The Power Potion (13 page)

Normally, they look like they could very easily fall right out of the sky.

“Are you kidding me?” Dave cried. “This is it?”

“I know that evil
hombre
liked flying, but
I never saw him do it.” Sticky shrugged again. “Maybe flap your arms?”

“Flap my arms? I’ve got to
flap
?”

“I don’t know,
señor
. I’m just saying, maybe you could try?”

So Dave (feeling totally and terminally ridiculous) flapped.

Things did not improve.

“Maybe it just takes time to learn?” Sticky suggested when Dave stopped flapping.

Dave wobbled around in the air a bit longer, willing himself to go higher. Faster. But nothing changed. “I could go faster on my bike!” he said at last.

“This is true,
señor
.”

“My whole life, I’ve dreamt about flying…but not like this!”

“You’ll get better at it,
señor
. But, uh, right now shouldn’t we be getting down to help the potion man?”

“Like
this
?” Dave asked.

“Hmm,” Sticky said, tapping his chin with a finger. “It might be zippier to take the bike.”

Dave landed awkwardly and removed the Flying ingot. “No kidding,” he grumbled.

So Dave and Sticky relied on old-fashioned pedal power to leave Raven Ridge. But right before they reached the Moongaze Boulevard turnoff, Dave hid his bike behind some shrubs along Jackaroo Avenue and said, “I have an idea.”

“Does it use Flying?”

Dave clicked an ingot into the powerband. “First it uses Wall-Walker.”

“See?” Sticky said with a very satisfied look. “Gecko Power is
asombroso
!”

Dave gave him a little smile and then got down to business. “The potion guy lives in a circus trailer in the middle of Gypsy Town. You have to go left, left, left about a hundred times to find it.
I’m thinking if I go diagonal, I can sneak up to it quick and see what’s going on. If anything.”

“Oh, something’s going on,
señor
,” Sticky said sagely.

So Dave entered Gypsy Town, zippy-toed up the side of one house, traversed the roof (diagonally), and switched to the Flying ingot. Then he took a running jump (and a leap of faith) from the rooftop and flew like a bony-bodied bumblebee to a neighboring rooftop, where he landed, ran (diagonally) across, and then flew to the next rooftop.

And the next.

And the next.

“Asombroso!”
Sticky cried as Dave got the hang of it. “I’m a flying leeezard! A flying leeezard!”

The two got to the heart of Moongaze Maze much faster than they would have on Dave’s bike, but as they neared Moongaze Court, Dave heard a
strange noise and came to a stop. “What
is
that?” he whispered.

“Ay-ay-ay,” Sticky moaned. “That’s the Brothers. I’d know their singing anywhere!”

“But they’re singing about…
underwear?
”

Now, you may recall that in this part of Moongaze Maze, the trees and animals seemed to take over. The foliage was fuller. The goats had more horns. There were also birds and snakes and toads and squirrels. It was like a little jungle, really, and when you think of jungles, what one animal always springs to mind?

(Ah, what animal indeed!)

“Eeeeeek-reeeeeeek?” came a cry from across Moongaze Court.

“The
monkey
?” Dave gasped, and flew forward to get a better look.

“Not him!” Sticky groaned when they spotted him at the base of a tree. “Not again!”

It was, indeed, the monkey. (A fact easily
confirmed by the satchel strapped across his chest.) The little rhesus had found refuge from honking horns and angry merchants and rabid animal control agents in this tranquil neighborhood jungle. But as the procession of Bandito Gypsies and kids and goats and dogs turned up Moongaze Court, the monkey shrieked and bounced and pointed.

It was as though he was trying to warn people about the phony gypsies.

It was as if, despite the elaborate costumes, he recognized the Brothers.

Dave soaked in the sight. “Why are they dressed like that? Why did they bring Rosie? What are they
doing
?”

“The big question,
señor
, is where’s that evil
hombre
?”

Dave looked around quickly. Sticky was right—the ruthless treasure hunter had to be nearby. What if he already had them in his sights?

Now, while Dave was worried about Damien, and the procession was making its way up Moongaze Court, a cautiously curious six-horned goat approached the monkey from behind. And finding the scent of the satchel quite compelling, the goat became more curious (and less cautious) and began nibbling on the bag with its prehensile lips.

And its tongue.

And its teeth.

The monkey, however, was so intent on eeeking and screeching out a warning that he did not notice the goat, or that it had now ripped a hole in the bottom of the satchel.

Himalayan coffee grounds began pouring out of it.

One ounce.

Two.

Three and four!

And as the grounds ran onto the
ground
, out fell one coffee-dusted squirt-top container.

“Reeeeeeeeek!” the little monkey cried when he noticed that his coffee stash had been compromised. Clutching the hole to stop the flow, he scurried up a tree, leaving the goat to nibble and gnaw (and, yes, puncture) the squirt-top container.

While Dave and Sticky watched the Bandito Brothers approach the vardo from a rooftop, Damien Black kept an eye on the action from beneath the manhole cover. And as the parade moved farther and farther from him, Damien found it more and more difficult to
stay
undercover.

Before too long, he had pushed the lid to the side.

Before too long, he had stepped up a few rungs on the portal’s metal ladder (which is, in case you didn’t know, how city workers get down the manhole to enter the sewer system).

“Get Pablo into the wagon quickly!” Damien hissed into the communicator. “Tell him to
silence the gypsy, but nothing more! I need him alive!” Then he grumbled, “At least for now.”

“Go!” Angelo commanded Pablo, and (grabbing his skirts so he could move faster) Pablo immediately mounted the vardo’s steps and entered without even knocking.

“He’s in!” Angelo whispered into the communicator.

“Very good!” Damien replied. “Now announce, ‘Rejoice, good Romany people, Yanko Purran is to be healed!’”

Angelo made this announcement (in an exuberant, theatrical manner), then whispered, “Now what?” into the communicator.

“Now hitch up the mule, you fool! Then grab the handles and go!”

So Angelo and Tito removed the vardo’s steps and began hitching Rosie to the wagon. But as they did so, a voice boomed down at them from a rooftop nearby.

“STOP! These men are thieves! Don’t let them do that!”

“We’re not thieves!” Angelo replied, looking around for the source of the accusation.

“We’re jolly gypsies!” Tito cried.

Then they saw where the voice had come from. “Oh no!” Angelo gasped. “It’s the boy!”

“What?” Damien gasped back through the communicator. “Where?”

“On a roof, boss!” Angelo whispered frantically. “Right next to us!”

The Bandito Brothers had no idea what it was that “the boy” had that Damien wanted. They just knew that Damien wanted whatever it was very, very badly.

They also knew that “the boy” could somehow walk on walls, and because of this, they believed he was bewitched.

Or possessed.

(Or maybe both.)

And now when they saw Dave fly from the neighboring rooftop to the vardo’s rooftop, they froze in fear.

“He can
fly
?” Angelo gasped.

“He can
fly
,” Tito confirmed.

Now, had Damien shown some restraint, things might have played out differently. But hearing this unhinged his already precariously hinged mind. “He can FLY?” Damien demanded. “What, exactly, do you mean by ‘fly’?”

“Uh,” Angelo said, “he can, you know…
fly
. Without flapping?”

Damien (who was already half emerged from the sewer system) now leapt to the street. And as he marched toward the vardo, he produced a pistol and shouted, “Just grab the wagon and go!” into the communicator (even though he could be heard perfectly well through the air).

Well! The children and goats and dogs and chickens (and, for that matter, snakes and squirrels
and a certain monkey) had all been startled into a moment of silence when Dave’s voice had boomed from the rooftop. But now they noticed an angry-looking man (in a whoosh-swooshy black coat) with a pistol in his hand.

“Hey!” one girl in the gathering called to her friends. “That’s the creepy guy I told you about! And he’s got a gun!”

The children scattered, hiding behind trees and shrubs, as Damien approached. And Angelo (realizing he was going to lose his promotion if things fell apart) hitched Rosie up to the vardo, grabbed one handle, and barked at Tito to grab the other.

But just as they were pulling the wagon forward (yanking it free from its service connections), Dave flew down from the vardo’s roof and hovered above them. “Put it DOWN!” he commanded.

As much as Damien was in a state of disbelief over how Dave had managed to obtain the Flying
ingot, he now knew that Dave did, in fact, have it, and the thought of this invasion, this violation, this…this
confiscation
made his blood boil.

His veins pop.

His temper snap.

“KEEP MOVING, YOU FOOLS!” Damien shouted. And as Angelo, Tito, and Rosie bolted forward and pulled the vardo down the dirt road, Damien raised his pistol, taking careful aim at Dave.

“Señor!”
Sticky cried. “He’s deadly with that shooter!”

Ah, yes.

Deadly and merciless.

And in his cold, calculating heart, Damien Black had never wanted anything dead as much as he wanted Dave dead.

It wasn’t just that it would stop the boy from (yet again) putting a monkey wrench into one of his plans.

It was that killing Dave would deliver a doubly diabolical dividend: The nettling nuisance of a boy would be gone forever, AND he would be able to snatch back the powerband.

A feeling of felonious glee ran through Damien.

A little bwaa-ha-ha bubbled up inside him.

He couldn’t have planned this more perfectly if he’d tried!

And so the hard-hearted, cold-blooded demon of a man pulled the trigger.

Which dropped the hammer.

Which hit the percussion cap.

Which ignited the gunpowder.

Which sent a musket ball of solid lead flying straight at Dave.

A bullet fired from a dueling pistol has a muzzle velocity of approximately eight hundred feet per second.

That’s more than 545 miles per hour.

(Which, to put things in perspective, is approaching the speed of sound.)

There is no time to react.

No dodging to be done.

You’re hit before the sound of the shot even registers in your brain.

So to say that Dave dodged Damien’s deadly wad of lead would be to imply that he purposely reacted to the trigger pull and moved to avoid being hit.

He did no such thing.

It was simply his inability to fly in a straight line (or hover in the same spot) that saved his life.

It was, if you will, the bumble in the bee that caused the bullet to blast past him instead of into him.

But hearing the bullet whiz by made Dave lose his levitation concentration, and before long he was frantically flapping, then flailing, and finally falling to the ground.

Dave landed on his arm with a painful thump, and although he broke no bones, the Flying ingot was jarred loose and tumbled from the powerband onto the ground beside him.

In the wink of a deadly eye, Damien was upon him with his second pistol drawn.

“Well, well. See what we have here,” he hissed, pinning Dave’s arm with one big black boot. Slowly, he reached down and plucked the
Flying ingot from the dirt and slipped it into his coat. “How clever are you now, hmm? You pesky little pickpocket.”