Kingdom Keepers VI (9781423179214) (11 page)

T
HE 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.

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.

Storey fell to the sand, coughing. But breathing.

Maleficent, holding the burning orb, marched steadily toward them.

Storey and Maybeck crawled away, keeping low to avoid the dangling snakes.

“Oh, please!” Maleficent called out. “Are we so limited in our thought?”

A hundred snakes dropped to the sand, writhing and coiling. Maybeck started dancing from foot to foot, shifting wildly, terrified. Storey grabbed him and tried to climb up him to get her feet higher.

Maybeck eased her back to the sand. “Hang tough.” He knew this was one of those defining moments, his chance to prove himself. He sucked it up and shook off his outward fright.

“Perplexing, isn't it?” Maleficent said.

Maybeck dove, took hold of one of the snakes, and threw it at Maleficent—more out of fear than heroics, but he wasn't ever going to admit that.

Maleficent threw a transfiguration spell. The snake became a harmless length of rope, and she caught it with her free hand.

Tia Dalma strode up behind Maleficent.

“How you feel now, me boy? Eh?” She stuck the doll with a pin.

Maybeck twisted, moving in inhuman ways that seemed sure to break his limbs.

“Stop it!” Storey shouted.

“Now?” Tia Dalma said, delivering more of her voodoo.

Maybeck folded backward, screaming. Storey
feared the next pin would break him in half.

“Run out of fire, old lady?” A girl's voice echoed through the cave.

“Charlie?” a tortured Maybeck whispered.

Charlene dropped through a ceiling hole in the next room, sticking a perfect landing. Irate, Maleficent wound up and threw the fireball in Charlene's direction. Charlene cartwheeled. The fireball missed and ricocheted off the cave's ceiling in a shower of
sparks.

In that moment, two things happened:

The fireball caused the snakes to release and slither away, clearing a path to the exit. And as the fireball exploded into the ceiling, ten thousand bats took
flight.

Maleficent, blinded by the swarm, spoke a curse that turned a thousand of the feckless bats into rats.

Tia Dalma cursed at Maleficent. “Rats? You make the rats?”

“Children hate rats.”

“I no like the rats, neither, you lizard-skinned fairy!”

“You shut your trap, or I'll turn you into one
yourself.”

“You talk like that, missy; I give you the gift of pain. Pain like none you felt.”

For Maybeck, Charlene, and Storey, escaping the cave was like trying to run underwater. The churning, screeching, flapping bats were like windblown leaves, batting against faces and arms, making it hard to see, to breathe. The rats crawling on the floor only made matters worse; no foothold was secure. The three teens held their breath, squinted, and dashed for the entrance. Maybeck hollered as he ran. Charlene and Storey covered their faces, peering through the cracks between their fingers.

Gasping for air, they followed the bats out the cave, bursting into the sunlight. There, twenty feet away, a Japanese tour group that had gone off-map cowered back from the black wave escaping the cave. Without noticing Charlene, Storey, and Maybeck, the tourists ran for their mini-bus. The kids headed for the street and Maybeck's taxi.

“Where did you come from?” Maybeck asked Charlene. Looking at her, he couldn't help the huge smile breaking out on his face.

“My first cave was no good, but my driver recognized the sketch. Sorry I was late.”

“Me, too.”

They dove into the cab and slammed the door shut. The driver came awake, banging his head against the steering wheel and sounding the car horn.

Looking back, Maybeck saw Maleficent at the mouth of the cave, bats flooding out past her. She swiped her cape up, posing for the running tourists.

The taxi sped away.

“So?” Maybeck asked Storey.

“It was some kind of ceremony or ritual,” Storey said. “Tia Dalma was crouched over a pile of bones. She was burning a bird's nest, or maybe twigs? I couldn't see that well in that weird light. She was chanting and kind of half-singing, and Maleficent said nothing. Just stood there, watching her.”

The driver was turned, listening to Storey.

“Drive!” Maybeck shouted. “Fast!”

The taxi driver sneered. The cab gained speed.

“And there was this yellow flower,” Storey said. “It seemed like that was what the crazy lady was focused on.”

“A key flower?” the driver said, his eyes locked on theirs in the rearview mirror. “You actually saw a key flower?”

“Yellow,” Storey said. “The only flower I saw.”

The driver nodded. “You are special, missy. And so very lucky! A key flower! Imagine!”

“I take it, it's special,” Maybeck said.

“Special?” The driver scoffed. “Only blooms between a new moon and a full eclipse. You tell me, mister. Special?”

“They picked it,” Storey said. “They did their little ceremony, and they picked it.”