Chapter
7 Cat
Trap
Kyla, Sun Lin, and Suzi
were almost in a panic. Nova
had not shown up after her phone call.
Of course, the three heroines had immediately investigated, going
to the address that she had given, but they had drawn a complete
blank. The address she had given
had not been hard to find, but when Suzi and Kyla had checked it out they
had not had any luck. The door
had been answered by an elderly butler who had shown them into the
parlor. Soon the mistress of
the house had appeared. She told
them her name was Mrs. Simm. She
too was elderly, and had been more than happy to show them around the house
when they had explained their concern.
Of course, Kyla had used her powers of mind control to make herself
invisible. It gave her a chance
to go to areas of the house that would normally have been off
limits. Mrs. Simm, in fact did
not even know she was there.
Unfortunately, she had found
nothing. She had gone from room
to room, but had seen nothing to indicate that anyone lived in the house
except an old lady and an old man.
They had finally left the house, accepting Mrs. Simm’s story that Kyla
had been there, but had left shortly after being shown around the
house. They doubted her story,
but had no evidence to the contrary.
Distressed, but not knowing what else to do they returned to Master
Zhou’s home and met with Sun Lin.
“What are we going to do?” asked
Kyla. “Natassia is out there
somewhere, and my guess is that she found what she was looking
for. She is in the grips of the
vampire.”
“I can’t think of anything except to explore the area that Natassia
was investigating,” replied Suzi.
“She must have been on the right
track.”
“I agree,” said Sun Lin.
“There are three of us.
Why don’t we each take a section of the town and see what we
can find?”
“That could be dangerous,” said
Suzi. “We already know that
it is not safe to come up against this vampire one on
one.”
“I don’t think we have a choice,” replied the oriental
heroine. “It would be best
if we went in a group, but this is an
emergency. I suggest that we
keep in contact by phone. We
can call in to Master Zhou. His
manservant will take the calls and we can keep track of where each of us
is.”
The other two heroines nodded. It
was the best possible plan. They
didn’t have time to arrange anything
else.
An hour later the three heroines were moving through the streets of
Kyla found herself in a light industrial area, not far from the center of
downtown. She did not have much
confidence that she would come up with anything, as it was a bit remote from
the area where Natassia had made her last phone call, but the other two girls
were checking out that part of town.
The buildings she was interested in were all those that had changed
ownership in the last few months.
She wanted to see how many of them seemed to be operating as viable
businesses and how many were simply sitting
derelict. It was the abandoned
buildings she was interested in.
Those were most likely to be the hiding places of a
vampire. Unknown to Kyla, one
of them was also the hiding place of someone
else.
“Blackie, someone is sneaking
around the building,” said Ocelot.
“I told you not to call me Blackie,” said the Black
Leopard. “And what are you
talking about anyway?”
“That,” said the black-clad apprentice
villainess. She pointed to a
figure moving stealthily around the base of the building Li Mei had chosen
for her headquarters.
Li Mei limped over to the distant viewing machine
she had gotten from the Mad Russian before they had had their little
“disagreement.” She
was still very sore from her misadventure on the roof of the
museum. Looking into the glowing
screen she had to admit the warped little scientist had been good for
something. “I know who that
is,” said Li Mei.
“It’s that little bitch who can make herself
invisible. Don’t tell me
the Jade Dragon and her friends have figured out where I have been
hiding.”
“I think she’s alone,” said
Ocelot. “She’s not
even in costume.”
“I think you are right. Maybe
we can lure her in and have a little fun with
her. Tell you
what, you and Cheetah go up on the top floor
and…”
Kyla looked down the alley.
“This is a waste of time,” she
thought. “I’m never
going to find Natassia this
way.”
“Eeeehh!
Help,
help!”
Kyla looked up toward the
direction of the call for help.
Four floors up she could see a young woman
leaning out of a window. She
seemed to be struggling with someone Kyla could not
see. Kyla reached out with her
mind. She detected five people
in the building. Using her
mind-clouding power, she took away their ability to see
her.
From another window, hidden from Kyla’s view, a Black clad figure nodded
in satisfaction. She had seen
Kyla disappear. The fish had
taken the bait.
Kyla moved quickly to the back of the building and ran up a landing to a
second floor door. It was locked
as expected, but she took a few tools from her purse and soon had the door
open. Once inside she stopped
for a few seconds. It was pitch
black inside the building, and the only light came through the
door. She let her eyes adjust
to the dark, while at the same time stripping off her outer
clothing. It didn’t make
any difference she knew, but she was a superheroine, and superheroines wore
costumes. Underneath, her street
clothes was the blue and black outfit of the heroine
known as the Blue Avenger. She
stuffed her street clothes into her handbag and pulled her cowl over her
long hair. The entire operation
had taken only seconds and had given her eyes time to partially adapt to
the dim interior of the building.
Now she was ready!
She headed into the building until she came to a
stairwell. Above her she could
hear what seemed like muffled screams.
She moved up the stairs two at a
time. She was in superb physical
condition, and she hardly even exerted
herself. She climbed past the
first floor and then the second.
Confident that she could not be seen, she took very few precautions,
and did not notice that as she climbed the final flight she passed through
a number of tightly drawn silken threads.
Those threads were attacked to small bells that sounded an alarm,
alerting several black-clad young women.
Natassia had reached the fourth floor.
Before her was the doorway from the stairwell to the
hallway. She could hear muffled
thumping sounds, as if someone might be
struggling. Cautiously, she looked
into the hallway. It seemed to
be deserted and she could hear the sounds more
distinctly. They were coming
from a room about twenty feet down the
hall. It was time to
act. She stepped into the hall
and moved quickly toward the room.
She had hardly gone five feet when she heard the tinkling of a
bell. She realized with a start
that she had triggered some sort of detection
device. Startled by the sound
she halted her forward movement. It
seemed fortunate that she did. Just
in front of her a section of the roof swung down and swept toward
her. She barely had time to step
back out of the way. If she had
not been alert, the swinging section of the roof would have knocked her off
her feet. She was congratulating
herself on her escape when she heard another sound behind
her. She turned just in time
to see a second section of the roof swinging toward
her. This time there was no
escape. She was trapped between
the two roof sections. She had
time to brace herself, and then she was swept into the section of the roof
that had already dropped.
“Ooooofff!”
Kyla’s breath was knocked out
of her and she was squeezed between the two roof sections like a sardine
in a can. The pressure was
tremendous. She was crushed into
a space only about eight inches deep.
The weight of the roof sections was so great that she was unable to
move, and she was unable to get her breath
back. She struggled desperately
as she came to the frightening realization that she was being
suffocated. Frantically she tried
to draw her legs up so that she could use them to help push the two roof
slabs apart, but there was no room to bend her knees and the slabs were too
heavy to shift. Her chest began
to heave with the strain of trying to draw a
breath. Black spots began to
dance before her eyes. Then the
black spots became larger and larger, until they completely filled her
vision. Her consciousness faded;
she was going to die.
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