Kingdom Keepers VI(9)

For the first time since becoming an OTK, Greg Luowski felt like a rat in a maze, looking for a way out.

Any way.

* * *

The smell was at once metallic and dangerous; it struck a primeval chord in Finn that told him to run.

“I’m not liking this,” he said.

“I hear you.”

“Maybe we should turn around.”

“We need that thumb drive,” Maybeck reminded him.

“I’m the one who got it in the first place,” Finn said, wiping up the spot Maybeck had sprayed. The quantity of spilled blood had increased. Neither boy mentioned it, but neither missed it either.

“Where’d it go?” Maybeck said, his goggle-covered eyes trained on the deck. The blood trail had been regular and predictable—every eight to ten feet—until here, at the forward section of the jogging track, where it vanished.

“Weird,” Finn said.

“You think it was magically healed?”

“Nah. Maleficent doesn’t have that kind of power.”

“Tia Dalma might.” Maybeck sounded worried. “I don’t put anything past her.”

“You think it’s Tia Dalma who’s running the OTs?” Finn asked. For years there had been speculation that Maleficent was not the top Overtaker. “What about Chernabog?”

“Anything’s possible.”

“Exactly.”

“But if we could capture Tia Dalma…” Maybeck said.

“Yeah. I’m with you.”

“Whitman!”

Maybeck’s shout stopped Finn cold. Finn tugged back the paper hood in order to see where Maybeck was pointing: the jamb of one of the closed doors carried a red smear. Blood.

The door’s sign warned:

DANGER:

CREW MEMBERS ONLY

BEYOND THIS POINT



Maybeck muttered a curse word.

Finn’s family had a rule about not using such language, and though he never admitted it to his friends, he didn’t like hearing them. “You think?” Finn said.

“I think,” Maybeck answered. He tried the door handle. It moved. The door opened a crack. He reached for the light switch.

“No lights,” Maybeck said. “You think someone took care of them?”

“If that was the case, we’d be nuts to go in there.”

“No doubt.”

“But we’re going in anyway?” Finn said, tentatively.

“You’re the leader.”

It had never been voted on. But Finn didn’t deny it. “We need the thumb drive,” he repeated.

“No argument from me.”

Maybeck hungered for such adventure; he listened to jacked-up music and flaunted his independence. The rest of the KKs tolerated conflict; Maybeck seemed to thrive on it. Maybe it had to do with anger over his living situation—none of the Keepers knew whether something had happened to his parents or if they’d bailed on him. Or maybe he was an adrenaline junkie. Finn wasn’t in any hurry to rush into something simply because Maybeck wanted to.

Through the door, they found themselves in a mostly open area where the anchors and docking lines were neatly stored. The wind carried with it salt and the sweet scent of the sea. But mixed into this were other, disgusting odors, like an outhouse in the sun, like garbage cans set out on the curb, like a mouse that had been under the couch for the past week.

Something dead.

Finn faltered. Maybeck cursed under his breath.

“Whoa,” he muttered.

“I know,” Finn said.

There were two inverted rowboats strapped tightly to the deck. A fiberglass rescue launch was slung overhead, looking like a miniature tugboat. Twin spools the size of small cars were loaded to full with twisted steel cable as thick as a man’s forearm. Each played out to a monstrous chain neatly ordered on the deck, leading to one of the ship’s two anchors, weighing four tons—eight thousand pounds of iron. The rowboats and the darkness blocked the sight of the forward deck. Something crunched beneath Finn’s leather deck shoes.

“Glass,” Finn said.

“The lights.”

“We could report the broken lights,” Finn sug- gested. “Whatever we’re smelling…whoever came looking…they’d find it.”

“And that’s a good thing?”

Maybeck and Finn stopped at the exact same moment, compelled to do so by the sudden stench.

“On three,” Maybeck said.

Finn wasn’t waiting. He used the face of the phone to cast a green pall across the deck.

He retched.

Maybeck blew his cookies onto the inverted rowboat. He cursed again.

Before them, lying on the deck atop the neatly ordered coil of chain, was a hyena, cut open and eviscerated. Maybeck turned away from the gruesome sight. Finn tried to make sense of it. A ritualistic sacrifice. Something a Creole witch doctor would do?