid-count. And since he was immersed in one of his three favorite occupations (tricketeering and gadgeting being the other two), he did not want to believe that he was hearing what he was, indeed, hearing.

But there it was, sounding like a long, rattly rainstick—the Snake Alarm. “Who the …”

Through Damien’s mind flashed some hopeful possibilities.

A wayward bat?

(It was a distinct possibility.)

A runaway rat?

(Again, no stretch there.)

A menacing mouse?

(He was grasping for culprits with that one. Nothing so cute dared live anywhere near his nefarious mansion.)

And then a more serious possibility jumped into Damien’s flashing mind.

Could the Bandito Brothers have rattled the alarm?

Had those buffoons managed to escape?

Impossible!

Unless …

Unless they’d been helped?

The twenty-dollar bill began to quiver in the treasure hunter’s hand, and at last he laid it down with a bone-chilling thought.

Perhaps he had been followed.

But… by whom?

Agents from the bank?

The
police
?

They wouldn’t dare!

(Or, at least, they had never dared before.)

Still. Damien Black did not like the idea.

Not one itsy-bitsy bit.

And although he still hoped for the possibility of a bat or a rat or a cutesy-wootsy mouse (that he
could easily squish with his black-booted foot), in his devilish gut he knew something bigger was afoot.

Something irksome.

Troublesome.

And with the luck he’d been having, difficult to dispose of.

Why couldn’t he just be left alone to count his robbings?

But the alarm had, indeed, alarmed him, so Damien scraped back his counting chair, snatched up his long double-edged axe (which had been leaning against a wall), and cautiously exited the counting room.

He saw nothing in the convoluted corridor (although the fact is, he couldn’t see very far because, being convoluted, the corridor had only short lines of sight).