Kingdom Keepers VI Read online

  When he refocused, he’d lost Luowski and Dixon. Philby panicked and studied each of the shops.

  Next to Peggy’s Yarn Shop, a store window: Bytes, Bits, and Beyond.

  A computer store.

  Philby crossed the street at a run. The shop’s window was filled with gear, some of it switched on and working. One monitor displayed a live video of Philby looking in. To the right was another monitor divided into four video quadrants.

  A handwritten ad read:

  Security Special! Package includes 4 wireless cameras and software!

  In the lower-right quadrant, two dark shapes were crouched below the counter. Philby wondered how Luowski could be so dumb.

  A police siren grew steadily louder.

  And closer still.

  At first, Philby assumed Luowski had tripped a silent alarm, and was delighted at the idea of the bully getting himself locked up. Then he considered his own position.

  Not good. He could easily be mistaken for a lookout. An accomplice.

  Tires screeched. A police car slid through the turn onto Jolastraat.

  Philby took off running, realizing too late that this was a stupid thing to do. People who ran from cops appeared guilty. Car doors slammed behind him. The dying siren crawled up to a scream again as the police car peeled out.

  Cursing under his breath, Philby cut left onto a dirt track. The police car slammed on the brakes, backed up, and took a sharp left, now immediately behind Philby.

  Fence, Philby’s brain cried.

  The wooden fence was eight feet high, with lumber bracing halfway up. Philby headed for it.

  At that same moment, Luowski and Dixon emerged from the shop’s back door cradling large cardboard boxes.

  For a split second Philby hesitated: he’d led the police directly to the thieves. That had to be a good thing!

  But as the police car slowed and the passenger door swung open, dispensing a woman cop who ran straight at Philby, he knew he was in big trouble. If arrested, he would not only miss the ship’s departure but he’d look like an idiot to the others—all brains, no brawn, though that was far from the truth.

  Wayne had recruited Philby in part for his rock-climbing skills; he’d ended up as the group’s techie only after Maybeck shirked the responsibility. Now—unbeknown to the others—he seemed to be being groomed to lead the Keepers, a role currently all Finn’s. Wayne treated him special, gave him secret responsibilities. An arrest would sabotage all he’d been working toward.

  Philby scaled the fence like he was flashing a new climbing route, crossed the street, and tried to lose himself in a stand of trees.

  The lady cop fell awkwardly into the dust. When she looked up, the tall kid was gone.

  * * *

  If Dixon hadn’t reacted the way he had, Luowski might have frozen in place. At the very least, Luowski would have dropped the stolen computer before running. But Dixon reacted calmly. He wasn’t afraid. It gave Luowski strength.

  Dixon took off without looking back.

  Within seconds Luowski was following him across a busy street amid a flurry of protesting car horns.

  The police car’s siren cried behind them, but at a distance now; they had the jump on them, and Dixon and Luowski shot though a narrow gap between buildings, knowing a police car would not fit. The driver should have followed on foot. By pursuing in the car, he’d lost his advantage.

  Dixon and Luowski seized it.

  MAYBECK AND CHARLENE had disembarked at seven when Cast Members were allowed off the ship. They’d headed for separate taxis and left for separate caves.

  Ten minutes out of the city, Maybeck’s driver drove him onto a road of sand no wider than the car. After a long, bouncing drive, the taxi arrived at a turnout where three boulders blocked vehicles from entering a weed-infested, trodden-down footpath lined with cactus and discolored by litter. Maybeck told the driver to wait for him.

  Maybeck passed a boulder; decaying wrought iron bars blocked access to a dark hole where rock met sand. Hoping that wasn’t the cave in question, Maybeck hurried up a path that climbed a small hill, now facing a smooth rock formation that rose unexpectedly out of the sand. Giant boulders lay atop one another at odd angles, creating dark spaces between them. The path led under and through the boulders, revealing shaded spaces, but not exactly caves.

  Bugs swarmed around Maybeck’s head.

  None of the spaces matched the copy of the sketch he carried in his back pocket. The path continued through more of the partial caves and broke out again into sunlight.

  A bust.

  Back in the taxi, he described the cave in Jess’s drawing to the driver.

  “The cave I’m looking for is on flat ground.” He passed the driver the copy of the sketch. “The cave opening is like a mouth about to smile.”

  “A poet,” the driver said.

  “Artist, actually.”

  “You draw this?”

  “A friend.”

  The driver dragged his hand over his face, stretching his skin.

  “I might know this place,” the driver said. “Not so popular. A ways from here. Cost you twenty florins.”

  Maybeck calculated the conversion. Eleven dollars. It seemed like a lot. “And if you wait for me maybe an hour and take me back to the ship?”

  The driver considered the proposal. “Thirty florins to return, then the meter back to the ship.”

  “Twenty-five,” Maybeck said to the driver. “Then the meter.”

  “I wait one hour,” the driver said. “You have the money?”

  “U.S. dollars,” Maybeck said.

  “Show me.”

  Maybeck didn’t like the idea of showing a taxi driver he was carrying a bunch of cash.

  “No problem.” He struggled to pull a single twenty from his pocket. Waved it toward the front seat. The driver nodded and took off so fast Maybeck’s head snapped back.

  Five minutes into the ride, Maybeck turned on his charm.

  “This cave? You know anything about it?”

  “This island got nothing but stories, mister.”

  “Any stories about the caves?”

  “Guadirikiri, where you’re going, has two parts. Holes in the roof of the cave let in the light by day. Let the bats out by night. Thousands of ’em. It’s said that they’re souls of all them slaves flying each night, trying to find eternity.”

  Maybeck felt a chill. He leaned back.

  “Slaves?”

  “Aruba’s first settlers were Indians—natives, like me—escaping other tribes like the Carib. Then the Europeans came, in the year of our Lord 1499. But unlike on the other islands, the Europeans didn’t try to grow nothing here. Instead, they packed up the natives and sold them, sent some of them poor souls back to the country their ancestors first escaped from. The bats of Guadirikiri…are souls that stayed behind on the island, even though their bodies left.”

  Maybeck swallowed back a knot of anger and frustration.

  “You okay?” The driver asked.

  “My ancestors…they were slaves.” Maybeck’s stomach felt tight, his throat dry.

  “That why you look for the Guadirikiri Cave? You look for their souls?”

  “Something like that.”

  * * *

  Seeds carried by the wind and washed ashore by storm tides had found purchase on the island’s shores and randomly rooted in clumps, like a poorly planned obstacle course. Maybeck now lay beneath the shade of one of these bushes. Surrounded by a thicket of stickers, engulfed by the unrelenting heat from a steadily rising sun, he kept his eye on Guadirikiri cave. Its similarity to Jess’s drawing was unmistakable.

  He was glad he’d chosen to be dropped off up the road. Another taxi waited in the sand parking lot. Maybeck had already jumped to the conclusion that this taxi had brought the Overtakers—to Guadirikiri, a cave not on the tourist list of the top five sightseeing attractions. But Maybeck was here; his moment had arrived.

  Bugs swarmed him, landed on his arm
s and neck. He fanned them away, but they drove his impatience to a barely controlled restlessness. He could not stay hidden much longer. He was going to have to move.

  The cave entrance was concealed within a towering set of rocks, accessed by a concrete staircase that, unfortunately, looked nothing like the painting of the steps in the journal. Other outcroppings of rock rimmed the area, like spaceships that had crashed in a sand-swept desert.

  Maybeck swatted away the black bugs, rose, and ran to the next clump of shrubbery and thorn. As he moved, he saw a person, crouched and running toward him. He tightened his fists and fixed his feet squarely, so that even squatting, he’d have a firm base for fighting.

  Storey Ming slid in next to him.

  “How did you—?”

  “It’s a long story,” Maybeck said. “Later.”

  “They’re in there!”

  “I kinda figured,” he said. “How many?”

  “Two women. Two guys,” she said.

  “Are those steps the only way in?” Maybeck asked.

  “Yes. There are these erosion holes up top, but I don’t recommend them. They’re way too high. We’d make a scene.”

  “You’ve been watching?”

  “I heard them talking. The women, not the guys.”

  “What were they saying?”

  “Not sure. It was weird, like old ladies arguing.”

  “Can we get in there without being seen?” Maybeck asked.

  “We can try.”

  With his attention moving between the parking lot, the steps, and the cave entrance, Maybeck shielded his eyes from the sun.

  “The driver?”

  She said, “Asleep, with his seat laid back.”

  “Good. Okay. So, I’ll check out the entrance. You chill. If it looks good, I’ll signal you.”

  “Fine, but we go in together,” Storey said.

  “You realize how stupid that would be?” Maybeck said. “If I’m caught, I need you to get me out.”

  “Strength in numbers.”

  “Battle tactics,” he countered.

  “It’s a deep cave with a bunch of rooms. If you don’t signal me to join you one minute after you go inside, I’m going to drop in.”

  “You said that would make a scene.”

  “Yeah, I did, didn’t I?” Storey said proudly.

  THE STAIRS HAD BEEN CARVED out of the rock that formed the cave. Maybeck stopped near the top, made himself flat against the stone, and edged closer to get a look inside.

  Storey Ming had hinted to Finn that the 2.0 upgrade was beta testing for a second generation of DHIs, that Finn and the others were about to be “retired” and replaced. Standing there, about to enter a cave infested with bats that supposedly embodied the souls of dead slaves, Maybeck saw a miniature Disney Channel blimp in the distance and was reminded how much he liked being a Keeper. Being part of Disney had made him famous, had given him a sense of real purpose. The idea of returning to his “normal” life really wasn’t what he hoped for.

  Pushing the thoughts away, he slipped around the rock and into the mouth of the cave.

  Dark. Cool, almost cold.

  He heard the voices that Storey had mentioned, but they were a long way off.

  The awful smell hit him immediately: bat guano. Shafts of light streamed through the overhead holes. It was like entering a slab of Swiss cheese; he’d gone from daylight to dusk. It was hard to see more than a few yards in any direction.

  Maybeck cautiously continued inside, dodging stalagmites that rose from the sand floor like melted candles. If Storey jumped down onto one of those, she’d be killed.

  He hurried back to the entrance and signaled. She joined him a moment later. Together, they crept quietly forward toward a second “room.” Darker. Colder. The sickening smell grew more intense; Maybeck’s sandal squished into a deep pile of guano. He thought he might puke.

  They followed the cave wall slightly to the left and lower, the darkness swallowing them. The overhead holes emitted marginal amounts of sunlight, barely penetrating the gloom.

  Maybeck steered Storey away from a cone of this faint light, moving them deeper into the dark. He took the long way around this second room, ducking under stalactites that hung down like stone icicles.

  As the ceiling grew progressively lower, the distant voices grew progressively louder. Here, the stalactites reduced the clearance to five feet, forcing Maybeck and Storey to weave in between. With the eerie gray light, it was like trying to see through smoked glass.

  But there was enough light to see the shapes of two women.

  Storey touched Maybeck’s arm and turned him. She pointed to herself and then at the two women who were crouched, talking.

  Before Maybeck could register if she was asking or telling, Storey was on her stomach, crawling through the sand and guano. She reached the far side of the “room” and held to its edge, trying to get near enough to overhear what they were to up to.

  Maybeck felt worthless, like he should do something to help. He didn’t appreciate Storey’s tricking him like that, but he knew better than to follow. There were other words for guano, after all.

  He carefully dodged the rock icicles that hung from the ceiling, moved to the nearest wall, and placed his back against it, wishing his eyes would adjust to the light. After another thirty seconds of watching Storey, who was nothing but a dark, slithering shadow, he realized his eyes had adjusted—there just wasn’t much light back here. It was about one birthday candle shy of pitch-black.

  Storey got closer still.

  Whatever was being said by the two women sounded like gibberish, all grunts and chants. Maybeck couldn’t tell who it was. Maleficent? The Evil Queen? It might have been a couple of tourists, for all he knew. Maybe he and Storey had gone to all this trouble over a pair of old ladies from the ship!

  That was when he spotted a second moving shadow. This one was standing almost upright and moving through the stalactites across the cave in the direction of where Maybeck had last spotted Storey.

  The new shadow paused. It, too, vanished a moment later, a trick of the low light. Maybeck dropped to his hands and knees and, despite the bat guano, crawled toward where he’d lost the standing shape only moments before. His fingers sank into the gooey stuff, unleashing the worst smell—a combination of outhouse and puke. He held his breath and tightened his throat to keep from hurling. Trying to see between the stalactites was like trying to see with a comb in front of your eyes; they created optical illusions of impenetrable walls; they looked like spears, knives, icicles, and snakes. Maybeck didn’t want to run into the shadow-shape guy—if it even had been a guy. Maybe it was nothing but an illusion.

  Pulling into a squat, Maybeck slowly stood, an inch at a time. A blob of darkness moved, only feet from him. It moved again, toward where he’d last seen Storey. With her attention on the two women, she wouldn’t see this man—if that’s what it was—coming for her.

  Maybeck took a step forward. What he’d been looking at was a shadow.

  But to his left, less than three feet away, stood a man.

  Looking right at him.

  * * *

  Up close, Maybeck could see that the guy was Joe College, the one who’d helped attack them backstage. One of the zombified Overtakers. Blond, tall, and fit, he had the clean-cut look of a Cast Member and was dressed as one, in khaki shorts and a white polo.

  The guy swung a club up and into his grip, a string loop holding it to his wrist. He handled it in a controlled, practiced way, striking Maybeck on the shoulder and dropping him to one knee.

  Maybeck’s shoulder was numb. He found himself unable to move his arm.

  The club was raised again. It was coming for his head.

  And then Joe College was hit from behind and knocked off his feet, revealing Storey, suspended from a pair of stalactites, which she’d used as handles in order to elevate and kick.

  From the recesses of the dark cave came Maleficent’s crackling voice.

&n
bsp; Joe College got to his feet again, directly between Maybeck and Maleficent, raised the club—and turned into a huge, hairy crab.

  He’d intercepted Maleficent’s transfiguration spell.

  The crab, easily the size of a cafeteria tray, landed on its back.

  “Ew,” Storey said, now on her feet.

  She scooped up sand and guano, packed it into a snowball, and flung it at Maleficent, forcing the dark fairy to duck out of its way. But not before Maleficent lit a fireball in her hand.

  The cave came alive with a million shadows thrown by the stalactites. The floor and walls shifted in a disorienting dance of darkness and light.

  To Maleficent’s side stood Tia Dalma, shorter, darker, and holding a tiny rag doll in her hand. She stabbed the doll.

  Maybeck screamed and twisted.

  Tia Dalma stabbed the doll a second time.

  Maybeck roared and buckled over, holding his stomach.

  Storey grabbed on to him. “Run!” she said.

  He limped forward. She steered him through the maze of ceiling spears. He buckled again. His right leg dragged behind him, stiff and unusable.

  Then, as quickly as it hit him, he recovered. He was more surprised than anyone. “I’m good!” he gasped.

  “Not so good,” Storey warned.

  All around them the stalactites transformed: no longer calcified stone but a thousand snakes hanging by their tails.

  Maybeck’s pain had disappeared because Tia Dalma had changed tactics, casting a curse that endangered both of them, not just Maybeck.

  Storey was lifted off her feet. She was hanging by her throat, a snake coiled around her neck. The snake constricted, lifting Storey higher, choking her more fully. Leaping up, Maybeck forced his fingers between the snake and Storey and pulled. It was like trying to uncoil a steel cable. Storey’s face bulged like an overinflated pool toy. It was no use—the snake wasn’t going to let go.

  Maybeck took hold just behind its head. The snake didn’t like that. It flexed and pulled. In doing so, it loosened its hold on Storey, who drank in a gulp of much-needed air. Maybeck pulled hard, twisting the snake’s head at the same time as he unwrapped it from Storey’s neck. It came free.