Kingdom Keepers VII (54 page)

F
INN HOLDS
M
ICKEY BACK
. The legend wants desperately to climb the ladder, though he is well aware of what waits above them, but Finn and the Keepers have other plans. Pushing Mickey’s sorcerer’s cap out of his own eyes, Finn climbs. Violet’s hands are nearly on his heels, she is climbing so close behind him.

“The Queen! Tia Dalma! Where are they?” he shouts to Willa, far below. Were the witches caught and killed in the Skyway Station battle? It’s the last anyone has seen of them. If Finn doesn’t return, he wants Willa thinking ahead.

He doesn’t anticipate the cloven hoof in his face. One moment he’s climbing, the next, the ladder is knocked out from under him. The steel structure, bolted to concrete, crumples as if made of mere paper. Grabbing at the leg attached to the hoof, Finn finds himself on an express elevator to the penthouse, up and through the hatch. He lets go, the beast that carried him there none the wiser. Hitting the ground, he lands behind Chernabog, crouched on his hands and knees. Violet’s not here. She must have fallen back to the catwalk, Finn realizes.

There’s a thundering sound, but it isn’t thunder. The beast stomps one hoof angrily. The steel hatch jumps off the deck, lifted by the vibration, and slams shut. The sound it makes draws Chernabog’s attention; as he turns, he spots the parasite he carried aloft: Finn. The beast cocks his head at Finn and widens his black eyes, which are as big and as opaque as bowling balls. Hot, sour air blasts from his wet nose as he coughs and snorts.

Then, with a roar, Chernabog swipes at Finn as if he were a housefly. Finn ducks and feints to his right. The sunken deck at the top of the Matterhorn is instantly transformed into a boxing ring. Chernabog draws back a fist, the wing attached behind his shoulder trailing and echoing the windup, and swings. Finn dives between the beast’s legs, rolls, and comes to standing mere inches away. If Chernabog steps back, Finn will be crushed or forced over the side to his death.

Finn steals a look down, past the edge of the sunken platform upon which they’re standing, which has a surface rubberized against weather and is barely bigger than a backyard wading pool. The Matterhorn’s icy white peak sits like a scoop of ice cream atop the cone of the mountain’s jagged brown slopes. It’s a long way down to concrete and asphalt.

In the second or two he has bought himself, Finn manages to go all clear. He attempts his spin technique, moving through Chernabog as the beast turns to search for him. Again, Finn comes out behind his opponent.

Not seeing Finn, Chernabog pivots back. Finn carefully times when to step through the beast. He succeeds undetected. Sensing the ruse this time, the beast turns yet again. He’s quicker and cleverer than Finn anticipated. A flash of panic steals his all clear, and Finn bounces into, then off the beast’s leg.

With another roar that seems to shake the heavens, Chernabog slams Finn with one mighty fist. But one wing tip snags on the lip of the sunken platform, reducing the force of the blow—it’s not a square hit. Finn spins like a top and collapses, still conscious.

Chernabog raises his hoof and stomps. Finn crawls out of the way at the last possible second. The beast rears back to kick Finn, but Finn hauls the escape hatch open. Chernabog’s hoof cracks into the steel plate; the resulting collision sounds like a ten-car pileup. The enormous creature staggers back, growling in pain.

Seizing his advantage, Finn charges, his arms outstretched like lances, and slams into Chernabog. He might as well have hit a brick wall. Finn falls; Chernabog barely totters. But totter he does, and his sore hoof doesn’t help. Finn lunges again, angrily this time, desperately. He is fighting not only for his self-preservation; he is fighting for Wayne’s sake too.

Chernabog hits him cleanly this time, first with his hand, then with the tip of one wing, which catapults the boy off the platform, sending him sliding down the mountain’s icy face. The surface is real ice, not fiberglass. It’s real, and this beast means to kill him.

Finn claws his way up the snow, grabs a handful, and hurls a half-packed snowball at Chernabog. The beast tries to block it, but the ice ball explodes on contact, and the monster is blinded, at least for the moment.

Scurrying now, slipping and falling, but managing still to climb back up toward the platform, Finn throws more ice and snow into the beast’s oversize eyes. Chernabog’s reaction is to wrap his wings around himself and step forward.

Finn slips over the edge and back onto the sunken platform, scooping and throwing snowballs all the while, but the monster’s wings open with a snap, revealing a red-eyed bull’s head that is the closest thing to a devil’s face Finn has ever seen. Chernabog takes two thunderous steps and knocks the hatch shut again, eliminating any chance for Finn’s escape.

In the distance, an explosion rocks Big Thunder Mountain. Like a crippled shooting star, the crane lifts and then falls, consumed in flames. Chernabog bellows his displeasure, making the Matterhorn shake with his cries.

Maleficent in her dragon form was vulnerable to Finn’s attack. But she had outgrown a confined space, trapping herself and giving Finn the upper hand—literally: he tore her heart out with his hologram hand.

There will be no such simple end with Chernabog. The beast is free, he’s angry, and the flesh-eating monster now towers over Finn. His massive black leathery shoulders cap bulging arm muscles and humanlike hands—but with long claws, bigger than lawn rakes. His blank, unforgiving eyes radiate a bull’s brute ignorance and rage.

“I know you can hear me!” Finn shouts at Chernabog, who responds with an inquisitive look. Finn wants to cheer; he’s won the beast’s attention. “You cannot win! You kill us, and more will take our place. You destroy the park, another will be built.”

Chernabog swings, but simply voicing his convictions has returned Finn to all clear. The surge of energy is brief, but potent. The beast staggers, thrown off balance by the force of his blow, which fails to connect, sweeping through Finn’s torso.

“I’m not here,” Finn says. “I’m magic. I’m everything you’re not!”

Another swipe, another miss.

For the first time, Finn sees real puzzlement in the gaping black eyes. “There’s no such thing as evil here!” he hollers. “No room for it in this place. In Disneyland, evil never wins. How can you beat the laws of nature?”

They are frozen, staring at one another, gazes locked. Finn wishes for Amanda’s power to push. He wishes for Amanda. Chernabog deserves to go over the side, or worse. The beast snorts, his eyes aflame.

“Take a look around,” Finn says. “We’re going to fix it. We’re going to change it back to what it was—to what it’s always been.”

He can’t decide if he’s addressing a bull with a man’s body or a man with a bull’s head. He realizes that even if he manages to push the beast over the side, Chernabog will simply spread his wings and fly or glide to the ground. Finn eyes the closed hatch.

Another flash of lightning is followed almost instantaneously by a deafening crack of thunder. The storm is directly overhead.

“It starts and ends in lightning.”

Jess said that. Had the Keepers misunderstood her? They had thought she meant that the park would be ended—destroyed—by lightning, and although that still appears to have been the Overtakers’ aim, Finn wonders if there was a second meaning, one they missed.

Chernabog leans toward Finn, letting loose a moaning roar that sounds like a bull’s grunting complaint and a man’s pent-up frustration in one. And in that instant, Finn looks for something metal to attract the lightning. If this is his moment, if this is what Wayne meant to show him, that some things require the ultimate sacrifice, then he has no intention of going alone. If he’s to die, his death has to mean something, it has to count. Again, Wayne’s last words sound in his ears:
“It’s about
time.”

“For what?” Finn shouts, but he’s afraid of the answer. He already knows.

Chernabog startles at Finn’s outburst. The boy dives to one side, biting back a cry as a stream of green bile fills the space where he stood a second before. The bile boils and bubbles on the rubber surface, melting away a section of the mountain. Finn forgot the beast could do things like that.

Finn rolls over and jumps to his feet. Chernabog shifts his weight, eyeing the hatch, apparently to be sure that it is still closed. He fakes Finn out, swiping at him with a casual gesture, as if merely fanning the air, catching the boy in the ribs and tossing him aside.

Landing hard, Finn looks down—and feels his stomach fall. He’s once again over the edge of the recessed platform, hanging by his fingertips. In the flashing lightning, looking up at his wrists, he sees Wayne’s watch, reflecting the storm in tiny bursts of light.

“It’s about time.”

It’s about the watch, Finn realizes. He needs something metal to attract the lightning. If he’s not fully all clear, the watch isn’t either. If he’s some part human flesh in this condition, then the watch must be some equal part its original self: metal. Gold-plated metal. Gold, one of the best conductors of electricity.

Did Wayne possess Jess’s gift of prophecy? Did he foresee this moment?

Dozens of times in battle, Finn has reached for all clear by imagining a pinprick of light at the center of an endless black vacuum. He has pictured it like a train coming at him, the light growing until he is enveloped in it. He sees it now—that same intensity of white light. But the difference is that Chernabog has made his way into the basalt blackness.

Finn drags himself to the lip of the platform, crouches, and…

Jumps. He flies like a superhero.

Finn’s boldness catches Chernabog by surprise. The beast spreads his arms and his wings, trying to grab Finn, to crush him against his chest. But Finn arcs through the air with surprising speed and smashes into Chernabog’s chest—and this time he makes the monster stagger.

As fast as he can, Finn climbs, ascending Chernabog’s chest as if it were a climbing wall. He pulls himself up to Chernabog’s shoulders, grabs onto one of his hideous curled horns, and stretches Wayne’s watch toward the heavens.

Finn thinks of the old man. Here they are, teamed up together one last time, fighting this last good fight together. The pinprick of light in the sky expands and grows more intense, just as it has so many other times. But this time, the process goes faster than ever before. Finn’s imaginary train has always moved slowly as it approaches through the darkness, washing out the fear and ushering the all clear in. Not this time: this time it comes as fast as lightning.

V
IOLET AND
E
LSA
recover the ladder only moments after it crashes to the catwalk. Although she has fallen from a great height, Violet’s abilities protect her from harm. With Mickey standing aside, the two race to reattach the ladder, but the task proves to be physically impossible, because it has broken free from its supports. So instead, they work together to secure it well enough for Violet to climb back up to help Finn.

After several tries, Elsa’s panic subsides, and she realizes that the tools she needs are in her hands. She instructs Jess and Willa to guide Mickey a few yards away for safety. With the three of them behind her and Violet in front holding the ladder in place, Elsa freezes the bottom of the ladder to the catwalk, leaving only a small gap at the top between the ladder and the Skyway Station’s framework.

Violet is halfway up when an overhead explosion knocks her off the ladder a second time. Her horrified eyes fix on the ring of roiling blue electricity rolling down the mountain’s exoskeleton. “Finn!” she screams. She leaps onto the ladder a second time and climbs with abandon, angrily knocking the hatch door up and open and pulling herself outside on top.

It’s raining hard. Lightning flashes overhead; jagged bolts dance between the clouds. In the pulses of blue light, she sees the platform empty, abandoned. No Finn. No Chernabog.

Violet nearly hurls herself off the side, moving along the deck’s perimeter to look down in search of them, terrified that she’ll see Finn’s bloodless fingertips clutching a handhold, hanging on for dear life, but—nothing. Gritting her teeth, she dares to focus lower, on the concrete below, expecting the worst. But what she discovers is worse still.

Elsa, who has climbed quietly behind Violet, joins her on the platform. “Where…?” Elsa begins, but she doesn’t finish her thought. “Oh, no,” she whispers.

Violet follows the Winter Queen’s horrified gaze to the deck floor. One glance is enough. Stomach lurching, she averts her eyes.

The platform’s thick blue vinyl-covered surface is charred black and boiled brittle, as if something was cooked there. No, not some
thing
. Some
one
, turned to dust, burned and vaporized by the same surge of energy that has blackened every streetlamp and bulb in the park. Violet sees residual fires flickering like candles in a dark room, sending shards of glancing light across what remains of Disneyland. She sees emptiness and finality, death. Her love for this place, its magic, its characters…that feeling struggles for air in a vacuum of evil intent.

“Finn sacrificed himself…for us,” she whispers. She hears a peal of agony and sorrow carry like a clarion call over the park, and realizes belatedly that it comes from her own throat.

In the center of the still smoldering burn mark is Mickey’s sorcerer’s cap, somehow intact—the cap Finn was wearing when he climbed the mountain to meet his fate.