Haunted || Leo Valdez

68 - Rebecca Gets Kidnapped By a Pair of Monkeys

The other walls flickered, showing scenes from above deck. Piper stood at the helm, but something was wrong. From the shoulders down she was wrapped in duct tape, her mouth gagged and her legs bound to the control console.

At the mainmast, Coach Hedge was similarly bound and gagged, while a bizarre-looking creature – a sort of gnome/chimpanzee combo with poor fashion sense – danced around him, doing the coach's hair in tiny pigtails with pink rubber bands.

On the port-side wall, the huge ugly face receded so that Leo could see the entire creature – another gnome chimp, in even crazier clothes. This one began leaping around the deck, stuffing things in a burlap bag-Piper's dagger, Leo's Wii controllers. Then he pried the Archimedes sphere out of the command console.

"No!" Leo yelled.

"Uhhh," Nico groaned from the floor.

"Piper!" Jason cried.

"Monkey!" Frank yelled.

"Not monkeys," Hazel grumbled. "I think those are dwarfs."

"Stealing my stuff!" Leo yelled, and he ran for the stairs.

The situation on deck was even worse than he'd feared.

Coach Hedge and Piper were struggling against their duct tape bonds while one of the demon monkey dwarfs danced around the deck, picking up whatever wasn't tied down and sticking it in his bag. He was maybe four feet tall, even shorter than Coach Hedge, with bowed legs and chimp-like feet. His green-plaid pants were pinned at the cuffs, and held up with bright-red suspenders over a striped pink-and-black woman's blouse. He wore half a dozen gold watches on each arm, and a zebra-patterned cowboy hat with a price tag dangling from the brim. His skin was covered with patches of scraggly red fur, though ninety percent of his body hair seemed to be concentrated in his magnificent eyebrows.

Leo was just forming the thought Where's the other dwarf? when he heard a click behind him and realized he'd led his friends into a trap.

"Duck!" Leo shouted. He felt Rebecca's arms wrap around him and smelled the cool metallic scent of the gold that covered them both and protected them.

At least they were alive. Leo had been experimenting with all sorts of weapons based on the Archimedes sphere that he'd recovered in Rome. He'd built grenades that could spray acid, fire, shrapnel, or freshly buttered popcorn (Hey, you never knew when you'd get hungry in battle). Judging from the ringing in Leo's ears, the dwarf had detonated the flash-bang grenade, which Leo had filled with a rare vial of Apollo's music, pure liquid extract. It didn't kill, but it left Leo feeling like he was made out of Jell-O.

Rebecca lowered the gold shield and rolled onto her back, looking dazed. Leo tried to get up. His limbs were useless. Someone was tugging at his waist, maybe a friend trying to help him up? No. His friends didn't smell like heavily perfumed monkey cages.

A grinning, grotesque face loomed over Leo and Rebecca.

"Ew," Rebecca said. Leo had to agree with her.

The brown-furred dwarf was dressed even worse than his friend, in a green bowler hat like a leprechaun's, dangly diamond earrings, and a white-and-black referee's shirt. The dwarf showed off the prize he'd just stolen – Leo's tool belt.

"Rude," he said, dancing around Leo as he tried to grab his belt back.

"Take her anyway," said his friend. "She makes shiny gold!"

The next thing Leo knew, his girlfriend was bound hand and foot. The brown-furred dwarf slapped a piece of duct tape over her mouth, stifling her protests.