Kingdom Keepers VI Read online

  “We doubt very much,” Wayne went on, “that any attempt will be made until the leaders are off the ship. But there’s a catch: if they’re able to restart their own holograms, all bets are off. Their DHIs could lead the battle for the Base while their bodies sleep on the ship, Finn.”

  “I understand.”

  “That must be prevented at all costs: they must not get a server restarted.”

  “We lost their data.” Finn blurted it out for Wayne to digest. “It was…messy. We had it, and we lost it.”

  “All the more critical, then,” a troubled Wayne said.

  “I understand.”

  “I hope you do.”

  Wayne rarely scolded Finn, but Finn felt horrible nonetheless for letting him down. The old man didn’t speak for several long seconds; Finn could have sworn he heard the hum of engines in the background. Again, he thought: The sub. He marveled at the idea that King Triton might actually have saved him by summoning Captain Nemo, and that Wayne could possibly be on the Nautilus with him. As much as Finn was ready for his role as a DHI to end, for life to go back to normal, moments like this made him want it to go on forever.

  “More pressing for the moment is this plane. You tell me Chernabog is now on board the ship. You must find him.”

  “It’s why they’re on the ship, isn’t it?” Finn asked. “Something to do with Chernabog. The journal. Tia Dalma being a witch doctor.”

  “I warned you before that the mission may involve resurrecting the beast. You have to understand, Finn. How do I put this? His powers, should they ever return, should they ever be at the level Walt originally imagined… You see? Fantasia was as close as Walt ever got to showing us just how bad…to what degree this character is possessed by evil. You cross the Minotaur with a Central American bat god, and you get not only the most hideous, powerful physical features of both, but the power of two cultures as well. The Greeks. The Mayans. One had active imaginations, the other horrific practices and backward beliefs. Should the intention be to return this beast to its full abilities? Well, God help us all.”

  “So, we find him…and then what?”

  “So confident.”

  “I’m trying. All I’m saying is we’ll try.”

  “And I thank you for that. Okay. First? Let’s say you find him prior to whatever they have planned for him. To the awakening—if I’m right about that. In that case, Bob may have a hold that can contain him.”

  “This ship is made of steel,” Finn reminded Wayne. “Of course it can contain him.”

  “I see. You’re suddenly the expert?”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “Finn, you lost the DHI data. And now you’re not listening. If Chernabog regains his full cognitive and physical abilities, nothing you have—nothing anyone on that ship has—will stop him.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “You will recall your encounter at Expedition Everest, please. Even at twenty-five or fifty percent of his potential, he’s still many times the strength and evil of anything you and your friends have encountered.”

  Only Amanda had managed to save Finn from Chernabog. “But…”

  “Any…thing, any…one you have battled. Maleficent is a mere pawn in comparison.”

  Finn felt a chill.

  “Chernabog is the embodiment of evil and lethal force. We haven’t seen the half of him.”

  “So…?”

  “They may have cut off their noses to spite their faces,” Wayne said. “They’ve brought him on board in order to transport him somewhere the cruise is going. I doubt seriously the awakening, if that’s what’s at play, is to take place on the ship itself. They could have awakened him on Castaway. But they’ve chosen to take him out to sea. If you can find him, if Bob can contain him—perhaps drug him—before he’s fully conscious, it’s at least possible that he might be drowned. Bats do not swim. If you can drown him… The ship may be our one chance. But once on land…”

  “You’re scaring me.”

  “Good. Then I’m accomplishing something.”

  “And Base?”

  “We may need the five of you on a moment’s notice. It depends what develops. Check your phones. Check back here with me as often as possible. It’s fluid, Finn.”

  The connection ended.

  Storey was rocking out, virtually unaware of Finn. He pulled off his headphones, his vision blurring. He’d wanted to ask her about 2.0, about Wayne’s apparent favoritism of Philby, about the rumor that the present Keepers would be retired in favor of “new models” once 2.0 was fine-tuned.

  He wanted to ask a lot of things.

  But not now. At the moment, he couldn’t get a word out.

  IN THE WEE HOURS of the morning, Luowski climbed a steel ladder inside the ship’s forward funnel. Pausing once to look down, he decided never to do that again. It was a thirty-foot drop to a metal deck.

  He probably should have considered an invitation to meet with Maleficent some kind of honor. But since it was delivered as an order, he felt uneasy about the whole thing.

  The interior of the stack, including the ladder he climbed, trembled from the vibrations of the ship’s motor. The claustrophobic space was overly warm, noisy, and dark. The higher he climbed, the more it felt as if there might not be a way back down again.

  Reaching a ladder, Luowski pulled himself up through the hole and stepped out onto a catwalk’s metal grate. He gripped the handrail, mopping sweat off his face. A pale guy dressed like a pirate blocked his way—a henchman for the Overtakers. The man was most likely a crew member in costume, but Luowski wasn’t about to insult him.

  “And who might you be, lad?” the pirate said in a deep-throated rasp.

  “Greg,” the boy said. “Luowski.”

  The man shone a blinding light into his eyes. “Open ’em wide.”

  Luowski did as he was told, revealing the deep-green irises. For a while he’d worn green contacts because Maleficent had told him to. Then, one morning he’d woken up and they weren’t contacts anymore. From that day on, he hadn’t felt like himself.

  A voice behind him said, “Arms up. Feet spread.”

  Luowski startled as he was patted down from behind. He didn’t look back.

  “Clean,” the unseen man said in a fake Jamaican accent.

  Sheesh! “Is this happening or not?” Luowski said, impatient despite his better judgment. He knew to keep his mouth shut, yet like so many things in his life, his brain said one thing and his actions came out the exact opposite.

  “Chill,” said the one in front of him. Definitely not a pirate.

  A blindfold was pulled over his eyes. Tightened, it covered his ears and dulled the sounds as he was guided forward. Straight for five paces. Left. He tried to memorize their movements in case he needed a quick exit.

  “Up!” said the fake Jamaican, prodding him from behind.

  “You’re kidding!” he said.

  But it was no use. Luowski climbed a ladder blindfolded. Not easy. Six rungs up. A turn right. Two steps. Left, three. Left again. He was losing track, already forgetting the turns they’d made. It grew noticeably colder, and the whirring of fans made it loud.

  “You have it for me.” Her voice, like cracking ice.

  The character of Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty was a tall, green woman in a pressed cape and nice clothes. The Maleficent Cast Member was nearly identical. But the Maleficent Luowski heard—he’d never actually seen her—sounded like an old, menacing hag, like the nastiest grandmother in the neighborhood, the one with thirty cats in her house and a brown, overgrown yard.

  There was yet someone else standing nearby, someone previously unaccounted for. Luowski resisted turning in that direction. The person was a mouth breather—a long-time smoker, maybe—and he/she gave off strange odors—moss, mud, human sweat. The smells didn’t fit with what he thought about Maleficent. This was someone else. Someone…unforgettable.

  Wanting it all over with, Luowski reached into his front pocke
t, withdrew the blood-and-guts encrusted USB thumb drive, and held it in his open palm.

  Cold fingers plucked it away.

  Maleficent needed the cold.

  “Well done, young man,” the dark fairy said. “Well done, indeed.”

  “It…we had to kill it.”

  “Yes. Pity. The hyenas are so helpful.”

  “Had to gut it.”

  “Spare me the whining.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The dry-throat breathing sounds came from his immediate right now. Luowski could feel whoever it was sizing him up.

  “There is more to be done,” said Maleficent.

  The other one wouldn’t speak.

  “We need you to collect one of them for us.”

  “Collect,” Luowski repeated.

  Now it was Maleficent holding her tongue.

  “One of what?” he asked.

  “Not what: whom.”

  “You want to run that by me again?”

  “Are you deaf?”

  “No, ma’am. Your Excellency. Whatever…”

  “Never mind that for now. But we will speak of this again.” A shiver swept through Luowski. “Presently,” she said, “there is a task at hand. Once on Aruba…you will be joined by an associate. Perhaps we will send Dixon. Perhaps Victor. It is hard to say. It is an important task. Of the utmost importance. To fail is…unacceptable.”

  “What task is that?”

  “I’m beginning to regret my choice of you,” she said. She muttered something. Luowski couldn’t hear the words—they sounded like a gibberish, like a foreign language—but there was a soothing chantlike quality to them as well. He felt overwhelmed, like a blanket had been pulled over him. Pleasing, but disturbing. Something he knew better than to trust. Yet he welcomed it.

  It was hard to think, like in the moments just before sleep. Luowski’s thoughts were flat and soft. He saw arms wrestling the electrically stunned hyena onto its back; he saw the blade glint above his head. He shuddered as the camera of his imagination pulled back and he recognized the arm holding the knife as his own. He’d killed the poor thing. He couldn’t think, couldn’t grab a single thought. It was as if…

  “You will do as I say,” spoke the cracked-glass voice. “You and your accomplice will get in and out with no one the wiser. Including the police. Especially the police. To fail is to disappoint me. I advise strongly against that.

  “Now, you will listen, and you will listen closely, and you will remember everything I tell you as clearly as your own name.”

  Greg Luowski had no comeback because he had no thought. What he heard, he knew to be the truth. What he was told to do had to be done. And he would do it. Just like the hyena.

  He hated this woman—this fairy—for making him do whatever she wished, and in the same breath he loved her for it.

  “I’m listening,” he said.

  HAVING SLEPT FEWER THAN three hours, awakened by Mrs. Philby (who didn’t want the boys sleeping in), Finn and Philby sat cross-legged on the stateroom’s bed, the Disney journal between them.

  The notebook, dating back more than fifty years, had once been part of a private collection in a library kept by the Disney Imagineers at Disney’s Hollywood Studios in Florida. Some Disney historians believed the journals had belonged to Walt Disney himself.

  Maleficent, the Evil Queen, and Cruella De Vil had been seen stealing the journal, making its return critical to the Kingdom Keepers. Finn had, in fact, gotten it back; he’d kept it locked up in the stateroom’s safe.

  They thumbed ahead to the author’s notes about the creation of Walt Disney’s most fearsome villain: Chernabog. It was in among those pages that a beautiful watercolor had been drawn—faded by time, but still striking.

  The next page in the journal was left blank except for four doodles, one in each corner, done in pen and ink.

  The last of the three pages was no better, holding only the inscription:

  “LIFE IS BECAUSE OF THE GODS; WITH THEIR SACRIFICE THEY GAVE US LIFE…. THEY PRODUCE OUR SUSTENANCE…WHICH NOURISHES LIFE.”

  The boys spun the journal back and forth between them like a pinwheel.

  “What the…?” Finn said.

  “There is a good and a bad to this,” Philby said.

  “I’ll take the good first,” Finn said. “I had about all the bad I can take last night.”

  “The good and the bad are the same thing,” Philby said. “Whatever this is, it seems highly unlikely the OTs have figured it out yet.” He cleared his throat. “The bad news is: we have no clue what any of it means either.”

  “Way to cheer me up.”

  “I do what I can,” Philby said sarcastically. “Whatever it is, whatever it says, it’s why they’re on board, why Chernabog’s on the ship.”

  Finn thought back to his secret conversation with Wayne. “We don’t know that absolutely, but I suppose it makes sense.”

  “It makes tons of sense.” Philby ticked off each point on his fingers. “They’ve spent months battling for control of Base—still a work in progress; they steal the journal; they board the Dream; they smuggle Chernabog onto the ship—no easy task; they bring in OTKs like Luowski. They are trying to kill us. They may want to kidnap Charlene, according to Jess. They’re taking huge chances. It has to be for huge rewards.”

  “Again, with the cheering up,” Finn said.

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Try to kill us?”

  “We can be very annoying,” Finn said.

  Philby smiled. “We can, can’t we?”

  “But I see what you mean. What happened to this being a game?”

  “Exactly. It’s as far away from a game as it can get.”

  “It’s us,” Finn said. “The fact that we exist at all. Before, it was the villains against the princesses and princes, the fairies versus Mickey and Minnie. There was a balance of power. Wayne brought us in as DHIs to make sure the balance didn’t tilt too far toward the villains. But maybe by doing so, it upset things.”

  “The balance of power,” Philby said.

  “That’s what I’m talking about.”

  “You’re saying we’re the problem.”

  “I’m saying we may have started things going wrong.”

  “Escalation. So they’ve brought in OTKs,” Philby said. “They’re attacking the Base. If we win, they lose—”

  “Which is probably different from when both sides won and lost, but not all the time.”

  “More permanent.”

  “Permanent vacation,” Finn said.

  “And now that we’re winning some of the time, they bring along Chernabog. Though, granted, he’s sleeping or in a spell or something. They see a chance for real victory, not the give and take that’s been going on after hours in the parks for decades. The only thing is, we’re in the way. As long as we’re alive…”

  “Cheery thought.”

  “So their mission has two parts: get rid of us, and bring Chernabog to power.”

  “And the journal’s part of that,” Finn said.

  “This journal’s important to them. This journal is why they’re on the ship in the first place.”

  “We don’t know that!”

  “Let’s assume it,” Philby said. “The kind of detailed planning that went into the Chernabog pickup? This thing’s on a whole new level.”

  “Agreed.”

  “We need the others,” Philby said, pointing to the journal. “We’re better at figuring out stuff like this when it’s all of us. The sooner we crack the code, the better chance we have of stopping them.”

  AT BREAKFAST, the cafeteria-style food stations in the Cabanas restaurant teemed with hungry passengers. The Keepers’ quest for privacy put them at a corner table, where they spoke in soft voices.

  “We couldn’t risk bringing the actual journal,” Philby said, “but we photocopied the important pages.”

  He passed them around—the painting of the stone steps, the
coin-sized designs, the line of text:

  “LIFE IS BECAUSE OF THE GODS; WITH THEIR SACRIFICE THEY GAVE US LIFE…. THEY PRODUCE OUR SUSTENANCE…WHICH NOURISHES LIFE.”

  “We don’t know if the OTs have solved it or not,” he said. “Regardless, we have to figure out if it means anything. Whatever’s going on with Chernabog must be connected to the journal.”

  “Can I mention something bizarre?” Charlene said. No one answered, but she continued anyway. “Philby asked me to photograph the hyena Maybeck and Finn found.” She cringed. “Which, I’m happy to say, was gone by the time I got there. But anyway, I’m heading up the jogging path and I’m practically speared by a hummingbird!”

  “That’s not possible,” Philby said. “They can’t survive at sea. They’re land birds.”

  “But I saw it.”

  “You’re sure it was a hummingbird?” Willa asked.

  “One hundred percent.”

  “So we have a monster that doesn’t belong on board,” Finn said. “And a species of bird that has no business being here.”

  “Can we talk about this later?” Philby said, pushing back his hair impatiently. “This meeting is about the journal.”

  Charlene shrugged, put off but unwilling to start a fight.

  “When we work together, we’re good at this kind of thing. The Stonecutter’s Quill. ‘Under the Sea’ in AK.”

  “Maybe Jess’s dream about caves has something to do with these stairs,” Willa said, nudging the drawing. “I mean, they’re stone. They look old. Maybe we should copy the actual journal and e-mail it to her.”

  “Too dangerous,” Philby said. “The journal has to be locked up. We can’t risk losing it a second time.”

  Willa passed the sheets to Storey Ming.

  “Pictographs,” Storey said. “Not Egyptian. I’ve studied those in art class.”

  “Interesting,” Philby said.