"I smell him!" Eskina yowled. She shot forward, baying loudly. "Rattila!"
We plunged forward into darkness.
"Welcome, Aahz," a chilling voice echoed all around us.
Pale phosphorescence picked out looming shadows in the inky surroundings.
"Hell with it," I snapped. "Massha, light us up."
"Gotcha, honey," she replied.
A rosy orange glow issued forth from a charm in the palm of her hand and spread out as far as the eye could see, hundreds of yards! Thousands! The farther it went, the more astonished I was. And the room was far from empty.
"There must be a million gold pieces' worth of merchandise in here," Massha breathed, looking around at the heaps and piles everywhere that reached up to the low ceiling.
"The stolen goods!" Parvattani announced.
"That's not all," I reminded them. "We're not alone."
Around us, dozens of pairs of beady little eyes reflected the light back to us. And two unusual pairs side by side: one odd-sized and moon-shaped, and the other slanted and glowing red.
"Greetings, Aahz," hissed the voice we had heard before. The pair of red eyes bobbed slightly. "Welcome to my Rat Hole. I am Rattila."
"Yeah, I guessed," I replied, sounding as bored as I could.
Massha increased her light spell, and I finally got a good look at the creep who had caused all my current problems.
Rattila lounged at his ease on Chumley's chest. The Troll appeared to have been tied up with duct tape, a sub- stance that, though it had its own magikal properties, should never have been strong enough to hold him. Rattila was a ratlike creature, similar to the host of mall-rats crouching around us in the Rat Hole, but much, much bigger. If he had been standing next to me, he might have come up to my collarbone. His yellow teeth and red eyes provided the only relief from a personal color scheme that was unrelieved black: fur, nose, tail, and claws.
"He has grown huge!" Eskina squeaked, taken aback for the first time since I had known her. "He should be half that size!"
"Yes, my fellow Ratislavan," Rattila gurgled. "I have finally attained stature befitting my status."
"Hah!" Eskina scoffed. She put her hands on her furry hips. "You are a night janitor. Now, you will give me back the device, and we will return to Ratislava, where you will face justice."
"You are all forgetting something," Rattila reminded us, holding up one skinny claw. Immediately, it was filled with crackling energy like a ball of lightning. "I have your friend."
"You okay, Chumley?" I called.
"Fine," he grunted.
"Good. All right, Rattila, what do you want?"
"Now you are making sense," Rattila crooned, with all the confidence in the world. Casually, he tossed the ball of lightning a few times, then shoved it in the Troll's face. Chumley recoiled, and we all smelled the odor of singeing fur. "I want all of you to leave here. Forget about me. Go away and let me complete my business. If you don't leave at once, then your friend dies. That's what I want. Do you understand?"
"Uh-huh," I nodded. "Oh, well... sorry, Chumleyr
With that, I leaped at them.
Rattila gawked at me for one second, then threw the lightning ball at us. I rolled to one side, ignoring blows from the pile of socks the lightning hit, and came up running. Rattila leaped off the Troll's belly and dashed away, shrieking, into the malodorous hideaway. The rest of the mall-rats scattered in all directions, most of them heading for the exit.
"Get them!" I bellowed, as Parvattani and his people stood frozen. "I'll get Rattila."
"We will!" Eskina shouted, running into the gloom after the giant rat.
Par, Cire, and the guards started chasing mall-rats all over the place. Massha sailed over to cut Chumley loose. I lost sight of them.
"He must not escape," Eskina panted.
The dark figure ahead of us dodged around piles of stolen goods. Lightning balls and tongues of flame crackled toward us. We threw ourselves into heaps of moldering clothes and stinking upholstery to avoid them. Smoke began to fill the low chamber as Rattila's missiles set more and more swag on fire.
"He won't," I coughed.
The truth was, I didn't have a plan. I had hoped that superior numbers would overcome Rattila and his followers. I was surprised but relieved that there were so few of them. Par should have no trouble rounding them up.
The footing was unsteady. Bedsheets, T-shirts, tunics, socks and stockings, hats and underwear had been tried on and strewn all over them place in ammonia-scented heaps. I tripped on a knot of scarves. A bolt of green power sizzled over my head, incinerating a grandfather clock.
"He is doubling back," Eskina stated.
I took a moment to judge my bearings and realized she was right. The sound of a free-for-all was ahead of us once again. I heard Parvattani bark out orders.
"He's heading your way!" I bellowed.
I hoped Cire and Massha could cut him off, but with all the power he had at his disposal, he probably outgunned them. I wondered how we were going to deal with him if we caught up.
"Halt in the name of the law!" I heard Parvattani shout. Another blaze of crackling power came in response. We saw the backwash of actinic white light and heard a yell of pain.
"We must get the device away from him," Eskina insisted.
"We will," I insisted grimly. "Split up. We'll flank him."
Eskina nodded sharply and ducked away to the left, between a pair of full-length mirrors.
Emerging into the area we had been in before, I spotted Rattila alone. He was clambering up the highest heap of junk, heading for a metal seat that looked like a science-fair project at a school for young torturers. I made straight for him. He spotted me about the same time I spotted Eskina coming up behind him.
"C'mon, ugly," I taunted him, walking toward him nice and slowly. "Give up. You don't know how much power we can raise against you."
"I know all about you, Aahz," Rattila snarled, scrabbling frantically at the debris with both paws. "Magikless freak! Big talk, but nothing to back it up. Your Skeeve had more talent than you will ever have!"
"True," I acknowledged, evenly. "The kid's full of promise. But so what?"
I was livid that he had been picking my ex-partner's memories like daisies. When I got my hands on him I'd tear him a new orifice, but Eskina was within a pace of making the collar. I couldn't blow it for her.
"No matter how good someone is, there'll always be a better one coming along in a moment. He's the real thing. You're just a pathetic wanna-be."
"I am the epitome," Rattila hissed. "I hold all—"
Eskina pounced. Her teeth snapped shut on the nape of his neck. In spite of the near parity of their sizes, she managed to lift him off the ground and shake him.
In a flash, he became a huge red Dragonet. Eskina lost her grip and tumbled down the mound. Rattila galloped toward the exit. I ran to catch Eskina. "You all right?" I asked, setting her upright. She pushed away impatiently. "Yes! Hurry! He is getting away."
We dashed out into the shop, but we couldn't spot Rattila right away. Chaos reigned in The Volcano. Though I had told Rimbaldi to shut the place down, dozens of his relatives and other shopkeepers had descended. I guessed that word had gotten out that we had uncovered the lair of the gang that had been ripping them off for years, and they all wanted a piece of the action.
Rattila's henchcreatures—henchrats, now that it looked like all of his associates were rats like him—weren't stupid. I watched an Imp, pursued by Marco Djinnelli, disappear into a standing rack of clothes and emerge on the other side as a Shutterbug, full of injured dignity.
"Get your hands off me!" it squeaked, as the Djinn teleported to the far side and nabbed him.
"So sorry," Marco apologized, letting him go immediately. "Did you see an Imp-—"
"That's him, Marco!" I called, as Eskina and I dashed toward them. "Shapechanger!"