Kingdom Keepers III(90)

“Oh, I don’t know,” Finn said. “You look a hundred to me.”

She didn’t like that. She twisted her horrible face into a ball of meanness, of spite and hatred.

“It wouldn’t do to just kill you. You must be made to suffer first.”

Where had he been? What had he been thinking?

He felt like Dorothy in Oz: he’d been wearing the slippers all along. Slippers that this green witch did not know he possessed.

He closed his eyes and pictured a train tunnel.

“Don’t you dare pass out on me, boy! I want to hear you scream. I want to see you suffer. Open your eyes.”

He pictured a deep, bottomless void of black—a cool dark pit so perfect that no sound escaped.

He felt his hands tingle.

She might have been saying something, but he didn’t hear.

He felt his legs twitch and jump with static, like his nerves misfiring just before sleep.

The train’s light came toward him, growing brighter and more intense. He leaned forward and came out of the chest strap—there was no heat, no cold. He felt nothing but the intense tingling in his limbs and a fullness in his heart. He sat forward. The waist strap passed through him. He pulled up and out of it.

The melting plastic crept from either side and joined, melting the seat he’d been sitting in, just as the witch’s laser went straight up his legs and chest, passing right through him.

In complete disbelief she looked first to her finger and then to the boy, as if there had to be something mechanically wrong, as if she needed to put another battery in her finger, or sharpen her dark purple fingernail.

Finn stood in the smoking car, shimmering.

“Things are really heating up,” he said to her, moving to jump out of the car.

“Finn! Catch!” It was Philby! He was running up the track toward Finn, his left forearm raised against the intense heat. He threw the sword. It flew through the air, end over end, and Finn reached to catch it, to snatch it out of the air the way they did in movies. But he was all-clear and the sword passed right through his hand and landed. He would have to come out of all-clear to pick up the sword—and that would also make him vulnerable. His arms tingled. He picked up the sword.

He slashed and sliced as he jumped free of the vehicle and marched steadily toward Maleficent, who was already retreating deeper into the cold chamber.

As she backed up, the heat on Finn’s back quickly lessened.

Finn heard a spray behind him: Philby had grabbed a fire extinguisher.

Maleficent was backed up to the end of the cold room now. Finn didn’t feel the cold, only the swinging steel in his hand.

The infrared lights went off as Philby doused the last of the flames.

“We will defeat you,” Finn said, still advancing steadily. “The longer you drag this out, the less likely it is that your character will survive. You understand that, don’t you? The stories can be rewritten. Some of us die, it’s true. But others are simply written out of the story. Edited out of the film. Removed. Permanently. Erased.” He witnessed her reaction—a horror he’d not seen on her confident face before. “It’s what you fear the most, isn’t it? What you Overtakers are running from? Erasure? Insignificance? The fear that your ride, your attraction will be removed from the park the way others have been? One day you’re here. One day you’re gone.”

“What do you know?” she said.

He didn’t quite believe his eyes as he watched her melt into the gray concrete floor, watched her reform into a snake equal in size to Gigabyte, but bearing a definite green hue. His hands and feet tingled, and he realized that fear had gotten the better of him.

He didn’t like snakes.

She came after him with a flick of her mighty tail, slithering toward him with blinding speed. She opened her awful mouth, revealing a pair of fangs that had to be two feet long.

He raised the sword and prepared to strike.

Maleficent flicked her tongue in the direction of the half-melted test car, and the car made a popping noise and came to life, its headlights snapping on brightly. It rolled toward Finn, gaining speed.

From the front—Maleficent in snake form. From behind—the car. And Finn in the middle, raking the heavy sword left to right, right to left, keeping the eager snake at bay. Maleficent lunged, fangs extended, but Finn sliced for her head and she retreated.

“Look out!” Philby said. “Jump when I say!”

Finn dared not look back. Maleficent struck again. Finn caught her on the side of the head with the blade. She bled—green blood—crying out as she jerked her head back.

“Now!” Philby said.

Finn jumped straight up.

The car cut under him. He tumbled backward, rolled along the hood, and was dumped into the seat area, where Philby grabbed hold of him.