The Greatest Power (11 page)

“Bwaa!” he hiccuped (for a wickedly delicious plan was bubbling up, causing him mini fits of laughter).

“Bwaa!” he hiccuped again, only this time, the clock began to strike midnight.

“Caw!”

“Bwaa-ha!”

“Caw!”

“Bwaa-ha-ha!”

“Caw!”

I should pause here for a small word of advice: You should never, and I mean
ever
, interrupt a deadly, diabolical villain when he begins bwaa-ha-ha’ing. It is both dangerous and dumb and will, in the end, get you killed.

Or, in this case, smashed beyond repair.

Damien’s laughter sputtered to a halt. And as the crudely carved crow continued cawing, Damien ripped the clock off the wall and proceeded to crush it with his black-booted feet. Up and down he jumped, smashing, crashing, until, at last, the clock quit cawing.

“Bwaa!” Damien laughed, feeling better (and
quite in control, now that he’d quieted the crow). “Bwaa-ha!” And as the plan came back into his (no longer distracted) diabolical mind, a feeling of felonious glee blossomed inside him. “Bwaa-ha-ha-ha-ha!” he chortled. “Bwaa-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

This brought the Bandito Brothers running.

“You got a plan, boss?” Pablo asked.

“A plot to catch the boy?” Angelo said (for they had all heard Damien’s mutterings).

“I wanna help! I wanna help!” Tito cried.

Damien gave them a dark, withering look, but the Bandito Brothers didn’t wither. They instead tried to do the look themselves.

“Stop that, you fools!” Damien shouted, but his plan did, in fact, include the Brothers.

And what made it so wickedly delicious was that it would, he hoped, take care of two problems at once.

The Brothers.

And the boy.

If you were brave enough to tippy-toe past the wrought-iron fence of Damien’s property and venture between his maniacal mansion (on the left) and the foreboding forest (on the right), you would do so on a wide, long-neglected path that was more mossy dirt than gravel.

And if you were brave enough to continue along that path and make it past the dual front doors (which are, I must tell you, thick white-washed oak, carved in the shape of a great, ghastly skull, with heavy brass clackers for eyes and a menacing mail drop for a mouth), you would round a corner and come upon a drawbridge.

The drawbridge extends across an enormous
hole (dug by Damien because he really, really,
really
wanted a place to put a drawbridge and didn’t, at the time, have one). And if you were, indeed, brave enough to make it this far, you would almost certainly discover that the drawbridge was drawn.

Now, by drawn, I do not mean drawn with a pencil, or colored in.

I also do not mean haggard, drained, or tired-looking.

By drawn, I mean upsy-daisied.

Horizontally neutralized.

Pointing toward Pluto.

In a word,
up
.

The drawbridge, you see, serves as both an exit ramp
and
a door.

The garage door.

Now, perhaps your garage is a hodgepodge of bikes and boxes and holiday doodads. Or maybe there’s a drum kit and other band equipment
keeping the cars out. Or perhaps it’s stuffed with fishing gear or hiking packs or Jet Skis or (let’s be frank, shall we?) a giant jumble of junk.

If this is the case, then your garage (and, for the record, mine) is nothing whatsoever like Damien Black’s.

Damien Black’s garage is there for one purpose and one purpose only.

The care and comfort of his 1959 Eldorado Biarritz.

Originally manufactured by Cadillac, the Eldorado was a long, sleek shark of a car with radical tail fins (designed to produce lift and thrust); broad, curving chrome molding (because, hey, it looked good); air suspension (for a smooth, velvety ride); and three two-barrel Rochester carburetors (because such a vehicle deserved more oomph than any conventional four-barrel jobbie could provide).

It also had, to Damien’s delight, whitewall tires.

Damien (of course) customized the car to meet his unique (and decidedly sinister) specifications, until it was rigged and jigged and loaded with gizmos and gadgets that Cadillac would never (trust me,
ever)
have thought to provide.

Damien also painted it (in a moment of sheer frivolity) not black but the deepest, darkest purple imaginable and installed a fold-back ragtop to match.

The car became his pride and joy.

His coolest, most marvelous treasure.

His devilishly dandy delight.

It was, without question, his baby.

So it was with sentimental sadness that Damien now realized that it had been much too long since he’d driven the Eldorado.

His Sewer Cruiser had somehow usurped his Eldorado. Sure, the Cruiser was functional, fast, and
bad
(for a souped-up moped, anyway), and it did use very little gas (a definite plus), but it wasn’t the Eldorado!

How had so much time gone by?

How had life become so tangled that he couldn’t just take the Eldorado out for a spin once in a while? Top down, wind in his oily hair, whitewall tires purring on the open road … you know, just get out and
cruise
.

What doubly annoyed him was that he was thinking about the Eldorado now because he was
saddled with those blasted Bandito Brothers. For his double-edged plan to work, he needed to get them into town.

Damien considered the possibilities:

It was too far for them to walk.

He couldn’t trust them to get downtown on their bucktoothed burro (which was, in fact, the means by which they’d arrived at the mansion).

And they’d never all fit on the Sewer Cruiser. (Besides, he didn’t want them knowing about his secret speedway under town—they already knew way too much.)

So after spending the night in his workshop (muttering and brooding and devising diabolical devices needed for his plan), he realized he had no choice.

They would take the Eldorado.

It would, after all, be worth it.

If
they caught the boy.

As you may recall, the Invisibility ingot does not make you inaudible (which is why it was important for Dave to be,
shhhh
, quiet when he was moving among people toward the manhole cover after the bank heist).

It also does not make you non-odiferous (which is why the monkey could smell Dave, even over the aroma of freshly ground Himalayan coffee).

And unfortunately, it does not make you disappear physically (which is why Damien’s coat snagged as he whooshed by Dave in the convoluted corridor).

I say “unfortunately” because it was this solid
little fact that gave Damien Black his bwaa-ha-ha moment in the great room (interrupted as it was by the caw-caw clock). It was this solid little fact that had him working feverishly through the night in his workshop.

And in the end, it was this solid little fact that had him dig through his den of dastardly disguises and make the Bandito Brothers remove their absurd bandoliers and sombreros so they could, instead, dress up as blind men.

“I feel naked,” Pablo complained, for although Damien had stripped them of their six-shooters when they’d arrived, they’d still been wearing their bandoliers of ammunition, and the weight across his chest had given Pablo a real sense of security.

“I feel bald,” Angelo complained (which was, I assure you, more than just a feeling).

“Wheeeee!” Tito squealed, running around in circles with his arms spread wide. “I can fly!”

“Stop that, you fool!” Damien snapped. Then he took a deep, demented breath and hissed, “You said you wanted to be my …
assistants.”
(Even saying the word caused him to shudder.)

“We do, Mr. Black! We do!” they all cried.

“Then you must
listen.”

“We will, Mr. Black! We will!”

“Shut up, you fools, and just listen!”

“We will, Mr. Black! We will!”

“DO IT NOW!”

The Bandito Brothers made big eyes and zipped their lips.

Damien took a deep, calming breath. “Here,” he said, handing them each a pair of strange-looking goggles.

“Do these make us blind?” Tito asked cheerfully.

“The man said shut up!” Angelo and Pablo hissed at him.

Damien Black gave Angelo and Pablo a small, twisted smile. “Some of us are learning, I see.”

Then he turned to Tito. “Quite the opposite. They make you see.”

“When do we get to be blind?” Tito asked. Damien pulled a villainous face at Pablo. “Can you make him SHUT UP?”

Pablo got his ratty face right up to Tito’s. His eyes were like beady little coals of hatred. “We’re going to
pretend
to be blind, you idiot! It’s a
disguise
. Now, do you want to help, or do you want to stay here?” Tito gulped and in a very small voice said, “I want to help.” “He’ll be quiet, boss,” Pablo said, feeling very much like Damien’s right-hand man.

The treasure hunter glared at Tito for a solid minute before
continuing. “The goggles,” he said, strapping an extra-deluxe pair over his own oily head, “have one shaded lens and one
magic
lens.”

“Magic?” the Bandito Brothers gasped, then hurried to strap on their own goggles.