Kingdom Keepers(74)

The doorknob went white with frost. She was holding it from the other side.

“You’re thinking this is a trap,” Finn said. “And you’re right to think that. But it isn’t. We just want to go home. We want to sleep at night. Please…help us, and you’ll have what you want.”

The doorknob turned.

Maleficent stood in the doorway. She had not fully recovered from Finn’s zapping her the night before. She looked older, slightly yellow in the cheeks. Behind her, on a stack of more computers, Finn saw the scroll of plans she had stolen from him at One Man’s Dream.

Finn and Maybeck backed up a step. Philby was nowhere to be seen.

“Which server?” Finn asked.

“And we need whatever back-up server they have, as well,” Maybeck said. “Once we’re gone, we don’t want them able to bring us back.”

Maleficent glared at them with her eyelids lowered menacingly. She was either half dead or ready to kill.

“I’m sorry for what I did,” Finn said. “I didn’t know.” Finn realized he’d zapped a good deal of the power from her. He’d drained her. She was like a battery running out of juice.

She said nothing, just stood there blinking, looking devilish. She gathered her strength and said, “Jez likes you, or I would have hurt you last night when I had the chance.”

“That’s comforting to know,” Finn said. “I’ll put down the pens. You can have it. But first you’ll show us the right server.”

“First the pens,” she said. “You think I’d trust you like that?”

“And why should I trust you?”

“This is your idea, not mine. Besides, once I have the pen, what threat are you?”

Finn concealed his smirk as he shrugged. “Have it your way,” he said.

He withdrew the group of pens and pencils from his pocket and placed them on the ground.

Maleficent approached them like a kid nearing a Christmas tree. She seemed to have more energy. Her eyes flared open in expectation.

Finn took several more steps backward, Maybeck right next to him.

But behind Maleficent, the door to the back room swung slowly away from the wall, and there stood Philby. In his right hand Philby clutched a fistful of pens and pencils tightly.

Maleficent bent toward the pens on the floor, clearly cautious. But as she drew closer she saw modern brand names on the pens. She looked up through fiery eyes.

“Now!” Finn shouted.

Philby charged from behind and did just as Finn had told him: holding the pens extended, he drove his fist into the witch.

At that same moment, she turned around.

A blinding flash erupted as the pens made contact. Maleficent rose from the floor and was thrown violently past Finn and Maybeck and into the heavy black shelves.

Maybeck sprinted forward into the back room, grabbed the roll of plans, and headed for the main door. Philby, stunned by what he’d done, passed the pens to Finn, leaving behind on the floor the pens the boys had collected from a desk at the front of the control room.

Philby was next out the door.

“What’s going on here?” A big man blocked Finn’s exit.

Just then a shower of sparks and spurts of flame rose from where Maleficent lay pinned to the computer shelves, impaled onto a stack of electrical oudets and surge suppressors. As the electricity flowed through her body, beneath the smoke and spitting sparks, Finn saw her skin color return to a rich green. The electricity fed her.

“What—is—that—?” asked the office manager.

Maleficent’s bloodshot eyes flashed open and locked onto Finn. He’d never seen eyes so angry, so mean and vicious. So powerful. And they were aimed at him. Only at him.

The office manager staggered toward a fire extinguisher hanging from the wall.

Finn made for the door.

Maleficent pulled herself loose from the metal shelving as a shower of sparks cascaded overhead and cried, “Aaaah! I needed that!”

She flew out the door. Literally.

The office manager fainted.





33


Finn hit the tunnel running. Behind him raced a blur of green and black as Maleficent sped through the air, her arm pointing in front of her and leading the way.

Closing the distance.

The boys ran side by side now, Maleficent behind them, and closing fast. Like a shell game, the boys passed the plans back and forth between them, then switched positions as they ran and passed the plans again. For someone behind them, where Maleficent now followed, it grew impossible to determine which boy had the plans.

Then, just as Maleficent was nearly upon them, the boys split up, running in three different directions.

Maybeck mumbled, perhaps a little too loudly for his own good, “I’ve got them! Don’t worry. Just run!”