Rapacia: The Second Circle of Heck (21 page)

Amandi fought to lock eyes with those of the demon’s, whose dull gaze was concealed beneath drooping eyelids.

“Principal Bubb told me to torment them with the splendors of Mallvana before sentencing them to the unspeakable anguish of Sadia,” Amandi declared.

The demon chuckled, which caused his chins to ripple like someone shuffling a deck of cold cuts.

“That Bubb, always taking punishment to the next level,” the demon replied before waving Amandi and her gaggle of prisoners forward.

“Demons are
so
gullible,” Amandi sneered to herself while shoving the three boys through the curtains.

Lyon, Bordeaux, Norm, Jordie, and Takara had congregated by a towering Madagascar dragon tree just inside the mall. Amandi looked over at Lyon and Bordeaux, whose faces were as green as grass stains on new white jeans.

“Time to cough up the goods,” Amandi ordered. “We’ve got a date with a diamond-hungry bunny.”

Lyon and Bordeaux nodded and waddled into a nearby women’s rest (in peace) room. An assortment of retches, gags, and coughs ricocheted from inside the tiled lavatory.

“I hope those two glaikit chippies wash them diamonds orf before they give ’em to the Grabbit,” Jordie said.

Lyon and Bordeaux emerged, wiping their pouty mouths. Lyon smiled and patted her saddlebag.

“The only thing wrong with this moment,” Lyon gloated, “is that Marlo isn’t here to see it.”

“This way,” Amandi said, striding toward the Express Escalator to the SkyDeck.

“But everyone else is going to concourse,” Takara said with a mystified slant of her eyebrows.

Amandi stopped and turned to Takara. The pink-haired Japanese girl pointed to a snaking line of people boarding the spiral escalator bound for the concourse level.

“The Grabbit wanted us to make the drop at the staging area, up on the SkyDeck,” she answered. “After
it gets the diamonds, then it’ll be hop-hop-hoppin’ back down.”

Lyon cocked her eyebrow. “And how do you know so much about the Grabbit’s business?” she asked suspiciously.

Amandi’s mouth curled into a sly smile. “Why Lyon,” she asked, “didn’t you get the memo?”

Lyon’s golden face flushed pink around the edges. “Oh, right.
That,”
she replied uneasily. “I must have forgotten, what with the excitement of getting both diamonds and all.”

The girls followed Amandi up the Express Escalator, with the three hostages keeping up the rear. A perfumed wind blew in the dazed girls’ hair as they were whizzed at breakneck speed to the SkyDeck.

Milton clutched the handrail tightly as he scanned the bustling mall with one eye for any sign of Marlo.

“I can’t believe Marlo would bail on us like this,” Norm mumbled from behind to Takara, eerily as if reading Milton’s thoughts. “I thought we were friends!”

With a sudden heave, Milton and the other passengers tumbled off the faster-than-necessary escalator and onto the SkyDeck. He slid across the slick, white marble floor until stopping with a painful thud at a brass railing.

The girls rose to their feet, rubbing sore knees and elbows while Milton and the boys—their arms tied behind their backs—staggered and squirmed upright.

“I don’t see—” said Lyon before her observation was cut short by a hollow, booming voice from one of the abandoned offices on the other side of the dizzyingly high span.

35 · FUNNY BUNNY

MILTON STRAINED THROUGH
the tear in his hood to discern the source of the odd, toneless voice. The confused girls looked across the SkyBridge, which gleamed in the simulated morning light pouring through the glass ceiling.

“This doesn’t make sense,” Lyon said, folding her golden arms. “It didn’t even really sound like—”

“We don’t have time for this,” Amandi complained in a voice as thick and inelegant as her body. “The Grabbit needs the Hopeless Diamonds before its ceremony.”

“Hey,” Bordeaux said, “look at the funny shadow in that office!”

Through the slats of the venetian blinds that covered the glass wall of a nearby office, Milton could make out a monstrous silhouette—two large ears and twin coiled arms that unfurled like party favors.

“It’s too quiet,” Norm said suspiciously as she cased out the SkyDeck. “Where’s security?”

“The bluebottles must all be downstairs, preparin’ for the big party,” Jordie surmised.

Amandi shoved Milton and the other boys across the SkyBridge to the office. Lyon pushed herself ahead and poked her flawless face into the room.

“Hello, Mr. Grabbit?” she asked nervously. “I’ve got …
oh gawd.”

In the back of the office was a bulky, hulking shape standing motionless in front of a plate-glass wall, looking down upon the mall concourse below. The creature was dimly illuminated by a small desk lamp, which cast it with a sickly jaundiced glow. Smoky incense filled the room with pungent, sooty tendrils. The effect was disorienting and intimidating, like a school dance.

So that’s a …
Grabbit, thought Milton.
Looks like a lumpy, overgrown, white chocolate Easter bunny
.

Bordeaux and the other girls joined Lyon in the doorway.

“No, I just,” Lyon stammered, “you just seem … different.”

“It sounds like it has a cold,” Norm whispered to Takara.

“Well, Grabbit,” Lyon said as she fumbled through her saddlebag, “before I give you the diamonds—which Bordeaux, Jordie, and I stole, by the way—I want to know what we’re going to get. My team, that is, not Marlo’s, because she totally flaked and—”

Lyon’s jaw dropped. Bordeaux and Jordie gasped. After a moment of shock, the three girls jumped up and down, squealing with delight. Bordeaux clutched Lyon tight, like a designer handbag. Norm, indignant, stormed up to the Grabbit.

“This is
not fair!”
she complained. “We stole one of the Hopeless Diamonds; then Amandi double-crossed us and gave it to their stupid team!”

Norm wiped away her indignant tears and joined Takara at the back of the room. Lyon slipped from Bordeaux’s embrace, straightened her awful
WHAT HAPPENS AT GRANDMA’S
STAYS
AT GRANDMA’S
sweatshirt, and marched back to the Grabbit. Lyon took out the two diamonds, one in each trembling hand.

That weird voice
, thought Milton.
It’s like when you order fast food at a drive-through and struggle to untangle the crackling voice of a fiberglass clown
.

“Where … do you … want … them?” Lyon muttered under clenched teeth as she strained to hold the Hopeless Diamonds with her superficially toned arms.

Lyon nodded as perspiration began to bead on her forehead. She heaved a diamond into a hole at the top of one of the Grabbit’s coiling arms. The dense gem rattled and rocked its way down into the robotic rabbit’s torso, landing with a great
plunk
. Then, with a pained grunt, she deposited the last Hopeless Diamond into her school’s vice principal.

Lyon squinted through the dim light and thick smoke. “Wait a second,” she muttered. “You’re …
disappearing
.”

The Grabbit’s cartoonish features and festive colors began to fade, revealing a pale, rabbit-shaped lump underneath. It was as if someone had projected the image of a rabbit onto a mammoth snow-bunny and the projector’s bulb was dying.

The Grabbit shook furiously until its belly burst in an explosion of canvas and plaster. Milton, his eye bulging beneath the tear in his hood, struggled to make sense of what was happening. The girls surrounding him screamed and stumbled back in shock. Out tumbled a figure, chalky white with dust.

“Didya miss me?” Marlo asked as she rose to her feet, brushing off chunks of papier-mâché and torn pieces of the Grabbit’s vanishing portrait. She grinned so wide it looked as if her face were about to split in two. Marlo’s dark eyes twinkled at Lyon as she patted her bulging fanny pack.

“Oh, and, like, thanks for the diamonds.” She giggled. “You are, like, my bestest friend
ever.”

“Marlo!” shrieked Norm as she ran to embrace her. “I knew you hadn’t run away!”

Milton, meanwhile, was dumbstruck at the surreal
sight of his sister tumbling out of a jumbo-sized bunny tummy. It was thrilling, disturbing, and surprising in how unsurprising it was—Marlo at the center of some convoluted plot.

“Mlow!” Milton called out through his gag. “Mlow!”

Marlo noticed the three hostage boys in the doorway “Who are
they?”
she asked. “Demon cats or something?”

Milton vibrated like a toddler after too much apple juice.

“Boys,” Norm explained. “They were on the stagecoach, on the way to Sadia.”

Lyon shoved her way past Norm. Her eyes were hot blue flames aching to burn. “You totally cheated!” she screeched. “This won’t count!”

Bordeaux trembled by Amandi’s side. She wrapped her skinny arms around herself as she stared at the piles of torn paper and plaster with a traumatized expression on her face.

“How did you get the Grabbit to eat you?” she said with distress.

Marlo threw back her head and laughed. Flecks of the crumbling portrait she had stolen from the Grabbit’s warren flew from her mouth. It was like there was a parade inside her, celebrating her victory with joyful blasts of confetti.

Norm gawked at her friend with open admiration.

“But how did you know that Amandi would give the Hopeless Diamonds to—”

She leveled her gaze at Amandi hovering at the back of the office. Despite the girlish grin, she still resembled a Bulgarian wrestler with wildly fluctuating hormone levels.

Norm smiled.

“Ooh, you guys are good!”

Lyon pushed Norm out of her way and got in Marlo’s face.

“Fine, you and Uggs played us, but why go through all this trouble?” she said, waving at the huge, busted bunny piñata in the corner.

Marlo brushed dust off the front of her tacky sweatshirt, which only made its innate tackiness shine through.

“It’s easy, but I’ll speak slowly so you can follow along,” Marlo explained. “We knew it would be hard to get these heavy Hopeless wonders past security,” she said, patting her fanny pack with satisfaction. “We pretty much figured the only way to get them through undetected was by swallowing them, and since you and Bordeaux are to body fat what reality TV is to actual reality, you were the best candidates.”

“But why all the barney rubble of dressin’ as the big bunn?” Jordie asked, still a little angry yet grudgingly impressed.

“Well, Lyon here may be dumb, but she’s not stupid,” Marlo clarified. “We knew the only way to get her greedy mitts off those diamonds was to trick her into
thinking she was delivering them straight to the Grabbit itself. And, boy, did I!”

Amandi stepped forward in two hulking stomps.

“We’d better get the Hopeless Diamonds to the Grabbit now,” the stocky girl said. “The real one.”

Amandi looked Marlo up and down.

“You’re kind of a mess …
nothing personal,”
she observed. “You might arouse suspicion.”

Marlo straightened her hair, causing a small avalanche of plaster dust to rain down onto her face and shoulders.

“I should take the diamonds down to the Grabbit,” Amandi continued.

Milton fidgeted in a spastic fit, trying to free himself from his bonds.

Marlo peered beyond Amandi’s beefy shoulder at Milton. “They seem uncomfortable,” she commented. “Especially that little one …”

“Nah, they love it,” Amandi replied.

She stepped in front of the boys.

“Whoever wants to be untied, raise their hand,” she asked.

The boys writhed and moaned.

“See,” Amandi said, turning to Marlo and puffing up menacingly. “Now hand over the diamonds, before it’s too—”

“What’s with the hoods?” Marlo persisted. She was fascinated by the bouncing boy in the middle. She stalked toward him, grabbed his canvas hood, and yanked.

Milton’s eyes protruded behind his spectacles, and his face shimmered with a sickly, clammy sheen. He was hyperventilating through the kerchief in his mouth.

“Milton!” yelped Marlo.

“Milquetoast,” murmured Amandi. She folded her thick arms against her ample a grandma is a mom with extra frosting sweatshirt and glared at Milton, her lip curling with amused malevolence.

Marlo yanked Milton’s gag out of his mouth.

“Marlo!” he yelped. “I …”

Marlo beamed, hugging her brother, who, with thick twine around his wrists, couldn’t hug back.

“What’s this?” she asked, noticing a small package tucked into the back of his pants.

“It’s nothing,” Milton gasped, hungrily breathing in air through his mouth. His eyes rested on Amandi. There was something about the girl that filled Milton’s stomach with molten dread. The wide-set, coal-black eyes and coarse features …

“Stop squirming,” Marlo scolded as she uncoiled the rough twine from her brother’s raw wrists. “Did you make it back up to the Surface? If so, how did you get back? I mean, if you escaped, then came back, then how …”

Milton smiled as his sister barraged him with questions that she had no intention of letting him answer.

Marlo’s nose curled.

“Let me guess,” she continued. “It involved a microwave loaded with Kernel Instapop’s gourmet popping corn exploding in your face.”

“Something like that.” Milton grinned. His sister managed to take the sting out of, again, dying in a food-related accident.

“I love family reunions as much as the next guy—uh,
girl,”
Amandi said, brushing blond bangs from her short, wide forehead, “but we don’t have time. The Grabbit needs those diamonds now, or else all this was just a big waste of time.”

The Fauster children stared at Amandi with wide, questioning eyes.

“I’m a teacher’s aide,” she said after registering the doubt in Milton’s and Marlo’s faces. “I can slip through security faster and—”

Just then, Amandi’s thumb and pinky rang.

The girls traded glances until finally settling on Amandi as she tried to ignore the ringtone emanating from her hand.

Marlo glared at her suspiciously.

“Aren’t you going to get that?” she asked.

“What?” Amandi replied with a quaver, her fuzzy lip twitching slightly. “Oh.
This
. No one ever … it must be a wrong number.”

“Only one way to find out,” Norm said flatly.

Amandi sighed. She stuck her thumb in her ear and talked into her pinky.

“Hello?” she answered under her breath, turning away toward the plate-glass wall.

“Damian?” Bea “Elsa” Bubb squawked from the other end of the phone. “Is that—”

“Wrong number,”
Amandi hissed into her pinky.

A swarm of prickles traveled up Milton’s spine as his stomach sagged, like a leaky balloon filled with sour milk and battery acid. His ferret-heightened ears echoed with the wretched name, uttered by a wretched voice. Apparently, his link to Lucky—though now jagged and stuttery like a bad cell-phone connection—had survived the Transdimensional Power Grid.

“Damian!” Milton yelled. He grabbed Marlo and pulled her close. “And she …
he …
is talking to Bea ‘Elsa’ Bubb!”

“So
that’s
your game!” Marlo seethed.

Her face crinkled into a dusty white mask, like that of a mischievous baby ghost. Without warning, Marlo ran over to Damian and kicked him full force between the legs. The faux female doubled over in excruciating pain.

“And we’ve got
your
number,
Damian,”
Marlo sneered. “On speed dial.”

She walked back to Milton.

“C’mon, we’ve got to skedaddle.”

Lyon and Bordeaux blocked the door leading back to the SkyBridge. Between their scrawny shoulders, Marlo could see several demon guards stumbling off the Express Escalator and onto the SkyDeck.