Kingdom Keepers VII (17 page)

“Finn, I hate snakes.”

“Hate them down here with me before that thing has you for lunch.” He points to Jafar’s transfigured snake shape. “It’s
him
! We’ve got to get out of here.”

Maybeck lands next to Finn, and they run. The tunnel arcs to their left.

“If he gets stuck, we’re in luck,” Maybeck says.

“Since when have we ever been lucky?”

“Point to you.”

From behind them comes the sound of the partition closing. Jafar, the cobra, is through.

Finn gets another look at the floor, illuminated in flashes by the flickering torchlight. The same muddy prints are there. Too big for a cat. His brain is in the act of processing this difference when a bone-chilling roar sounds from the flame-lit dusk.

“Oh!” Finn says, skidding to a stop. “
That
kind of cat.”

“What?”

“Never mind,” Finn says.

A Bengal tiger the size of a Smart car appears out of the darkness. Its rumbling growl resounds to the depths of the cavelike tunnel.

Sighting the boys, it lowers onto its front haunches, ready to spring.

Maybeck looks back. The giant cobra is moving toward them faster than the boys can run, catching up to the smaller snakes that are also hard on the boys’ heels. “Pickle!” Maybeck says, citing a baseball term, though he doesn’t have much patience for the sport: when a runner trapped between bases is run down by the opposing team’s players, who are trying to tag the runner out, that’s a pickle. The runner rarely, if ever, escapes.

The tiger leaps. Maybeck’s far-too-solid DHI is knocked to the ground. His life flashes before his eyes. He feels the jaws tear into his shoulder, can picture the pool of—

“Come on!”

Maybeck opens his eyes. It’s Finn’s face; and it’s Finn’s fingers tearing into his shoulder, not the cat’s teeth. Maybeck is paralyzed—he can’t move. The tiger snaps up two of the black snakes like a robin feasting on worms. Then it skids to a stop, facing the giant cobra.

“Hurry!” Finn says, giving Maybeck a hand and pulling him to his feet. The boys flee down the tunnel. “That’s Rajah, Princess Jasmine’s protector.”

“I think I missed that movie.”

“Rajah must know we’re the good guys, or at least, that a fifteen-foot cobra can’t be.”

The cat roars. The boys stop and turn to watch. Rajah and Jafar face each other, first moving counterclockwise, then doubling back. Counterclockwise again. Testing. Challenging.

The cat’s claws swipe the snake, which hisses and rears up. It flares its hood and strikes. Rajah jukes to the side; Jafar misses. But Jafar is wily; he’s slowly turning Rajah, pushing the cat’s tail up against the stone and limiting Rajah’s movements. Turning Rajah like this also provides the cobra with an opening down the tunnel toward the boys.

“He’s coming! Let’s go!” Maybeck says.

“I can’t!” says Finn, edging closer to the duel.

“Are you
crazy
?”

“He saved us.”

The cobra has pinned Rajah back onto his rear haunches. Rajah paws at the snake, but Jafar’s too clever by far.

“Go! Find out where this leads!”

“As if!” Maybeck says.

“Find a door. Hold it for me and the cat. Be ready to close it the second we’re through!”

“Finn—”

“Do it! Now!”

Maybeck shakes his head, takes in the scene. “I—”

“Move!”

Maybeck runs.

Finn gathers himself as he has a dozen times. He silences the noises of the battle, quiets the doubting voices in his head, imagines a pinprick of light in a sea of darkness. Normally, he need not do this routine when in his DHI state, but he’s terrified, and it takes several long seconds to calm himself. His DHI glows a shade brighter.

Rajah’s in trouble. Finn has no time to test his transparency. He runs toward the cobra, skidding to a stop. “I thought you wanted me, you withered old man!”

The cobra’s head snaps toward Finn, its black tongue licking the air, tasting his scent. Without further warning, it strikes.

Finn closes his eyes.

The cobra soars through his DHI. Finn dares to peek; he spreads his legs to straddle the reptile.

Rajah sinks a claw into the body of the cobra. The snake rears up in pain. Finn, allowing panic to steal into him, rides the snake backward and is crushed against the overhead stone ceiling. The world goes black.

Finn comes awake bouncing, feeling what must be warm blood oozing over him. It takes him a second to realize he’s in Rajah’s mouth. The big cat has him in his jaws. The liquid he feels is not blood but cat drool—Rajah is carrying him as if a kitten.

A rectangle of artificial light glows ahead. Finn shifts slightly to adjust his vision: it’s not a window, but a doorway. Maybeck is holding a door open twenty yards ahead.

Fifteen…

Ten…

Finn steals a look behind Rajah. Jafar in cobra form is coming for them as fast as a freight train. Fluid leaks from his fat tube of a body where Rajah tore him open. He’s one unhappy cobra. His black eyes glitter with vengeance. He’ll kill them both and revel in it.

Five…

The cat’s head swings left, snaps right and releases Finn, who flies through the air—and through the door. Finn crashes to the pavement and rolls.

Maybeck slams the door, but too late. Once again, the cobra is half in, half out. It writhes to lengthen itself, its tongue lashing out at Maybeck. It rears up, puffs out, and strikes at Maybeck for a deadly blow—and comes up just short, its dripping fangs no more than an inch from Maybeck’s face.

Jafar’s snake eyes bulge. Rajah has hold of him, his sharp claws steadily hauling the snake back into the tunnel.

“Run!”
Finn hollers.

At that instant, the snake vanishes, replaced by an ugly, long-bodied weasel with a bad cut in its back. The weasel’s paws scrabble against the stones, and an instant later, it’s gone.

The cat’s head is visible through the gap in the door.

Finn waves. “Thank you, my friend!”

Maybeck looks back and forth between Finn and the eyes of the cat. “This, they’re never going to believe,” he says.

G
ETTING INTO THE
C
RYPT
after hours isn’t easy. Philby knows the routine involving the sliding door to the underground storage area, the deception created by the holograms of furniture, and the correct door to take. But it’s locked. Joe must have used a key to enter the Crypt—and Philby has no key.

The one Keeper capable of lock picking is Willa, who learned the art from her younger brothers. Willa leaves her rooftop surveillance duty to take care of that task—a convenience for Philby, who appreciates the extra time with her.

Philby is an expert in all aspects of technology. He’s a decent rock climber. His confidence is typically quite high; but at the moment he’s glad he’s not a DHI, because he’s scared. His fear has nothing to do with sneaking into the Crypt.

“How are you doing?” he asks Willa.

“You mean other than—”

“This. Yes.”

“I miss home. I’m sad to have missed graduation. I didn’t bring enough clothes with me, and I’m beginning to feel like a prisoner. Other than that, it’s all good.”

“I meant…” Philby wonders why he can’t seem to finish his sentences.

“Us.”

“Well, yeah.”

“Good, I guess.”

Guess
. She doesn’t know.

He says, “I wish we had more time…together, I mean.”

“We’re together all the time,” she says. “When
aren’t
we together?”

He feels like an idiot. “Never mind.”

She gets the door unlocked and Philby is in. She tells him to remember to lock it from the inside when he’s through. Then she’s gone, leaving Philby thinking that no matter what people say about him, he’s really not so smart.

In the midst of data-mining the Crypt’s servers for information that he is not supposed to access, Philby receives a surprising text from Amanda, saying that, as agreed, she and Jess are heading off to sleep in hopes of crossing over. The surprising news is that the Fairlies
must
cross over: Jess dozed off, had an elaborate and alarming dream, and has sketched the whole thing out—the Keepers are in danger.

Philby responds, grateful for the distraction, wondering if he can think up an excuse to bring Willa back down with him. He’d like the chance to start all over.

* * *

“It was the wrong lamp,” Maybeck says. He’s out of breath, bent over, clutching his knees in the shadows of the Jungle Cruise dock.

Finn, who’s assumed a hands-on-hips pose similar to Peter Pan’s, is also gulping for air. “What are you talking about?”

“The lamp.”

“We should be talking about calling Philby so he can return us, not fake lamps. The nearest pay phone is over there.” Finn points beyond the Bazaar. “The exact direction that weasel headed.”

“Fake lamp? You think? You rub the thing and Jafar shows up and you’re saying it’s a fake?” Maybeck huffs derisively, trying to breathe. “It wasn’t fake, it just wasn’t the one from Jess’s dream. If there’s one thing I, personally, have learned about the parks, it’s that
nothing
is fake. And by
nothing
, I mean: no thing, as in ‘No Thing Fake!’”

Finn’s DHI face twists with frustration. He closes his eyes. A moment later, his DHI strengthens and he’s no longer out of breath.

Impressed, Maybeck tries closing his eyes. Nothing. He’s still acting like a runner at the end of the four-by-one-hundred-meter relay. Through gulps of air, he speaks. “Jess rarely gets stuff wrong. There’s a second lamp. Trust me.”

“Since when are you all Mr. Positive?” Finn asks. “I like it.”

“Part of my turning over a new leaf, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“We want to remember: that was Jafar. Snakes. A giant cobra. That wasn’t negotiating tactics. He was trying to kill us.”

“We’re DHIs. ”

“And if we slip up and we’re snake bit as DHIs, then when we return we’re still snake bit. As in: dead.” Finn is trying not to sound scared.

“I got that. But he didn’t bite us. And there’s a second lamp somewhere. Look, we have to focus on what we can trust—and that’s Jess. The Cryptos are talking bad stuff behind our backs. We’re basically on our own.”

“Do you know another attraction with a magic lantern or a genie lamp?” Finn asks. “’Cause I don’t. Maybe Philby does. So let’s get to the pay phone.”

“We should have brought our own phones. This is why, FYI.”

Philby forbade them from crossing over with their phones, believing the Cryptos were using the devices’ GPS signals to make sure the Keepers didn’t leave the Studio. The solution was for Finn or Maybeck to place a call from a park pay phone and request to be returned.

“Still. I don’t love that Jafar headed that way,” Maybeck says.

“The longer we wait, the more time he has to recover from those wounds. Being a sorcerer, I doubt it’ll take long.”

Finn pulls coins out of his pocket, marveling at the DHI experience; there are still so many unexplained elements surrounding the phenomenon. At times it feels as if the Keepers have barely scratched the surface of the possibilities.

“You keep watch,” Finn says. “Hoot like an owl if you see something wrong.”

“How ’bout I just scream?”

“If you give yourself away, we’re in deep trouble. I may need you.”

“You always need me,” says Maybeck. “It’s me, after all.”

“I thought you said Charlene had taught you things.”

Maybeck grins, unfazed.

“Once I make the call,” says Finn,” we run for the Plaza—we need to return together.”

“You don’t trust Philby?”

“I don’t trust the technology. We’re partial 1.6’s. He’s trying to fix that tonight with Charlie, but we don’t know what works and what doesn’t, how well it works or doesn’t. I don’t love being a guinea pig when someone like Jafar is hunting us.”

“Point taken,” Maybeck says. “I guess I should say ‘Good luck,’ even though I’m more of the school that says you make your own luck.”

Finn rolls his eyes; Maybeck laughs, and then Finn takes off across the open walkway, aware of the whirl of humanity outside the park: a jet on final approach somewhere overhead; the underlying buzz of electricity, humming like a creature that wants to break out of a cage; the creepy feeling of closed-circuit cameras watching him. Although they do not fully understand why, there are times when only the Keepers are able to see the Overtakers. That is one of the positive features Wayne deliberately sought to achieve in creating the DHI technology in the first place. It’s doubtful that the OTs will show up on security cameras, rendering useless any justification Finn and Maybeck might make to the authorities for their being here. Ironically, at night their allies—Disney Security—also become their nemesis.

Finn is nearly across the path when he catches a flash of color in his peripheral vision. It comes from his right—the Plaza—and is
moving
toward him. He runs faster. Maybeck hoots like an owl, confirming that what Finn thinks he has seen is not only in his imagination. Someone is back there and coming for him—fast. The pay phone is lit by a lamp. It looks so normal, reminding Finn how
abnormal
his own situation is. Maybeck hoots a second time. Finn remains focused on the task ahead. A pure DHI is the best defense he can mount, so he refuses to look back and see which OT is chasing him. Fear is the real enemy within, no matter what the Imagineers might think.

Finn heads toward Frontierland, creating a challenge for his pursuers: he doesn’t go around obstacles, but runs through them––a stone wall, a copse of trees––creating enough of a lead to lose his pursuers. How much of a lead, he can’t be sure. The trick will be getting back to the Plaza in time to return. He skids to a stop at a pay phone and lifts the receiver.

It only takes credit cards. No coins. He’ll have to make a collect call. He dials zero for the operator.

In the next instant, Finn is lifted off his feet and smashed backward into the wall, the phone’s receiver torn from his hand. The terror of the moment leaves pain radiating through his body; he feels as though someone just dropped him from a roof. Drawing a painful breath, he dares to look back and confront his attacker, steels his mind to face whatever OT it may be, including Jafar.

It’s Amanda, with Jess beside her.

It takes Finn a moment to realize that Amanda “pushed” him. He’s been on the receiving end of her paranormal power before, but it didn’t feel like this, a powerful wind blowing directly in his face. The last time it was more like being pulled by cable from behind. She went easy on him. Despite this, he feels like he’s been in a car wreck and is slow getting up.

“You were able to cross over,” Finn says.

“Yes. Jess discovered a game changer. The lamp in the Bazaar—”

“Backfired on me and Maybeck.” As Finn speaks his name Maybeck appears, coming up the lane at a jog as if summoned. “I didn’t get my wish, unless I secretly have a
death
wish. Believe me, I’m beginning to wonder.”

Finn motions for the four of them to slip out of sight. They move near the exit of Thunder Mountain and tuck into the shadows. The glow of their v1.6 DHIs makes hiding fully difficult.

“I have an idea,” Jess proclaims. “Which direction did the lantern face in the Bazaar?”

Finn considers. “The spout faced right. But it’s mounted. It’s not like you can move it.”

“The lamp in my…dream…” Jess doesn’t experience them as dreams, more like “visions” but has never dared call them that, “faces left.”

“There’s a genie lamp in Storybook Land,” Amanda announces. They look at her curiously. She says, “You think Philby’s the only one who
reads
?” She pauses for emphasis. “Trouble is, it’s small, and the only access is up steep, tiny stairs, so reaching it and rubbing it—”

“Ain’t gonna happen,” Maybeck says, his voice filled with defeat.

“Actually,” Amanda says, “Charlene already went through this. Philby messed with code before Charlene reached the stage. And he continued until he crossed you over. He resized selected portions of her DHI. Turns out it worked: at one point her leg shrank to the size of an arm and she fell over.”

“Get to the point,” Maybeck says.

“A picture’s worth a thousand words,” Jess says. “Time?” she asks Amanda, who checks her watch.

“Three minutes! We’d better hurry!”

“To?” Finn asks.

“The Plaza! We’ve got to be at the Plaza by half past.”

“To return!” Finn says, excitedly.

The girls look at each other and speak nearly in unison: “Not exactly.”

* * *

Three minutes later, Finn, Maybeck, Jess, and Amanda skid to a stop next to the Partners statue in the shadow of the Sleeping Beauty Castle.

“Did you know Walt Disney named the castle after Sleeping Beauty because the movie was in production and he wanted the extra publicity?” Jess says.

“Seriously?” Maybeck says. “Crass!”

“You can’t survive as an artist,” Jess says, “if you don’t understand business. Vincent van Gogh died broke and unknown. Now his paintings sell for a hundred million dollars
each
.”

“Think what you could get for his missing ear,” Maybeck says.

“Eew!” Amanda groans.

“Bogies!” Finn warns. “Nine o’clock!”

Finn’s grateful for the training and experience they’ve all had. No one breaks his or her neck straining to get a look. The three others manage to turn to pretend-speak to one another and, in the process, sneak a peek.

Jafar is hunched over, a result of wounds inflicted by Rajah. Even from a distance, he looks older, angrier, even less patient. Oddly enough, he resembles a python ready to strike. On his shoulder perches Iago. Iago’s parrot head and parrot beak are lowered below his parrot shoulders, transforming him into a parrot assassin with all the cuteness of a sixty-year-old crow. The bird takes flight; a target-seeking missile.

Finn feels his DHI slipping. Jafar taps his scepter, and sudden light fills the eyes of its serpent head.

“Caution: evil hex.” Maybeck voices what they’re all thinking. That scepter is nothing to mess with.

Through it all, Jess keeps her cool, her full concentration on her wristwatch. She calls out: “Three…two…”

A bird chirps.

Everything around Finn begins to grow to a comically large size, as though he has stepped into a world inhabited by giants. Then pain hits him and he screams. Every molecule in his body vies for his attention as bone, muscles, and organs shrink against his will. This must be some kind of dream state or hallucination. Finn’s voice goes from his normal deep tones to a squeak that sounds like he’s sucked a breath or two of helium. He hears other such squeaks and thinks that it must be his friends crying out.