Ends of the Earth (26 page)

Wyatt sucked in a deep breath. “ROOOAAARRR!” he called with more authority. A few of the lions slowed their stalking approach, twitching their ears and peering about for the source
of the sound.

“Chuff chuff chuff…” he crooned, switching to the tone that had earned him the title of Cat Whisperer, all those years ago at Gran's circus. He closed his eyes, shutting
out the pandemonium and the fear, pouring all his focus into those soothing sounds. With the familiar smell of sawdust, hay, and big cat in his nostrils, Wyatt could almost believe he was back in
his gran's care, safe and loved and cherished.

With family.

“Kimmm-murmur-murmur…”

Into his wordless song, he poured all those feelings of loving and belonging, all his desire to return to those simpler times, when he was just a little kid and everything was all right. Wyatt
didn't know how long he kept up the crooning. It could've been a minute, it could've been a day.

When he came back to himself, the first thing he noticed was a strong odor of raw meat and cat food. Wyatt opened his eyes.

He stood at the center point of twenty-something pairs of yellow eyes, gazing raptly up at him. He was completely surrounded by a small ocean of fur and fang and muscle. By the biggest of the
big cats.

Wyatt swallowed. “Nice kitties?” he said.

As Hantai Annie jumped for the rising platform, Max and Cinnabar charged down the aisle to help. All at once, a towering figure blocked their way.

“Not so fast,” snarled Styx, the massive double agent. “You've both got a lot to answer for.” He held no weapon, but then he didn't need one—his
powerful hands were the size of dinner plates. Styx spread his arms wide, barring the path.

They couldn't slip past him, and the bleachers were crawling with panicked politicians—no way through up there either.

With a sinking feeling, Max regretted pepper-spraying the thick man.

“I suppose it's too late to kiss and make up?” he said.

Styx pounded his huge fist into his palm. His smile was an ugly thing to behold. “Normally, I don't approve of violence against kids, but—”

“Don't go making an exception for us,” said Cinnabar. Her tone was light, but Max noticed the tightness in her voice and the set of her shoulders.

The spy lumbered forward, snatching at them like a giant from a fairy tale. Max and Cinnabar danced backward out of reach. Once more, he grabbed and they evaded. Styx was forcing them away from
the center ring.

Past the big man's shoulder, Max saw the platform lift as Mrs. Frost kicked at Hantai Annie. The younger woman avoided Frost's attack, but lost her grip on the stand, and tumbled
into thin air.

“No!”

Instinctively, Max curled his arms above his head as if to protect himself. His chest felt tight. He couldn't lose Hantai Annie—he just couldn't.

“Styx,” pleaded Cinnabar. “Let us go. Annie could die.”

“Tough toenails,” growled the double agent, rubbing the bruise on his temple. “Let her.”

The platforms continued to rise, and now Max saw that Hantai Annie had landed on a lower one, and was dangling off it, half dazed. Frost was climbing to her feet.

“Go!” said Cinnabar, drawing a wide-barreled weapon from her waistband.

“But I can't—” Max gestured at the angry agent closing in on them.

She rolled her eyes. “Fly, you cabbage brain!”

Duh. Max had nearly forgotten about his jet pack. He reached for the starter button as Cinnabar fired three beanbag rounds—
bam-bam-bam
—into Styx's broad chest.

“Unh!” The big man staggered back a step, barely fazed. Cinnabar fumbled in her pockets for a reload.

Max hesitated, torn between helping Cinnabar and helping Annie.

Then Styx gave an animal bellow of pain and dropped to one knee. Behind him stood Cinnabar's sister, Jazz, dressed all in black and recovering from the kick she'd just delivered.

“Get away from my sister,” she snarled.

“Jazz!” cried Cinnabar.

A grinning Mr. Stones stepped up beside Jazz, hefting a lead-filled blackjack in one hand.

“Aww, does widdle Styxie have a sore knee?” he said. Stones winked at Max. “Go ahead, cupcake. We got this one.”

Max didn't need to hear it twice. He yanked at the joystick and zoomed straight up. One of Styx's huge hands rose to snatch him out of the air, but Cinnabar, Jazz, and Stones closed
on the traitor, taking him down.

Then Max was past them, soaring up into the lights, homing in on Hantai Annie. Movement from above caught his eye. Max saw Mrs. Frost draw something from inside her jacket, something that
glinted in the spotlight.

A pistol.

She would shoot Hantai Annie before the spymaster could recover! Max was closing on them, but he wouldn't make it in time.
No!
Desperate, he pawed at his pockets for something to
throw, and came up with one of the smoke bombs.

With his hands off the controls, the jet pack wobbled in its flight like a nectar-crazed hummingbird, and Max nearly slipped out of his harness. Awkwardly, he heaved the bomb at Mrs. Frost from
about a dozen feet away.

It struck the ringmaster a glancing blow on the cheek, knocking her off balance, but not off the platform. Max steadied his flight, but he was fresh out of weapons.

And now Mrs. Frost was aiming the pistol at
him
!

Yikes.

“Witless, brainless boy!” she shrieked. “
No one
stops my revenge!”

He yanked the joystick forward, zooming lower around the structure's central cylinder, just as a bullet pinged off the steel core above his head.

“No!” cried Annie.

Max held his jet pack to a tight arc, hugging the frame with a skill he didn't know he possessed.

As he came around again, Max noticed Mrs. Frost's forgotten whip, dangling off a lower platform. He reached out an arm and snagged it, jerking back on the joystick to rise again.

Just ahead, he saw a sight that chilled him to the marrow: Hantai Annie crouching on her platform like a fox cornered by hunters on a high cliff. And above her, Mrs. Frost. The ringmaster leaned
over the edge, steadying her pistol in a two-handed grip.

At that range, she couldn't miss.

“Any last words?” Mrs. Frost called, her voice all ice and steel.

“Nanakorobi yaoki,”
said Hantai Annie, her eyes never leaving her enemy.

The LOTUS chief sneered. “In English?”

Hantai Annie Wong squared her shoulders, body as full of tension as a coiled spring. “Fall seven times, stand up eight,” she said.

“Not this time,” said Mrs. Frost, drawing a bead on Annie.

Max had only one chance to get this right. As he zoomed toward them, he swung his arm back, pulling the whip with it, then lashed forward with all his might.

Whh-chack!
The leather popper at the whip's end tore into the soft skin of Mrs. Frost's hands. With a cry, she released the pistol. It tumbled into Hantai Annie's
waiting grip.

“Ha!” Max crowed. “Take that!”

But he was robbed of seeing Mrs. Frost's reaction, because when Max snapped the whip, he'd lost command of the jet pack.
No, not again
. For a handful of heart-stopping
seconds, he whizzed about like a balloon releasing its air, legs swinging, nearly cracking his head on a platform above him.

His ragged breath burst in and out. A crash from this height could kill him.

Max gritted his teeth. He wasn't going to crash—not this time.

With a Herculean effort, he righted himself and leveled off. Max took the jet pack in a wide circuit through the smoky, laser-lit air, coming around to hover beside Hantai Annie's
platform.

She glanced over at him, keeping the weapon trained on Mrs. Frost. “Not bad, Max-
kun
, not bad. We may make a spy of you yet.”

BY THE TIME
the police, zookeepers, and MI-5 arrived, summoned by a quick-thinking minister, things were settling down in the big top. Somehow or
other, Wyatt truly
was
a cat whisperer, and had guided the predators safely back into their cages, to the everlasting amazement of the zookeepers. He stayed beside the big cats, feeding
the creatures morsels of raw meat and murmuring to them in his daft way.

Once the cats had been corralled, the politicians climbed down from their bleachers and started behaving like politicians again, instead of frightened nanny goats. That meant lots of bluster and
bravado and ordering people about. Business as usual. While a few ministers had been pawed, nobody had been seriously injured, much less eaten.

Cinnabar felt bad for the disappointed cats, but she supposed that, on the whole, it was rather a good thing.

For all their size and strength, Styx and Ebelskeever hadn't prevailed either. A battered Ebelskeever sat handcuffed in the back of a police van, while the half-conscious Styx was being
watched over and occasionally tormented by the gleefully revengeful Stones.

And speaking of vengeance, Cinnabar briefly came face-to-face with Vespa da Costa in the crowd. Her stomach hardened and an involuntary tigerlike growl rumbled from her throat.

But when she noticed how lost and distressed the blond girl seemed, Cinnabar resisted the urge to punch her right in her frog-lipped mouth.

“Cinnabar!” Vespa cried, reaching out as if for support, then letting her hand fall. “I…are you okay?”

“Yes, no thanks to you,” snapped Cinnabar.

“Me?” Vespa's brown eyes went wide. “But I had nothing to do with all this.”

“I'll bet.”

“It's true. In fact, I'm the one who brought your sister here.”

“Right.” Cinnabar folded her arms. “You brought Jazz here.”

“It's true, sis,” said Jazz, materializing from the crowd. “She wanted to help.”

Jazz seemed sincere, but Cinnabar wasn't ready to let Vespa off the hook so easily. “So how did you
know
to bring her here?” she demanded. “You must have been in
on the plot.”

“I guessed something was going to happen, but I didn't know what.” The blond girl held up her palms. “I swear. It's all my aunt's doing.”

“Oh, really.” Cinnabar cocked her head.

“She forced me to come to this,” said Vespa. “I didn't know what she had planned. She said I had some growing up to do, and that I should watch and learn.”

“And did you?” asked Jazz gently.

Vespa's head drooped, and her soft hair fell like a curtain. For a second, jealousy of the girl's perfect, tangle-free golden locks wrestled with compassion in Cinnabar's
heart.

“I learned that just because someone is your blood relative, that doesn't make them a good person,” she said.

“Or even sane,” said Cinnabar.

Vespa nodded. “That too. Blood isn't everything. But family…” Her eyes grew moist. “I wish I had a family like you two, and Wyatt, and Max.”

At the mention of his name, Cinnabar's eyes narrowed. “You keep your paws off Max.”

The blond girl raised her palms again in surrender and wandered off into the crowd. Jazz laughed and lightly punched her sister's shoulder. “Possessive much?” she said.

Cinnabar blushed and looked away. Near the entrance, she noticed Mrs. Frost in handcuffs, surrounded by police, and she wondered what would become of Vespa, what would become of them all.

S.P.I.E.S. had done it. They had defeated LOTUS, at least in this country. But was this their swan song? Without a home, without resources, could the Merry Sunshine orphans stay together?

Max joined his father near the entrance, where Simon and Hantai Annie Wong stood talking with several important-looking politicians in expensive suits. His father flashed him a
quick smile and draped his arm, warm and heavy, around Max's shoulder. Somehow, it just felt right.

“…and with half of Parliament to testify,” a lean, caramel-skinned woman was saying, “I rather doubt we'll have much trouble locking these villains up.”