The five Keepers looked back at once.
Maleficent stood at the rail, her black and purple robes swirling in the wind, her green index finger pointing skyward into a stunningly blue, serene sky.
Finn spotted at once what was missing. Maleficent had no handler. All Cast Members playing Disney characters were accompanied by a fellow Cast Member guide whenever appearing in public. The fact that Maleficent lacked a handler suggested she was not a Cast Member playing her character. She was the real thing. Or a 2.0 hologram of the real thing.
Willa and Finn took off for the lighting panel nearest the railing. Maybeck and Charlene dove for the tripod closest to them.
Willa aimed the panel higher while Finn found and twisted two knobs on the back. Light burst from the panel, like a car switching to high beams. Maybeck and Charlene did the same. Maleficent cried out, trying to shield her eyes.
As much as Philby had annoyed Finn lately, the idea of blinding Maleficent was a stroke of genius. Even holograms had to see.
“What the—?” Andy managed to say as the Keepers ran toward him. Charlene hooked Andy’s arm and dragged him with her. Each of the Keepers snagged other members of the film crew.
It sounded like a jet had broken the sound barrier somewhere up in the clear blue sky. Maybeck looked up and over his shoulder.
He hollered, “Hit the—”
An explosion rocked the deck as a bolt of lightning struck. Sparks flew from the film crew’s gear.
Maybeck shoved the cameraman aside to safety, crossed through the smoke, and threw a football block on Charlene and Andy just as a second spike of lightning struck.
Maybeck screamed and lay flat. Gray smoke swirled.
Passengers in the ship’s swimming pools cried out. Parents grabbed their children and ran for cover.
As he was knocked off his feet by the concussion of the lightning strike, Finn looked in the direction of Maleficent. She was gone.
Returned, he thought.
His head thumped against the deck, and his eyes found a piece of the staircase that led to the AquaDuck—the world’s first enclosed waterslide on a cruise ship. He saw bare feet running up the stairs. He stared at the steps for a good long time, finally making the connection to the illustration in the journal.
Something nagged at him: stairs? steps? bare feet? He couldn’t place it.
He also spotted something else, something more sinister: a black crow on the rail of the upper deck from which the fireworks were launched. Diablo, Maleficent’s sidekick.
The crow lifted its beak and cawed shrilly.
What happened next made Finn’s blood run cold. He’d seen such scenes in movies: the boy and girl high on a skyscraper roof, the bad guys coming after them and then, from out of nowhere, helicopters surface from below, rising high, searchlights aimed at the bad guys.
But this wasn’t helicopters. And no bad guys were chasing the Keepers. It was frigate birds—long-winged black seabirds with white necks and heads. The birds’ five-foot wingspans were oddly angular, like something attached to a stealth fighter. First, there were five or six, then twenty, then fifty or more, rising into view from below the deck.
Diablo cawed twice, sharply. In unison, like a squadron of aircraft, the frigate birds angled up, catching the ship’s wind and racing skyward.
Finn called out loudly, “RUN…FOR…IT!”
The others had rolled and tumbled in reaction to the lightning strikes. Finn spotted and crawled to Maybeck who lay still on the blackened deck. Finn shook Maybeck, but the boy was unconscious––or worse.
A crew member, a college aged boy, knelt by Finn. “I’m trained in CPR! I’ve got this!”
“You sure?”
The boy pointed up. “Take cover!”
Finn saw the frigate birds poised to strike.
“FOL—LOW ME!” Finn shouted, rising to his feet as he searched for someplace safe from the birds. The obvious choice was the nearest door—the door through which Maleficent had come—but something told Finn that was what he was supposed to choose, that Maleficent had made sure it would not open, leaving the Keepers exposed as frigate food.
Instead, Finn crossed the deck toward…the stairs to the AquaDuck. Where better to avoid a bird strike than inside an acrylic tube? He glanced back: others followed, including Andy and his crew.
The frigate birds dove in concert, as if something—or someone—were controlling them. They tucked their wings back as though they were diving for a fish in the ocean, increasing their speed tenfold, their black, beady eyes trained not on fish, but on the heads of the four teenagers.
“DOWN!” shouted Philby.
The kids and the film crew all ducked at once. The first wave of frigates arrived. Several missed their targets, crashing into the deck in an eruption of feathers. A beak grazed Finn’s right shoulder, tearing his shirt, opening up his flesh. He grabbed the bird’s wing and flung the creature away. It spun in a loop and splashed into the pool.