Kingdom Keepers VI

by Ridley Pearson

“Got to be,” Philby said. “So one bike in front, one behind; and the taxi keeps the van in sight but never too close.” He added, “Okay with you?”

  A small boat pulled up to the pier near the van. None of them had noticed the crane until it lowered a sling toward the waiting boat.

  “They’re offloading something heavy,” Philby said. “Something big.”

  “Him.” For Finn, the one word rang out like the sound of a starting gun.

  * * *

  An hour outside of Puerto Vallarta, Willa realized she’d run out of money. The taxi driver dropped her by the side of the road. On the scooter, Charlene had lost sight of Maybeck and Philby, the white van, and the taxi.

  “Hey,” Finn said into her ear, holding on to her from behind. “Isn’t that—”

  “Willa’s taxi!”

  “Empty!”

  Charlene sped up the bike, believing they’d reached their destination. When they found Willa on the side of the road, their spirits were crushed. Not only would they now slow down further due to having three on the bike, but any chance of closing the distance on Maybeck’s bike and the white van were dashed.

  “We’ve lost them,” Finn said.

  “Maybe not,” Willa countered. “The driver spoke some English. And by ‘some,’ I mean very little. He said the only thing out here is a stone quarry and some ancient ruins. There’s a trailhead. He said maybe ten more kilometers.”

  “The quarry?”

  “End of the road. Another five kilometers past the trailhead. The early natives used the quarry for their temple rock. They built a limestone road from the quarry to the site. It still exists.”

  “I’d say his English was pretty good,” Charlene said.

  “He had a guide book. In Spanish, but there were pictures.”

  “A tourist trap?” Finn said.

  “Not hardly. It was being excavated, but they ran out of money a long time ago. In the guidebook it’s marked as the highest level of difficulty for hiking. There’s no water, and it’s not policed.”

  “That has Overtakers written all over it,” Finn said.

  When Willa failed to comment, Finn gave her a moment and then turned toward her. He’d given his helmet to her, so with the wind in his face he couldn’t hear well.

  “What?” he shouted. “Why do you look like that?”

  “It wasn’t just the money that stopped them from digging it up.” Willa shouted to be heard over the complaining motor. “The site was apparently used for sacrifices. Human sacrifices. People thought it was haunted.”

  “Human sacrifice.” Finn made it a statement. He leaned forward to Charlene. “Please tell me you can make this thing go faster.”

  * * *

  Maybeck and Philby stayed well back of the white van, part by design, part by default.

  Losing the van on the flats multiple times, they were able to regain it on the jungle hills where the van struggled under a heavy load. Nonetheless, it was somewhat by chance that Philby spotted the vehicle off-road, penetrating deeper into the jungle.

  He tapped Maybeck on the shoulder and pointed. Maybeck slowed the scooter and pulled to the side of the empty dirt road.

  “What now?” Maybeck asked.

  Philby looked back: Charlene was nowhere in sight.

  “We can’t wait for them,” Maybeck said.

  “No. And you and I have to stay together. So pull up to where the van turned in and let me hop off a second.”

  Maybeck did as requested. Philby clipped the chin strap of his helmet to a vine, leaving it hanging low where it might be spotted.

  “Brilliant!”

  Philby smiled. “That’s why they pay me the big bucks.”

  It had become a common joke among the Keepers—their parents and guardians were receiving direct-deposit monthly performance fees in educational accounts to help fund a Keeper’s college enrollment; the kids themselves never saw a dime.

  A wooden sign sagged away from the road, its message faded and covered in vines.

  “Not so sure about the bike,” Maybeck said. “It’s too loud.”

  “They could be miles down this road.”

  “Agreed. But they could hear us coming.”

  “That would make for an unpleasant welcoming party.”

  “As long as the…path”—Philby could hardly call it a road—“goes straight, and we can see the van’s tracks out ahead, we can stay on the bike. We’ll go real slow, so it barely makes noise. If we lose the tire tracks, we’ll shut it down and walk until we know what’s going on.”

  “Got it.”

  They rode ahead, eyes trained on the tracks left by the heavy van.

  “Whoa!” said Philby after five minutes. The dirt trail narrowed, the jungle encroaching. “Nasty.”

  They climbed off and walked the scooter. The trail narrowed even further, barely wide enough for the two boys walking side by side. They formed a single file, Maybeck in the lead, pushing the bike. The crushed plants and vines indicated the passage of the van; tire tracks were no longer easy to see. It was darker here, the jungle blotting out the sun.

  “I’m stashing this thing,” Maybeck said. “It’s a pain in the butt to push.”

  The boys leaned it behind a dead stump of a tree, fifteen feet tall, easy to spot among the rest of the overgrowth and well off the trail.

  “This place is bizarre.”

  “It is,” Philby agreed. “I think it’s safe to assume they’re heading to an ancient temple or archaeological site.”

  “If you say so.”

  “There were whole cities in these places a thousand years ago.”

  “Spare me the history lesson.”

  “I’m just saying.”

  “Well, don’t. We shouldn’t talk. I’ll take the lead,” Maybeck said. “Hand signals only until we know what’s going on.”

  “You going to take your helmet off?”

  “Oh, shut up!” He unstrapped the helmet and left it with the bike. As he did, he whispered, “What if the others see your signal but don’t shut off their bike? What if they mess this up?”

  “I trust them,” Philby declared.

  “Yeah? Well good for you. Me? I’ll wait to make that call.”

  “You can’t wait on trust. You either have it or you don’t.”

  “Lose the professor thing, would you? We’ve got a monster to track down. And don’t forget Dillard.”

  “Believe me. I haven’t forgotten.”

  At that exact moment, the sky rumbled.

  Philby looked up thinking: What next?

  * * *

  “What next?” Finn said, his eyes trained on the dark sky.

  “Rain?” Willa said.

  Charlene had spotted the helmet; Willa, the sign. Finn pointed out the depth of the single track—the scooter—explaining that it would only make such a deep impression if both boys were on it. They headed down the dirt trail, noticing how the jungle closed in from either side, choking off the route. Finally, with three of them riding, the scooter was spinning out too much. They parked it in the vegetation, ditched the helmets, and walked. When the rain came it drenched them like a fire hose, but it only lasted all of five minutes. Then the jungle felt like a sauna that had been turned up. Hot, sticky.

  Mosquitoes whined by their ears, the girls swatting at them.

  “I don’t like this,” Charlene said.

  “Noted.” Finn didn’t like it either, but withheld comment. Troubled by the claustrophobic undergrowth and the lack of light—it felt like midnight!—he kept his fears to himself.

  “The sign said something about religion,” Willa said. “House of religion? I’m not sure.”

  “We don’t know if it’s important,” Finn said, “until we get there.”

  “It could be miles.”

  “It could. So I suggest we save our energy with less chatter.”

  But it wasn’t long until Finn lost sight of the bike track. He stopped the girls and told them to wait. Back-tracking, he
found where the track led into the undergrowth and, eventually, the other bike behind the tree.

  “If this trail gets any smaller…” Charlene whispered. She didn’t complete her thought. She didn’t have to: the Overtakers couldn’t be far.

  * * *

  Among the jungle cries, the buzz of insects the size of bats, and the noises of humans extremely close by, Finn picked out a cooing he identified as coming from Philby. Philby had cared for a wounded pigeon in seventh grade and had taught himself to coo like one, a bizarre talent that only his closest friends knew about. And though a pigeon’s coo in the middle of a Mexican jungle might have caught the ear of an ornithologist, when mixed into the ongoing cacophony, only such a bird specialist would realize it had no place here.

  Finn tugged on Willa’s sleeve, stopping her. They’d been using hand signals for the past hundred yards, having heard voices. Now Finn pointed to their left.

  There it was again: coo-coo…

  Willa took hold of and stopped Charlene. The three carefully tiptoed into the undergrowth, following the call of a city bird a long way from home.

  Maybeck and Philby had found a part of an old wall—a very old wall—made of refrigerator-size hand-carved stones stacked with exacting accuracy. Covered in creeping vines, flowering orchids, and giant ferns, the wall wasn’t a wall at all, but the bottom flight of a tiered pyramid temple that had lost two-thirds of its upper structure to fifteen hundred years of hurricane winds and erosion.

  With their backs pressed against the moss-covered third row of rock, and hidden by the vegetation, the boys held an elevated post looking down into a large flat area about the size of half a football field. Judging by the tall lumps of vegetation enclosing it, it looked as if it might have been a courtyard, surrounded by temples or meeting places. At its center was a massive stone, waist-high and five feet long, elevated on a platform of smaller stones. The platform and table had been cleared of vines and weeds. It stood in stark contrast to the wild, uncontrollable growth surrounding it.

  Tia Dalma stood by the long flat rock, the journal open in front of her. Maleficent paced nearby. The Evil Queen leaned against the van, scowling, a large duffel bag at her feet. Four men—ship crewmen who Maybeck recognized as OT Zombies—struggled with a towering horned gorilla.

  Chernabog. As nasty and terrifying a creature as Finn had ever seen. His skin crawled as though he were covered with leeches.

  “He’s huge,” Maybeck whispered. Given the jungle sounds he could have shouted and not have been heard. But Chernabog had stunned him to silence.

  “He’s disgusting,” Charlene said. “Eew! Is that a bull’s head?”

  “And bat ears,” Finn said.

  “Eight feet tall at least,” the professor said clinically. “Possibly ten. A living monster.”

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Willa said, her words hanging in the thick air. “He’s…worse than anything we’ve ever seen.”

  “And then some,” said Charlene. “Do we really think we can help Dillard against that thing?”

  “We don’t leave yet,” said Philby.

  “The three steps,” said Finn. “A witch, a key flower, a sacrifice. It’s about Chernabog. We were right.”

  “Yeesh!” Willa said. “They’re going to take him out of torpor!”

  “Tia Dalma,” Philby said.

  “You give something that…evil even more power,” Willa’s voice was hollow, “and it’s over.”

  “Son of Frankenstein,” Maybeck said.

  “Dillard doesn’t possess any powers,” Charlene said. “So maybe it won’t work.”

  “We’re not Wayne! We’re not going to let them kill him to find out!” Finn said, too loudly. Tia Dalma raised her head.

  “Freeze!” Philby hissed.

  The Keepers did not move, did not breathe. It felt to Finn as if the voodoo priestess was looking him directly in the eye, but somehow she didn’t see him.

  He could feel her straining to hear above the constant sounds of the jungle.

  She called over to the Queen, who raised her thin arms and stepped out into the courtyard.

  The jungle went instantly silent. Every last living thing stopped singing and buzzing, moving, breathing. Only the leaves, dripping the remnants of the rain shower, could be heard.

  Finn’s heart threatened to tear a hole in his chest. If it pounded any louder the OTs would hear.

  Bit by bit, nature’s sounds returned. First a whisper, then a wind, and finally a storm of all God’s creatures.

  “I know that symbol,” Willa said softly. Pointing across the courtyard to an exposed rock, she drew attention to a large face chiseled into the rock. “It’s sa-ja-la. Technically, it means subordinate lord.”

  “How about not so technically?” said Charlene.

  “Under lord.”

  “As in lord of the underworld?” Finn said.

  “More like four-star general instead of a five-star,” Willa said. “A title of importance but not the highest importance.”

  “Is that a cave?” Maybeck said, referring to the huge black opening alongside the rock in question.

  “An entrance to the temple,” Philby said. “Possibly, a burial crypt. These things had all sorts of secret rooms and tunnels, same as the Egyptian pyramids.”

  “Square stone tunnel, I’ll bet.” Finn was about to pull the folded e-mail with the scanned image of Jess’s dream out of his pocket when he thought better of it. It would make too much noise.

  “Lord of the underworld,” Charlene whispered eerily, stuck on Willa’s definition.

  “They picked this spot carefully,” Finn said. “There must have been other ruins and temples in places like Aruba and Costa Rica.”

  “It’s the table,” Maybeck explained. “My uncle Jim works in a processing plant—a slaughterhouse. They have tables like that, only theirs are metal. You see that line all around the edges?”

  “The border,” Charlene said.

  “It’s not decoration. It’s a drain system. See the hole to the right? You put a jar under there and collect the blood.”

  “That’s disgusting!” Charlene protested.

  “No,” Maybeck said. “That’s part of a sacrifice. Kill the animal, drink its blood.”

  “Eew!” Charlene went shock-white. “Can we change the subject please?”

  “The ancient civilizations didn’t kill animals,” Willa said. “They killed—”

  “People,” Philby said. “Human sacrifice.”

  Finn spoke faintly. “We were right. ‘One of you will die.’” His eyes fell on the duffel bag at the Queen’s feet. When they’d talked about it, it had felt more abstract. Dillard, posing as Finn, was in that bag. And he was going to die.

  “Are you telling me Dillard’s blood is going to be Chernabog’s power drink?” Maybeck had a way with words. “For the record, I’m now disgusted as well.”

  “What’s with the sun?” Charlene said. “Why’s it so dark all of a sudden?”

  Finn had noticed the darkness during the brief storm, but Charlene was right: if anything it was actually darker now.

  “Oh dear.” Philby said, checking his wristwatch. “It’s the solar eclipse.”

  The four others stared at him. He looked into each of their faces.

  “What? You’re going to tell me you didn’t know about the solar eclipse? It’s May twentieth.” He looked for some spark of recognition on their part. “A total eclipse. Extremely rare. Arizona to Panama is the best possible viewing. As in: a jungle in Mexico.” He studied his watch again. Fiddled with it.

  “In eight minutes it’s full. A total eclipse. We’ve got eight minutes to save Dillard.”

  “THE GIRLS WILL CAUSE a distraction. You two,” Finn said to Maybeck and Philby, “will grab the duffel. I’ll try to get the journal, so this can’t ever happen again.”

  “What kind of distraction?” Willa asked.

  “Don’t take any stupid chances. Just make a bunch of noise and take
off for the highway. We’ll you meet you there.”

  “Nothing stupid,” Philby repeated.

  “Are you two on again?” Maybeck asked.

  “Shut up!” Willa said. But she didn’t deny it.

  “Six minutes,” Philby announced.

  “One thing to keep in mind,” Willa said, holding everyone together for a moment longer. “This thing is part Minotaur.” She meant Chernabog. “In Greek mythology, Theseus leads the Minotaur into a labyrinth. The Minotaur is trapped and can’t find his way out.”

  “Get to the point!” Maybeck said.

  “I’m getting to the point,” Willa said, pulling a lock of hair behind her ear nervously. “The point is, historians say it may not have been a labyrinth, but a palace or temple with a lot of rooms.” She was looking at the black hole alongside the symbol chiseled into the rock. “If that’s an entrance…”

  “The under lord,” Philby said.

  “Keeper of the underworld,” Finn said, repeating what he’d said earlier. No one dismissed it this time.

  “If we can lead him in there,” Willa said, “who knows? Maybe he never comes out.”

  “And maybe we get eaten alive trying,” said Maybeck.

  “Five minutes,” Philby said.

  * * *

  Finn missed Amanda. About to take the risk he was about to take, he felt a hole in his chest and once again regretted making her hate him, even for a moment. Those moments, he thought, had been wasted.

  He’d circled around to the side of the cave entrance. In front of him: Tia Dalma, Maleficent, the Evil Queen.

  Chernabog.

  Finn felt woefully ill-prepared to battle such forces. He had gained new strength—unexplainable strength—and speed, but he had no real control over it. It was like stepping into a cockpit where you didn’t know what the buttons were for. He was unpracticed, unpolished.

  He wished for Amanda’s ability to push. One shove from her, and the witches and fairies, maybe even Chernabog with his wet black nose and black, hideous eyes, would be thrown against the rocks. Dillard would be rescued. They could steal the van and be on their way, leaving the OTs behind.

  But Amanda wasn’t here.

  But he was here: where he’d never wanted to be. In a Mexican jungle, the survival of his friend depending upon him.