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 coun-tergadget 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?