Kingdom Keepers VI (9781423179214) (29 page)

The beast's jaw opened and snapped at Finn's head, narrowly missing. Finn backed up and fell off balance. He tumbled into the dirt, the table between him and the beast.

Chernabog roared, pounded down angrily on the table, and split it in two.

The knife flew up, spinning tip-over-grip. The beast snatched it out of the air. It looked like a toy in his hand as he brought it to his maw and licked the blood hungrily from the blade.

Dropping the knife, Chernabog raised his head toward the ever-lightening sky. His flesh rippled as he seemed to grow, or swell, or increase in some indefinable way. A chrysalis in catharsis—a butterfly's drying wings ready for flight.

The demon—no longer merely a beast—gazed down at Finn and cocked his head.

Finn reacted primordially. He grabbed for the fallen knife and plunged it into Chernabog's thigh.

Chernabog roared in pain. The jungle canopy shook. Startled birds erupted upward.

Finn scooped up Dillard and ran for the tunnel entrance. He could see death flicker behind Dillard's eyes with his every step.

“Don't you leave me!” Finn told him, his own tears starting now.

Dillard's eyes floated open. He stared up at Finn, who could not take his eyes off his friend.

“Don't…you…dare,” Finn said.

“‘If you don't take a chance,'” Dillard said, a weak grin sweeping his lips, “‘you don't have a chance.'”

“You're a Keeper. Always a Keeper!”

Dillard's eyes brightened, then eased shut; and Finn felt the life leave his friend's body. It was sickening and magical, disgusting and vile.

Finn cried out.

Chernabog followed the sound, the knife still in his leg. He'd tasted the boy's blood. He wanted more.

Finn caught sight of the writhing Maleficent, distant now, still under Tia Dalma's twisted spell. The dark fairy managed to squirm to her knees.

“He awakens!” she called out.

Finn carried Dillard's body into the dark tunnel.

Behind him the jungle erupted in a deafening chorus of savage sounds: hissing, licking, sucking. Finn felt the world driving him deeper into the tunnel.

* * *

“Psst!”

Finn stopped, but the trembling of Chernabog's feet pounding the ground from behind gave him chills. There was faint light flooding through joints in the overhead stones, just enough to see, but not clearly. Two shadows stepped forward.

Finn recognized Charlene's voice. “The tunnel splits ahead.”

“And again after that. It's a labyrinth,” Willa said, “designed to defeat tomb robbers.”

“Like Escher's Keep,” Charlene added.

“You're saying we can't go in?”

“It's designed so you never come out.”

Chernabog plugged the far end of the tunnel. He crouched and heaved himself forward, narrowing the distance.

“But if I could find my way back out,” Finn said. “If you two took Dillard and hid in one tunnel while I led
it
down another…”

“You can't,” Charlene protested. “Seriously, you can't.”

“But if I could find my way out and he couldn't?” Finn hoped to appeal to Willa's sense of challenge, to Charlene's sense of adventure. He understood what perhaps they did not: the four of them were not getting past Chernabog. They had to come up with some kind of plan. “I need a string. A really long string.”

Charlene tore her shirt and pulled at the frayed ends trying to start a run of thread, but it wasn't going to work.

“How are you with spiders?” Willa asked.

Finn could barely see her finger pointing out a delicate spiderweb.

“I don't love them,” he confessed.

Chernabog was close now—too close.

“If you squeeze a spider gently, it lays its silk.”

“I don't think I want to know that,” Finn said.

“You follow the silk back,” she said. “He…
it
isn't smart enough to do that.”

“You're crazy!” Charlene protested. “What if it breaks? Or runs out?”

Clomp! Clomp!
Chernabog was no more than twenty feet away.

Finn widened his eyes, admitting more light. He saw the large black spider, the size of a lemon, at the lower edge of the web. He cringed, thinking of actually taking hold of it.

The image of Dillard's eyes, of the light slowly going out of them, flashed through his mind, strengthening his resolve. Finn held his breath and snatched the spider from its web. It wiggled in his hand. He dropped it.

Willa scooped it up and returned it to Finn.

“You're set,” she said.

“Protect him,” Finn said.

“Go!” Willa said. “We can handle it. Go!”

“Good luck!” Charlene added.

“Nothing stupid,”
Willa said, quoting Philby.

Finn squeezed the hairy spider. He felt sick to his stomach. But Willa was right—as always. The silk played out like a whisper of silver thread. Finn stuck the end of it to the nearest wall.

A giant hunchbacked troll in the form of Chernabog stood twenty feet from him. The demon sniffed the air. And again.

It had poor eyesight. Finn realized. Chernabog not only didn't fit in the tunnel, but he could see only a few feet before him.

Finn dragged his running shoe across the stone floor to make sure Chernabog followed him and did not head toward the girls. The beast sniffed the air again. If he sensed Dillard's blood…Finn made sure he heard him, made sure to lure him in his direction.

Chernabog grunted and lunged forward with surpris-
ing speed and agility, his hand—the size of a catcher's glove—swiping the air mere inches from Finn's face.

Attaboy,
Finn thought.

Giving the spider a gentle squeeze, Finn touched the silk against the wall of the left tunnel and continued deeper into the darkness.

Chernabog followed.

T
HE CREATURE WAS
a quick learner. He was moving faster now in his pursuit.

Finn arrived at another Y in the tunnel—the third since he'd left the girls. This time he faced descending stairs and more darkness to his left, level and light to his right. He touched the spider silk to the wall, and descended.

Chernabog was no climber. His cloven hooves slipped on the stairs and kicked Finn, sending him flying. Finn held on to the spider, but landed awkwardly, spraining his right wrist while attempting to break his fall.

Chernabog swiped at Finn, connected, and plastered him to the wall.

Finn dropped the spider. It scurried away before Finn could recover it.

The beast struck out again—a cat toying with a mouse. He sent Finn to the bottom landing, then slid down the stairs after him.

His head aching, Finn tried to navigate the darkness. There was no light at all. It sounded as if Chernabog was groping around in the dark for him. With each blow, the beast loosened the rocks. Sand and dirt rained down. Dust spread. Finn coughed.

Some faint light seeped through.

Chernabog roared. The tunnel shook. Finn covered his ears. Chernabog lowered his horns and lunged at Finn but missed as Finn dove to his left into a pile of bat guano.

Finn spit the disgusting taste from his mouth and crawled away from the beast in a crab-walk. He needed to take advantage of his smaller size, agility, and speed; he also possessed an enormous reserve of anger-derived strength eager to be released, a power that filled him to bursting.

Standing, Finn darted left to right, causing Chernabog to slug the stone wall with his fists and groan with each miscalculated blow. The blows were delivered with the force of a pile driver, cracking the rocks and undermining the thousand-year-old construction. An overhead stone dislodged several inches.

In the dim light, Finn saw Chernabog more clearly. If he'd been a child before the ceremony, he was a man now. His grotesque head, all bull and bat, looked massive, a pink tongue dangling from his jaw. He kicked out and caught Finn, smashing him into the opposing wall.

Finn's hand fell onto another hairy spider. Grimacing, he picked it up, squeezed, felt for the silk.

Chernabog pivoted and roared. Finn crawled through the beast's parted legs, elbowed the beast on the backs of its knees. Chernabog kneeled, and Finn drove his right elbow like a spike into the back of the bull's neck. It was like hitting brick, but the thing cried out and fell forward. Finn kneed it in the spine, forcing it to arch its back; he then dropped another elbow. Knee, elbow. Knee, elbow. With each blow, Chernabog sagged farther forward.

Finn Whitman, defeating a giant.

The beast threw an elbow of his own. Finn hit the wall so hard, he couldn't see. The spider tried to escape. Finn touched its silk to the stone and hurried deeper down the tunnel. Another hit like that would be his last.

This tunnel was narrow and low-ceilinged.

Finn put some distance between him and Chernabog, but clawing and scratching sounds told him the beast was moving.

With each lunge forward, Chernabog's back worked against the ceiling stones, unsettling them. More sand and dirt rained down, clouding the air.

Chernabog's growls grew increasingly strained and vicious. Finn touched another spot of spider thread to the wall, wondering if he'd be alive to follow it out.

He entered a wide but low chamber off which ran three additional tunnels—each in the center of a wall, just like the one through which he'd come.

The chamber's floor was sticky with mud.

Chernabog approached.

Finn froze. Which tunnel?

He chose the middle, touching the spider silk to the stone.

In the dark, he ran face first into a wall. Trapped.

A dead end tunnel about ten feet long. If Chernabog pinned him here, he'd be torn limb from limb and eaten.

Chernabog burst into the chamber, swinging his clublike mitts.

The chamber offered him more room than a dead end. Finn charged out to face the beast. Needing both hands, he dropped the spider. It scurried away. Finn felt a sharp pang of loss.

How many times had he crushed a spider? How could he suddenly miss one?

Chernabog faced him, panting, lips still stained with Dillard's blood.

He swiped.

Finn ducked. He spotted the knife protruding from the beast's leg. Lunged for it.

Chernabog caught him on the side of the head. Finn saw stars. Staggering to the side, he planted his hand into the gooey mud. Another blow. Finn collided with the wall, the wind knocked out of him. A tunnel entrance to his right offered escape, but Chernabog maneuvered to block it
and the others.
The beast cocked its head, seemed to be considering whether to end Finn or toy with him for a while.

Somewhere inside, Finn knew he still had untapped strength. His head spinning, his chest aflame, he lacked the will to find it. In the battle of the boy against the beast, the beast had won. Finn hung his head.

Chernabog's hoof moved and crushed the spider. His spider.

Killed so easily.

Like Dillard.

It came from somewhere deep inside, like lava to a volcano, venom to the snake. His muscles swelled, his mind knotted. Finn charged. He hit the beast in the gut, drew the knife from its thigh and heaved it over his head. As Chernabog bent forward from the pain, the knife entered his chest. The beast roared so loudly, Finn's ears rang.

This time Chernabog yanked the weapon out and threw it across the chamber where it shattered against a wall. Finn ducked instinctively from the flying pieces.

Wild with rage, the beast tried to force itself to standing.

At that moment, the roof caved in, unleashing a torrent of water. Chernabog slashed at the flow, not understanding it. In lashing out at the ceiling, he further ruptured the precarious seam between stones. Water gushed down, filling the chamber. Finn floated off his feet, slapping the surface to remain buoyant. He spun in the water. Which way was out? All four walls, all four tunnel entrances looked identical. He tried to recall Chernabog's movements. Hadn't he crossed the chamber diagonally? Was that where he stood now, fighting against a fallen rock that was pinning him?

Only one tunnel led out to the jungle.

Finn treaded water frantically. The pinned beast heaved. More water gushed down—a river now—but Chernabog had freed himself.

Finn had to pick a tunnel; there was no time.

Then he spotted it: the water was quiet at the mouth of two of the tunnel entrances—
because they were dead
ends
. Two others had water spilling into, and filling, the tunnels. One of these two he'd come through only moments before.

He only had one chance. He guessed it was the tunnel immediately to his right, the one farthest from…

Chernabog stood beneath the waterfall coming through the ceiling, reaching out and pulling at it as if it were fabric.
He's scared of water
, Finn realized. The beast was fighting the water, screaming, thrusting his horns into the flow and swinging his great paws. He was consumed with fear.

As the water rose, Finn swam underwater for the tunnel. Should Chernabog look over, he would fail to see which tunnel Finn chose.

Echoing from behind him came the guttural, bubbling sounds of a monster near drowning.

Finn hurt all over as he walked. He slipped and fell, stood again with great difficulty. The speed of the water rising lessened. Finally he was out of the water altogether.

He combed the stone surface to his right, desperate to find the silk thread. Maybe the water had pushed wind ahead of it; maybe the absence of silk didn't
mean he was moving
deeper
into the tunnels. If he
only had more light; it was dark as pitch in here. How was he supposed to see something thinner than a human hair?

Finn thought back to DHI version 1.6, when he'd been able to briefly turn his human self into a hologram. That particular phenomenon had surprised even Wayne and the Imagineers. The upgrade to 2.0 had stripped him of that ability; again, no one understood why or how.

With the water rising again at his ankles, with the sound of Chernabog thrashing in the flood, Finn came to a realization. The trigger for “
all clear
,” as they'd called the 1.6 phenomenon, was to lose your fear. Not hide your fear, not cover it up, but lose it. Completely.

What if the ability had been within the 2.0 upgrade all along, but the rules about losing one's fear had changed? Everything else in 2.0 was
enhanced
. Why not
all clear
as well?

Losing one's fear wasn't enough. What was more than losing one's fear?

How could losing his fear be more than losing his fear completely?

Chernabog roared. There was no doubt: he'd freed himself.
And he was coming closer
.

“To resist her power is futile. With her you must lose
yourself to win.”
Wayne had said that before abruptly changing the subject.

Not lose yourself, you idiot!
Finn chastised himself.
“Lose your
self
.”

Your identity. Your ego. All sense of “you.” A deeper place than fear.

He closed his eyes and blocked out all sound—only to realize that to block something out, he had to be something. If he was something, he was self. He tried to think of a physical description for “nothing.” His thought jumped from
thing
to another; but any
thing
was not nothing: no-thing. He had to imagine no-thing.

Space. Black. Cold. Silent. No gravity. Finn put himself there: into space, consumed by its full emptiness. Its no-thingness.

His head felt light; in fact, he didn't have a head. Or arms. Or wet feet. He opened his eyes.

He was glowing. Not like 1.6. No blue outline around his hologram, but a hologram just the same. And a hologram that emitted a faint amount of light—just enough to see a single bluish thread of spider silk stuck to the wall.

* * *

Willa looked up at the steep cave wall, and imagined easily how she'd climb up. The grips, the crux… The one sport where I top Charlene, she thought wryly.

“Charlene, I'm going to hide up above. But for the record, I still say this plan sucks. You shouldn't be going out there alone.”

“Of course I should. I'm fast. Superfast, as a matter of fact. You think those middle-aged freaks can possibly catch me?”

“Tia Dalma swapped herself with Dillard, you twit! We don't know what they're going to do next!”

“I'd love to debate you,” Charlene said. “Actually, not, because you'd win. But we don't have all day. We need the van, and we need the boys in the back of the van. Do you have a plan? No? Because I do. So that's our plan: mine.”

“We just can't mess up,” Willa said softly.

Without meaning to, both girls looked back at Dillard's body, his bloodless face haunted her. They
had carefully propped him in the shadow of a column near the tunnel opening, making sure he couldn't be seen.

Shaking her head, Charlene stepped into the stone corner near the main tunnel entrance to the labyrinth and looked at Willa expectantly. Willa sighed.

“The minute you're out, I'll climb up.”

“Promise. Do as I told you,” Charlene hissed, and peered outside.

Maleficent was squatting alongside the sitting Evil Queen, whose clothing was still smoking but no longer in flames.

She couldn't make her plan too obvious. The witches
were far too smart and cunning for that. It had to be subtle, but it had to be quick: Willa wouldn't be able to hold herself for long, no matter how good a climber she was.

Charlene sprinted across the open terrace and hid behind a rock near the sacrificial table. Tia Dalma still lay on the ground. Wanting to win the attention of Maleficent and the Queen, Charlene ran a zigzag pattern toward the unconscious boys, made a point of appearing to reconsider, turned, and headed back to the tunnel.

Maleficent threw a weak fireball and missed. Charlene entered the tunnel. Her fingertips found the crevices between the stones that Willa had pointed
out.

As the two witches entered the tunnel, Maleficent formed a fireball and rolled it ahead as a torch.

“My Lord's prints!” the Queen said, pointing to the cloven hoof marks heading to the right.

Maleficent lit another fireball; held it at shoulder height.

The ball nearly burned Charlene's face. Both girls were now stuck to the ceiling, pressed between the walls, directly above the two Overtakers. The flames threatened to set Charlene's dangling hair on fire.

Maleficent hurled two fireballs. One into each
tunnel.

In the flickering light, Charlene saw Willa about to fall. Her hands were ashen white.

Come on!
Charlene willed the two witches.
Move!

As if hearing her, Maleficent and the Queen headed quickly down the tunnel to the right.

There had been no hoofprints on the floor of the entrance; Charlene had scattered the dust so that Willa could be drawn to the prints and then wipe away her own, leaving only the hoof marks. Maleficent and the Queen were entering uncharted territory.