Villain's Lair

by Wendelin Van Draanen

  Also by Wendelin Van Draanen

  Shredderman: Secret Identity

  Shredderman: Attack of the Tagger

  Shredderman: Meet the Gecko

  Shredderman: Enemy Spy

  Sammy Keyes and the Hotel Thief

  Sammy Keyes and the Skeleton Man

  Sammy Keyes and the Sisters of Mercy

  Sammy Keyes and the Runaway Elf

  Sammy Keyes and the Curse of Moustache Mary

  Sammy Keyes and the Hollywood Mummy

  Sammy Keyes and the Search for Snake Eyes

  Sammy Keyes and the Art of Deception

  Sammy Keyes and the Psycho Kitty Queen

  Sammy Keyes and the Dead Giveaway

  Sammy Keyes and the Wild Things

  Sammy Keyes and the Cold Hard Cash

  For the superhero educators in Bakersfield and Lamont,

  and for the kids there who reach for the power inside.

  You are asombrrrrroso!

  CONTENTS

  1. The Oozy, Stinky Cave

  2. Perhaps You’re Wondering

  3. Dave Freaks Out

  4. Crunchy, Slooooopy, Gross, and Goopy

  5. The One Way Out

  6. Confusing, Confounding, and Just Plain Creepy

  7. The Dastardly, Demented Damien Black

  8. The Dungeon

  9. The Pit of Doom

  10. Doomed!

  11. Crouching Dragon, Lying Boy

  12. Enter the Cat

  13. Meanwhile, Back at the Mansion

  14. Delivery Boy

  15. The Disguise

  16. Mariachi Spies

  17. Over the Edge

  18. Extreme Gravity

  19. A Take-Ten-Paces-and-Shoot Situation

  20. The Capped Crusader

  A Guide to Spanish and Stickynese Terms

  Chapter 1

  THE OOZY STINKY CAVE

  “Quick, señor, hide in there!” Sticky said, pointing past dangling moss into the deep blackness of a cave.

  “That’s even worse than out here!” Dave whispered.

  “Not if Damien Black sees you,” Sticky warned.

  Dave Sanchez looked at the forest behind them, his heart beating madly. From the tales Sticky had told him, Damien Black was ruthless. Evil. A treasure hunter who would stop at nothing to get what he wanted.

  But had the noise in the night been him?

  Had Damien seen them hide the bike and squeeze past his gate?

  The treasure hunter’s mansion loomed like a monster above them. Even washed in moonlight it looked dark. Eerie. The sort of spooky house you see only in your very worst nightmares: pointed spires, shutters hanging from a single hinge, bats fluttering around the belfry…

  Not that this house had a belfry, but you get the idea.

  What this nightmarish mansion did have (besides pointed spires and shutters hanging from a single hinge) were rooms that jutted out at odd angles. Rooms that seemed almost suspended in space.

  These rooms had either no windows, or unusually shaped windows, up very high.

  Some of the rooms had ladders mounted on the outside.

  Ladders that seemed to lead nowhere.

  Others had cables or pulleys or winches, or really, just turning-pulling-cranking thingamajigs. It was hard to imagine what they were used for.

  Were they torture chambers?

  Dastardly plotting-to-take-over-the-world chambers?

  Or perhaps these rooms held vast amounts of evilly acquired treasure.

  Chests of gold!

  Maps to riches!

  The pearls, diamonds, and emeralds of kings!

  Anyone would agree it was odd.

  Very odd indeed.

  “Señor, in there!” Sticky said again, and this time he tugged Dave’s ear with one hand as he pointed into the cave with the other.

  Dave hated when Sticky tugged his ear, but Sticky knew no other way to get Dave to listen. Sticky was, after all, just a gecko lizard, where Dave was a stubborn, all-knowing thirteen-year-old boy.

  Something crunched through the darkness of the forest, and this time Dave followed the tug on his ear until he was safe inside the mossy cave.

  Safe! Now, that’s a laugh. They had stepped from the forest surrounding Damien Black’s night’ marish mansion into a cave beneath his nightmarish mansion. A deep, dark cave that held, among other things, all the bats that would have been in the belfry, had there been one.

  Not that Dave could see the bats yet. It was, as I have said, a deep, dark cave. And, as it turns out, smelly, too.

  “Ay-ay-ay!” Sticky said, fanning the air in front of his face.

  “I wish I’d brought a flashlight!” Dave whispered.

  “How about matches?” Sticky asked.

  “Matches? Where am I gonna get matches?”

  “Hold on, hombre,” Sticky said, then scurried over Dave’s shoulder and into the backpack Dave wore everywhere.

  So how did matches come to be inside Dave’s backpack without him knowing it?

  The same way that money or jewelry or, say, grapes would mysteriously appear in Dave’s backpack: Sticky had put them there.

  You see, Sticky was, on the whole, a good gecko. But he was a good gecko with a very bad habit.

  He stole things.

  Lifted them.

  Snagged them!

  He had, if you will, sticky fingers.

  “It’s not my fault, hombre,” he would tell Dave. “I was born this way!”

  Which is true; geckos have incredibly sticky fingers. And on this particular night, in this particular darkness, Sticky’s bad habit happened to come in quite handy.

  “Here, hombre,” Sticky said, holding the box of matches up to Dave’s face.

  “How’d these get in my backpack?” Dave asked, taking them from him.

  “You don’t want to know,” Sticky replied.

  This was also true. Anytime Sticky would start to answer that question, Dave would say, “Stop! Don’t tell me! I don’t want to know!”

  Dave did not ask again. Instead, he struck a match. But as the match flared to life, the boy and the gecko saw that they had entered a foul and fiendish cave that had oozing walls and…

  “Bats!” Sticky cried, diving for cover inside Dave’s sweatshirt.

  Dave did not like bats either, but he had nowhere to dive. He did, however, have a match. A match that, just before it burned his fingers, cast enough light on the cave wall to reveal a mounted torch.

  “Ouch!” Dave said, waving out the match.

  “Did a bat bite you?” Sticky shouted from inside Dave’s sweatshirt.

  “No.” Dave struck another match. “The match bit me.”

  Sticky emerged from the sweatshirt and asked, “Why is there a torch on the wall of an oozy, stinky cave?”

  “I don’t know,” Dave said, pulling it out of its holder. He lit the torch with the match, and as he moved deeper into the cave, he wondered the exact same thing that Sticky had asked.

  Why was there a torch on the wall of an oozy, stinky cave?

  It’s a well-known fact that bats are not comfortable with light or smoke, and since the torch was giving off a great deal of both, they were really coming to life now, fluttering about in the spooky, choppy way that bats do.

  “I don’t think bats eat geckos,” Dave said, aware of the way Sticky was cowering inside his sweatshirt again.

  “You don’t think, señor?” Sticky asked.

  But Dave did not answer. He was too busy noticing that this oozy, stinky cave had a passageway.

  A passageway that led away from the stench and the dangling moss and the fluttery bats.

  A passageway that led, Dave would soon learn, to somewhere much, much worse.

&nbs
p; Chapter 2

  PERHAPS YOU’RE WONDERING…

  Perhaps you’re wondering what Dave and Sticky were doing, creeping through a frightening forest and an oozy, stinky cave toward the underbelly of a nightmarish mansion.

  Or perhaps you’re wondering in what make-believe world a kleptomaniacal talking gecko lizard exists.

  These are, I admit, perfectly understandable things to wonder.

  Unfortunately, the explanation is not an easy one. You see, this story does not take place in a make-believe world, with make-believe villains and make-believe lizards.

  This story is quite real.

  Quite true.

  And perhaps your reaction to this is, Impossible! Lizards can’t talk!

  That, too, would be a perfectly understandable reaction, and it happens to be the exact reaction Dave had when Sticky spoke to him for the first time.

  Not that Sticky had spoken to him right away. Even though Dave had saved him from the clutches of a neighbor’s cat, and had proclaimed him “the coolest lizard ever!” this was not enough to begin a conversation.

  Nor was the fact that Dave let him roam freely through the humble apartment that Dave shared with his parents and little sister. Or that Dave took him everywhere. After all, geckos are known to bring good luck, so why not?

  No, Sticky was more than just cautious.

  He was afraid for his life.

  Why?

  Because he was hiding from more than just the neighbor’s sharp-clawed cat.

  He was hiding from a diabolical man named Damien Black.

  It should have been enough to escape this evil treasure hunter’s clutches with his life, but Sticky had managed to escape with something more, and Damien Black wanted it back.

  Badly.

  It should also have been enough for Sticky to hide in the safety of Dave’s apartment for the rest of his life, but Damien Black still had something that Sticky wanted.

  Maybe just as badly.

  Sticky didn’t want it for himself. He more wanted to get it away from Damien Black. After all, he was the one who had discovered the treasure, he was the one who had risked his life, he was the one who had brought it out of the realm of legend, back into the hands of man.

  Now, you’re probably wondering, What is this “it”?

  And again, the answer is not an easy one. Or is, at the very least, not one you won’t say “Impossible!” to when you hear. (Which means that you will, most likely, say “Impossible!”)

  So I am somewhat hesitant in sharing that what Sticky retrieved from an ancient Aztec treasure hidden for hundreds of years in the folds of a secret cavern was… a wristband.

  A magic wristband, known also as a power-band.

  Ah-ah-ah, I warned you. But as I’ve said before, this story is true.

  Amazing?

  Yes.

  Incredible?

  Yes.

  But still, true.

  Now, had this amazingly, incredibly magic Aztec wristband worked on Sticky, he might have cut Damien out of the equation entirely. (After all, what had Damien done, really, but take him to the vast, unforgiving mountain where legend said the powerband had vanished?)

  But the powerband did not work on Sticky.

  And, as it turned out, it did not work by itself either.

  You see, the wristband was but half of the equation.

  The power ingots were the other.

  These power ingots could easily be mistaken for ancient Aztec coins. What gives them away to the discerning eye, however, is that they are notched.

  And have odd pictures on them.

  And are shinier than gold.

  Blindingly so.

  In fact, you could pick them out of a treasure chest, no problem.

  Assuming, of course, you were looking for shiny notched coins with strange pictures on them.

  Which Sticky was.

  Because Damien had told him to.

  But let’s go back to the wristband, shall we? That will take us back to Dave’s reaction to Sticky being able to talk, which will take us back to what in the world these two were doing, creeping through a frightening forest and an oozy, stinky cave toward the underbelly of a nightmarish mansion*

  Well, you’ve almost certainly figured that last bit out on your own by now, but I’ll tell you anyway:

  Damien Black still had the ingots.

  Sticky had snagged the wristband.

  The wristband is useless without the ingots.

  The ingots are useless without the wristband.

  Together, though, that’s another story! By clicking a power ingot into a slot on the wristband, the wearer immediately possesses that particular ingot’s particular power. Super-strength, lightning speed, invisibility … that sort of thing. It’s a one-power-at-a-time sort of magic wristband, but still, very cool indeed.

  Now, Damien had promised Sticky the life of a king if he could bring the powerband and the ingots out of the cavern, but in the end, Damien had betrayed him. Tricked him. And then, much worse, caged him. He was, Sticky learned the hard way, a beastly barracuda of a man. A bwaa-ha-ha-ha-in-the-night sort of villain. Damien did not care about Sticky. He merely saw him as a possession. A unique kind of treasure. Something he did not want to let get away.

  But Damien Black underestimated the price he would pay for his betrayal. For although it took all of Sticky’s ingenuity and strength, he managed to escape the dastardly treasure hunter’s lair with Damien’s most valuable possession:

  The magic wristband.

  So! Knowing this now, you can see why it took a while for Sticky to work up the courage to talk to Dave. He liked the boy, but what if he was just another, younger Damien Black? What if he, too, would betray him and cage him?

  But in the end, Sticky decided that getting his hands on the power ingots was not something he could do alone. He needed help, and Dave seemed just the boy to give it. He was strong and nimble and fast on a bike. He was old enough to go places on his own, and young enough to not freak out over a talking gecko lizard.

  Or so Sticky hoped, anyway.

  He really, really, really didn’t want Dave to freak out.

  Chapter 3

  DAVE FREAKS OUT

  It happened one afternoon when Dave was home alone. Sticky simply crawled onto his shoulder and said, “Buenas tardes, señor!“

  “What?” Dave said, looking at the gecko with wide eyes.

  “You heard me, hombre,” Sticky said as he cocked his head. “I said, ‘Buenas tardes.’ You know, good afternoon?”

  “I know what buenas tardes means! But…but…you talk?”

  “Looks like,” Sticky said with a shrug, implying that Dave was brainy like a burro.

  Dave shook out one ear.

  He shook out the other.

  “It’s impossible!” he whispered, trying to convince himself that he wasn’t hearing what he was indeed hearing. He looked at Sticky and said, “Talk again.”

  “What do you want me to say, señor?”

  Dave fell into a chair. “A talking lizard!” “A talking leeezard,” Sticky repeated, pronouncing “lizard” the only way his accent would allow.

  “A talking lizard!” Dave said again, and ah though Dave was much, much larger than Sticky, he looked enormously frightened.

  “A talking leeezard!” Sticky repeated again, and although Sticky was much, much smaller than Dave, he looked enormously amused.

  Dave sat up a little. “How can you be talking? Are you enchanted? Bewitched? Cursed?”

  Sticky shrugged. “I’m just me, señor.”

  “Have you always been able to talk?” Dave asked, his voice but a whisper.

  Sticky nodded his little gecko head and grinned. “Sí, señor. Ever since I can remember.”

  “Can all lizards talk?”

  “Ay caramba, don’t I wish? No! I’ve tried to teach them, but they look at me like my head’s full of loco berries! I say to them, Theees is how you do it, seeee? You move your leeeeeps. You pus
h words ouuuuuut.’ But they won’t even try! All they want to do is eat bugs and sleep.”

  “Eat bugs and sleep,” Dave said, like he was in a trance.

  “Sí, señor. So what was I supposed to do? Hang around a bunch of sleepy-eyed cricket catchers for the rest of my life? No way, Jose! I needed to shake a tail! Flap a tongue! Find someplace where I belonged!”

  Dave’s eyes were enormous. “And…and…you belong here!”

  Sticky’s face scrunched to one side.

  His eyes became a bit shifty.

  He inspected the fingernails of his little gecko hand.

  And just when it seemed he would huff on his nails and buff them against his chest, he put the hand down and muttered, “That depends on you, señor.”

  “On me?”

  “Sí. On whether you’re willing to help me.”

  “Help you?” Dave asked helplessly. “Help you how?”

  “Ay-ay-ay,” Sticky said. “This is not easy to explain.”

  Dave stared at the lizard for a moment, then said, “Well, try!”

  Sticky tapped his little gecko chin with a little gecko finger and murmured, “Dios mío, where to begin?” But then, with great gecko wisdom, he decided that the very best place to begin was… at the beginning.

  Now, as Sticky told Dave about Damien Black and the ancient Aztec powerband, and the vast, unforgiving mountain where he had so selflessly risked life and limb, he did it in a very spicy way, generously seasoning the story with expressions that were neither English nor Spanish, nor even Spanglish. Expressions like “Holy tacarole!” and “Freaky frijoles!” and “Chony baloney!”

  Expressions that, really, could only be called one thing:

  Stickynese.

  In fact, the telling of the tale became so spiced that as Sticky was explaining the power of each magic ingot, Dave could take it no longer. He jumped up and said, “Stop! I don’t believe you! Not for a minute! There’s no such thing as a wristband that can make you fly! Or turn you invisible! Or let you walk up walls! It’s impossible!”

  Sticky pursed his lips.

  He cocked his head.

  His whole mouth screwed around from one side of his face to the other.