Kingdom Keepers VII (5 page)

It’s a light show. Maybeck can’t take his eyes off the sparking, shooting rays leaping from his chest. It’s a supernova, beautiful in a way. He understands the creature is killing him, but he’s so transfixed, he’s helpless to do much about it. This, he realizes, is the secret of the wraiths’ power—they mesmerize.

The realization briefly breaks the spell. Maybeck struggles to lift one pale, dimming arm. It takes all his concentration. His hand and skin are dull gray, the tips of his fingers dissolving as the last of the photons flow up his forearm to collect at his shoulder. With his other hand, he manages to take hold of the espresso machine’s steam tube and bends it to aim at the creature. The thing sees him—its skull shifts slightly in the machine’s direction—but the wraith has conjoined with Maybeck using its right arm, and it lacks the flexibility to reach far enough.

Wraith and Keeper look at each other. The creature smiles.

All of Maybeck’s color is now drained, gathered in a ball in his chest like a backed-up sink. Maybeck turns the plastic knob, opening the valve.

Boiling hot steam rushes from the nozzle with a delicious hiss and blasts the wraith directly in its hollow eye sockets. The leathery skin bubbles and sizzles. Tethered as it is to Maybeck, there’s no way for the wraith to avoid the scalding blast.

Seconds before passing out, Maybeck feels the cold inside him replaced by a welcome warmth. The ball in his chest disperses as luminous color rushes back into his extremities.

The wraith finally releases Maybeck in order to shield its face from the steam. The struggle has taken only perhaps twenty seconds—twenty seconds that feel like many long minutes.

Maybeck swings the fire extinguisher overhead and crushes the wraith’s skull. Bone cracks and shatters. There’s a puff of gray ash, and the creature is gone.

Staggering, finding his strength and balance, Maybeck turns to face the onslaught of wraiths flying toward him. But he’s got game now. He understands the objective. He swings the fire extinguisher canister like a baseball bat back and forth, connecting with the skull of each wraith as it nosedives to attack. The creatures burst into gray ash on contact.

He dispatches four, then spins around to check behind him and sees the impossible: the wisps of ash are drawing together on the floor like magnetic particles; re-forming, the ash begins to take shape—the edge of a cape; the top of a skull. Wraiths are immortal, Maybeck thinks. Maybeck can’t guess how long it will take for the wraiths to restore themselves, and he’s not sticking around to find out. He charges through to the lobby, where he sees Finn leaning over the fallen Security guard.

Overhead, a wraith. It slows and hovers above Finn. His full attention is on the guard.

“Look out!” Maybeck shouts.

* * *

After passing through the wall, Philby and Willa find themselves in a stairwell.

“Perfect,” Philby says.

“You amaze me!” Willa says, a little too adoringly, and stutters. “Your…accuracy. Your…aim. Right where we want to be.”

She hopes he can’t see her blushing face, but the emer-gency lights in the stairwell are superbright and not hiding much.

Ignoring her discomfort, Philby takes off down the stairs. “It’s likely they—” He cuts himself off as, rounding a landing, he finds himself fifteen feet from a broom. The broom is having trouble with its small legs on the stairs. One hand holds the rail; the broom clearly needs the support for balance.

Willa can see the green goo in the broom’s bucket—it’s the same stuff Maybeck and Charlene encountered in Disney Hollywood Studios three years earlier, an acid that would quickly dissolve human flesh and bone. Willa accepts that she’s not the most physically coordinated Keeper. But she has better balance than most and can hold her own on a climbing wall. Her fellow Keepers think of her as brainy and quiet. Philby knows her better than any of the others, but even he probably considers her more bookworm than athlete.

It’s not what others think of you, Willa reminds herself; it’s the truth you know about yourself. Since the devastating confrontation in the Mexican jungle at the end of the Panama passage, the Keepers have adopted the motto No Limits. Willa doesn’t remember who came up with it, and she doesn’t care. She only knows that it resonates inside her, reminding her that she is limitless in her abilities, effort, and success. The Keepers battle for good; only good can come of it. Only one person can stop her from accomplishing her objectives: herself.

She mounts the railing sidesaddle, balances, and lets go with her hands, racing down before Philby can stop her. The broom is slow to turn; Willa catches the upper part of one of its arms and slides off the railing, spinning the broom around in a full circle. Her momentum dislodges the broom’s grip. It staggers, its bucket swinging nearly horizontal. Willa grabs hold of the opposite handrail and whips the broom behind her, propelling it off the stairs and onto the lower landing. The bucket spills its contents across the cinder block wall and door, instantly burning a small hole through the door and scarring the concrete wall.

Philby practically flies past Willa and leaps from the fourth step. He lands directly on the yellow wood of the broom handle, splintering it in two. Its hands spasm, twitch, and stop moving.

“Kindling,” Philby says. “Nice move.”

“Thank you.”

He sizes her up, head to toe, seeing something in her he hasn’t glimpsed in a long time. “Really
nice
move.”

“Again: thank you.” She feels like an idiot.

With Philby in the lead, they step over the broken broom. Together, he and Willa pass through the acid-burned hole in the wall and approach an unmarked steel door halfway down the long corridor—and step right through.

“Yes!” Willa cheers, sounding a little too much like Charlene for her liking.

They face an array of gray electronic panels, conduits, and boxes. A metal lever with a red rubber end cap is in the off position. Philby grabs it and forces it up.

“And then there was light,” he says.

* * *

As Finn looks up, the wraith floating above him dives, aiming at him, one palm outstretched as if to push him.

“Don’t let it touch you!” Maybeck shouts.

Finn tears a metal sign off the wall, swings it, and bats the wraith across the room. Seeing Maybeck’s stunned expression, Finn realizes that the sign probably weighs more than he does. His unusual strength has kicked in.

The lights come on.

The wraiths shriek and twist and roll in the air. They waste no time fleeing, swirling out the door and into the night, where they disappear. File folders and papers, notebooks and binders cascade to the floor in their wake.

The demons—there are fewer of them, more slow-moving and plodding—remain, not to mention the broom that stands sentry, blocking the door to the Archives.

“These guys aren’t terribly smart,” Finn says, leading Maybeck’s DHI through a section of glass wall. He slams the door on the broom and locks it before the thing has time to turn around.

“He’s just going to burn his way through,” Maybeck says.

“Let’s hope it takes him a moment.”

Sure enough, the doorknob starts to rattle.

“I told you,” Finn says, “not smart.”

The two boys find themselves in the Archives’ small library with several tables in the center of the room surrounded by chairs and walls of shelves packed tightly with books. There’s an administrator’s desk at the far end, and an open doorway to its right shimmers with fluorescent-tube lighting. From this room comes the sound of items falling to the floor.

Finn and Maybeck hurry farther inside—and stop short.

Wayne Kresky, the Keepers’ mentor and team organizer, Finn’s personal hero, stares back at them unflinchingly.

“Continue the search,” Wayne says, directing two brooms beside him. The creatures have paused, startled by the intrusion.

“Stop them!” Finn pleads. “Order them to stop!”

“Careful, Witless,” Maybeck says, reaching for Finn and pulling him back a few steps. “The animals bite.”

“Continue the search!” Wayne repeats.

The brooms go back to clearing the shelves.

“Order—them—to—stop!”
Finn can’t believe he’s seeing this: Wayne, a traitor! “There’s a man out there who needs medical attention.”

Maybeck quips, “The man out there needs something more like an exorcism.”

“Buckets up!” Wayne orders.

The brooms abandon their search and take hold of their buckets, ready to splash.

“Back off, or it burns,” Wayne says to Finn and Maybeck. “All of it.”

Maybeck tugs Finn’s shoulder a second time, but Finn slaps his hand away and steps toward the white-haired old man. He takes in the ruddy face, his strong nose and bushy eyebrows. He thinks of all the lessons Wayne has taught him: leadership, confidence, teamwork.

“Why?” Finn asks. It’s not an easy question to ask; Wayne has reasons for everything. But this? Betrayal?

Wayne repositions himself, turning slightly. He’s wearing khaki pants and a black Windbreaker with a chest patch emblem and a stripe down the sleeves. His leg bumps a cardboard file box. He looks down. Back up at Finn. Back at the box.

“When you wish upon a star…” he says, smiling. “Been looking for this box.”

Handwritten in black marker across the side of the box is one word:
Fantasia.

Wayne knocks the lid off, squats, and withdraws a manila folder. Slipping it under his arm, he calls out, “Back off, or it all burns!”

“Why?”
Finn repeats, not moving.

“Buckets!” Wayne shouts.

The brooms hurl the contents of their buckets against the moveable shelving. Instead of acid instantly eating a hole through the walls and the floor, the shelves catch fire.

The boys jump back.

Maybeck sprints for the brooms before they can complete a second dousing. Finn rushes past Wayne to the fire alarm box on a distant wall, elbows the box’s glass face to pieces, and pushes the silver button inside.

The ceiling erupts with a gray gas.

* * *

As Philby and Willa slip back outside, they encounter two adults: a man who could be a farmer and a woman dressed for a charity luncheon. Judging by the jet-black eyes sunk deep in their sockets, they aren’t…
human
.

“Hello?” Willa says tentatively, beginning to shake with fear.

“Demons,” Philby whispers. “Don’t look into their eyes, no matter what you do.”

“What were you going to tell us about demons?” she asks.

“Nothing you want to hear.”

“Try me.”

Philby and Willa take two steps back. The demons match them step for step, their footfalls scraping on the concrete.

“The souls inside these two aren’t under their control. They’re recently dead, back on Earth’s surface for a particular mission.”

“Earth’s surface…” Willa mutters.

“Right at the moment, these two want to use us. Enter us. Possess us. If they do, we end up down under with them, or…”

“‘Or’? I don’t like ‘or’!’”

The Keepers step back again. The demons step forward. Again, their shoes make a scratching sound with each step.

“No, you won’t,” says Professor Philby. “You’ll like it even less when you hear the full story. Believe me.”

“So we’re out of here,” Willa says.

“One problem: they are fast. Believe it or not, they’re part angel.”

“Not.” Willa understands the source of that strange sound: the demons are leaving slight trails of sand behind them.

“Demons can be good. The ancient Greeks used the same word for angels. These, maybe not so much. Chances are, they can fly,” Philby says.

“We can’t outrun them?” Willa sounds terrified. “Do we even have to? We’re DHIs.”

“Doesn’t seem like a good time to test their powers. We might outsmart them. Maybe not. But we won’t outrun them.”

“How do you outsmart a demon?”

“Depends on the variety,” Philby says, taking another careful step backward.

“I hope you’re kidding.”

“I wish I were.”

“‘Variety,’” Willa says dubiously.

“They could be Biblical. Or Greek. Or Hindu. Or…a lot of other cultures. The point is, they’re under divine control.”

“Divine? As in…?” Willa takes a big step back, drawing even with Philby. “Can they hear us?”

“They can’t think for themselves. That’s our advantage. We have to make them try to use their brains, because they can’t—it’ll confuse them. Maybe we buy some time to run for it.”

“Riddle them?”

“That’s it!” Philby says enthusiastically. “That’s what I’m talking about! Riddles. Puzzles. Yes! Exactly!”

“Tie them up in thought while we escape.”

“You’re good at this,” he says.

“Why do you always sound so surprised? You know how many times you’ve said that to me? Is it really so shocking that—”

“Riddles. Yes! Great idea, Willa. Got any riddles for a brain-dead, remote-controlled, soulless demon?”

Willa raises her voice and speaks to the two monsters ambling toward them. “Answer me something: I never was, but am always to be. No one has ever seen me, nor will they. Yet I am the hope of all who live. What am I?”

The demons glance at each other as they continue to march forward. The male answers, “Him,” and strains his head to look up.

“No! Wrong.” Willa repeats the riddle. Under her breath she tells Philby, “Get ready…”

The second challenge does the trick. The demons stop to ponder.

“Now!”

Philby and Willa run. The former studio back lot is laid out like a small town or community college, with city blocks of buildings separated by lanes. Philby leads Willa down Donald Avenue, between a building marked
PLUMBING
to their left and one marked
TEAM
to their right. He heads for a barnlike structure marked
THE MILL
.

At the door, Philby stops, out of breath. He and Willa glance back and see the demon duo coming at them, flying like puppets. They’re not like Superman or Iron Man—there’s nothing glamorous or cool about their form of levitation. They look like floating corpses, with their arms held stiffly at their sides as if they were still lying in their coffins. The sight turns Philby’s stomach. These monstrosities can’t possibly represent anything good. They are black holes in the world of good. They don’t belong here.