"I look like the Ghost of Christmas Hangovers," she murmured to me, out of the corner of her mouth.
I stood at her side, dressed in a spiffy herald's uniform.
"You look terrific," I shot back. "Hugh would be crazy about you in that outfit."
She paused, as Chumley roughly escorted a family of Imps out of the tent. "You think so?"
"I know it," I flipped off, with airy confidence.
Her husband, retired General Hugh Badaxe, had fallen madly in love with Massha a few years back. The two of them had taken to disappearing together whenever possible. In their case, getting married seemed like an almost unnecessary afterthought. They made one of the most stable couples I knew.
I leered. "He'd like you in nothing better."
"I know that," Massha replied, with a giggle.
A Deveel female in a chic shirtdress with a notebook floating beside her was the next to enter. Her pointed ears were almost perked forward. Clearly she had heard a little of our exchange. She went forward to take Massha's hands, but a growl from Chumley stopped her at a respectable distance.
"Dear Red Fairy, I'm Somalya. Love the color scheme, baby! I write a popular column of who's hot and who's not for the Hottenuf Gazette. You're definitely hot, so we want all the dish from you. Who's he? Is he your significant other? My readers would love to know."
I cleared my throat. Massha didn't really need the warning.
"Well, I don't really like to give personal details in public," Massha began in a conspiratorial undertone, "but Guthlab's a real looker from Capri."
"A Capricorn?" The Deveel signed to her pencil, which wrote avidly in the notebook. "Is it true what they say about Capricorn males—"
"Oh, yes," Massha assured her, settling back on her cushions with a luxurious wiggle. There was a crunch! from her wings. Gamely, she ignored it. "Horny all the time."
"Really! Well, are you going to, er, tie the knot at any time in the future?"
"Just as soon as his divorce is final," Massha stated, with a wink.
"Give our readers just a few more personal facts," Somalya urged. "What is your favorite food?"
"Er, chickalick stew."
I kept my face from breaking into the grin that hovered just below the surface. Massha hated chickalick stew. She always said the beans made her break out. She was doing a good job under pressure of pulling fibs out of thin air.
Somalya was delighted that our "star" was willing to share. "What do you like to do on the perfect date?"
"Skee-ball."
"What's your shoe size?"
"Seven and a half."
"When's your birthday? Paper or plastic? Boxers or briefs?"
"Dat enough," Chumley uttered suddenly. He dropped a heavy hand on the Deveel's shoulder and turned her toward the exit.
"Oh, please," Somalya begged, hopping up and down to be seen over Chumley's huge arm. The scribbling notebook hovered over her head. "Just one more statement for our readers."
Massha fluttered her fingers in farewell. "I love you all."
"Whew!" she whistled, as the flaps sagged closed behind the reporter. "I thought my mind would go blank if she asked me anything else. Thanks, Chumley."
"My pleasure," the Troll replied, with a gallant bow. "Your prevarications were most glib, I must say."
"We're not going to fool Rattila, though." She sighed. "He already knows who I am."
"We're not trying to fool him," I reminded her in a low voice. "We're trying to cut down on his workforce. If we can get him, too, all the better. Cire's standing by outside with his spell on 360-degree reception."
A gentle "ahem" from outside reminded us that more people were waiting for their brush with greatness. I signaled to the guard to let the next punter in.
"Lady, look at you!" a Klahd exclaimed loudly, shepherding his wife into the tent. He held up a camera. "Go and pose with the Red Fairy, honey. D'you mind? One more, with the kids, okay? Hey, that's great!"
Massha and Chumley had things under control so well that I decided to go and check out the crowd. Moa and his fellow executives, in fancy brocade tunics that were so heavily padded they could hardly get their arms out in front of them, sat checking credit cards at a carved wooden table flanked by guards just outside the ropes that surrounded Massha's tent. Moa had insisted on being part of our subterfuge.
"I want to see these pains in the waddayacallit face-to-face," Moa told me.
They were doing land-office business. Thousands of eager faces lifted toward me as I flung open the flaps of the tent, then dimmed slightly when they realized I wasn't the Red Fairy.
The kiosk plastered with posters just behind the executive table was actually hollow. Inside, Cire deployed his spell. He had a gizmo to snap the walls of the tent closed if any of the impostors made it inside. The guards were ready to pounce if and when the signal came.
Moa himself was waiting on a female Gnome with fluffy hair and a turned-up nose who reminded me a little of Eskina. I glanced around to see where our sawn-off ally was hanging out. No sign of her. She was just too short to be seen over the heads of the crowd. Her magik sniffer must be on full alert, though.
The fancy credit cards these individuals were carrying were just a single sign of a well-to-do, if not opulent, lifestyle. I saw dozens of beings from multiple dimensions carrying on conversations with personal-sized crystal balls. One female Deveel stared into a compact mirror while changing her features with enchanted cosmetics. She
couldn't make up her mind for the longest time which nose to go with, but finally decided on an aquiline design with flared nostrils. She caught me looking when she glanced up, and I gave her a nod of approval. Bridling with pleasure, she snapped the compact shut.
Moa accepted the entry form from the Gnome, and the next customer ambled forward. My eyes nearly popped out of my head. My Pervect shapechanger!
Behind me, the kiosk started rocking furiously back and forth. Cire had detected her, too.
I poked the guard at Moa's left in the ribs.
"That one," I whispered. "Get her."
He glanced back at me, curiously.
My whisper was too quiet for a Flibberite to hear, but it was more than loud enough for a Pervect. Her gaze lifted. Our eyes met and locked. In one smooth move she leaped over the table, her claws going for my throat.
"She's an impostor!" I croaked, tearing one hand off my windpipe.
Then the guards reacted. Both of them grabbed the woman's upper arms and attempted to haul her off me. She backhanded the guards, knocking them into the tableful of executives.
Cire exploded out of the kiosk, spells blazing. The Pervect hauled up her skirts to reveal a black lace garter on her left thigh, flipped open the minute pocket attached to it, and hauled out of it a vintage Thompson submachine gun. Cire and I ducked for cover as she sprayed the immediate area with bullets. The air split with the deafening report. The tent behind me collapsed with a crash. Fifty armed Mall guards and I jumped on the Pervect.
The crowd went crazy. These were the power shoppers, the elite, the coddled buyers who were wooed with wine-and-cheese events and half-price coupons. When one Mall guard rose from the fray with a bloody nose and the gun, they ran away shrieking.
This woman was one dirty fighter and strong as a dragon. Whatever vitamins these thieves were taking, I wanted
the formula so I could bottle it and sell it. We rolled together along the floor, knocking over people and tables in our wake. She went for my eyes with her talons. When I threw up a forearm to guard, she dug the heel of her hand into my windpipe. Gasping, I dragged in a deep breath, then let it out in a single bellow.
"Chumley!"
No answering roar. He must be protecting Massha from the stampede.
Parvattani jumped into the exercise. "All together-a now!" he shouted.
Working with the well-oiled precision I had admired in his troop the first time I'd seen them, the guards surrounded the Pervect and dragged
her off me. She continued to struggle, gouging the Flibberites with her fingernails and punching them whenever she could work a hand free.
"Cire, freeze her," I choked out, as I got to my feet to help the guards.
The Walroid scrambled up and pointed his hands at her.
A bolt of bright green light hit him between the shoulder blades, knocking him over. I searched for the source of the attack. I turned around, expecting another invasion of the zombie shoppers, but the advancing force was an army of one. Chloridia undulated toward us, her four purple eyes glassy. Cire staggered to his feet. I threw myself at her, trying to distract her aim. She shot another solid bolt at me, and followed it up with another at Cire. The Walroid went backward over a table. I could hear him groaning.
"They got her," I groaned. We needed magikal backup, and quick. "Massha!"
"Help!" her voice came, muffled by the tent.
I looked around. The Pervect had thrown the guards off and disappeared into the screaming crowd. Parvattani nursed an eye rimmed with purple as he helped to pull the table off Moa.
"Consarn it!" shouted Skocklin, Moa's partner, as the guards pulled him free. "I never thought they'd attack like that."
"You thought maybe they'd give up like they were playing hide-and-seek?" Moa chided him.
"Someone's going to have to pay for all this damage," Woofle exclaimed, looking pointedly at me.
I turned my back on him and started fighting my way through the fallen tent's folds toward the writhing, kicking mass.
"Massha, Chumley, hold still!" I instructed them. "I'm right here."
"Mmmm!"
With a mighty heave I hauled the scarlet canvas away. A pair of crumpled gossamer wings quivered and lifted, followed by the rest of Massha.
"Whew!" she wheezed. "That's better."
"You okay?" I asked. She nodded, her chest heaving as she gasped for breath. "Good. Can you heat up one of your gizmos and help me lift the rest of this tent? Chumley's still in here somewhere."
"Aahz, he's not," Massha insisted, clutching my arm. "I tried fighting them off, but they cut a hole through the back flap and came in right past the guards. They seemed to know which gadget I would go for next, and had a countergadget ready. They zapped him with some kind of spell and carried him off!"
"Chumley?" I asked, disbelievingly.
"Yes," Massha replied. "I did everything I could to stop them, but I was outnumbered. I'm sorry, Aahz!"
"Who took him?" I demanded.
Massha looked me sadly in the eye.
"Eight Skeeves."
TWENTY-THREE
Not surprisingly, being carried by eight beings of less than average strength was bumpy at best. They dropped him again and again on the hard tile floor. Chumley would have protested if his mouth had been free, but two of the Klahds—he refused to call them Skeeve even in his thoughts—had wound sticky tape around it.
He struggled to get free, to no avail. How was it that eight puny beings were able to sap his superior strength? He suspected that it was not their doing; these were the worker drones—the queen, or, in this case, the king of the hive had cast an enfeebling spell and interfered with Massha's magik.
A ninth figure caught up with the group and hoisted Chumley's left shoulder. Chumley's heart leaped. At first he thought Aahz had discovered the subterfuge and was about to rescue him, but it was a Pervert—er, Pervect of the female persuasion.
"Zis is not fair! Why can I not match ze ozzers?" the Pervect asked, in a peevish tone.
"Because you lost your Skeeve card," one of the bland
Klahdish faces responded. "The Big Cheese doesn't remake them, remember?"
The Pervect grumbled. The group trotted on, rounding corners. Chumley tried to keep track of all the turns they made, but he was not accustomed to watching the ceiling.
"Whoops," the lead impostor gulped. "Patrol on the way! Hey, you, disguise us!"
Chumley caught another glimpse of green out the corner of his eye, this one dark and smooth. The newcomer was Aahz's friend Chloridia.
"Mmm!" Chumley exclaimed, trying to get her attention. Her four eyes never focused on him. Her expression was one of dazed obedience. He was shocked. She must have fallen at last under the spell of Rattila's card theft.
"There you are," the impostor lugging Chumley's left foot grunted. "We can't let go of him. Put a disguise on us."
At the impostor's order, Chloridia began to chant in unknown words. In a moment the Klahds bearing him became a host of meaty Djinns in coveralls. Chumley shuddered to think as what they might have disguised him.
"Good," the leader stated. "Now, go buy something. We'll call you if we need you."
"Mmmmh!" Chumley blurted, frantic to get her attention, but she had already turned and undulated away.
The Klahd-Djinns hoisted his limbs once more and continued their journey.
A good deal of the ceiling went by, with several more changes in direction, until the disguised horde finally carried him over a threshold. The scent around him was somewhat familiar, that of brimstone and sulfur, along with a sharper odor reminiscent of ammonia. Through the shoulders of the illusory Djinns around him, he spotted tall shelves supporting myriad pairs of the blue trousers that had so captivated the Klahds. Therefore, he was in The Volcano. Where, then, were they taking him?
Row after row after row of dressing rooms flashed past him in peripheral vision. Chumley tried to keep count of the doorways. He recalled from their early orientation that
The Volcano was extradimensional. It could be the reason they had never managed to discover the whereabouts of Rattila was that it lay not in this dimension but in another.
The answer, which surprised him, was not long in coming. A few hundred doorways had gone by when his escort made a sharp left through a gaudily dyed curtain and into dank, hot darkness. As soon as they were within, the disguise spell dropped away.
His eyes, more sensitive than many other species', adjusted very swiftly. Chumley became aware that the party trod a downward slope. Feeble lights issued from the ceiling, lending the Klahds a leprous cast. A howl sounded from far ahead.
"Uh-huh!" one of the impostors announced. "Sounds like the Big Cheese is home."
"Well, well, what have you brought me?" a squeaky voice asked with eager menace.
The Klahds dropped Chumley on the floor. The landing was not painful, as his fall was cushioned by an uneven pad of some kind.
A black-furred face imposed itself between Chumley and the ceiling. Before the Troll's eyes was one of the largest vermin he had ever beheld. Nearly the size of Eskina, this creature had a narrow, tapered head terminating in a quivering black nose with long, wiry whiskers that quivered when it talked.
"Welcome to my Rat Hole," the vermin chittered, showing sharp, yellow, rectangular teeth, a startling contrast to the ebon fur. "You've met all of my associates? I am Rattila, Lord of The Mall, and soon to be of all Ratislava. What do you think of my domain?"
The tape was ripped away from Chumley's mouth, painfully pulling out a good deal of facial fur. With his feet still bound, he attempted to stand up and banged his head on the ceiling. He toppled onto a heap of, clothes and noticed that all of the garments still had the price tags attached. He wrenched himself into a sitting position. As far as Chumley could see, the sprawling chamber was
filled with clothing, jewelry, books, musical instruments, large appliances, rolled-up rugs, and furniture, all in their original bags or containers, and all piled haphazardly, as if the getting was more important than the having.
"It's rather a tip, what?" Chumley blurted, then felt abashed. "I do beg your pardon. What bad manners, making personal comments like that. I believe it's the heat."
Rattila's eyes glowed red. "You are just jealous," he hissed. "You envy my collection. Well, you're a part of it now. You belonged to M.Y.T.H., Inc. So that makes you an absolutely priceless asset that my Skeeves here have acquired."
Ra
ttila sprang away from Chumley, revealing a long, snaky, hairless black tail, which he cracked like a whip. The impostors scattered out of his way. Rattila ascended one of the heaps, this specimen greasier and more well worn than the others. At the top, Chumley beheld a seat of some kind. It appeared to be made out of items made of precious metals, such as watches and tableware, tied together at random. It could not have been comfortable to sit upon, but Rattila lounged upon it as if it was a throne.
That was it, Chumley perceived. This was the mania Eskina feared: Rattila had set up a kingdom right there underneath The Mall itself!
The gigantic black rat plunged his paw into the heaps of spoil underneath his throne. The paw reemerged, wielding a golden rectangle that gleamed as bright as a torch.
"Behold the Master Card!" the black rat announced. "Bring me the power you have gathered for me. All the identities you used!"
As Chumley watched, the impostors dug through their belt pouches. The Pervect female opened her purse. They all produced piles of cards, much thicker than the collection he and the others had confiscated from their erstwhile captive, and thumbed hastily through them. All of the Skeeve imitators came up with the same blue card.
"One Card to Rule The Mall, One Card to Charge It,
One Card to cruise The Mall, and in the darkness Lodge It," they chanted.
As soon as the spell cleared, Chumley spotted their erstwhile prisoner, the black-mustachioed mall-rat, as Parvattani had called him. He had been the Pervect. Chumley recalled the complaint that their captive no longer had a Skeeve identity to employ, and that Rattila wouldn't—not couldn't, but wouldn't—restore that power. Chumley was inwardly pleased. At least they had deprived Rattila of one ninth of his ability to drain Skeeve's identity. Yet, as the transformations went on, he made another surprising discovery.
MYTH-Taken Identity Page 21