Kingdom Keepers the Return Book 3

by Ridley Pearson

  “Yes, unfortunately, I do.” Willa grabbed hold of a plastic flower, one of many scattered on the floor like rose petals on a wedding aisle. She bit into a petal, grimaced, reconsidered, and bit into a leaf.

  Jess coughed. The smoke was getting bad. “Maybe not the best time for floral arrangements, Willa.”

  “See that big box on the wall over there?” Willa pointed. “Hurry up and get that open. Start up what’s inside—and memorize the location of the projector and the stage. I mean: exactly where they are, so you can tell with your eyes closed. You’ll know what to do when it happens.”

  Even as she began to shred a second leaf, Willa bent the two wires of the flower until they resembled arms, reaching out from a skinny body with a daisy for a head. It looked like a voodoo doll, like something the Traveler might have fashioned.

  “We need to help them!” Jess pleaded. “What is that?”

  “Just go!” Willa’s strident rebuke sent a jolt through Jess. “And remember what I told you.”

  Jess took off at a run.

  Willa moved toward the wall. She was counting on the fake flower’s plastic to insulate her fingers.

  A teenage girl—how many teens were in here?—ran toward Willa, screaming a wordless screech. The distraction threw her off; she looked up and away from the wall socket. Mentally cursing herself, Willa refocused, concentrating on the ends of Miss Daisy’s bare wire arms. Lining the wires up with the slits in the wall socket, Willa looked left: Jess had the wall box open and a fire hose in hand; to the right, the wild banshee, now only a yard away, prepared to strike.

  Willa shoved the wire arms into the wall socket. A loud pop sounded, followed by yellow sparks and a puff of smoke.

  The flower’s plastic failed to insulate. A jolt of voltage stabbed through Willa, tensing every muscle in her body. As her attacker made contact, the electricity shot through her as well.

  The two girls fell, unconscious, just as the cavernous room lost all electricity, the only visible light coming from the flames.

  CONSUMED IN INSTANTANEOUS darkness, Jess turned the firebox’s old rusted wheel. About the size of a dinner plate, the wheel groaned and strained, requiring more effort than she’d expected. But at last, the flat canvas hose bulged and became tubular. Jess held it firmly and aimed its green brass nozzle, her eyes already adjusting to the low yellow light from the flames.

  The boy with the projector never saw it coming. The powerful stream of water hit him like a battering ram, sending him off his feet. He was midair when a figure that resembled Amanda rose from the floor. Amanda lifted her arms and pushed, changing the boy’s direction and speed. Rolling tables, snapping chairs, and the boy himself flew toward the stage as if lofted high by a tornado.

  Amanda looked witchlike, a tormented force of anger and rage. Burning furniture lifted from the dance floor in a debris storm. Jess directed the fire hose at the stage, as instructed, aiming to douse the campfire over which the Traveler squatted.

  At almost the same moment, a brilliant flash of blue light erupted from the imaginary pot being stirred by Witch Hazel. The air filled with a hundred birds of every size, from eagles, hawks, and crows to swallows and sparrows. In a second, the debris Amanda had thrown was gone, replaced by living organisms.

  Not a splinter reached the Traveler.

  Jess dropped the hose, astonished. Beyond the Traveler, with no electricity or projector, the Maleficent mannequin glowed. The evil fairy seemed caught, struggling between a projected and material existence. Jess forced herself to redouble her efforts; she had to keep Maleficent from forming.

  The birds circled overhead, wings stirring the smoke and clouding the vision of the people in the ballroom. The wild creatures cried in anguish, desperate for open air. Crows and hawks swooped low, forcing Jess to duck—and only then did it occur to her that the birds were agents of Witch Hazel.

  Maleficent’s wooden limbs moved. Jess swallowed back the urge to vomit.

  Maybeck rushed the stage. The three teens closest to Maleficent turned, forming a wall that kept him from both the kneeling Traveler and Maleficent’s shifting form.

  Jess struggled to regain control of the spitting hose, the power of which made it difficult to hold. She shot some birds out of the air; hit a table, and pushed it across the room. Then, with renewed focus, she trained the watery blast on the stage.

  She hit Maybeck in the shoulder, spinning him out of the way. Without pause, she sprayed the three teens. They whisked back and into the transfiguring Maleficent. The mannequin went down hard.

  The Traveler looked up then. Straight into Jess’s soul.

  HIS SHOULDER NEARLY KNOCKED out of its socket by the water from the fire hose, Maybeck found himself looking offstage at a symmetrical pattern of stage rigging ropes, neatly tied off to belaying pins.

  Pain shot through him; a fireball had hit him in the chest. It bounced off and fell to the stage; Maybeck beat down his smoldering shirt, hollering from the sting of the burn. He looked up, searching for the source.

  The half mannequin, half Maleficent, her image not yet fully merged with the wood, was looking at him maliciously.

  It took a split second for Maybeck to compute that the would-be Maleficent had thrown the fireball at him. She appeared to be reloading, her arm cocked back. Maybeck ducked as a fireball the size of a softball flew wide.

  The Traveler smiled. He was eerily calm, though the fire hose had left him a curled ball against the screen, covered in wet ash and pieces of burned finger bones.

  In a singsong voice, the Traveler murmured, “Dem children shouldn’t play with no fire!” He wrapped his bony fingers around some feathery thing hanging from his neck and squeezed.

  Maybeck’s insides cramped so painfully he dropped to his knees. Unable to stand, he fell to the stage and rolled.

  “We need dem pains so we don’ts forget dem lessons. Huh?”

  Maybeck squirmed and groaned, arms crossed tightly around his shins, his tortured belly knifing pain through his whole body, his eyes pasted open in agony. He rolled away from the Traveler, eyes desperately searching the vast space of the ballroom. It was not Amanda or Jess, not Willa or Charlene that interested him. No. It was the object in the dark overhead.

  Calculations, strategies, and game design were Philby’s, Willa’s, and Finn’s strengths. Maybeck had been pigeonholed as the artist of the group, a tag he didn’t necessarily mind, but one he found limiting. The thing about any artistic project was this: it had to be planned, from having the idea to collecting the supplies and making the art. Just now, in the midst of his painful roll across the stage, Maybeck had envisioned a masterpiece. A piece of performance art to rival Einstein on the Beach.

  A third fireball whizzed by his ear. This time, Maybeck appreciated it. Keep ’em coming, Greenie! he wanted to shout. His courage defeated the Traveler’s painful voodoo grip. Even though he wasn’t a hologram, by overcoming his fear, Maybeck made the threat powerless.

  Maleficent’s image strengthened, suddenly more flesh than wood, more mortal than mannequin.

  “You three, out of here!” Maybeck shouted at the three teens.

  Their impudent expressions suggested a spell or hypnotism, which meant their anger and hatred toward Maybeck was manufactured.

  “Jess,” Maybeck called across the room, which was now filled with smoke and circling birds of every variety. “When I say so, hit those three with everything you’ve got!”

  “Got it!” she called back.

  “Mandy!” he yelled.

  But Amanda didn’t answer. He glanced over, saw her folded up once again in a heap on the dance floor. Wounded, he thought. Their numbers were shrinking. He still hadn’t seen Finn; in the back of his mind, the thought sent worry squirming through him.

  But there wasn’t any more time to think. Maybeck had to work to keep the fear at bay—to keep the Traveler at bay. He ducked another incoming fireball, backed across the stage and into the wings.

  Keep ’em comi
ng…

  Maleficent, ever more herself, matched his every step. That’s right…

  The mannequin-fairy stepped awkwardly forward. A crow arrowed out of the swirling mass and landed on her shoulder; she reached up and stroked it. As she did, the bird’s eyes went red.

  Diablo! Maybeck thought.

  He moved across the stage, continuing to back up into the wings, keeping himself squared with Maleficent. Manipulating Maleficent.

  Where was Finn? Now the question wouldn’t leave him alone. Why wasn’t he helping?

  Cursing under his breath, Maybeck slowed, intentionally allowing Maleficent to close the gap. First, twenty feet away. Now, fifteen.

  “Being human is more than not being wooden,” he said, hoping to goad her. “You’ve got a lot of work to do. And the green skin? Not so hot, if you ask me.”

  The dark fairy continued to stagger toward him, eyes squinting. Behind her, Witch Hazel kept stirring space. Above his head, the birds surged and soared.

  Maleficent’s green skin showed the wood grain within it—a ghostly pattern. She did not look human, but more cartoonish, like the projection that had helped form her. Neither character nor mannequin, Maleficent was a half-formed thing. A horror. A partial sketch with a mind of its own.

  The dark fairy stopped her advance, slightly past the middle of the stage, arm winding up once again.

  Maybeck saw the Traveler look up. Saw the strange man’s bloodshot eyes widen as he, like Maybeck before him, followed the taut lines of rigging.

  “Now, Jess!” Maybeck shouted.

  “No!” the Traveler called, his voice mixed with Maybeck’s. “Fairy! Don’t be—”

  But he was too late.

  Jess struck the three teens with the fire hose’s powerful stream. The blast drove them into the screen. They skidded along, rolling like riders on a slippery slide, and were knocked into the darkness backstage.

  “FAIRY!” the Traveler shouted. But he was neither in nor out of control of the transfigured form. Maleficent existed in an ethereal space, caught between transformation and puppetry.

  She let fly the biggest fireball yet. Maybeck understood that it was all about timing now. He waited to feel the heat of the projectile before moving aside. The small ones had been easy. This one, the size of a basketball, proved too hot. Maybeck endured the stinging pain to his face, arching his back like a player in a game of limbo.

  And then he dropped lifelessly, his hair smoldering, forehead blistering.

  Maleficent’s roiling flame passed beyond his slumped body and smashed into the wall, igniting posters, a curtain, a bulletin board—and a number of the taut stage ropes. Maybeck, eyes stinging and blurry, saw a rope snap as it burned through. Then another, and several more.

  The object he had first spotted high overhead, the same object the Traveler had just seen, a metal catwalk used as a working platform for stagehands, jerked sharply, first to the left side of the stage, then to the right.

  It fell.

  Oddly, for Maybeck, there was nothing slow-motion about it. The falling catwalk more closely resembled a fly swatter slapping a hard surface. One moment, Maleficent was standing, a menacing form stretched far above him. Behind her, the crouching Traveler was coming to his feet.

  The next, a loud noise. Dust. Some scattered pieces of smoking wood and charred bone. No Maleficent, no Witch Hazel, no Traveler. Gone. All gone.

  Pieces of wood and debris rained down from the ceiling. No birds.

  The fire continued to rage, finding more fuel in its path. Through the walls came the distant cry of sirens.

  The Traveler’s teens, strewn about the dining room and backstage, saw the carnage and scattered, heading out the main door.

  From within the smoke and silence came the sound of Amanda’s desperate tears. Jess looked okay, albeit shaken. Willa stood, wobbly, a chair falling off her.

  Maybeck had seen the two tables smashed together earlier. They weren’t fully closed, the sides hovering near each other like a bear trap that had been tripped.

  He jumped off the stage. Knocking tables and chairs, tablecloths, broken lamps, chunks of wood, and coils of electrical wiring out of his way, Maybeck approached the sobbing Amanda…and the shoe before her.

  “Finn,” she moaned.

  “THERE!” HUMPHREY SAID, POINTING.

  “Where?” Mary Ann said, flicking her blue locks out of her eyes. “All I see is smoke.”

  “Base of the people mover,” Humphrey said.

  “I was looking over at the Buzz Lightyear ride.”

  “No. Closer than that. To the right.”

  “It’s him.”

  “It is,” Humphrey said. “The Dogcatcher.”

  “I hate that man,” Mary Ann said in a gravelly whisper. It caught in her throat. “He made a friend of mine…She bumped a table in the kitchen when she was carrying a big pot of soup. It slurped over the edge and spilled. He made her lick it up. All of it! I don’t know if you ever saw the kitchen floor…but I’ve seen bathrooms that were cleaner.”

  “He caught Billy, the guy who could make people say things he wanted them to say? Remember him? Anyway. Billy was trying to escape. The Dogcatcher put him in 13 for three weeks! Three weeks! I don’t need to tell you how he came out.”

  “Enough of back then,” Mary Ann said. “We need to focus! Why does anyone care about the people mover?” she asked.

  Humphrey studied the empty overhead track encircling Tomorrowland. “We may be dumb, but he’s just plain stupid!”

  “Humphrey?”

  “Don’t you see? Whoever controls that track—just look up there!—has the battlefield advantage over Tomorrowland. How many other Barracks stooges like Dogbreath are there? Five? Ten? Without us working for them, they’re toast. So they’re taking up strategic positions to keep us from gaining the advantage while they try to empty the place with this shock-and-awe fireworks attack.”

  “Which is working.”

  “Clearly.”

  “So we take out the Dogcatcher—Dogbreath! I like that!—and gain the high ground. Then what?”

  “We put some of ours up there, maybe some Disney characters, too, and we capture any Cast Members or kids the Barracks guys have compromised. The fireworks aren’t going off by themselves. The Barracks obviously had a backup plan if we didn’t get the job done.”

  “So, let’s get it done,” Mary Ann said, face tightening with determination.

  “He’s powerful, Mary Ann. Let’s not forget that.” Some of the Barracks grown-ups had once been Fairlies themselves. Though they’d mostly grown out of their abilities, a few like the Dogcatcher still possessed considerable powers. “His thing is pain.”

  “Yeah,” she said, “I know.”

  “He can throw it.”

  “Right. Make you howl like a poked dog.” Mary Ann shivered. “I heard all about it. He’s right-handed, and before he throws the pain he places his left hand over his heart. I don’t know if that’s for show, or part of his ability, but that’s his deal.”

  “Distance?”

  “I’ve heard everything from ten yards to a hundred. Don’t think I’d like to find out.”

  “And you? The cold? The way you make everything so cold?”

  “You mean how far? Forget about me, Humphrey. I’m the Ice Queen when I’m inside a place, but I’m no Elsa. I need small spaces. A room. A hallway.”

  “But you’ve got me,” he said.

  “Mr. Turbocharge. Right. I know what you can do! But consider this: let’s say you can touch me and increase my power? Okay. But now my power increases and I freeze you, way colder, way deeper than I mean to. I’m immune to the cold, Humphrey. Maybe by touching me, you are too. But maybe not. That particular test has never been done, and this seems like a pretty pathetic time to start experimenting.”

  “Have you ever ridden piggyback?”

  “Say what?”

  “If I’m carrying you, we’re touching,” Humphrey said. “Once we’re touchin
g, I can triple, maybe quadruple your ability. So, I run. You take your best shot at Dogdoo over there. Whaddaya say?”

  Mary Ann giggled. “I like you too much to let you do this, Humphrey. But thanks for the offer.”

  Leaving Humphrey flat-footed, she broke away from their hiding place—behind a trash can, next to a metal bench—and took off running for the Dogcatcher.

  A second too late, Humphrey started off after her.

  MATTIE REACHED HER ROPE before Nick and, taking hold, immediately sank onto her bottom as it stretched. She stood, pulled the slack out of it, and reached overhead. Nick arrived several steps behind her and flew to the wall, taking the rope in both hands. Working hard, he began walking up the face of the mountain, his back parallel to the asphalt. He looked like a Marine.

  Mattie’s approach was to hold on overhead while wrapping the rope around one leg and clamping it tight at her ankles, exactly like she’d learned in P.E. class before P.E. class had been renamed Activity Hour, which amounted to sixty minutes of sitting in the shade and gossiping.

  Above her, Nick began to lose his traction, causing him to put his feet higher than his head. He appeared dangerously close to falling headfirst.

  Mattie, the tortoise to his hare, happened to look up the length of his rope to see little puffs of dust, like heavy raindrops exploding on packed dirt. At first she took this phenomenon to be the old rope shedding some of the dust from storage. But then, she understood.

  “Nick!”

  “Don’t worry! I got it! I’m getting the hang of it.”

  “Nick! The rope!”

  “I said I’ve got it.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t think it has you.” Even as she spoke, Mattie felt her own rope weakening, the aged fibers stretched to snapping. Pop, pop, snap: the ropes were fraying. Coming apart.

  The fireworks charges that had been trained to their positions on the ground had followed Nick and Mattie up the mountain, striking all around and showering them in painful sparks. Colors flashed blindingly: blue, red, white, green, purple. Enveloped in an acrid smoke that tasted sour and made her nose twitch, Mattie climbed steadily up her rope, trying to ignore the repetitive drops, a fraction of an inch at a time, that signaled the rope above her coming apart.