Kingdom Keepers: The Return Book Two: Legacy of Secrets (33 page)

Heading in the direction of the wood shop.

“D
O YOU HAVE ANY IDEA
what we’ve done?” Philby panted, racing toward the wood shop. A pink sky was forming in the east. The park’s radio antennas would be turned back on at sunrise—any minute now.

“Maybe we could discuss this later?” Finn said, working hard to keep up.

“If those punks get hold of the ink, we’ve given them the very tools they need to create real villains from the Disney drawings. We’ve created the—”

“Overtakers.” Finn went white.

“Wrap your mind around that one.”

“If we don’t stop them from getting that ink, we’re the ones to blame.”

“And if we do, then the Overtakers may never exist, which means Disney doesn’t need us—Wayne doesn’t need us—and—”

“We never meet. We never become friends.”

Finn and Philby skidded to a stop, both in shock. The others saw them and slowed, then stopped themselves.

“What?” Charlene shouted, well ahead of the rest of the Keepers.

“There’s good news and bad news,” Philby said.

“Really? Now?” Willa said, impatiently. “Guys? They’re getting away!”

The five took off again, but Finn and Philby exchanged a telling look of panic, fear, and remorse. Save Dillard, the Keepers and the Fairlies were the only friends Finn had known for the past several years. They had been his world. His universe. He’d walked the parks as a hologram. He’d done things, extraordinary things he couldn’t imagine a life without. He’d made friends he couldn’t live without.

How did the universe work? he wondered. If they recovered the ink, would the Overtakers find another way to exist, or would it mean the end of them? If the Overtakers failed to exist, would he and his friends find a different way to meet, or would they never know each other’s names?

As torn as he’d ever been, he reached the door to the wood shop. In front of him, Philby, Maybeck, and Charlene were already fighting the hooligans.

Finn took a deep breath, and dove into battle.

T
HESE GUYS MEANT BUSINESS.
Philby took a fist to the face and went down to his knees with a bloody nose. Charlene cut out the knees of the boy responsible, but all her blow did was cause him to stagger. The boy spun, fist raised, and…hesitated. His brain apparently couldn’t process that a girl had hit him and now he had to hit her back. In that instant, Charlene performed a martial arts pivot on one foot and delivered her opposite heel into his abdomen. A whoosh of air went out of him, yet he still remained standing.

A leg tripped Charlene from behind, the work of yet another of the boys, on his way to club Maybeck with an elbow to the back. Willa was crouched into a ball, hands on her head, as a third boy brought both fists down, screaming at her, “Mind your own beeswax!”

The Keepers had lost the advantage in a matter of thirty seconds. Two of the hooligans fled through the door of the wood shop.

The ink! Finn thought. Resolve shot through him; he found a strength he hadn’t experienced in a long, long time. He’d first felt it after an electrifying experience on the Disney Dream cruise ship. Now, it entered his veins like warmth; he recognized the familiar glow immediately: he was twice, maybe three times his normal strength. Blinded by the rising sun, he was reminded of what an endlessly long night this had been. Only then did he make the connection to the tingling he was feeling.

“All clear!” Finn shouted. “We’re DHI!”

The Disneyland radio transmitters had been turned on.

The next blow to Willa’s head went straight through her. She stood and kicked the boy in the shins, but her poorly projected leg passed through his. Off-balance, she stumbled and fell.

The teen who’d elbowed Maybeck should not have stuck around. Maybeck’s hologram proved impossible to strike.

“Ghost!” the teen shouted, terrified.

Maybeck focused intently on his hands. He felt them tingle and struck the kid in the jaw, the belly, and on his back with an elbow, driving him down to the pavement.

“You…don’t…play…fair!” Maybeck said, kicking the kid, though nowhere near as hard as he could have.

“You’ll never beat Hollingsworth!” the boy spat up at him. “Once he has that ink, his power will be greater than any of yours!”

“Yeah? Well, he doesn’t have it yet.” Maybeck headed for the wood shop at a sprint.

Finn had already reached the door. He hurried inside, only to see a 2 × 4 piece of lumber flying through the air, aimed at his head. It passed through him. But his fear of the thing gave him substance. He grabbed hold, yanked it from the kid on the other end, and swung for a homer. The boy went down with stars in his eyes. One to go!

Maybeck blasted through the door behind him. His hologram charged right through Finn’s, both of them racing toward Walt’s desk in the back. Solidifying, Maybeck knocked into a kid who had the rough wood statue of Mickey in hand. The statue flew up into the air. A narrow glass jar slipped out, spinning and flashing as it tumbled down. Maybeck caught it with one hand.

The ink.

Finn sped to a stop at his side. He bent and used twine to tie the hands of the kid Maybeck had leveled.

Trying to catch their collective breath, still shaking from adrenaline, the two boys looked at the dark ink inside the vial. It was thick as blood, dark as the Evil Queen’s cape.

“Perhaps we can come to some agreement,” a man’s deep voice called out.

The boys looked toward the door. An older man with an upturned chin and fierce, narrow-set eyes stood there, looking back at them. He wore a fine suit and shiny black shoes. Cuff links sparkled from his wrists. A black cane with a silver crown warmed in the palm of his hand. To see such a man on the street, Finn would have thought him a banker or lawyer. But the feral eyes revealed a troubled soul within. He was a cave dweller, a man who lived so often in darkness that his eyes had lost the ability to adjust to light. Only black glass remained.

Philby, Willa, and Charlene stood frozen in place at his side. Something bad had happened to them.

“I think you’ll need this, as it turns out. Two peas in a pod, the pen and the ink.” Hollingsworth reached into his jacket and came out with Walt’s pen. “You shouldn’t have left that boy alone, you know? Never abandon your defenses.”

“Pen and ink,” Maybeck muttered to Finn. “No power without both.”

“You give me that ink, and I’ll give you your friends back. How does that sound?” His gang of four had recovered, save the boys Finn and Maybeck had tied up. Awaiting Hollingsworth’s command, they held back from the Keepers—and the ink.

Finn wondered how the man could have possibly affected his friend’s holograms. What powers did he have? For affected they were: unmoving and frozen in place.

“I don’t think that’s going to happen,” Finn said.

“I’d be careful. I don’t make offers twice.”

Finn reached out and took the ink from Maybeck. He held it out as he walked forward, closing the distance to Hollingsworth. He unscrewed the bottle’s small tin cap.

“I’ll pour it out right here,” Finn said.

“You wouldn’t.”

“Really?” Finn tipped the bottle. Ink splashed onto the concrete floor.

“NO!”

“Release them now.”

“I will not!”

“You will.” Finn poured out more of the dark, viscous ink. A few drops splattered onto Charlene’s dress shoes. Color raced up her leg and spread through her as Hollingsworth, Maybeck, and Finn watched in astonishment. The flow of change in her looked like the change that pixie dust made when the animated Tinker Bell waved her wand.

Shaking herself like a sleeper emerging from a dream, Charlene suddenly stepped forward and flung herself at Maybeck.

“I heard it all,” she said.

Maybeck squatted, colored his fingers with the ink, and flicked it at Philby and Willa. Like Charlene, color flowed through their bodies; in a flash, they came back into being.

Hollingsworth staggered backward toward the door, overcome by what he’d just witnessed.

The Kingdom Keepers rushed outside to stop him.

I
T STRUCK
F
INN AS AN
apparition: something remarkable this way comes. Hollingsworth and his gang of four stood in front of a tall man. At this hour, the rising sun pinned to the horizon backlit him, turned him into a faceless silhouette. The brightness of the sun enlarged his shape and burnished the edges of his form until he almost seemed to float.

When the man spoke, Finn recognized his familiar crackling voice.

“You’re nothing but trouble, Amery.”

A wave of goose bumps seemed to surge across Finn’s body.

“You’ll not stop me,” Hollingsworth spat. “You may think you will, but you won’t. I have destiny on my side. I have creatures you created.”

The villains!
Finn thought. The Overtakers.

The silhouetted man spoke. “I’ve just been informed by a reliable Cast Member—whether I believe him or not is another matter—that perhaps I won’t stop you, but these five young people will. Finn? Amery will give you my pen now.”

He knew Finn’s name! Finn stepped forward.

But Hollingsworth didn’t move. “Another step and I smash it.”

Finn had been so focused on the man that he’d missed the four men in Disneyland security uniforms who’d appeared on either side. They stepped forward, but Walt Disney waved them back.

“Amery, please. Enough of this.”

Hollingsworth clearly weighed the odds. “I’ll smash it to the ground. Your choice…
sir
.” He spoke each word venomously, as if the syllables were blows he was raining down. “Bad always overtakes good. Darkness consumes light. What you’ve built here is temporary.”

He raised the pen higher, about to smash it to the ground.

“Hey,” Finn called to Maybeck. He pinched his own throat.

Maybeck nodded. He stepped up behind Hollingsworth. Hollingsworth’s boys made a move, but there was no Maybeck to grab—only a projection.

Maybeck reached his DHI arm
inside
of Hollingsworth from behind. Through the man’s shoulder blades and up to his windpipe. He focused and squeezed.

Pain ripped through both men, Maybeck crying out, Hollingsworth gasping for air. The comingling of projection and corporeal human caused Maybeck intense pain. Hollingsworth reached for his own throat as if to pull away the hands choking him—a hand that the others couldn’t see.

He let go of the pen.

Finn’s DHI dove toward the pavement, rotating in midair to put his back to the asphalt. He looked up to see the pen falling toward him, tumbling end over end. He reached. Grabbed. And snagged it.

Maybeck released Hollingsworth, withdrew his arm, and staggered back. Charlene caught hold of him as he sagged, hissing in pain.

Hollingsworth gagged and coughed. As he staggered forward, the guards took hold of him and the four young men in his gang.

“Take them to the gate and show them out,” Walt Disney said. “Amery, the next time I’ll have you arrested.”

“The next time,” Hollingsworth said, “it will be my park, not yours.”

“We’ll see,” Walt Disney said.