Kingdom Keepers V

by Ridley Pearson

  “But VQ?” Charlene asked. “Who’s that?”

  It wasn’t Storey who answered; it was Philby.

  “They’ve abbreviated her nickname,” he said. “Voodoo Queen.”

  “Tia Dalma’s on board the ship,” Finn said. “And I’m guessing she’s unauthorized.”

  * * *

  “So please join me in welcoming Disney’s very own Disney Hosts Interactive!” The ship’s director of entertainment, Christian, dressed in his crisp dress whites, gestured across the Walt Disney Theatre’s stage. He had made a big deal in his warmup about the cutting-edge technology represented by the DHIs, about the company’s effort to get them into every park, and how excited they were to now introduce them to the cruise line. But in the back of Finn’s mind he couldn’t help reliving his conversation with Storey Ming, his sense that the company might already be on the verge of retiring the original DHIs in favor of a second generation. He wondered if that decision had anything to do with the fame and lore that now surrounded him and the others, with the stories and rumors of their battles to save the parks. Had they grown too big too fast, overshadowing the traditional Disney characters? Did the company hope to return the Disney Hosts to just that, and not have to deal with the public’s appetite for controversial stories of witches and villains attempting to overthrow the parks?

  All of this tempered his enjoyment of the moment. A thousand people were standing and applauding. Cheering and screaming. The kids waved from the stage. It felt in many ways like the best, most lavish welcome the five kids had ever received. But they were no longer young middle schoolers, and Finn sensed this wasn’t just an introduction—it was a retirement party. Disney had plans no one in the audience understood.

  “Thank you!” Finn said, wearing a wireless microphone. He spoke the script he’d been asked to memorize. It was short and sweet, a message of harmony and magic and enthusiasm. He told them they’d be staying to autograph cruise posters and announced that their DHI holograms would be on deck that evening for tours and photographs. The crowd went wild.

  A short video celebrating the DHIs ran on three screens simultaneously—a large central screen onstage and two displays on either side. It was part tribute, part promotional piece. Finn noticed that there was little to no mention of them personally; instead the video focused on the concept of in-park guides and personal hosts. If anything, taken in a certain light, it seemed to be priming the audience for a new set of hosts. He wondered if anyone in the standing-room-only crowd caught on to this subtle message.

  When a fishing net fell from the stage rafters, covering the five waving kids, and Maleficent appeared stage left, her green face enormous on the three screens, the crowd went wild. A team of pirates converged on the stage, contained the net, and pushed the trapped kids back several feet; then the stage dropped out from under them, a hydraulic lift descending. The cheers of the crowd grew even louder.

  “Behold the New Order,” Maleficent said in her eerily calm and grating voice. “The dawning of a new age.” Another huge cheer from the adoring crowd. “Enough of all this prince-and-princess spun-sugar nonsense. It’s time for the Grimm in the fairy tales to express itself. The woods are dark, my dears. The beasts within them will eat you for supper, not sing you a song. Wake up and smell the roses.”

  The last thing Finn saw of the auditorium was the fanatic crowd looking up to see thousands of falling red roses released from high overhead. The attendees reached up to welcome the flowers, apparently not thinking through that the stems of roses carried thorns, and thorns could scratch. As the hydraulic lift removed him and the others from the stage, Finn heard the cheers turns to shrieks and cries. Then the world went dark as they were hauled off the platform, which quickly returned to seal the stage’s trapdoor shut, removing all sound and light.

  “All clear,” Philby said the moment they were pulled as a netted knot from the platform. Perhaps only he understood the seriousness of the situation—or maybe he was just bragging.

  If the Overtakers had the nerve to capture the Keepers in broad daylight in front of an audience while announcing a New Order, there would be only one intended outcome.

  Death.

  The pirates drove their swords through the net and into the kids without warning. No tear-jerking speech from Maleficent, no end-of-the-movie apology or dramatic summary. Just swords into their chests.

  They saw the blades coming. The pirates knew nothing of finesse. Finn dodged the one meant for him, as did Maybeck. Philby’s hologram stepped through the net and he bumped the pirate going for Willa. Charlene cried out. Stabbed in the shoulder, bleeding badly. The ignorant pirates cut the net with their sharp blades. Finn launched himself through a resulting hole and delivered a fist into the face of the pirate attempting to finish off Charlene. The pirate dropped his sword and staggered back. Finn clutched his knuckles, wondering if he’d broken his hand.

  Maybeck followed Willa out of the net.

  Philby took a sword to his body. It passed through, throwing whoever held the sword off balance. Maybeck or Finn helped trip the staggering man, and they moved fluidly in a choreographed way, first drawing the pirates apart, then singling one out and knocking him down.

  Armed with fallen swords, Maybeck and Finn fought back while Philby played shape-shifter. A pair of crash-test dummies guarded the room’s only door; there would be no easy exit.

  Finn ducked a sword swipe, the pirate’s blade lodging in the wood of the towering crate at the center of the space.

  Chernabog?

  Willa held a Lion King shield between her and her pirate. His sword bounced off it as she steadily drove him back. He stumbled, lost his balance, and Maybeck swiveled in time to knock him unconscious with a length of pipe. She joined at Maybeck’s side, and together they went after one of the few remaining pirates.

  Philby seemed to be enjoying his status as the only 2.0. He stood in place, allowing a frustrated pirate to strike him time and time again, the man’s sword slicing through the light of his projection. Then, as the pirate tired, Philby delivered a soccer kick between the man’s legs, and the pirate collapsed.

  Seven pirates had become five, then three. A crash-test dummy left his post at the door and tossed Maybeck against a wall like a rag doll. Maybeck crashed to the floor, groaning. Willa kicked the dummy, failing to do any harm. He backhanded her and sent her to the floor as well.

  Philby all clear, Finn not, the two regrouped, armed with swords, back to back near the crate. They faced three very angry pirates and one robotic crash-test dummy. Swords clattered and clanked as they beat off the attempted blows.

  “Not good,” Finn said loudly.

  “I’m working on it,” Philby said.

  You conceited jerk, Finn wanted to shout.

  “On three, jump out of the way.”

  “I will not!”

  “You go for the lights.”

  “You call that a plan?” Finn said.

  The CTD swung out and hit Finn’s shoulder, turning him so that he was no longer back-to-back with Philby. Instead, both boys had their backs to the crate.

  “Change of plans,” Finn said. “Help me out here.” He slammed his back into the crate, rocking it.

  “Are you nuts?” Philby said.

  “I can help you,” came Charlene’s voice.

  She was standing—wounded shoulder and all—behind the three pirates and the CTD. She held Maybeck’s length of pipe in her one good arm. She looked mad. Real mad.

  She swung the pipe like Albert Pujols taking batting practice. One, two, three, she connected with the backs of the pirates’ legs and took them down. The CTD turned around.

  Charlene hit him a good one. The dummy stumbled, tried to balance, and ended up behind the crate.

  “Push!” Finn shouted.

  The boys spun around and heaved against the huge crate, Philby pushing with his hand. The crate tipped, but rocked back upright.

  “Again!”

  The crate rocked.
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  Charlene struck the dummy a second time, keeping him in the shadow of the crate.

  The boys pushed again in unison. The crate tipped, teetered, and went over. The CTD didn’t have time to get out of the way and was crushed by the falling crate.

  The wood shattered and the box broke open.

  A horrid thing lay there, his leathery black skin like the fingers of a gorilla. Reddish-brown hair grew from him as fuzz. His face was a horror, half bull, half bat—and the ugly half of both. Two scarred black horns bent from his skull above hairy, pinned-back bat ears. The crate had seemed big enough, but now in the flesh this thing appeared twice as large. Enormous. Maybe twelve feet tall and as wide around as a refrigerator. His shoulders too wide to fit through a double doorway, arms as thick as Burmese pythons.

  His eyes squinted and opened. There was nothing inside but bottomless darkness: Chernabog.

  Someone screamed.

  It was Philby.

  * * *

  They fled from that place as a group. Ran so fast that, had anything or anyone been attempting to follow, it would never have caught up. They ran down companionways and through doors, up stairs and along decks. They found their way to their staterooms and locked the doors and hid under the covers without a peep.

  Only Charlene did not make it to her room. She was spotted by a uniformed officer who called out “Stop!” Being a polite girl, and one brought up to obey and respect authority, she did just that. The woman kindly showed her to the ship’s hospital, where they treated and closed her wound with butterfly bandages, accepting her explanation that she’d had a freak accident involving a broken drinking glass and a bathroom’s wet tile floor.

  None of them had any intention of sleeping knowing that the beast was somewhere belowdecks.

  Discovering Chernabog out of the crate, the Overtakers would feel pressure to speed up whatever plan they had. At the top of that agenda was certain to be the elimination of the Keepers before they could ruin their plans. That meant an all-out war. Tonight.

  That necessitated the Keepers go on the offensive.

  A few minutes past two a.m., Philby hid their three Wave Phones in a potted plant behind the lobby’s grand piano, a hiding place chosen for its accessibility. He then rode an elevator to the Radio Studio, where the key card allowed him and Storey Ming to enter. He instructed her on how to work a manual return.

  “I’ve got it,” she said, after he’d been over it a third time. “I don’t mean to sound rude, but it’s pretty simple.”

  “Don’t tell the others,” Philby said. “They think of it more as rocket science.” He grinned. “And remember: if you don’t enter that code correctly, if you aren’t here when we need you, we remain stuck. You understand that?”

  “Trapped. Yes. I understand.” She hesitated. “You could have asked one of the others—one of the five of you. Why me?”

  “Charlene needs sleep. Maybeck is valuable to us on this side for now. We know what we’re doing.”

  “Maybeck stays here to make sure I do my job,” she said.

  Philby didn’t answer her directly. “Being a hologram is fine. But having Maybeck on this side increases our chances of success. Statistically, it’s a matter of—”

  “Shut up,” Storey said. “They may listen to your garbage, but I don’t have to.”

  Philby looked made of stone. He said softly, “We can contact him when we need him.”

  “Uh-huh. Fine.”

  Storey waited a full hour, allowing time for Philby, Willa, and Finn to sneak out to one of the empty staterooms and get to sleep.

  At exactly three, she typed in the first string of code and pushed the ENTER key. The screen filled with scrolling computer code. Storey read back her notes, matching the identifiers with what she saw on-screen.

  If she understood it correctly, Finn and Willa had crossed over; Philby had not. She knew what to do in this event—Philby had explained everything to her like some kind of schoolteacher. Wait fifteen minutes and rekey the missing identifier. Failure to cross over usually meant the person in question had not fallen asleep in time. Sometimes there was Wi-Fi interference or Internet problems.

  A knock on the door startled her, and she jumped in her chair.

  It was a green-eyed girl, motioning her out of the studio.

  Storey shook her head. “No!”

  “Open the door!”

  “No!”

  They were inches apart now, separated only by the door’s safety glass.

  “Please…” came the girl’s muffled voice.

  Something about the quality of that voice made Storey turn the doorknob. She stepped out, keeping the door ajar with her right foot.

  “Who are you?” the girl said.

  “Who are you?” Storey said.

  “A friend.”

  “Same.”

  “Then how come I don’t know you?”

  “Same question,” Storey said.

  “I was expecting…someone else.”

  “A boy.”

  “Yes.”

  “A smart boy.”

  The girl nodded.

  “He’s busy.”

  “It’s a trap.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The network will indicate one of the refrigerators on Deck One. They left a clue there some time ago so the Keepers would believe it. But it’s a trap.”

  “A clue?”

  “Tell them the piece of torn robe was a phony. You can convince them if you tell them that.”

  “And I’m supposed to believe this because…?”

  “Because you don’t want them walking into a trap.” She paused. “Do you?”

  “Shut…up!”

  “Just tell them. What they’re after—it doesn’t need the cold. It’s in a special case.”

  “You know this how?”

  Sally Ringwald took a deep breath, releasing it slowly. “Because I’m one of them.”

  She turned and took off down the stairs.

  “Wait!” Storey’s foot slipped out of the door.

  “No!” She grabbed for the handle. Too late. It clicked, locked shut.

  She spun in circles, having no idea what to do, blissfully unaware that the ship’s meteorologist had been summoned to the bridge. The Dream was heading smack into the roar of wind and rough seas.

  * * *

  “Where the devil did you come from?” The question was posed to Finn by an Indian man polishing the atrium’s floor with a buffing machine.

  “I…well…we…” Finn said, pointing across the small photo-shoot stage to the opposite corner and Willa, who was just sitting up. He found himself suddenly tongue-tied.

  “We were playing a game of hide-and-seek,” Willa said. “The Vibe club? And we both must have fallen asleep.”

  “Which is to say,” Finn said, “no one ever found us.”

  The maintenance crew member scratched his head. “It’s too late for you to be here. You should be in your staterooms.”

  “Which is where we are going right now,” Finn said.

  “Mom and Dad are going to be furious,” Willa said, playing it as if they were brother and sister. It made Finn think about his mother and how he was going to break whatever spell held her. Where was she now? he wondered.

  “Off you go before I report you,” said the worker. The curfew for teens was one o’clock, and it was well past that.

  Just then the ship shuddered bow to stern, a long rumbling tremor underfoot like a growling stomach. The man must have seen Finn’s horror.

  “It’s nothing, son,” the man said. He sounded more Irish than Indian. “When the seas kick up, she’ll push and fight and pitch and yaw her complaints like an old maid, but she bends like bamboo, the beauty. It’s all part of what they call the ‘seafaring experience.’”

  “Have you sailed a long time?”

  “I was a farmer. And my father and his father, both farmers. So no, I’d never seen the ocean before. Took some getting used to for me, but now
I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Every ship has a personality, and the Dream’s well named.”

  Another grinding shudder rippled through the expansive atrium.

  “That’s normal, then?” Willa said.

  “Perfectly,” the man said. “Don’t you worry a hair on your head. Now, off you go!”

  Finn and Willa thanked him and took off across the atrium, but reached out and caught hands to steady themselves as the ship lurched to port. Suddenly it was like trying to walk in an amusement park ride, Finn thought, only he didn’t find it so amusing.

  “Where’s Philby?” Willa said as they reached the elevators. Given that they were glass elevators on the side facing the man they’d spoken to, they had to ride at least a few floors up to convince him they were returning to their staterooms.

  “I was wondering the same thing,” Finn said.

  The elevator arrived, and they boarded and rode to the sixth floor.

  “Missed the crossover,” she said.

  “I’m assuming.”

  “But how do we find the OT server if he’s not monitoring the network data flow?” Willa said.

  “We need to get back down there and get our phones. Without that guy seeing us.”

  “I totally spaced that part.”

  “We need the phones.”

  “So…what now?”

  “We think like an Overtaker.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Tia Dalma’s somewhere on board this ship,” Finn said. “Wherever they’re hiding her, you can bet it’s as far away from where they’re hiding Chernabog as possible. So where is that?”

  “Somewhere at the stern,” she said. Then, “Is this about your mother?”

  “We were at Typhoon Lagoon. The theme is beach and water and island and shipwrecked boats and—”

  “—Creole witch doctors fit in with that. Yeah, I can see that,” she said. “It’s Tia Dalma.”

  He thought back to his spying on the voodoo lady’s meeting with Jafar and the crew members, about her demand that the crew members be brought to her. He wondered how many characters could stand up to Maleficent in this way.