Villain's Lair (12 page)

One car after another collided, until the whole intersection was blocked.

“Uh-oh,” Pablo said.

“Not good,” Angelo agreed.

“Should we maybe play a happy song?” Tito asked, looking around at the wreckage that surrounded them.

Pablo and Angelo exchanged looks, then jumped off of Rosie and scrambled through the jumble of bumpers and broken glass, leaving Tito and Rosie to fend for themselves.

Meanwhile, Damien had chased Luis around the roof of the building until at last he had him cornered. “Now!” he panted. “Give it to me or
die.
“

“I don't know what you're talking about!” Luis cried.

Damien grabbed him by the neck and gave him a diabolical sneer. “What do you take me for? A fool?”

“NO!” Luis choked out. “I take you for a crazy man!”

Damien pinched the boy's neck tighter and ripped off his shirtsleeve.

No powerband.

He ripped off the other sleeve.

Again, no powerband.

“Where is it?” he shouted.

Then a giant lightbulb went on over his devious, diabolical head.

“Bwaa-ha-ha-ha-ha!” he cried, then grabbed the boy by the ankle, dragged him onto the ground, turned him onto his stomach, and sat on him while he inspected his ankles.

His pockets!

His armpits!

“Where is it?” he finally screeched. “Where have you hidden it?”

“I don't know!” Luis said into the gravelly roof.

“Well, let's see if we can't make you remember !” Damien snarled.

And with that, he grabbed the boy by his ankles, hung him upside down, waddled him across the roof, and did something only a desperate, diabolical demon of a man would do.

He dangled him over the edge.

Since the day that Dave had first seen the Bandito Brothers in town, he'd watched for them while he was out making his Roadrunner Ex-press deliveries.

Each time he found them, they had moved closer to his neighborhood.

Each day he saw them, he grew more and more nervous.

And each time Sticky had to tell him, “You would be safer to ignore them,
señor.
They are looking for a boy in red and white sneakers and a snake hat.”

But Dave seemed unable to ignore them. He couldn't help wondering if they were asking about
a boy with a pet gecko. Sticky had been lying low, but a lot of the kids at school knew he had a pet gecko. A lot of his
neighborhood
knew it.

What if the Bandito Brothers found out where he lived?

What if Damien Black came to his apartment?

What if that demented villain hurt his family?

Well, his sister, that would be one thing. But his parents?

Then one day Dave was racing through the streets on his bike, making a delivery to a business on the outskirts of the city, when he heard the metal-munching, windshield-crunching pileup of cars.

“Ay
caramba!
What was that?” Sticky cried, jolting awake from his siesta.

Dave coasted for a moment, then turned down a side street toward the sound. He could hear people shouting, and everyone on the sidewalks seemed to be funneling toward the commotion.

“What a mess!” Dave said as the intersection came into view.

It wasn't just a two- or three-car crash.

There were cars crunched in all directions.

People were shouting.

Crying.

It was a doozy of a disaster.

And then Sticky choked out, “Hopping
habañerosl
Look!” as he pointed to the very heart of the chaos. “It's Rosie and Tito!”

Now, it's a well-known fact that gravity pulls. There's the gravity of the earth, which keeps us and our buildings and our bikes and burros all securely on the ground. It's a very strong force, and the truth is, no one completely understands it.

A
situation
also has a pull to it, depending on its gravity. It's not the same kind of gravity as the gravity of earth, but it has a similar effect.

People are pulled to it.

The more grave the situation, the stronger the pull. So in this particular case, in this particular city, this particular metal-munching, windshield-crunching pileup had what might be called
extreme
gravity.

Everybody wanted to get a closer look.

Now, when Dave saw that the nucleus of this pileup, the very heart of this pull, was one badly bucktoothed burro, he, too, wanted to get a closer look. But he was encumbered by his bike. So he backtracked to a basement stairwell, locked his bike against the railing, then returned to the chaos in the intersection.

Word of the wreck had radiated out quickly, and more and more people were funneling in to see.

Sirens wailed in the distance.

People began shoving and bumping.

And then a familiar voice called through the crowd, “Dave!”

“Ay
chihuahua
, not her!” Sticky said, ducking for cover.

It was, indeed, Lily, who had spotted Dave's bright red sweatshirt and was now squeezing between people to get to him. “Did you see what happened?”

Dave shook his head.

“What's a
donkey
doing here? And who's that guy on it? Why is he wearing a bandolier? Is that ammunition real? Does he have a gun?”

Dave knew the answers to all these questions (or, at least, he believed he did), but he wisely chose not to answer them. Instead, he did what he usually did when he was around Lily.

He stood there staring at her, feeling totally dorky.

And it was while he was standing there, feeling (and, I'm afraid,
looking)
totally dorky, that something strange happened.

Something very strange indeed.

A hat came out of the sky and landed with a loud
thwap
between Dave and Lily.

It was a purple ball cap.

With a diamondback snake design.

Dave stared, not believing his eyes.

Was this
his
hat?

Lily snatched it off the ground. “Is this
your
hat?” she asked, understandably confused, as Dave was wearing his bike helmet.

“N-no,” Dave lied, staring at the hat.

Then Lily looked up. Up to where the hat had thwapped down from. And then Lily, being a very vocal sort of girl, let out an ear-piercing, heart-spearing
scream
as she backed away from the building.

Soon everyone was looking up at the dreadful sight above, talking, pointing, and yes, screaming.

And that's when Sticky, who had been slyly watching the exchange between Dave and Lily,
looked up, up, up and saw poor Luis dangling down, down, down from the roof of the building.

“What the
jalapeño
is that?” he cried. But then, because geckos have keen eyesight, he figured out what the
jalapeño
it was.
“Señor!
Ay
caramba! Señor!”
he said, pulling frantically on Dave's ear. “It's Damien Black!” And then, being one smart gecko, he put it all together lickety-split. “The hat! Hopping
habañeros, hombrel
That evil
hombre's
got a boy he thinks is you!”

Dave looked around frantically.

There wasn't a policeman in sight!

He could hear sirens, so he knew they were coming (or at least trying to), but by the time they got there, it might be too late.

Someone had to do something!

Why was everyone just standing around?

Then, in his ear, he heard Sticky's voice. “Why are you standing there like a
bobo
saguaro?”

“Huh?”

“You need to move!
Ándale!”

Dave looked at the gecko. “Move? Move where?”

Sticky blinked at Dave.

He stretched out his little gecko spine.

He crossed his little gecko arms.

Then he gave Dave a stern, hard look and said, “Climb the building, man! Save the boy!”

Dave wasted no time. He returned to the basement stairwell where he had chained his bike, hurried down the stairs, and swiftly stripped out of his helmet, sweatshirt, shirt, and shoes. Then he donned a black shirt, a black cap, slip-on shoes, and shades, and stuffed the rest of his belongings inside his backpack, which he left in the corner of the basement stairwell.

If you've ever seen a gecko move, you know they are quick, assured, and nimble. And although Dave moved quickly and nimbly up the wall, he was not feeling at all assured.

“I can't believe I'm up this high!” he said when they'd reached the third floor. “What if the power just
stops?”

“It won't!” Sticky replied, then mumbled, “At least, it never has for me.”

“But you're a gecko! You're
supposed
to walk on walls!”

While he talked, Dave pressed on, moving nimbly on a diagonal across the building toward the side where Damien was dangling Luis from the roof. With each step, he moved more and more in the style of a gecko, holding his arms and legs to the side instead of beneath him. With each step he took, he felt stronger, more agile, more comfortable being on a wall.

Up the building he darted.

Around the corner he scurried.

He could see Damien Black now, could hear him yelling something at the boy.

And below him? Below him people had stopped screaming and were now gasping and asking each other, “How is he climbing the wall? Can you see a rope? Is he a rock climber? Who is that?
What
is that?”

And then came the inevitable moment when Damien saw him.

He stopped shaking Luis.

He blinked his dark, disbelieving eyes at Dave, then uttered the only word appropriate in such a situation:

“Huh?”

But in a flash, his eyes were back to being deadly and diabolical, and he roared, “BWAA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!” which echoed eerily off the building across the street. “BWAA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!”

You see, in the end, he had found the boy.

The right boy.

His actions had ultimately drawn him out.

(By mistake, perhaps, but to Damien's mind, the result immediately became part of his master plan. His premeditated, brilliant scheme to flush out the boy and get what was rightfully his! Bwaa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! This, you see, is
how dastardly villains make themselves feel smart.)

And now what?

Dave had no problem with now what. He was filled with a newfound bravery. A power inside of him that made him believe that he could outrun that evil
hombre
, no problem. A power inside of him that made him believe that he was stronger, quicker, faster, and smarter than evil.

He had the power of
good.

Luis, at this point, however, thought he had lost his mind. It was, after all, flooded with blood from hanging upside down, and that, combined with the fear of dying, made not believing what he was seeing quite believable.

But the vision of a boy walking straight up the wall didn't go away. And then the crazy man who had been dangling him upside down suddenly hoisted him back up onto the roof and dumped him.

As the blood rushed out of his head, he
realized that he
had
seen what he'd thought he'd seen.

A boy had walked up the wall to save him.

The minute Luis had his wits about him and saw that the devilish man was no longer interested in him, he got to his feet and started sneaky-toeing toward the fire escape stairs. But just as he was getting near it, two of the weirdos who had followed him earlier came panting onto the roof.

“Mr. Black!” they shouted. “We're here!”

Damien Black waved them back, as he was crouched and ready to pounce the instant Dave came over the edge.

But once again, Damien Black was about to be outwitted by a child.

(With the help, that is, of a gecko lizard.)

“Careful,
hombre
, careful,” Sticky whispered in Dave's ear. “A little to the left,
then
leap up.”