Kingdom Keepers VI (9781423179214) (4 page)

“Where'd it go?” Maybeck said, his goggle-covered eyes trained on the deck. The blood trail had been
regular and predictable—every eight to ten feet—until here, at the forward section of the jogging track, where it vanished.

“Weird,” Finn said.

“You think it was magically healed?”

“Nah. Maleficent doesn't have that kind of power.”

“Tia Dalma might.” Maybeck sounded worried. “I don't put anything past her.”

“You think it's Tia Dalma who's running the OTs?” Finn asked. For years there had been speculation that Maleficent was not the top Overtaker. “What about Chernabog?”

“Anything's possible.”

“Exactly.”

“But if we could capture Tia Dalma…” Maybeck said.

“Yeah. I'm with you.”

“Whitman!”

Maybeck's shout stopped Finn cold. Finn tugged back the paper hood in order to see where Maybeck was pointing: the jamb of one of the closed doors carried a red smear. Blood.

The door's sign warned:

Maybeck muttered a curse word.

Finn's family had a rule about not using such language, and though he never admitted it to his friends, he didn't like hearing them. “You think?” Finn said.

“I think,” Maybeck answered. He tried the door handle. It moved. The door opened a crack. He reached for the light switch.

“No lights,” Maybeck said. “You think someone took care of them?”

“If that was the case, we'd be nuts to go in there.”

“No doubt.”

“But we're going in anyway?” Finn said, tentatively.

“You're the leader.”

It had never been voted on. But Finn didn't deny it. “We need the thumb drive,” he repeated.

“No argument from me.”

Maybeck hungered for such adventure; he listened to jacked-up music and flaunted his independence. The rest of the KKs tolerated conflict; Maybeck seemed to thrive on it. Maybe it had to do with anger over his living situation—none of the Keepers knew whether something had happened to his parents or if they'd bailed on him. Or maybe he was an adrenaline junkie. Finn wasn't in any hurry to rush into something simply because Maybeck wanted to.

Through the door, they found themselves in a mostly open area where the anchors and docking lines were neatly stored. The wind carried with it salt and the sweet scent of the sea. But mixed into this were other, disgusting odors, like an outhouse in the sun, like garbage cans set out on the curb, like a mouse that had been under the couch for the past week.

Something dead.

Finn faltered. Maybeck cursed under his breath.

“Whoa,” he muttered.

“I know,” Finn said.

There were two inverted rowboats strapped tightly to the deck. A fiberglass rescue launch was slung overhead, looking like a miniature tugboat. Twin spools the size of small cars were loaded to full with twisted steel cable as thick as a man's forearm. Each played out to a monstrous chain neatly ordered on the deck, leading to one of the ship's two anchors, weighing four tons—eight thousand pounds of iron. The rowboats and the darkness blocked the sight of the forward deck. Something crunched beneath Finn's leather deck
shoes.

“Glass,” Finn said.

“The lights.”

“We could report the broken lights,” Finn sug-
gested. “Whatever we're smelling…whoever came looking…they'd find it.”

“And that's a good thing?”

Maybeck and Finn stopped at the exact same moment, compelled to do so by the sudden stench.

“On three,” Maybeck said.

Finn wasn't waiting. He used the face of the phone to cast a green pall across the deck.

He retched.

Maybeck blew his cookies onto the inverted rowboat. He cursed again.

Before them, lying on the deck atop the neatly ordered coil of chain, was a hyena, cut open and eviscerated. Maybeck turned away from the gruesome sight. Finn tried to make sense of it.
A ritualistic sacrifice
. Something a Creole witch doctor would do?

“Psst!” Finn caught Maybeck's attention. By moving
the light from his phone away from the horror and incrementally to his right—starboard—he illuminated a line of thin
S
's on the painted deck.

Maybeck picked up on it and nodded, wiping spittle from his lips.

Bloodred
S
's, from the edge of a rubber-soled shoe stamping an ever-fainter line of color along the deck. Finn turned away, not wanting to make a big deal out of it.

The line led into the dark shadows between a pair of steel girders on the outer hull that supported the overhead deck.

Someone was hiding there.

Finn suppressed the urge to scream, to charge into the shadows and attack whoever had slain the hyena in this horrid manner. Retribution.

“We need to tell someone,” Maybeck said, louder than necessary, loud enough to be heard by whoever
was lurking a few yards away. He leaned against
the opposing rowboat, as did Finn, their backs to the girders.

Finn took notice of the coveralls, realizing whoever it was would believe them to be crew members, not kids impersonating crew members. For a moment both he and Maybeck had forgotten their roles.

“You mean to help us clean it up,” Finn said.

“Ah…yeah. Of course,” Maybeck said, catching on. “Disposal. Easiest thing is to toss it over the
side, but they'll want to incinerate it.”

“They'll want to explain it,” Finn said.

“No joke. Since when are dogs allowed on board?”

“That's one ugly dog,” Finn said. “You see the neck on that thing?”

All the while he'd been unpacking the defibrillator while signaling with his gloved hands, pointing first to the wall behind them, then counting down by putting up one finger at a time.

When Finn's third finger lifted, Maybeck spun to the far side of the rowboat; Finn stayed on the bow side and charged the dark, lugging the defibrillator along with him. He dropped the main business of the thing, extending the wired stickers out like a weapon.

Two guys jumped out of the dark. No matter that Finn had been expecting something like this; he startled and tripped on a deck-mounted cleat and went down hard. Defending himself from the fall, he let go the defibrillator's electronic stickers. Suddenly defenseless, he rolled into the ankles of the two boys and knocked them down.

Maybeck took the bigger of the two, while Finn rolled on top of the other one. But Maybeck jumped back as a steel blade flashed in the low light.

“Back!” Greg Luowski said, lunging with the knife. “Off him!”

Finn paused, then let go of the other kid.

The only light—and there wasn't much of it—came from the open door to the jogging track. The light played across Luowski's sullen face in patchy scabs.
Finn was no stranger to the bully, but he'd never seen him like this. The boy's dull Cro-Magnon eyes were alight with energy, like the eyes of a guy on a street corner talking loudly to the passing traffic. Luowski looked unsure and unstable. If anything, it made him more dangerous.

The other boy wasn't a boy at all. He was in his
thirties, maybe, with a bony, pinched face and unfocused eyes set close together. He wore all black, a
stagehand's costume, and a name tag that Finn couldn't read because of the angle.

“No problem, Greg.”

“Shut up, Whitless.”

Judging by Luowski's blood-caked clothes and hands, they were looking at the hyena's killer.

“He swallowed it,” Maybeck said, figuring it out. “The hyena. They made you go after it.”

Luowski said nothing, but he didn't have to: he was horrified by what he'd done.

“Nice people you're working with,” Maybeck said.

“Shut it!”

“They're not people,” Finn said.

Luowski waved the knife in Finn's direction. “I said—”

“Yeah, yeah, we got it,” Maybeck said. “Let me ask you this: after what you just did, how can you possibly wave a knife at us? Fellow human beings. You gonna cut us open like that?”

Luowski's knife hand lowered. He was breathing hard; he looked sick. “My advice: get off this ship before they carry you off. I'm telling you, she's not going to let anything stop her.”

She?
Finn thought. Which witch? What woman? What girl?

“From doing what?” he asked.

Luowski almost looked ready to tell him. With his hand lowered, Maybeck could have jumped him, but he thought better of it.

“Tia Dalma? Maleficent? The Evil Queen?”

“I have no idea,” Luowski whispered. “I don't
want to know.” His body shook from head to toe. Finn sensed that the real Greg Luowski was held in a spell.

Then it occurred to him: the other guy was likely under some kind of spell, too.

“We can help you,” Finn told Luowski.

Maybeck's questioning look threatened Finn.

“Get out of here before I hurt you,” Luowski said, brandishing the knife.

“I'd listen if I were you.” The unnamed man spoke in a gravelly monotone. Definitely drugged, drunk, or under a spell.

“You're not us,” Maybeck said.

Finn stepped back carefully. Maybeck matched him step for step, but reluctantly; he wanted a fight.

Finn said, “We need the USB drive, Greg. Its contents, at the very least. Make a duplicate. Who's going to know?”

“I'll know,” the man—Dixon—said. Finn could finally make out his full name tag.

“Who that matters is going to know?” Maybeck said, making sure to direct this at Dixon.

Luowski spoke in the same grinding whisper. “Get off the ship. All of you. Get off and stay off. I'm telling you: they mean business.”

“Better listen to him,
boys
.”

Finn felt gooseflesh ripple across his skin. He spoke directly to Greg, doing his best to ignore Dixon.

“Come to us. Anytime. Anywhere. We can help.”

“Someone will die,” Luowski said. “One of you—you'll die.”

He blurted it out like he was divulging a secret. For a moment they all stood still as statues.

Then Finn stepped back until he reached the door to the promenade. He and Maybeck never took their eyes off the two men as they retreated. Luowski still held the bloody knife.

Someone will die,
Finn thought.

One of you.

I
T WAS SOMETHING OF
a Keepers convention in stateroom 816. Finn and Maybeck shed their coveralls and joined the other Keepers—Willa, Philby, and Charlene—along with the hologram of Amanda and
the real-life Storey Ming. Jess's sputtering, sparking hologram lay on the bed, the leg wound sometimes bleeding, sometimes not, depending on her current state.

“What a mess,” Charlene said.

“Keep calm,” said Philby.

Finn tried to catch Amanda's eye, but she wouldn't look his way. To say they'd been more than friends for the past year was an understatement. It was something special, and they both knew it. But things had noticeably cooled off since Finn had accused her of leading the Overtakers into Typhoon Lagoon, a conflict that had left Finn's mother under the Overtakers' power. He'd been stupid. It had come out of his mouth all wrong. He wasn't sure if Amanda would forgive him. The possibility of that loss left Finn with a sickening feeling in his gut. Only one thing had eclipsed this reaction: that moment when he'd looked at his mother behind the wheel in the Typhoon Lagoon parking lot and had seen his mother's bright-green eyes.

She had been born with blue eyes.

That moment had been paralyzing. Terrifying.

Finn's mother was somewhere on the ship now. If he'd been successful in threatening Tia Dalma, she'd be his mother, not some lady under a spell. Finn was itching to find her and make sure she was okay; itching to have Amanda relent and allow him back into her world; itching to get Jess taken care of so he could figure it all out.

But as leader, he knew he had to stay focused on the task at hand. He knew to put the needs of the group first and his own desires last, no matter how frustrating and painful.

“We need to fix her leg, make sure Amanda is returned first, and then get Jess safely back,” he said. “Philby, you need to get to the Radio Studio, so only Amanda goes on the first Return.”

“Why did you come, anyway?” Willa asked Amanda, somewhat accusingly. The question hushed the
others.

“I told you, Wanda. Jess's dream about Maleficent and the Evil Queen capturing Charlie—
Charlene
,” Amanda corrected, knowing Charlene only liked the boys to use her masculine nickname. “The bee suits. Her dreams, her visions—whatever—get all tangled. Wanda wanted us here as backup.”

“Let's stay on point, please,” said Professor Philby. “What matters is
right now
.”

“Once she returns, Jess is going to be in some serious pain,” Charlene said. “Amanda, you're going have to be ready for that. She may cry out.”

“Ice,” Willa said. “We can numb the wound here. When she returns, it'll still be numb.”

“Numb or not,” Maybeck said, “that thing's going to hurt.”

* * *

Amanda scratched and clawed at the darkness like she'd had a blanket tossed over her. Pulled herself up and out of a nightmare in which Finn tried to kiss her good-bye and she put her hand up to his face, stopping him like a traffic cop. Pulled at the fabric of her unconscious as it bunched at her feet, still allowing no light to penetrate. Just then, a sound. A thin electronic whine that she knew well but couldn't place. No, wait! It was their roommate's CD player, an ancient portable thing that the girl used to listen to “massage music” to help her sleep.

Amanda was returning.

She opened her eyes, threw her legs off the upper bunk, and jumped to the floor, arriving at Jess's side as her sister sat up in pain, her startled eyes wide. She grabbed for her leg. Amanda covered Jess's lips and signaled quiet. Jess squeezed her eyes shut and nodded, tears running down her face.

Amanda carefully peeled back the bedding and winced. Even in the dark, she could see the stain on the sheets and the open wound on Jess's leg. She checked repeatedly to make sure their roommate was sleeping. She helped Jess out of bed, and together they went into the hallway bathroom. Amanda locked the door behind them and ran warm water.

“The bandages didn't return,” she told Jess.

“I sort of figured that out. The ice didn't work so great either, I'm sorry to say.”

Amanda touched around the wound. In fact, it was
incredibly cold—the ice treatment
had
worked—
which meant it was only going to hurt worse as it warmed up.

“There's ointment here,” Amanda said, checking the medicine cabinet. “I'll wash it. Then we'll bandage it again.”

“I'm going to be fine.”

“It's nasty.”

“It's like a few cuts all together. No big deal.”

“It is a big deal, and you know it.”

Jess bit her lips as Amanda washed the wound with soap and water.

“You're a lot braver than I am,” Amanda said.

“We need to get back on the ship.”

“Chill. We need to get you healed.”

“I had almost the same dream again. Maleficent and the Evil Queen. Someplace dark. A cave, I think, same as last time. But this time I was inside, and if it was Charlene, I don't think she was alone. It looked like her from the back, but when she turned…there was a scarf wrapped around her. Maybe a
rope
around her neck. I couldn't see her face clearly. I don't know exactly what was going on, but if it was Charlene, I think they meant to kill her. We have to protect her. We have to tell the Keepers.”

“I can send Philby an e-mail. You stay still.”

“It doesn't feel right. We need to be on the ship with them.”

“I know, but we're not. And you're in no condition to go anywhere.”

Amanda's phone vibrated. It was insanely late to receive a text or a call. Driven by curiosity, she checked the device.

“It's from Wanda. A text.”

“Saying?”

Amanda read, “‘Sorry to hear about current
situation. Text me back when you two are able to TAKE A NAP.' She capitalized that last part. What's with that?”

“She probably thought you wouldn't get it until tomorrow morning.”

“So?”

“So someone wants us to cross over.”

“Well, that's not going to happen! You're
injured!”

“Amanda, she knows that. They wouldn't cross us over if we couldn't handle it. They must need us.”

“Need
you
, you mean,” Amanda said, emphasizing Jess's importance. For years it had been the same: everyone wanted what Jess had. Her ability to dream the future was more precious than money.

“I'll probably feel better crossed over. So if you're worried about me, don't. Write her back and tell her we're going to sleep now.”

“It's not right.”

“It's Wayne. It's Wanda. It's right. They'll have us back by morning. Remind them of that in the text—that Mrs. Nash will check on us if we're not down for breakfast.”

“As if you'll get downstairs like that,” Amanda said, the phone suddenly heavy in her hand.

* * *

Amanda awoke beneath a superstructure of metal beams on an open-air, circular tiled terrace. It took her several seconds to recognize it as the base of Mickey's Sorcerer's Hat at Disney's Hollywood Studios.

She studied her hand's peculiar quality—a luminescence that she wished was hers. It was, in fact, her hologram's. She'd crossed over.

Jess was to her left. Amanda wore the boxer shorts and spaghetti-strap tank top that she always slept in. Jess still wore the clothes she'd been wearing when she was injured on the ship. Her bandages were blood-soaked and nasty.

“How are you?” Amanda asked.

“I don't think it hurts as much.”

Amanda took Jess's hologram hands and began dragging her awkwardly into the shadows. In that moment, a voice called out.

“Willow?”

A red-haired girl in a purple clamshell bikini top approached. Amanda froze. It was Ariel!

Recalling Willa's stories about Ariel saving her
here in the Studios, Amanda smiled and called
back.

“Friends of Willa's. I'm Amanda. This is Jess.”

“Ah!” Ariel's eyes grew larger as she took in Jess. It was obvious she didn't see the injury, or chose to ignore it. “The sorceress, Jezebel!”

“Hardly a sorceress,” Jess said, sitting up, but unable to stand.

“We owe a great debt to you and the others,” Ariel said.

“It's the other way around,” Jess said. “We all—everyone who comes to the parks—worship you guys.”

“Guys?” Ariel said curiously.

“Characters,” Amanda. “You, the characters. We were sent here by—”

“The Imagineers,” Ariel said. “The Elder.”

“Wayne,” Amanda said. She'd never heard him called that.

Jess couldn't contain her curiosity. “Is our coming here connected to the theft of the journal from the library?”

When Ariel smiled, the terrace filled with a soft light. “I believe you may be familiar with my friends.” She gestured into the shadows. Three silhouettes appeared, two of them distinctive. Tigger and Pluto.
As they came into the light, Amanda and Jess saw
that the sultry female form was Megara, from
Hercules
.

None looked exactly like their film animations, but again, each was unmistakable.

“We wish to help you,” Megara said in a silky voice. She looked directly at Jess's leg. She was possibly the most beautiful of all the characters the girls had ever encountered in person. “Telephus, son of Hercules, is here in spirit.”

Amanda looked around the area. The Engineering Base was only a few hundred yards from where they stood. “You're exposed here. We know our enemies to be in the area.”

“You forget,” Ariel said in an eerily calm voice. “Long before you and your friends came along, my friends and I were battling these same forces. Every night for decades. Yes, it is more serious now. Yes, the evil ones have organized in ways we never believed possible. But we are quite aware of the dangers.”

“The battle for Base.”

“Has subsided, at least temporarily.”

“The Keepers were told only days ago the final battle was imminent!”

“The darkness appears to lack leadership.”

“We know where the leaders are. But there's a
technology that could allow them back here at any moment.”

“I do not know this word
tek
…”

“It's…a form of magic. It comes from the power of lightning. We are trying to prevent the leaders from appearing magically.” Amanda ran her hologram arm through a wooden kiosk stand. Ariel was clearly impressed by the demonstration.

“You see, Amanda,” she said, “once upon a time—forever, actually—the evil ones' imagined superiority over one another has prevented them from working together effectively. They have battled each other, rather than us. This gave us an advantage. Now it is different. They have come together unexpectedly. This is why your friends like Willow were summoned. It is why all of you are here.”

Ariel's calm, lilting voice affected Amanda.

It is why all of you are here
.

Tigger jumped up and down. Pluto nuzzled Amanda. She petted him.

Megara approached Jess, knelt by her side, and kissed Jess on the forehead.

“You have sacrificed and suffered much, my dear. We wish to thank you.” As Megara ran her hand directly above the wound, she whispered, “The oracle of Delphi once said, ‘He that wounded, shall heal.' Do you know what this means?” As she asked, she pulled out a small leather purse sack and loosened its drawstring. She reached inside.

“I suppose,” Jess said through clenched teeth, the pain tightening her throat, “I need to heal this myself?”

Megara chuckled. “Not exactly, child. To the
contrary, it means all one needs is the source of the injury to end the effects of the injury.” She pulled out two small white teeth from the bag. “Hyenas are part cat, part dog. Did you know that?” she mused to herself as Ariel passed her a knife and Megara scraped each tooth with the blade. She collected a tiny amount of tooth dust in her palm.

“You mustn't fear this, child,” Megara said. She rubbed the tooth dust into the open wound.

It was as if two different photos of Jess's leg had replaced each other: one showing the wound; one, without.

“There,” Megara said. “That should feel better.”

The rip remained in Jess's pant leg, but the wound was closed and clean. Jess flexed her leg effortlessly. “No way…”

Megara grinned serenely. “They have not defeated us yet, my child! The magic lives, I assure you. There is still much to fight for.”

“This is why Wanda…” Amanda muttered, her eyes brimming with tears, unable to contain her joy at the healing miracle.

“We are a team,” Ariel said. “Megara's powers…well, this is child's play for her.”

It might be child's play, but Megara looked tired and drained. Clearly the healing had taken something out of her.

Ariel continued, “We ask that you come to believe in us. To rely upon us. We are at your disposal. We ask that you tell the others: you are not alone. You will do this for us? You will tell them about the power of our magic, please?”