Villain's Lair Read Online Free PDF Page A

room (and who knows how they’d get out of
that)
, through the waterfall of goopy, sloopy snails, down a musty passageway (with no torch to light the way), through the oozy, stinky cave of fluttery bats, and finally out through the dark and dangerous forest to squeeze through the gate.
    In the end, Dave decided that going forward would be safer. After all, Damien Black would not enter his house in such a bizarre manner. Surely there was a door somewhere. A simple door with normal knobs that led away from this maniacal mansion.
    Poor Dave. He still had so much to learn.
    â€œSo now what?” he asked at last.
    â€œSo now we find the dungeon,” Sticky replied.
    Ah, yes. The dungeon. Sticky had told Dave that the dungeon was where the power ingots were kept. Power ingots, which, if you’ll recall, were why these two had endured bats and tunnels and snails and shrunken heads and catapulting shafts in the first place.
    To his credit, Sticky had warned Dave that the dungeon housed a ferocious dragon. Not the fire-breathing sort found in made-up fairy tales. A
real
dragon, found in real-life stories, such as this one.
    A dragon with dark, scaly skin.
    Big eyes.
    Sprawling legs and sharp claws.
    A three-hundred-pound dragon with a tail as long as his body and a long, yellow, forked tongue.
    A cold-blooded, meat-eating beast.
    One that could kill with a single bite of his disease-ridden, bacteria-breeding mouth.
    Dave had been undaunted. “A Komodo dragon? Those are just oversized lizards!”
    â€œAy-ay-ay,” Sticky had murmured, for it was clear that Dave had no idea what he was getting into.
    But whose fault was that?
    He would simply have to pay the price for being an all-knowing thirteen-year-old boy.
    So Dave and his sticky-footed friend stepped through the doorway and entered the room that Rosie was in.
    I use the word “room” loosely here, as this was more a large, six-sided intersection of hallways than an actual room. There were walls (and a ceiling) and an actual door across from the door they’d just come through, but there were also four shadowy passageways leading to (or from) this intersecting room.
    Dave looked around at his choices and whispered, “Which way?”
    â€œUh…thataway!” Sticky said, pointing with great conviction to a hallway on the left.
    So Dave went past the bucktoothed burro and sneaky-toed down the hallway that Sticky had pointed to. But after a few minutes he whispered, “Does any of this look familiar?”
    â€œSí, señor,”
Sticky lied. “We turn right, right here.”
    They were soon meandering through a dingy, dusty, cobwebby maze of hallways.
    It was a labyrinth of passageways.
    A confounding collection of creepy corridors.
    And after many twists and turns and sneaky-toeing along with Sticky pointing the way, they found themselves face to face with … a buck-toothed burro.
    â€œNo!” Dave cried. He glared at Sticky. “You have no idea where we are, do you?”
    Sticky looked away. “It’s a big house,
señor.”
    â€œSo what are we supposed to do?”
    Sticky shrugged. “Try again?”
    So off they went again, through the confoundingcollection of creepy corridors. Only this time Dave went where
he
thought they should go.
    And, as you may already have guessed, they wound up face to face with … a bucktoothed burro.
    â€œNo!” Dave cried again.
    This time, however, they heard an evil, hissy voice coming from down a hallway.
    But which hallway?
    â€œIt’s him! It’s him for real! Quick,
señor
, hide!” Sticky whispered.
    Now, it’s a well-known fact that when panic strikes, the logic receptors in your brain stop working. They just freeze up, leaving logical thoughts out in the cold and forcing you to do whatever comes to mind, regardless of how ridiculous or irrational it is.
    In Dave’s case, panic had most definitely struck, and the only