Kingdom Keepers III(127)

If only….

“You and me,” Finn said, looking directly into the hideous, drooling eyes. The vulture advanced another step, her pink tongue appearing as its beak opened.

“It’s over.”

He heard the voice but didn’t quite believe it. A trick of his mind, perhaps. Wishful thinking. For there was no questioning whose voice it was: Wayne’s.

He looked to his right. High above him on an outcropping of rock stood the old geezer with his khaki pants, his white hair, and his Epcot windbreaker. Exactly as Jess had envisioned him.

“We’ve lost. It’s over. Surrender is the only option.”

“No!” Finn shouted. “They’ll trap us in the Syndrome. We’ll be there forever.”

“Listen to him!” the vulture croaked out in a grating voice much like Maleficent’s. “He’s trying to help you!”

“No!” Finn said, taking another dangerous step even farther from the series of trapdoors.

“It’s over,” Wayne said, turning and looking down at him. “Save yourself….”

“Finn!”

Finn reeled in the opposite direction toward the voice. Her voice.

Amanda appeared at the edge of the stage. Amanda, who had deserted him. Was she behind this?

Had he allowed himself to be fooled all along? Was she going to try to tell him to listen to Wayne and give up?

“Don’t you dare surrender!” she called out. She lifted her hands palms out and prepared to levitate, as he’d seen her do to Greg Luowski.

The wide-eyed vulture pivoted in Amanda’s direction. Amanda had nearly killed Maleficent at their last meeting; the vulture raised her wings as if defying Amanda to levitate her off the stage. Finn understood her choice of transfiguration then—a bird had nothing to fear from being lifted.

But as Amanda made a waving motion with her hands, it wasn’t the vulture that felt the pulse of energy.

It was the sword. It slid beneath the laser fence, casting sparks as it passed through to safety, and floated across the stage to arrive at Finn’s feet, just as the vulture spun and lunged its beak for Finn’s head.

He clenched his hands around the sword’s grip and hoisted the blade, putting it between him and the vulture’s head, piercing the feathers and the leathery neck so that the vulture shrieked and cried out as thick green blood flowed from her neck.

As the blade withdrew the vulture shrank and contracted, reforming into the green-faced fairy Finn feared more than anything on earth. Maleficent was bleeding green from her neck. She staggered, her bloodshot eyes rolling back white in their sockets. She tried to speak but gurgled and spat and stumbled.

“Kill him!” she hollered, grasping her wound with both bony hands.

The dragon roared, throwing himself forward. Just as the flame released from his gaping mouth, he too screamed painfully and lurched to the side, yanking his leg into the air and revealing some kind of stick stuck through his heel. He fell to that side, awkwardly off-balance. His neck bent and twisted, and the flame shot high, missing Finn entirely.

All seven trapdoors opened at once.

It was not Finn who fell through to safety. It was Maleficent.

She vanished.

Finn fell back to the stage, recoiling from the dragon’s fire only to see Wayne engulfed by the coil of blue-and-orange flame. It hit him like a blast from a flamethrower—a narrow torrent of roaring fire like a stream of water shot from a hose.

And Wayne was gone.

The dragon teetered and, unable to set down his wounded foot, hopped once to hold himself upright, and then went over backward, off the mountaintop. A length of thick chain flailed like a whip behind him.

Finn heard a tremendous crash of bone and trees and jungle. And there was Charlene, rising from behind where the beast had stood, and practically throwing herself over the rail to track his fall.

Amanda ran across the stage, leaping over two open trapdoors, and slid to Finn’s side.

“Are you all right?” she cried, throwing her arms around him.

Finn dropped the sword and hugged her back. “You saved my life,” he said.

“You saved us all,” she whispered back to him.





46


AFTER THEIR RENDEZVOUS at the Studios’ Soundstage B, and a lot of excited discussion of what had just happened, a distraught Wanda listened as Finn vented his frustration over losing the fob and held up her father’s cluttered key chain.

“Use these if you like,” she said, wiping away her tears. “I’m sure that one of them opens the gift shop at Epcot. And probably another, the Lost and Found.”

“I think he wanted to save us,” Finn said. “He meant to help us. He was a good man—”

“A great man,” added Philby.