The Greatest Power Read online

Or cutesy-wootsy squishable mice.

  But he did hear something.

  Something coming from the other side of the blood-red door.

  Something … happy-sounding?

  To a dark, demented mind, there is nothing more nerve-shattering than the sounds of someone else’s happiness. Birds chirping, people singing, laughter … these are like long fingernails across an old, dusty chalkboard.

  And to make matters worse, the sound Damien heard wasn’t simply chirping or singing or laughter.

  It wasn’t just happy.

  It was, Damien realized, joyous.

  The treasure hunter cringed.

  He quivered.

  He covered his ears!

  A great shudder moved from the top of his oily head to the tips of his ragged toenails as he gasped, “What is making that sound?”

  At last, and with great bravery (for he was truly frightened by the sound), he opened the blood-red door.

  The sound became unbearable!

  And someone had turned on the floodlight!

  He stepped through the door, and what he saw astounded him.

  Rendered him speechless.

  Gave him a severe case of dropjaw.

  In all his dastardly days, he had never, I promise you, ever seen such a sight.

  Tito Bandito (the one who looked like an ox and had a head full of rocks) was bouncing on the edge of the diving-board platform, squealing with delight. Pablo and Angelo were in line behind him, and there was a monkey (his monkey) swinging from here to there, flipping around, eeking and squeaking, and having a golden time.

  “GERONIMOOOOOO! WATCH OUT BELOW!” Tito cried, then boinged off the diving board and cannonballed into the sea of red balls below.

  Not one to remain dropjawed for long, Damien yanked in the trapeze bar and swooped down to the diving-board platform, landing with a great whoosh-swoosh of his raven-winged coat.

  His eyes were like fiery coals.

  His sneer like a razor of ice.

  Angelo and Pablo cowered from the demonic sight, feeling both burned and chilled.

  Neither had to say “Uh-oh.”

  They both knew.

  They were in deep, diabolical doo-doo.

  “What do you idiots think you are doing?” Damien seethed, moving toward the two Brothers.

  “Having a little fun?” Angelo tried (for even a man with a scarred face and hairy arms likes to have a little fun—especially after having been tied up for three days).

  “How could we resist?” Pablo asked. “It’s the ultimate playland, Mr. Black!” (And the Bandito Brothers would, in fact, know. They had been run out of many a fast-food playland and had never, trust me, ever seen one this remarkably radical.)

  “Mr. Black! Mr. Black!” Tito squealed from below. “Jump! Jump! It’ll make you happyyyyyyyy,” he cried, flinging armloads of balls into the air.

  “Shut up, you fool!” Damien barked at him. Then he came at Pablo and Angelo. “How did you get away? How did you unlock my monkey?”

  “The m-m-monkey unlocked us,” Angelo said, inching backward.

  “W-w-we thought y-y-you sent him,” Pablo added.

  “He’s a flying monkey,” Tito shouted from below.

  “You’re a flying idiot,” Damien shouted down at him. “Now get up here and catch my monkey!”

  “Sure thing, Mr. Black, we’ll catch him,” Angelo said.

  “We’ll have him in no time!” Pablo agreed.

  “Here, monkey-monkey-monkey!” Tito cried, climbing the ladder.

  The monkey had, in fact, untied the Brothers. And being no idiot (after all, an idiot could never have unraveled twenty square knots, eleven grannies, five cat’s-paws, nine half hitches, and three hangman’s knots), the monkey now sensed that he was once again in danger of being caught and caged. So, knowing no other way out, he simply dropped from his hiding place under the diving board and scurried out of the ball pit and up the slide, back to the whooshing door.

  “After him!” Damien cried, but while the Bandito Brothers fumbled and bumbled after the monkey, Damien himself took a trapdoor shortcut and headed straight for the espresso café. Something, he realized, didn’t make sense.

  If the Bandito Brothers hadn’t let the monkey go, how had he gotten free?

  Perhaps he had dug a way out?

  Maybe he had over-amped on coffee and somehow King Konged the bars?

  (Damien did, in fact, know that his monkey consumed too much coffee—any was too much at the import prices he’d been paying—but what could he do about it? He didn’t want to have to make his own espresso, so a hyped-up monkey was simply part of having his own café.)

  Damien, however, discovered no bent bars, no escape holes, and no sprung locks when he arrived at the café. Everything, it seemed, was perfectly in place.

  But then he noticed something in the golden glow of café lighting.

  Something sneaky.

  Or, really, something sneakerish.

  There were footprints.

  Sneaker-toed footprints.

  Everywhere.

  Blood (what little there was) drained from Damien’s face.

  His body quivered.

  It quaked.

  Had an anger seismometer been attached to his temples, the needle would have shot off the scale, for it was at that moment that the great calculating mind of Damien Black finally figured it out.

  “The boy!” he cried.

  And with a great whoosh-swoosh of his black-raven coat, he stormed off to find him.

  It was all Damien Black knew about Dave—that he was a boy. He didn’t know who he was, or how old he was, or that he lived with his mother and father and younger sister in a humble walk-up apartment on the poor side of town.

  All he knew was that he was a boy.

  A confounded, pesky, and maddeningly lucky boy.

  Oh, wait.

  That is not entirely true.

  (The part about what Damien knew, that is.)

  He also knew that the boy had a confounded, pesky, maddeningly talkative gecko named Sticky.

  And that Sticky had given the boy his prized magic wristband, along with the Wall-Walker and Invisibility ingots.

  But really, that’s all he knew. Oh.

  Wait again.

  He also knew that the boy had dark hair. And wore sneakers.

  And sunglasses and a ball cap for a disguise. (Which Damien found ludicrous, lazy, and ridiculously lame. He would 1 have been right, too, except for the inconvenient fact that, being so generic, the disguise was very effective. Lots of boys wear ball caps and, when they’re feeling the need to look cool, shades.)

  But really, that’s all he knew.

  Except that the mere thought of the boy drove him mad (or, I should say, madder), but that’s really more about him than it is about the boy, isn’t it? So I think this time we really have covered everything Damien knew about the boy.

  What Damien was now piecing together, however, was that the boy must have released the monkey (as a decoy, no doubt), untied the Bandito Brothers (while invisible, thereby making it look like the monkey had done it), activated the rattle alarm, and been right there in the hallway when Damien’s coat had snagged. (That last part, at least, he got right.)

  As Damien stormed back to the counting room, he spat out curses and muttered things like “Drat that brat!” and “That pint-sized pest!” and “What fool thinks he can get away with this?”

  “This” turned out to be much more than getting away with following Damien through the sewer system, setting free his hyped-up monkey, and infiltrating his mansion. “This” also included (to Damien’s absolute fury) getting away with stealing stolen cash and a certain tiger-eye ring.

  You see, while Damien was dealing with the Bandito Brothers and discovering sneakerish footprints around his espresso café, Dave and Sticky were discovering a table with stacks of cash alongside a tiger-eye ring.

  “I can’t believe it!” Dave whispered, and quickly shoved e
verything into the stretchy sack Damien had used to haul it from the bank. Then he made a speedy and invisible exit through, of all things, the mansion’s front door.

  And now, as he moved along the outskirts of the forbidding forest that surrounded the mansion, hurrying toward the property’s large, tilting wrought-iron gate, he could barely believe his luck. “That was almost too easy,” he whispered.

  Sticky was perched on Dave’s (still invisible) shoulder, facing backward. “No sign of him yet, señor, but I would ándale! He is going to be one steamed tamale when he sees what’s missing!”

  So Dave squeezed past the gate and hurried along the road that led away from Raven Ridge. But they’d gone less than a mile when Dave started complaining that he didn’t feel well.

  “Ay-ay,” Sticky said. “Achy eyes? Squooshy stomach? Fierce bad headache?”

  “Yes!” Dave said, looking at the gecko with surprise. “You feel sick, too?”

  “I feel fine, señor.”

  “So … how do you know how I feel?”

  Sticky gave a little gecko shrug. “That evil hombre used to get up-chucky when he went invisible for too long, too.”

  “Damien Black did?”

  “How many evil hombres do you know?”

  “So what do I do?”

  “Take it out, or you’ll be one pukey poncho.”

  “A pukey poncho?”

  Sticky simply shrugged.

  So Dave stopped, stuffed the sack of loot inside his backpack, took the Invisibility ingot out of the powerband, became instantly (and dangerously) visible, and continued down the mountain as fast as his feet could take him.

  Night had fallen while they had been in (and under) the mansion, but the moon was bright, and as Dave hurried down the long, lonely road that wound away from Raven Ridge, he worried about being spotted by Damien Black. Perhaps Damien had boy-seeking missiles he could launch from the mansion.

  Or hungry hounds he could unleash.

  Or rabid bats that would flutter frantically around his head and bite him!

  Damien Black was, after all, diabolically deranged.

  Anything was possible.

  But as Dave and Sticky finally crossed over the bridge that led into the city, no missiles screeched toward them, no hounds hunted them down, and no bats attacked with rabid fangs.

  They were, it appeared, safe.

  “Feeling better, señor?” Sticky asked as Dave hurried along city streets back to his bike (which, if you recall, he’d left near the bank).

  And that’s when Dave realized that he was, indeed, feeling better.

  All better.

  “Why does it make you sick?” he asked the gecko.

  Sticky shrugged. “Because being Invisibility Man is not nearly as asombroso as being the Gecko.”

  Dave frowned at him. “That’s no answer!”

  “Sí. But that’s because I have no answer, señor. How am I supposed to know? I’m a gecko. Maybe it messes with your DNA when you go invisible?”

  “Your DNA?” Dave glanced at the gecko, shook his head, then said, “Anyway. Do the other ingots make you sick?”

  “The other ingots? You mean the ones that evil hombre has?”

  Damien did, indeed, hold all of the power ingots but two. He had powers like Super Strength and Super Speed and Flying … powers that Dave hoped to someday get his hands on.

  (Especially Flying.)

  “Yes, that’s what I mean,” Dave snapped. “Of course that’s what I mean. Do all of them make you sick?”

  Sticky studied the tips of his little gecko fingernails. “I only know what happened to that evil hombre, okay?”

  “And?”

  “And he only really used Invisibility and Flying.”

  “And?”

  Sticky put his hand back on Dave’s shoulder and cocked his head. “And they both made him up-chucky if he used them too long.”

  “Great. Just great.” Dave huffed, then turned to Sticky. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  Sticky shrugged. “I didn’t know it would happen to you. I thought maybe it was just that evil hombre.”

  “A warning would have been nice,” Dave grumbled.

  Sticky frowned at him. “Why are you being a grouchy gaucho? So you were sick. Now you’re better, right?” He eyed him. “And just in case I have to point this out to you, señor, Gecko Power has never made you sick.”

  “I don’t want to be the Gecko! I want to be Disappearing Dude or the Fantastic Flier! What kind of lame superhero is the Gecko?”

  Sticky’s face scowled to the left.

  It scowled to the right.

  He crossed his arms and studied Dave with a scowl that eventually consumed his entire face. At last, he said, “You cut me to the quick, señor.”

  Dave tried apologizing, but Sticky (as you might imagine) was one ticked-off lizard.

  But in the end, their fight might have been a good thing.

  It kept Dave’s mind off of the trouble he was going to be in for getting home so late.

  And (more worrisome, even, than the wrath of a worried mother) the fact that Damien would, no doubt, come after him.

  The first person Dave had to face when he returned home was not his worried mother. It was his saucy neighbor, Lily Espinoza. He accidentally bumped her with his bike as he entered the foyer (which was not so much an actual foyer as it was a dingy corridor with mailboxes on the wall).

  “Freaky frijoles!” Sticky said, diving for cover inside Dave’s sweatshirt. He wasn’t afraid of Lily. It was Topaz, the sharp-clawed, ill-tempered, squooshy-faced cat cradled in Lily’s arms that was the real problem. Topaz, you see, was obsessed with getting her claws into Sticky. (A condition caused, no doubt, by Sticky’s sneaky habit of tormenting the cat.)

  “Hey, delivery boy,” Lily said in a mocking (and annoyingly superior) way.

  “Hey,” Dave replied, keeping his eyes down as he grabbed his bike and hoisted it onto his shoulder.

  “Have a rough day couriering packages?” she asked, walking up the stairs behind Dave and his shouldered bike.

  “Yeah,” Dave said, wishing Lily would quit making fun of him.

  Lily was, in fact, making fun of him. To her, Dave was a buttoned-up dork. He got good grades, did good deeds (like rescue her cat when Topaz was stranded outside on the apartment flower boxes, but never mind about that), wore a dorky red sweatshirt, and couriered packages.

  Who couriers packages when they’re in middle school?

  Who actually uses the word “courier”?

  Dorks, that’s who.

  (Which would, by her own definition, qualify Lily as a dork if it weren’t for the fact that she wasn’t actually using the word so much as using it to make fun of Dave.)

  “Why’s your backpack so stuffed?” she asked.

  Now, Dave couldn’t exactly tell her the truth (which was that it was stuffed with cash stolen from the bank), and since he wasn’t very good at telling her to buzz off, he instead made up a reputation-supporting lie. “Uh, I checked out some books for Ms. DeWitt’s project.”

  “Figures,” she grumbled as they made the turn to the next flight up. “It’s not due for two weeks, you know.”

  Dave nodded.

  Topaz was really starting to squirm now, as Sticky (unseen by Lily) was slyly taunting her from his new location inside the back of Dave’s collar.

  “You carry all that weight all over town?” Lily asked.

  Dave bounded up the steps as fast as he could (which wasn’t all that fast, considering he was shouldering a bike and had a pack full of cash). “Look, it’s just life, okay?”

  “Don’t I know it,” she snorted. “All of us have burdens to bear, you know. It’s not just you.”

  Dave, being thirteen, did not understand where this comment had come from, why she had made it, or how something so philosophical had come out of Lily Espinoza. All he really under-stood about Lily was that she was dangerous: gossipy, sarcastic, and nosy (not to ment
ion unnervingly pretty).

  By the time they reached the seventh floor, Dave was out of breath and ready to face his parents.

  Anything to get away from Lily Espinoza.

  But as Lily was moving toward her family’s apartment, tossing “Have fun doing your homework this weekend” over her shoulder, Topaz squirmed free and shot down the hallway, up Dave’s leg, and clawed her way over the top of his backpack.

  “Ow! Ow!” Dave cried (in an admittedly dorky way, but, hey, cat claws hurt). He spun around trying to free himself of the cat (who was now hissing and clawing at his collar) and, in the process, whacked the wall with his bike, stumbled, and went crashing down to the floor.

  “Topaz!” Lily cried. “Topaz, no!”

  Now, it’s a well-known fact that cats do not respond to the “No!” command. Even dogs in the heat of the hunt are loath to mind the word “no.” It is simply instinct. The pursuit of prey.

  So as you might imagine, commanding a sharp-clawed, ill-tempered, squooshy-faced fur ball to stop hunting down a smart-alecky reptile was completely futile. Topaz pawed and clawed and pounced and hissed, attacking poor Dave’s head and neck and shoulders until, at last, Lily grabbed the cat by the scruff and unhooked her front claws from their final, desperate clutch on Dave’s backpack.

  “My cat hates you,” she said, looking down on the battered heap of Dave and his bike.

  “Apology accepted,” Dave grumbled, but before he could recover, he heard “Dave-y’s in trouble, Dave-y’s in trouble” singsonging out of his own apartment, followed by “He’s home, Mom! He was out with his girlfriend!”

  Without a word, Lily disappeared inside her own apartment (as nothing makes a saucy girl take off faster than being mistaken for the girlfriend of a buttoned-up dork). And just as Lily’s apartment door closed, Dave’s flew fully open. (It had been cracked so that Evie, Dave’s little sister, could keep an eye on the hallway and be the first to sound the alarm about her wayward brother.)

  “Davey,” Mrs. Sanchez cried. “Where have you been!”

  “I told you he was fine,” Mr. Sanchez said, looking down at Dave. “Rough day?”

  Dave was untangling himself from his bike. “Very. Sorry I’m late.”

  “Dave-y was with Lil-y, Dave-y was with Lil-y.”