The Scarecrow of OZ (21 page)

The bartender looked at him with his good eye, the non-milky one, while he slid the dirty coin across the counter and poured two fingers of the sweet drink into Jasper’s glass. “If this keeps up, I’m going to have to cut you off.”

Jasper snatched the glass and hovered over it like a dog protecting its dinner. “There’s no alcohol in this.”

“True, but if you’re throwing farthings on the bar, you’re almost out of money.”

Jasper stared down at his reflection in the brown liquid. Being able to read people must be one of the prerequisites to becoming a bartender.

Separated from Nero, and with the rest of the army dead, he found himself in a strange land with no money. In addition, who was going to hire a young kid for anything, and pay him? He had to do something that would give him the freedom he wanted, and the money he needed.

He instantly fell back on some of the scams he pulled off back at home, but quickly realized the inhabitants of the Northern Territories were a much tougher crowd. The still tender burn, from a hot poker pressed into the palm of his right hand, attested to that.

None of his old tricks were going to work here. He needed something new. Something that wasn’t perceived as a scam, yet could still provide him a steady income.

Nero’s box proved to be the perfect answer. If Nero could not open the box, with his vast resources and knowledge, what chance did anybody else have?

So, why not let everyone have a try? Let them bring their own keys and pay for the chance to get at the treasure inside. A locked box holds a secret. Everyone loves a secret. It proved to be the perfect money-making scheme.

For about three days.

Now it seemed that this town’s interest in a locked box had waned and he was down to a few farthings in his purse. It was time to take his box to another town. And next time, he would conserve his money.

Randall sat down heavily next to him at the bar, his face beaming. “I got two more takers for you,” he said as he nodded toward the door of the tavern. Two men stood at the entrance, one of them wearing a hooded cloak.

Jasper’s suspicious nature took over. They certainly didn’t look like the usual clients willing to pay for an attempt at the unknown. They must be up to something.

He didn’t take his eyes off the men as he probed his assistant, who was many years older than he was, but none the wiser, for more information. “How many keys?”

“Just one.”

He rubbed the last of his two farthings in his pocket between an index finger and thumb. This wasn’t sounding too good. “Did you tell them the sixpence price is for a bulk discount?”

“I did. They agreed to the one try for three shillings.”

“How much convincing did it take?”

“I should have asked for a whole pound, because they agreed right away.”

This was sounding too good to be true. From his experiences growing up in OZ, anytime it was too good, it wasn’t true. His suspicions were all but confirmed and he couldn’t let his overwhelming need for money override his finely tuned survival instincts. He knew when not to get sucked into a trap.

“They’re not customers, Randall. Send them away.”

“No, no. They are customers.” Randall held out his open hand, three shillings clinking together in his palm. “They’ve already paid. See?”

Jasper snatched all three shillings from Randall’s hand. No sense in letting money go to waste.

“Fine. But take them by Draco first. He will determine if they are customers or not.”

Jasper grabbed Randall’s collar and pulled him back to the bar as he started to walk away. “You can forget about your cut if he kills these two like he killed the last one. We don’t need the kind of attention another body will bring. The townspeople are already spooked that there might be a monster running around loose, and if there is another victim, there will be far too many guards posted around the city for us to continue our business arrangement.”

From across the room, Caleb watched Jasper control the conversation between him and Randall.

Taylor leaned over and whispered, “Is that the kid we’re looking for?”

Caleb nodded silently.

It certainly looked like Jasper. But he behaved very differently than he had ever seen him behave before. In fact, if he didn’t know better, it looked as if Jasper was acting like a crime lord. But he did know better. He knew Jasper, and he was no crime lord. Sure, he ran his fair share of scams, but what kid growing up in OZ didn’t? It was a dog eat dog world, and now, Jasper was acting like the biggest dog of them all.

Randall shook himself free from Jasper’s grip and rushed over to them. “Okay, it’s all set. Follow me.”

They followed him out of the tavern, Caleb taking the opportunity, as the door opened, for one last glance at Jasper. His seat at the bar was already empty. Caleb looked around the tavern, but Jasper was gone. This was not a good sign.

Once outside, he had to run to catch up to the others. Taylor was already engaging Randall in conversation.

“Is it far?”

“No, no. It’s close.”

Randall seemed exceptionally nervous. Another bad sign.

A few minutes later, Randall slipped into a side alley that ran between two multistory buildings. The space between the buildings was so small, Randall had to angle his body sideways just to fit.

He craned his neck back and waved them in. “This way.”

Caleb and Taylor exchanged a look. They would have to enter one at a time just to fit.

Taylor took a step back and thrust a hand into his pocket, most likely resting a finger over the button of Caleb’s electric shock collar. “After you.”

The space was too small to make a move against Taylor anyway, so he angled his shoulders and stuffed himself into the tiny crevice.

It was a tight fit. The mismatch stones of the walls tugged at his cloak and pulled back his hood, exposing part of his face.

Halfway down the alley, Randall stopped at a door set into the side of one of the buildings. A look of horror crossed his face when he noticed Caleb was not human.

He fumbled the key into the door as Caleb inched his way closer. Randall disappeared and the door slammed behind him.

Caleb reached the door and twisted the knob, but it was locked from the inside.

Was this part of their plan from the beginning?

Or did Randall panic when he saw Caleb’s face?

Either way, the door was locked and they were wedged into a very tiny space.

Taylor grunted behind him. “Don’t just stand there, open the door.”

Caleb rattled the door handle. “He locked it.”

Taylor shifted around uncomfortably. “Don’t toy with me.”

“I’m not.”

The sound of rock grinding on rock was accompanied by the wall pressing Taylor into the building behind them. He shot forward to join Caleb in the doorway. Within moments, the alley was completely sealed and they were both crammed together into a tiny space.

Their faces so close, Caleb winced at Taylor’s hot breath as he spoke. “If I wasn’t touching you, I’d shock you so hard for getting us into this mess.”

The door flung open and they both fell into the room, Caleb falling onto his back with Taylor landing on top of him. A shaft of light pierced the hazy darkness from the single window on the high ceiling. His earlier guess at this being a multistory building was incorrect. It was tall, but the one room stretched from the ground all the way to the top of the building.

Caleb’s enhanced vision enabled him to see in the semi-darkness. The only door out of this room was the one they had come in. And now, the walls of the alley had sealed that up, leaving no way out.

The rustling of chains brought his attention back to the center of the chamber as a large half-human half-lizard creature stepped into the shaft of light. His wrists were bound by chains that stretched to twin holes in the wall behind him, but the chains were still long enough to give the creature free rein over half the chamber. Fortunately, it was the other half of the chamber from where Caleb and Taylor slowly picked themselves up.

Caleb had seen every type of hybrid imaginable back in the Southern Territories. But they were all mammal based. This is the first one he’d seen that was reptilian.

The creature held on to his chains and tugged at them, unable to get any closer. It let out a mighty roar that nearly emptied Caleb’s bladder. He had been trained as a master assassin since before he could walk and feared nobody and nothing.

Until now.

Nothing in his training or experience prepared him to stare into the cold eyes of a reptilian hybrid. There was no doubt that if the reptilian hybrid were not chained to the wall, he would’ve already torn them to shreds without emotion or remorse.

A clanking sound emanated somewhere deep within the opposite wall. The reptilian hybrid responded by spinning around and pulling as hard as he could on the chains. It didn’t do any good and he was pulled back to within a foot of the wall before the chains stopped retracting into the holes.

A deep voice echoed to them from the darkness above. “Why are you interested in the box?”

Before Caleb could respond, Taylor was already talking. “You enticed us with your sales pitch.”

“But you had only one key, and you didn’t negotiate.”

“Where I’m from, money is not a problem. Your price sounded very fair.”

“Do you know what is inside?”

“We were hoping to find that out when we opened it.”

“How do you know your key will unlock the box?”

Caleb placed a hand on Taylor to stop him from responding and took over the negotiations.

“You tell Jasper that I have Nero’s key.”

The room fell silent, except for a faint snarling and the rustling of chains from the other side of the room.

After a moment, a more familiar voice echoed from above. “Caleb?”

Finally, a friend.

“Hello Jasper.”

There was a sound of rocks grinding on rocks and stairs began to form that led to a niche high up along one wall. Jasper appeared and rushed down the stairs. He charged at Caleb and embraced him in a huge bear hug.

“It’s so good to see your friendly furry face.”

Caleb hugged him back. “I missed you too.”

Jasper looked around, ignoring Taylor. “Where’s Dorothy?”

Taylor, not wanting to be ignored, replied for him. “We have her.”

Jasper frowned. “What do you mean, ‘you have her’?”

“She will stay safe as long as we get what is inside that box.”

Jasper jabbed a thumb at Taylor. “Is he with you?”

Caleb half smiled. “Not exactly.”

Taylor took a step forward. “He is my prisoner. You will take me to the box at once.”

Jasper crossed his arms. “Or what?”

Taylor glanced sideways at Caleb. “Or I will make him suffer as no one has suffered before.”

Jasper glanced around him and laughed. “And just what can you do down here? You don’t exactly have the home field advantage.”

Taylor removed the small box from his pocket. “This button controls your friend’s shock collar. If I hold it down long enough, his heart will stop and he will die.”

Before Jasper could respond, a grinding sound drew their attention to the stairs receding back into the wall.

Jasper called out, “Randall, what are you doing?”

Randall appeared at the niche in the wall, “What I should have done a few days ago when you first approached me with our deal.”

Gone was the stuttered and slurred mumblings of the simpleton. Instead, it was replaced by the eloquent speech of a mastermind criminal. “You have a very unique scam there, Jasper. I think I can do a lot with that. Thank you for your contribution.”

His disappearance through the niche was followed by a hollow thunk in the wall behind the reptilian hybrid. All three of them looked over as the hybrid pulled on his chains, testing to see if they would pull farther out of the wall.

Which they did.

Jasper swore and sat down roughly on the floor in defeat. “I can’t believe I fell for the oldest trick in the book. Scam the scammer. I thought he was a simpleton. It’s a shame I won’t be around to tell my grandchildren about the best scam ever pulled on me. I’m not even going to be around to have children.”

Caleb grabbed Jasper and pulled him back to his feet. “How do we get out of here?”

Jasper stared right through him, lost in his own thoughts. “We don’t. I don’t know if you noticed the grates in the floor. That’s for our blood to drain away after the lizard man eats us.”

Caleb tossed Jasper into the corner and then whipped off his hooded cloak. They had one chance to survive this and he didn’t need that heavy cloak getting in the way.

“Taylor?”

Taylor was staring at the hybrid, frozen like a statue.

“Taylor!”

Taylor’s head jerked in his direction.

“Get ready to trigger my shock collar.”

Taylor gave him a quizzical look. “What?”

“As soon as I grab the lizard, you trigger my collar.”

The reptilian hybrid kept pulling the chains out of the wall until they ratcheted to a stop. The chains were now looped at his feet, and looked long enough to let him reach anywhere in the chamber.

He was eyeballing the three of them, trying to decide which of them to save for dessert.

It was now or never.

Caleb shot a sideways glance at Taylor. “Get ready.”

Taylor snapped out of whatever he was thinking and shouted.

“Wait!”

“No time!”

Caleb leaped through the air. The monster responded in kind and met him in the middle of the chamber in midair.

They collided heavily and fell to the ground with a thud. Caleb struggled against the powerful strength of the creature and screamed over his shoulder. “Do it now!”

For some reason, Taylor did not trigger the collar.

On his back, he gripped the monster’s arms and pushed up against the sharp lizard claws as the reptilian hybrid pushed down on him with all his weight. Caleb craned his head over to look at Taylor. “Do it!”

Taylor responded, “I can’t. There was only enough power for one shock.”

The truth that his collar was a one-time scare tactic was information he would’ve liked to have had before formulating his hasty plan. The reptilian hybrid was bigger and, he was quickly discovering, stronger than he was. Taylor was useless, but Jasper jumped to his feet and yelled something absurd as he ran by. “Just hold him there Caleb. I have an idea.”