The Greatest Power (4 page)

Dave stopped. “I know where we’re going! We’re going into the mansion. We’re getting back Ms. Kulee’s ring. And the bank’s money. We’re …” He squinted at Sticky. “What don’t I know?”

Sticky squinted right back at him. “Tell me what DNA is.”

“Oh, good grief.” Dave started climbing the twisty, rusty ladder again. “It’s deoxyribonucleic acid. There. Are you satisfied?”

“And what is dee-oxy … rybo … new-clay-ik acid?” Sticky asked, pronouncing it with careful respect. “It sounds dangerous,
señor.”

Dave heaved a sigh. “It’s not
dangerous
. It’s what you’re made of. What
I’m
made of. It’s like the blueprint inside of living things.”

Sticky’s eyes grew wide. “And it looks like a big, twisty, rusty ladder? Ay-ay-ay!”

“It’s not big. It’s tiny, in your cells. And it’s not rusty! It’s—”

“So it looks nothing like a big, twisty, rusty ladder?”

“Stickyyyyy!”

“What?”

Dave rolled his eyes. “Never mind.”

“Never mind? How can you say never mind?”

It was at this point in their argument that they came upon a landing. It was simply a wide metal platform that led to a wide dirt path on the shadowy left and another wide dirt path on the shadowy right.

Dave hesitated at the landing, looking to the shadowy left, to the shadowy right, and then to the shadowy up-above (as the twisty, rusty ladder continued up, up, up).

At last, he asked Sticky the obvious question: “So? Which way should we go?”

Sticky leaned off Dave’s shoulder, then ran, lickety-split, across Dave’s back and leaned off the other shoulder. “Thataway,” he said, pointing to the left.

“Why thataway?” Dave asked.

“Footprints,” Sticky said. “Fresh ones.”

Dave now saw that there were, indeed, fresh footprints leading to the left, away from the rusty
DNA ladder. “Where does that way go?” he whispered.

“Everywhere,” Sticky whispered back, then shuddered and added, “They all lead to everywhere.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind,” the gecko said.

“Never mind? How can you say never mind?”

“Eeeeasy,
señor
.” He gave a sneaky little gecko smile. “Like this: Never mind.”

And so their argument started up again, only this time they kept one eye on the hard-heeled footsteps left by Damien Black.

The pathway was cold.

Convoluted.

And increasingly dark.

But ahead of them there eventually appeared a faint golden glow. Through Dave’s mind flashed the notion that the glow could come from an enormous cavern of gold, but he tried to drive the thought away.

He was here to recover a ring.

And the bank’s money.

Discovering a cavern of gold was not part of the mission.

Besides, a cavern of gold?

It was ridiculous.

Preposterous.

Totally and wholly unlikely.

Who but a madman would keep a cavern of gold in a place like this?

But, then again, Damien Black
was
a madman….

The arguing ceased as they pressed onward because, despite his efforts to push the thoughts away, Dave’s mind was now filled with visions of gold.

Until, that is, there was a piercing screech in the distance.

“What was that?” Dave whispered, his heart bending and twisting inside his chest.

“It might be wise,” Sticky whispered, “to switch to Invisibility.”

Again there was a screech. This time louder.

And longer.

And … screechier.

Dave’s blood was suddenly running extra-twisty.

“Right,” he said, and with a simple click-twist, twist-click, Dave removed the Wall-Walker ingot from the powerband and replaced it with Invisibility.

Immediately both Dave and Sticky disappeared.

Unfortunately for them, Dave’s footprints did not.

The blood-twisting screeching grew louder as Dave and Sticky crept along the pathway. “What
is
that?” Dave whispered again.

“Something eeeeeechy-screechy,” Sticky whispered back.

“Do you think we’re in danger?” Dave asked.

“We’re always in danger,
señor.”

“But we’re invisible!”

Invisible or not, Sticky was shivering on Dave’s shoulder. “Whatever that is sounds verrrry mad.”

“Maybe it’s one of that madman’s crazy recordings?”

This was, in fact, a possibility. Dave had delved
inside the underbelly of the mansion before and had been tricked into a state of extreme fear by a cheesy pre-recorded message.

Perhaps, he reasoned, what he was hearing was simply pre-recorded screeching.

Still, despite the fact that they were completely invisible (except for those pesky footprints), they sneaky-toed along, hugging the chilly wall, their eyes peeled back as if whatever was screeching might suddenly spot them and pounce.

The golden glow grew brighter.

Warmer.

And as they reached the turn that led to the glow, the screeching was suddenly silent.

“Ay-ay,” Sticky whispered.

Now, “ay-ay” can, as I’m sure you’ve already determined, mean many different things. But in this particular instance, it meant, quite simply, Uh-oh.

“Shhh,” Dave whispered (which meant in
this and, it’s safe to say,
all
instances, Why do you always have to talk when we’re in mortal danger? Why can’t you just be quiet? What do I have to do?
Cork
you? If you say one more thing, I swear I’m going to leave you behind next time because you know what? You talk too much. Not only do you talk too much, you talk at the wrong time. Be quiet, why don’t you! Just be quiet and don’t—).

“Señor?”

“Shhh!”

“But why are we just standing here?”

“Shhh!”

A few moments later, they were
still
just standing there, so Sticky (quite understandably) whispered, “What are you? Petrified wood?”

“Shhhhhhh!” Dave whispered frantically. “Whatever
it
is
heard
you! Why else would it have stopped screeching?”

“Me?” Sticky said, pointing a little gecko finger at his little gecko chest.

“Shhhhhh!”

“Ay-ay,” Sticky grumbled, and, as I’m sure you might imagine, this time it most definitely did
not
mean Uh-oh.

Dave stood there for another minute, maybe two.

His invisible back was against the wall.

His invisible eyes were cranked wide.

He was waiting.

Listening.

Imagining
.

Sticky, you see, was right—Dave was, quite frankly, petrified. To be an all-knowing thirteen-year-old boy and suddenly not know anything (like what to do, or where you’re going, or what that blood-twisting screeching was) would be, I’m sure you’ll agree, entirely discombobulating.

And although the rest of him might have been stock-still, Dave’s imagination was in overdrive. In his mind, he saw a heaping mountain of gold protected by a terrifying beast with sharp claws and long, oozy, needle-sharp teeth. A beast so vile and disgusting that a mere whiff of its sewer-laced breath could knock its prey out cold. A beast so mutated and ugly that—

“Hombre!”
Sticky urged, pulling on Dave’s invisible ear. “Let’s mooooove!”

And so it was that Dave was forced to face the beast.

He took a deep breath.

He squared his invisible shoulders.

Then he stepped forward and came face to face with …

“A
monkey
?” Dave gasped.

It was, indeed, a monkey.

A small, moderately cute, but highly intelligent rhesus monkey that had been captured by
Damien Black on a treasure-hunting excursion in the Himalaya mountains of northern India, and was now kept (as was the case with all Damien’s treasures) locked up tight.

But the cage that held this monkey was no ordinary barred rectangular enclosure. It was, in fact, quite elaborate.

Quite snazzy.

Quite
hip
.

The front wall
was
made of bars, but they’d been painted gold, as had the three interior walls. There were cushy couches, recessed lighting, and a full-service coffee bar—the cage was the mansion’s subterranean espresso café.

It was the place Damien went to chill.

To unwind.

Or, more often, to get amped up with a stiff cup o’ joe.

You see, the monkey was not caged simply as a pet. That beastly Damien Black had trained him to brew rare and exotic blends of Himalayan coffee (which Damien enjoys drinking black, of course). Unfortunately for Damien, his prized, highly intelligent monkey had also developed a taste for exotic Himalayan coffee. (The result, no doubt, of being caged in an espresso café.)

Of course, as Dave approached the café, he knew none of this. He just saw a caged monkey in a gold room. A monkey who grew more and more agitated the closer they got, scampering from one side of the front wall to the other, pulling on the bars, stopping, whimpering, pulling some more.

“He knows we’re here,” Sticky whispered ever so quietly in Dave’s ear.

Dave gave the gecko a questioning look.

“He smells us,” Sticky whispered.

Which was true. Being invisible did not make them in-
smell
-ible.

Not that they stank—you and I would never have been able to smell them. But with an olfactory
system twice as sensitive as ours, rhesus monkeys can smell things we cannot. And so it was Dave’s odor, his natural (and appropriately managed) BO, that gave them away.

Perhaps you’re wondering why Dave did not just continue on his quest for the stolen ring. He was, after all, in no danger from a caged rhesus monkey. Damien Black had obviously been and gone (as was evidenced by the still-moist espresso cup teetering on its saucer outside a small to-go window). And Damien’s hard-heeled footprints were still visible, guiding them in the right direction.

So why didn’t Dave just move along?

Get with the program.

Or, as Sticky would say,
ándale!

It was the monkey. Something about his little fur-free face. Something about the way his eyes pleaded through the bars. Something about the whimper. They all said quite clearly what the monkey could not.

Set me free
.

“Do it,
señor,”
Sticky whispered, for he himself had been caged at one time by the evil treasure hunter and had great gecko sympathy for the little pleading monkey.

And so, after a quick glance around in all directions, Dave decided he would set the monkey free.

Ah, how unexpectedly dangerous good deeds can be.