by Bruce Hale
The trio found themselves behind rows of theater seats mounted on bleachers. Although she couldn’t see the action in the center of the big top, Cinnabar noticed the myriad of twinkling fairy lights, the multicolored lasers arcing back and forth, and the red-and-yellow tint cast upon all the people inside.
Some kind of strange circus-y hip-hop blared through the speakers, only to be overpowered by an amplified voice.
“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, honored ministers,” said Mrs. Frost from some unseen location. “But that is merely a taste of what’s to come. Behold, the Lions’ Leap!”
The crack of a whip. The blast of trumpets.
Cinnabar, Max, and his father crept into an aisle between bleacher sections, and now they could see what fascinated the audience of posh men and women, power brokers all.
The broad center ring was surrounded by what must have been more than twenty big cats. On individual golden stands, lions, tigers, leopards, and black panthers sat obediently, eyes glowing in the reddish light like hot coals. Seven women in black-and-silver spandex wheeled in an odd metal structure with a number of platforms set in a circle.
Another whipcrack, and a shouted command from the ringmaster, a diminutive figure in top hat, red tailcoat, and black boots. She half turned, and Cinnabar recognized the grandmotherly woman.
“Frost,” hissed Mr. Segredo. “She always did like to crack the whip.”
At Mrs. Frost’s command, two lions, a tiger, and a leopard left their stands and slunk forward, climbing onto the platforms in the center ring. Cinnabar sucked in her breath, awed by the graceful strength of their movements. As often as you see big cats on TV, she thought, you never get just how powerful and truly big they are.
Mrs. Frost gestured to her helpers, and now the platforms began to raise the four predators into the air as the structure revealed its nature. It was an irregular series of circular stands, with long vertical gaps between them, and it extended from the ground to the very top of the tent, at least a hundred feet above.
When the lifts stopped, the big cats poked their heads over the edge and snarled at the crowd far below.
“They’re going to jump to those little stands?” said Max. “One miss, and splat goes the cat.”
“Watch for the mind-control device,” said Mr. Segredo. “All this circus stuff is merely a distraction.”
“Oh, right,” said Cinnabar, who’d gotten completely caught up in the pageantry. She lowered her gaze to find that several LOTUS agents had discovered their presence and were sprinting down the aisle. “Look out!” she cried.
“I’ll hold them off,” said Max’s father.
The two forward agents skipped, turned their skips into front handsprings, and came flipping toward Mr. Segredo like a pair of evil acrobats. He pulled something from his pouch that resembled a mass of cord with three black rubber balls attached, whirled it once, twice, three times around his head, and let go.
Spinning through the air, the contraption wrapped around the lead spy’s face like an attack octopus. The balls struck him several sharp blows. He collapsed, and with a few punches and kicks, Mr. Segredo made short work of the second acrobat.
From behind the downed agents, Ebelskeever loomed, roaring, “I’ve got you, Segredo!”
“You most certainly do,” said Max’s father. He clenched his fists and waded into battle with a savage grin.
Max caught Cinnabar’s arm. “Come on!” he cried, dodging back behind the bleachers. “Let’s find the invention.”
They raced around the perimeter, eyes peeled for other LOTUS agents and the distinctive blue cube of the mind-control device.
“You know what I’ve been wondering?” Cinnabar half shouted over the crowd’s oohs and aahs.
“What?” said Max.
“How she’s going to brainwash all these people. I mean, that headset only fits over one head at a time, right?”
“Right.”
“So, are they brainwashing the ministers one by one while everyone’s distracted, or what?” she asked.
Max’s perplexed expression changed to one of alarm as he spotted something. “Watch out!”
He grabbed the support pole on the rear corner of the bleachers, kicked off, and swung his body around horizontally. Whump! His feet struck a spandex-clad LOTUS agent squarely in the chest. The spy stumbled backward across the aisle, smacking his head on the next set of bleachers.
As he sagged to the ground, Cinnabar rushed forward and zapped him with her Taser. The man twitched and lay still, out cold.
Retrieving the jet pack that had fallen off during his attack, Max slipped his arms back into the straps.
“Really?” said Cinnabar. “After all the trouble it’s given you, you still want to use that?”
One side of his mouth turned up in a smirk. “A spy’s gotta have his gadgets.”
Cinnabar couldn’t argue with that. Boys and their toys.
A deafening round of applause signaled the end of the Lions’ Leap performance. Cinnabar felt almost disappointed that she’d missed it. After all, an orphan girl didn’t get out to the circus that often. (Try never.)
But she and Max had more than enough to occupy their attention. Down the next corridor they passed, Cinnabar glimpsed the center ring. The predators had returned to their regular platforms, and Mrs. Frost stood beside the tall structure holding something new. Something familiar.
“There it is!” cried Cinnabar, clutching Max’s sleeve.
And sure enough, the ringmaster now grasped the cobalt-blue cube of the mind-control device in one hand. With the other, she brought the microphone to her lips. “And now, for our final act, the one I like to call…the Big Payback. Because when you damage one’s livelihood and deny her the honors she deserves, there is always payback.” Even from this distance, her storm-gray eyes were eerie and electric.
The audience murmured in confusion as Mrs. Frost set down her mike and adjusted the dials. Cinnabar got a queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach.
“What’s she up to?” said Max.
“I don’t know,” said Cinnabar, “but we’ve got to stop it.”
They sped down the aisle, heading for the center ring. On the opposite side, Cinnabar spied Hantai Annie Wong and Wyatt running to help. But they would all be too late.
Mrs. Frost pressed one last button, and spoke two simple words.
“Ready…”
All at once, the lions, tigers, leopards, and panthers shifted on their platforms to face the audience.
“Killll!” shrieked the evil ringmaster.
And the big cats pounced.
UTTER PANDEMONIUM. The government ministers screamed and scrambled up the bleachers, trying to escape the onrushing predators. Men trampled women; women shoved men. Dignity forgotten, every audience member at once attempted to go up or out. But steel bars now blocked the entrances, and the bleachers only stretched so high.
Nowhere in that tent was safe.
And through it all, the creepy hip-hop circus tune kept grinding on.
As he sprinted toward the center ring, Wyatt gaped at the insane simplicity of Mrs. Frost’s plan. She didn’t want to control the government, she wanted to destroy it. And she hadn’t brainwashed the ministers.
She’d brainwashed the big cats. Somehow LOTUS had modified the device to work on all of them.
Wyatt screwed up his face. A surge of pity swelled in his heart for those magnificent animals.
Ahead of him, Hantai Annie dashed into the center ring, intending to snatch the blue cube, but Mrs. Frost saw her coming. The LOTUS chief lashed her whip to drive Annie back, and then hopped onto a platform, tossing the weapon aside. With the flip of a switch, her stand began to rise.
“You can’t stop them, not even with the device,” the ringmaster cried. “Only I can—unh!”
Hantai Annie had taken a kung fu leap, catching the edge of the platform with one arm and Mrs. Frost’s ankle with the other. The older woman toppled, but managed to keep bo
th the invention and her place on the stand.
She kicked savagely at Annie’s face, still rising.
Hearing a fresh round of screams in the bleachers, Wyatt tore his eyes away from the fight. Maybe he couldn’t help his spymaster. But he could help all those doomed ministers.
His eye fell on the microphone, lying abandoned on the sawdust in the center ring. In three long strides, he grasped it.
“Rrroar,” he said into the mike. Wow. His amplified voice sounded so loud, so weird, that Wyatt immediately choked up in embarrassment. He shrank. Who was he to be the loudest person, the tallest poppy, the voice of authority?
“Help! Somebody help!” cried a tall, regal-looking woman. A white tiger had caught a corner of her long evening gown in its jaws, and she was whacking at the creature with her purse. Wyatt knew, as soon as the tiger finished playing with her, it would gobble the woman up.
Somebody had to do something. And that somebody, like it or not, was him.
Wyatt sucked in a deep breath. “ROOOAAARRR!” he called with more authority. A few of the lions slowed their stalking approach, twitching their ears and peering about for the source of the sound.
“Chuff chuff chuff…” he crooned, switching to the tone that had earned him the title of Cat Whisperer, all those years ago at Gran’s circus. He closed his eyes, shutting out the pandemonium and the fear, pouring all his focus into those soothing sounds. With the familiar smell of sawdust, hay, and big cat in his nostrils, Wyatt could almost believe he was back in his gran’s care, safe and loved and cherished.
With family.
“Kimmm-murmur-murmur…”
Into his wordless song, he poured all those feelings of loving and belonging, all his desire to return to those simpler times, when he was just a little kid and everything was all right. Wyatt didn’t know how long he kept up the crooning. It could’ve been a minute, it could’ve been a day.
When he came back to himself, the first thing he noticed was a strong odor of raw meat and cat food. Wyatt opened his eyes.
He stood at the center point of twenty-something pairs of yellow eyes, gazing raptly up at him. He was completely surrounded by a small ocean of fur and fang and muscle. By the biggest of the big cats.
Wyatt swallowed. “Nice kitties?” he said.
As Hantai Annie jumped for the rising platform, Max and Cinnabar charged down the aisle to help. All at once, a towering figure blocked their way.
“Not so fast,” snarled Styx, the massive double agent. “You’ve both got a lot to answer for.” He held no weapon, but then he didn’t need one—his powerful hands were the size of dinner plates. Styx spread his arms wide, barring the path.
They couldn’t slip past him, and the bleachers were crawling with panicked politicians—no way through up there either.
With a sinking feeling, Max regretted pepper-spraying the thick man.
“I suppose it’s too late to kiss and make up?” he said.
Styx pounded his huge fist into his palm. His smile was an ugly thing to behold. “Normally, I don’t approve of violence against kids, but—”
“Don’t go making an exception for us,” said Cinnabar. Her tone was light, but Max noticed the tightness in her voice and the set of her shoulders.
The spy lumbered forward, snatching at them like a giant from a fairy tale. Max and Cinnabar danced backward out of reach. Once more, he grabbed and they evaded. Styx was forcing them away from the center ring.
Past the big man’s shoulder, Max saw the platform lift as Mrs. Frost kicked at Hantai Annie. The younger woman avoided Frost’s attack, but lost her grip on the stand, and tumbled into thin air.
“No!”
Instinctively, Max curled his arms above his head as if to protect himself. His chest felt tight. He couldn’t lose Hantai Annie—he just couldn’t.
“Styx,” pleaded Cinnabar. “Let us go. Annie could die.”
“Tough toenails,” growled the double agent, rubbing the bruise on his temple. “Let her.”
The platforms continued to rise, and now Max saw that Hantai Annie had landed on a lower one, and was dangling off it, half dazed. Frost was climbing to her feet.
“Go!” said Cinnabar, drawing a wide-barreled weapon from her waistband.
“But I can’t—” Max gestured at the angry agent closing in on them.
She rolled her eyes. “Fly, you cabbage brain!”
Duh. Max had nearly forgotten about his jet pack. He reached for the starter button as Cinnabar fired three beanbag rounds—bam-bam-bam—into Styx’s broad chest.
“Unh!” The big man staggered back a step, barely fazed. Cinnabar fumbled in her pockets for a reload.
Max hesitated, torn between helping Cinnabar and helping Annie.
Then Styx gave an animal bellow of pain and dropped to one knee. Behind him stood Cinnabar’s sister, Jazz, dressed all in black and recovering from the kick she’d just delivered.
“Get away from my sister,” she snarled.
“Jazz!” cried Cinnabar.
A grinning Mr. Stones stepped up beside Jazz, hefting a lead-filled blackjack in one hand.
“Aww, does widdle Styxie have a sore knee?” he said. Stones winked at Max. “Go ahead, cupcake. We got this one.”
Max didn’t need to hear it twice. He yanked at the joystick and zoomed straight up. One of Styx’s huge hands rose to snatch him out of the air, but Cinnabar, Jazz, and Stones closed on the traitor, taking him down.
Then Max was past them, soaring up into the lights, homing in on Hantai Annie. Movement from above caught his eye. Max saw Mrs. Frost draw something from inside her jacket, something that glinted in the spotlight.
A pistol.
She would shoot Hantai Annie before the spymaster could recover! Max was closing on them, but he wouldn’t make it in time. No! Desperate, he pawed at his pockets for something to throw, and came up with one of the smoke bombs.
With his hands off the controls, the jet pack wobbled in its flight like a nectar-crazed hummingbird, and Max nearly slipped out of his harness. Awkwardly, he heaved the bomb at Mrs. Frost from about a dozen feet away.
It struck the ringmaster a glancing blow on the cheek, knocking her off balance, but not off the platform. Max steadied his flight, but he was fresh out of weapons.
And now Mrs. Frost was aiming the pistol at him!
Yikes.
“Witless, brainless boy!” she shrieked. “No one stops my revenge!”
He yanked the joystick forward, zooming lower around the structure’s central cylinder, just as a bullet pinged off the steel core above his head.
“No!” cried Annie.
Max held his jet pack to a tight arc, hugging the frame with a skill he didn’t know he possessed.
As he came around again, Max noticed Mrs. Frost’s forgotten whip, dangling off a lower platform. He reached out an arm and snagged it, jerking back on the joystick to rise again.
Just ahead, he saw a sight that chilled him to the marrow: Hantai Annie crouching on her platform like a fox cornered by hunters on a high cliff. And above her, Mrs. Frost. The ringmaster leaned over the edge, steadying her pistol in a two-handed grip.
At that range, she couldn’t miss.
“Any last words?” Mrs. Frost called, her voice all ice and steel.
“Nanakorobi yaoki,” said Hantai Annie, her eyes never leaving her enemy.
The LOTUS chief sneered. “In English?”
Hantai Annie Wong squared her shoulders, body as full of tension as a coiled spring. “Fall seven times, stand up eight,” she said.
“Not this time,” said Mrs. Frost, drawing a bead on Annie.
Max had only one chance to get this right. As he zoomed toward them, he swung his arm back, pulling the whip with it, then lashed forward with all his might.
Whh-chack! The leather popper at the whip’s end tore into the soft skin of Mrs. Frost’s hands. With a cry, she released the pistol. It tumbled into Hantai Annie’s waiting grip.
�
��Ha!” Max crowed. “Take that!”
But he was robbed of seeing Mrs. Frost’s reaction, because when Max snapped the whip, he’d lost command of the jet pack. No, not again. For a handful of heart-stopping seconds, he whizzed about like a balloon releasing its air, legs swinging, nearly cracking his head on a platform above him.
His ragged breath burst in and out. A crash from this height could kill him.
Max gritted his teeth. He wasn’t going to crash—not this time.
With a Herculean effort, he righted himself and leveled off. Max took the jet pack in a wide circuit through the smoky, laser-lit air, coming around to hover beside Hantai Annie’s platform.
She glanced over at him, keeping the weapon trained on Mrs. Frost. “Not bad, Max-kun, not bad. We may make a spy of you yet.”
BY THE TIME the police, zookeepers, and MI-5 arrived, summoned by a quick-thinking minister, things were settling down in the big top. Somehow or other, Wyatt truly was a cat whisperer, and had guided the predators safely back into their cages, to the everlasting amazement of the zookeepers. He stayed beside the big cats, feeding the creatures morsels of raw meat and murmuring to them in his daft way.
Once the cats had been corralled, the politicians climbed down from their bleachers and started behaving like politicians again, instead of frightened nanny goats. That meant lots of bluster and bravado and ordering people about. Business as usual. While a few ministers had been pawed, nobody had been seriously injured, much less eaten.
Cinnabar felt bad for the disappointed cats, but she supposed that, on the whole, it was rather a good thing.
For all their size and strength, Styx and Ebelskeever hadn’t prevailed either. A battered Ebelskeever sat handcuffed in the back of a police van, while the half-conscious Styx was being watched over and occasionally tormented by the gleefully revengeful Stones.
And speaking of vengeance, Cinnabar briefly came face-to-face with Vespa da Costa in the crowd. Her stomach hardened and an involuntary tigerlike growl rumbled from her throat.
