The Greatest Power (6 page)

Up there.

Dangling.

Dave stared.

Sticky stared.

But the monkey (not being one for standing around staring) reached up and yanked.

Suddenly,
whooooosh
, a big, openmouthed Chinese New Year dragon dropped out of the ceiling and swallowed them whole.

“Holy guaca-tacaroleeeeee!” Sticky cried, holding on tight to Dave’s invisible shirt as a powerful vacuum sucked them up, up, up through an enormous hose.

“Eeeeeeeek!” the monkey cried, and the force of the vacuum was so great that the monkey (who had, unfortunately, failed to hold on tight to Dave’s invisible shirt) was pulled right off of Dave’s shoulder and (because he was considerably lighter than Dave) whooshed ahead of Dave and Sticky at an impressive speed.

Now, perhaps you feel as I do that flying monkeys are terribly frightening creatures. Regular monkeys are just fine. But flying monkeys? Oh my. They give me niggly-wiggly nightmares.

Flying monkeys are just … scary.

And (as you will soon see) I am not alone in this (admittedly irrational) fear—there are others who feel just as fearful of flying monkeys as I do.

Not that this particular monkey was an
actual
flying monkey. He was simply a monkey who, due to his own impatience and impulsiveness,
happened to
be
flying. But he
appeared
to be a flying monkey, which is all it takes to strike terror through the hearts of those who get niggly-wiggly nightmares over flying monkeys.

And as fate would have it, there were three such hearts in the room where the vacuuming voyage ended. These hearts belonged to three men known as the Bandito Brothers: Pablo, Angelo, and Tito.

These three men were already in an extremely jumpy state because Damien Black was (understandably) furious with them. Damien had made it clear that he didn’t want them around, didn’t need them around, and didn’t
like
them around. Yet during his recent incarceration (or, if you will, stint as jailbird), the Bandito Brothers had holed up in his mansion, making themselves quite at home, eating everything in sight (regardless of its questionable state or expiration date).

Damien had returned to find the cupboards bare and dirty dishes everywhere. He had immediately
bound and gagged the Bandito Brothers and had begun plotting a way to rid himself of them for once and for all.

Obviously, getting rid of the Bandito Brothers required an especially deep, dark, diabolical deed, because Damien had paced around for three days, plotting, and had been uncharacteristically stumped as to what that deed might be.

And so (to curb his frustrations and replenish his dwindled cupboards and coffers) he had robbed a bank.

And snagged a ring.

It made him feel
so
much better.

He felt so good, in fact, that on the ride home on his Sewer Cruiser, he’d come up with a wonderful, fail-safe, deliciously devilish plan to at long last rid himself of those pesky Bandito Brothers.

“Bwaa-ha-ha-ha-ha!” he’d laughed while ascending the twisty, turny, rusty ladder. “Bwaa-ha-ha-ha-ha!” And after celebrating with a quick jolt of java at his espresso café and making a whooshing re-entry into the mansion, he’d passed by the Bandito Brothers with the sack of cash slung over
his shoulder and pointed with his very pointy pointing finger. “Tonight, you fools,” he hissed. “I get rid of you tonight!”

“No, Mr. Black! We are your friends!” Angelo said (although through the gag it sounded very much like “Oh, Mawa Bwa! Wa ah oh wen!”).

“Ooo
nee
ah!” Pablo said, trying to convey the desperate “You need us” line that all double-crossing criminals use when pleading for their lives.

“You are
not
my friends, and I do
not
need you!” Damien snarled (for, much to his dismay, after three days of their gaggling, he’d learned to understand their tongue-tied words). “Tonight! I get rid of you tonight!”

Unfortunately for Damien, a flying monkey was about to make a nightmare of his deliciously devilish plan.

The Bandito Brothers, it’s fair to say, idolized Damien Black.

They were in awe of his wickedness.

His deadly, diabolical dark side.

His sheer, unapologetic
badness
.

They had fantasies of becoming just like him. Anyone who had known the Bandito Brothers when they were petty criminals, stealing cash and curios from parties where they’d been hired to play as a mariachi band, would say that they were plenty bad enough (both morally and musically). But in truth, the Brothers were just bad boys in training.

Minor leaguers.

Damien Black, they immediately recognized, was the majors.

After they’d trekked a thousand miles to find him, they’d managed to convince Damien that they could help. They knew that Sticky could talk (something most people would scoff at rather than believe), and they’d convinced Damien that they could help capture the lizard and return it to him. “We have inside information about that sneaky beast,” Pablo had said.

“Valuable information!” Angelo had con-firmed.

“He eats crickets!” Tito had chimed in.

Now, it’s a well-known fact that all geckos eat crickets. They love crickets. So this piece of information was not only not valuable, it was not helpful in any way.

Why, then, would Tito make such a comment?

He was, in a word, simple.

Slow.

Or, as Sticky often said, brainy like a burro.

But the Bandito Brothers did, in fact, know quite a lot about Sticky because Sticky had once
lived
with the Bandito Brothers. (Ah, the mistakes we make in our youth.)

At first, living with the Brothers had been fun, but it didn’t take long for the Brothers to use Sticky’s conveniently sticky fingers (and his undeniable attraction to all things glittery, twinkly, or just plain shiny) in their petty criminal escapades. These antics might have gone on much longer than they did had the Bandito Brothers not made a crucial (and predictably greedy) error:

They kept the spoils to themselves.

After all, what does a gecko want with shiny earrings?

Or diamonds?

Or cash, for that matter?

Like he could spend it?

This, then, was the attitude that drove Sticky
into the clutches of the devilishly deceptive Damien Black. But the treasure hunter was also not to be trusted, and Sticky soon found himself betrayed and, worse, caged.

Being a very clever kleptomaniacal lizard, however, Sticky had gotten his revenge. He had escaped not just with his life but also with the ancient Aztec wristband Dave now wore.

The one that allowed humans to become invisible.

Or walk on walls.

The one Damien Black would give anything to get back. (Not that he would give the anything up
permanently
. Oh, he would
pretend
to, but in his devious mind, he would devise some diabolical double cross.)

So Damien had grudgingly allowed the Bandito Brothers to stay, but so far, they had done nothing to help him get the gecko or the powerband back. They had, instead, contributed to his
landing in jail and (adding insult to incarceration) had snooped through all his stuff and had eaten him out of house and home while he’d been away.

So this was it. Damien had had enough.

Those blasted bumbling banditos were history.

Yesterday’s headache!

Tomorrow’s daisies!

Gone!

Ah, but enter a flying monkey.

And what an entry that monkey made! The rhesus came whooshing out of the dragon-vacuum portal at an astounding speed, flailed in a wild, eeky-shrieky manner through the velvet curtain that separated the portal chamber from the adjacent room, flew clear
across
that adjacent room, and landed in a furry frenzy on top of Tito’s head.

“Aaaaag!” cried Angelo (and even through the gag, it sounded quite like
Aaaaag!)
. His scarred face contorted into a ghastly shape, and
every hair on his arms (and the few he had remaining on his head) shot straight out.

“Aaaaag!” cried Pablo, his ratty face pinching in fear as his dirty, stinky pores shot BO in all directions.

“Aaaaag!” cried Tito, his oxlike body knocked nearly flat from the force of the flying monkey. (His head, not surprisingly, was unharmed, as it’s difficult for a monkey to hurt a rock.)

“Eeeeek!” cried the monkey, for in all his adventures in the vast Himalaya mountains, he had never, I promise you,
ever
seen beasts so repulsive.

And while the Bandito Brothers aaaaag!ed in fear and the monkey eeeeek!ed in revulsion, Dave and Sticky (who had landed in the vacuum-portal chamber) peeked through the velvet curtain and, invisible as they were, were able to tippy-toe right past the lot of them.

“Ay caramba!”
Sticky whispered when they were safely outside the room and moving swiftly
down a cramped, cobwebby corridor. “Those
bobos
saguaros are still here? Why didn’t they
vámonos
while that evil
hombre
was in jail?”

But Dave had bigger problems than the Bandito Brothers. He and Sticky had gone the only way possible, had passed by no doors, yet were now at a definite dead end.

Dave, who’d acquired at least some experience with the bizarre nature of Damien’s mansion, took a deep breath and looked around.

The corridor had a planky wooden floor, so there were no telltale footprints to follow or stand in.

The ceiling had no dangling chains or visible escape hatches.

There were no levers or buttons or hidden whatsits or dosits on the cobwebby walls.

There wasn’t even a picture (behind which a devious mind might
hide
levers or buttons or whatsits or dosits).

But what Dave
did
eventually notice was the
absence
of something. And its sheer missing-ness caused a gasp to escape Dave’s lips.

“Look!” he whispered to Sticky as he pointed to the ceiling by the dead end. “There are no cobwebs up here or here … clear around to here!”

Sticky looked up, then tapped a little gecko finger to his little gecko chin. “Correcto-mundo …!”

“There’s a whole half circle with no cobwebs!” Dave whispered.

“Which means …”

But before Sticky could finish his thought, Dave pushed hard on the right side of the dead-end wall. And before Dave could peek around and see what they might be getting into,
whoosh
, the wall spun around, sweeping them out of the cobwebby corridor and through the air, sending them flying into darkness.