Bowing regally, he held out his arm toward the empty doorway. “Ladies first, of course.”
We couldn’t hear them, but somewhere alarms had to be screaming. So, as I stepped over the threshold, I glanced up at Vera and said, “Just like we practiced.”
Every PA speaker in the building rang out with rhythmic, chanted words. The drum beat started up, then the main singer and keyboard. I couldn’t understand a single word. I’d chosen electro-swing to override every recording and broadcasting system in the area this afternoon, and a few distant honks suggested the cars on the road were enjoying the tune as well.
We walked out into the middle of the warehouse, and it looked exactly like I’d expected. Those doors down there might be side offices, but mainly the building consisted of one big, empty room. Not quite empty, of course. It had its stacks of wooden crates, piled up bags, and a pair of huge metal shipping containers. A lot of places to hide our prize.
Claire leaned in. “How will we find it?”
“It will be well protected.” That much I could rely on.
My heart beat in time with the incomprehensible gibberish from the speakers. My feet carried the rhythm as I stepped away from my partners to lead by example. Snapping the sparkly pink wand out of the sugar tank at my side, I twisted the dial to “knife” and used the thin, ultra-high-pressure spray to cut a door in the side of the nearest shipping container. The sliced-out rectangle fell inward, its gong blotting out the music when it hit the container’s flooring. I peeked inside and saw a giant, empty box.
Ray had reached the stacks of wooden crates. One by one, he ripped the lids off, nails and all. Claire swooped in behind him, throwing out straw as she examined the contents.
As I walked over to join them, Claire lifted up a fistful of circuit boards and a teddy bear, the mechanical talking kind. Her voice squeaked with enthusiasm as she asked, “Hey, can I have an army of these?”
Not a bad idea. “Yes. Later.”
Nails screeched and wood cracked as Ray pulled off another crate lid. I saw more straw and more teddy bears inside. His black-masked face turned to us impatiently. “We need to do this faster. It has to have a radiation signature. Do you have anything that could detect that?”
“Maybe,” I answered. I just might. I reached up and tapped a little ceramic wing. “Vera. Can you find energy sources in this room?”
Her crystal ball head turned to look at me. Within the pink, gold lines pulsed in time with the music she was using to jam the airwaves. Would this work? She turned and floated away from me. She detected something, and she’d been smart enough to know I didn’t mean any of the energy sources we were carrying. Would she lead me to a box of teddy-bear batteries?
No. She hovered over to a fire hose box against the wall, pointed a ceramic hand at it, and a bell chime interrupted the music for a brief second. HA! Good girl!
Ray stepped forward again, but I smacked his shoulder with my wand. “Not so fast, Reviled. This stuff will be protected by magic. Bet on it.”
I had an answer to that, too. An answer that had hung strangely heavy when Marvelous’s levitation spell made the rest of my body so light. Unbuckling The Machine, I pressed him against the lid of the fire box and ordered, “Eat our way in.”
The Machine did, adding red plates to its surface and around its jaws accompanied by the noisy grinding of abused metal. It took only seconds of chewing before the growing hole in the lid revealed a lacquered green wooden box covered in glowing red symbols. That would be our baby.
The Machine ate faster as its jaws grew, munching away at the firebox lid like a caterpillar until his jaws latched onto the surface of the box instead. He went to work on that, and, as he bit into the first symbol, it winked out. Biting into the second sent a rippling flash through the symbols, and then they all died. The Machine had set off whatever protective spell guarded the case and eaten it like he ate all energy.
I let him keep eating, through the wood and the padding lining the inside and the velvet cover of the padding, until there it was. Nestled snugly in this magic box lay a dusty glass and wire gold bottle, or maybe a pitcher, with a bulbous body and fluted neck, a spout sealed with wax, and a slender golden handle. The dark red goo inside looked like what it was—blood.
A bang and a yell of pain sounded from the next pile of crates. I looked over to see a man in a suit cradling one hand as he dropped a ruptured pistol onto the concrete floor.
I sighed with disappointment. “Vera, you can do better than that.” As I looked up at her, she looked down at me. Pink light flashed, a pulse that burst out of her crystal globe and washed over me, through me, over and through everyone, and out through the walls. I definitely made out screeching tires and a mess of honking through the pumping music and warehouse walls. If I had to guess, a bunch of gas tanks now contained inert, fatty sludge instead of gasoline. Vera was just full of surprises, wasn’t she?
I also heard a click, and then a number of other clicks. Past the first fool with the bleeding hand, a dozen neatly dressed men pointed guns at us over crates, pulling the triggers repeatedly. They had to hope, but there was no point. Bullets full of the degraded slime Vera left behind wouldn’t fire.
I tilted my head to one side and asked with all the casual sarcasm I could slather onto the words, “Opening fire on little kids? You mob types do play rough, don’t you?”
They were tough guys, although it might have helped that between me, Ray, and Claire, none of us topped five feet. One of them dropped his gun and pulled out a pair of handcuffs, stepping out from behind the crate and advancing toward us. His friends were only slightly less brave, but much less polite. They pulled knives, two heavy metal batons, and one fire axe. Charming.
Not that I blamed them. “Yes, yes. We did break in, and we have super powers. You’re just doing your job. I’ll try not to hurt you.” As I made with the banter I pressed a lever on my sugar tank three times, spitting out three big chunks of rock candy into my palm. Then I tossed them onto the floor between us and the thugs.
I couldn’t help it. “HA! HA HA! AH HA HA HA HA HA!” I laughed as the lumps of sugar knifed up into stalagmites, charging across the floor in splintering waves to crash into the mobsters in rippling waves. Digging into a pocket, I tossed out a heavy handful of metal jacks and a rubber ball. The jacks rolled across the floor, getting under feet as the ball darted and bounced, slamming into thugs with enough force to knock a large man down. Which was what happened.
No need to heap abuse on the fallen. I twisted the dial on my tank, raised my wand, and squirted sugar onto each fallen mobster. The gray crystal coating crawled up their bodies, freezing them in place and gluing each one down.
That worked right up until a masked man in brown and red padded armor stepped out from behind the other shipping crate. The rock candy roared off at him in a storm of crunching sounds. As a sharp stalagmite jabbed up under his feet, he walked over it like a stepping stone. It swung back, and he set his foot on the rising spike again, riding it forward several steps and then stepping off as the sugary spikes swerved aside.
“You’re Witch Hunter, right?” Claire piped up, skating back out into the middle of the warehouse floor. Mask. Expert reflexes. At least two swords strapped to his back, and hilts of other weapons. We had an official supervillain enforcer here! I didn’t know him, but obviously Claire did.
Ray walked out onto the floor as well. “May I?” he asked me and Claire.
“We’re in a hurry,” I warned him.
He gave me a slyly sweet grin. “Please?”
Witch Hunter drew those two swords, slender and elaborately engraved. He kept walking, and Ray stepped between him and me. Claire lounged against a still-sealed wooden crate, and I looked deliberately away from her. I suspected she was waiting to see if she needed to intervene.
Even given Ray’s powers, two swords seemed a bit much. A lot much. I pulled a candy cane out of its slot and tossed it toward him. By the time it landed in his outs
tretched hand, it had grown to nearly his height. That would help.
Witch Hunter spoke for the first time, calm and professional. “I can’t promise not to kill you, boy.”
Ray held the candy cane loosely. I knew he must be humming with excitement, but he sounded quite calm himself as he answered, “Then I have to be better than you.”
Swords darted, stabbing. Stabbing? Yes, stabbing. The hook of the cane got in the way, pulling at them, but the second sword dove down to cut at Ray’s midsection and he jumped a step back. I took a step back, too, and then several more. They might be all over the place. I saw my jacks skitter on the other side of the pile of imprisoned thugs and held up a hand. Ray wanted to do this himself, and I wouldn’t intervene until he lost.
Which might be too late. Witch Hunter was clearly winning. Blades cut and jabbed in quick, economical strokes. Ray had to keep backing up, circling. Every time he blocked something a new attack followed. Only insane reflexes were keeping him alive. At least, that’s what I thought I was seeing. It mostly looked like an expert chef cutting vegetables, with the blades flashing again and again and again.
Ray hooked one of the blades, and the other sword sliced down the cane at Ray’s hands. When he let go, Witch Hunter threw the cane across to the edge of a shipping container and kicked. The kick didn’t land. Ray rolled backwards out of range, tumbling like a ball back to the candy cane and uncurling with it in his hand.
Witch Hunter didn’t chase Ray. Instead, he pulled out a knife, swung around and threw it straight at me – no, at Vera.
I didn’t have time to do anything. The knife whistled at us, and Vera’s hands came together and a pink flash melted the knife into goo, which smoked and glowed when it hit the floor.
My heart started beating again, which hurt. It had even happened too fast for me to be afraid.
Witch Hunter was entirely too smart. Maybe he’d seen Vera deactivate all the guns and thought killing her would reverse the process. Whatever, his plan had failed, and now Ray advanced on him with fast, implacable footsteps. Right up until he came within sword range, and then the dance started over.
Nothing seemed to have changed. Ray might have looked determined, but no sooner did they engage than Witch Hunter had him backing up again.
Then Ray smacked him in the temple with the butt of his cane. The cane swiveled back the other way, and the hook hit Witch Hunter on the other side of his head. He dropped onto his knees, then onto his side. Both swords clattered and rolled away.
Still, the enforcer twisted around and braced one hand against the floor, pushing back up to his knees. Claire gave him some very good advice. “You really ought to just stay down.” He glanced over at her gentle, concerned smile.
I decided this was over and sprayed him with my sugar wand. I sprayed him for several seconds, up and down his body. He stopped moving, frozen in place by an inch-thick layer of hardened candy. He wasn’t going anywhere.
Claire pushed herself up from the crate she’d been leaning against and dusted off her gloved hands. “Well, now that that’s over with, why do you think this box is so much better sealed than the others?”
She was right, now that I gave it a better look. The other crates had straw poking through cracks and nails jutting out in some places. This one might have been glued shut. That didn’t do it much good when Ray ripped the top off, but it did roar much louder and the top broke in half from the force. Inside was more straw, of course, and under that a plastic wrapper packing together big bags of white powder.
White powder. Oh, my. Claire said it for me. “Cocaine?”
“Could be heroin. That can come as a white powder,” Ray offered.
He scowled, and after a moment’s thought added another opinion. “Whatever drug it is, I’d rather not leave it here. Burning it would be dangerous. Can The Machine destroy it?”
I glanced at my wrist. The Machine lay there, coiled like a bracelet. I’d reattached him at the first gunshot by sheer habit.
He’d spit out the bits of firebox somewhere, which meant he’d gone back to normal size, which meant it would take too long. “Ignore it. The police will be here soon, and, when they see this, everyone will be too busy to worry about what The Inscrutable Machine might have stolen.”
“You’re right. All I have to do is keep you here until they arrive,” a boy’s voice announced over the still-thumping music. Ifrit stepped through the empty doorway we’d used to enter the building. I swung my wand up and sprayed a line of sugar at him. Flame roared around his body, intercepting the sugar blast, which exploded.
The boom echoed through the warehouse, and he flew several yards, hitting the wall and sliding along it before falling to the floor. I changed my aim and sprayed him again, sending the sugary coating crawling up his body.
“I wouldn’t try lighting any fires again,” I warned him, not quite as loudly as I ought. I followed up with a yawn. The excitement had really taken it out of me. Out of all of us. Ray had pulled himself up to sit on a crate, leaning against another. Claire slumped over the broken drug crate as I watched. I couldn’t blame her. I felt as tired as if I’d been firing the teleport rings nonstop. Even Ray slid down the crate he leaned against and fell asleep, lying atop a wooden lid. My eyelids sagged. Exhaustion crawled out to the ends of my body. My knees wobbled, and then the tiredness reached my wrists and disappeared, sucked into The Machine.
I slid down to floor leaning against the drug crate, pretending to be limp. At least my visor meant I didn’t have to close my eyes. I dug into my pocket as subtly as I could while I watched Marvelous hover gently down from the rafters. Her current costume contained a lot of fishnet, and not just on her legs. It was only modest compared to the old one. She had poise, too. She stood straight as a dancer when she landed, her voice as sharp as a dance teacher as she scolded Ifrit, “I told you not to confront them.”
“I think… I think…” Ifrit didn’t sound too conscious himself.
“Hold still. I can get you out of that,” Marvelous talked over him. She lifted both arms, and I lifted mine, spraying a jet of sugar at her from my wand.
Experience showed. She hadn’t completely turned away from us, and she yelled, “Shield!” or a word that sounded much like it. My sugar splattered harmlessly off a sparkling dome.
She swiveled to face me, and I lurched up, focusing behind her, on the other side of the shield. My vision jerked as I teleported and found out that Marvelous knew about this trick. Her hand was already swinging back toward me. I staggered forward another step, teleporting to the opposite side of her again. Marvelous’s other hand swung up. I had no choice. I smacked my wrist, and The Machine wrapped around it against her shield. As the shield vanished, I flipped the penny in my other hand at her while she shouted, “Boom!”
Boom was right. Blue flashed, and I felt like I’d just been tackled, knocked through the air to land with a painful jolt on the floor. My body ached, but not as bad as my head. The pain was easing quickly, so I rolled up. I tried to roll up. Another stabbing jolt in my head, and a wave of dizziness turned that into rolling onto my side.
Marvelous scratched at the coin stuck to her lapel. When it didn’t come off, she chuckled. “Bad Penny. Cute. Lift!” Weight eased away from me, and I floated up into the air. That was fine. A few seconds was rapidly clearing my head. When I felt steady, I twisted and extended a foot. Nothing happened. I couldn’t teleport while hovering in one spot like this.
Marvelous scratched at the penny some more, then gave up and put her hands on her hips. “You’re too good at this, kids. Way too good. I need to know where you get your orders.”
She stood there staring up at me, clearly expecting surrender or an argument. She hadn’t even raised her shield again. I was sure this overconfidence was the penny’s work.
I didn’t answer, I just pointed at Marvelous. Splintering noises in the distance presaged trails of spiky rock candy barreling across the floor at her.
“Boom!” she yelled ag
ain, one hand lashing out. A blue beam exploded one stalagmite. Her other hand shot out, and, with another beam, a second stalagmite exploded.
Then the rubber ball came flying across the warehouse and slammed into her shoulder. She staggered, spun, but didn’t fall down. Instead, she raised the other hand and shouted, “Lift!”
It worked. The ball spun in place in midair, immobilized. That left the final stalagmite, well behind its partners, grinding across the floor at her surrounded by rolling metal jacks. With a “Boom!” she blew the last rock candy weapon away, sending the jacks rolling past and around her.
She’d picked the wrong target. The moment they had her surrounded, blue lines of electricity arced like a web between the jacks, a lot of them intercepted and grounded by Marvelous’s body. She squealed, back arched, and I fell to the floor. The moment my feet touched down I took a step and teleported.
Even after being electrocuted, Marvelous swung around, arms lifted to fire wherever I’d teleported. Except I wasn’t down there. I’d teleported up onto the rafters, and I extended my wand and blasted her with sugar. She heard the hissing and threw herself to the side, but too late – a candy shell slimed most of her hip and one leg. It hardened instantly, and, with one leg immobilized, she fell heavily to the ground instead of rolling.
I teleported again, right over her, wand pointed at her face. As crystalized sugar spread over her body, Marvelous glared up at me. Suddenly, her eyes widened in realization, and one hand grabbed at the penny on her lapel. “You cursed me!”
“Shut up!” I yelled back. It probably was magic, and she probably could feel it. Too late. “No spells, not another word, or I choke you with sugar dust. We’re going to stay like this while my candy does its work. It’s just a tiny bit poisonous, and, by the time the shell stops growing, you’ll be asleep as well as immobilized. Listen carefully while you can, and later you can thank me. You need more dragon blood to keep your powers, right? Well, it’ll be on the market very soon. All you’ll have to do is buy it.”
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