The Warlock King (The Kings) (12 page)

She’d even done the Soarin’ ride across the way in Disneyland’s California Adventure
. She had been considering riding the Tower of Terror when a shaking woman got off the ride with her husband and daughter and had a sort of breakdown. Chloe had been able to feel her emotions as if they were jagged radio waves actually slicing into her nerve endings. From what she could make out of the woman’s almost hysterical speech, the ride had dropped them not once, but three or four times, and renewed the woman’s deep-down fear of flying. After all, what was a fear of flying really, but a fear of falling? The woman was terrified, traumatized, and nauseated. So Chloe re-thought that attraction and left it alone.

Now she smiled at the female attendant and took her place on the bench in what was a fairly empty boat in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. It was the only one she could think of that she hadn’t yet tried. It was early on a Tuesday night and most of the patrons had begun clearing out of the park. Chloe had all but given up on finding the Akyri she’d heard about fifty years ago. Maybe she was remembering it wrong. Maybe it had been a dream.

Or maybe, if the guy
did
exist, he’d moved on to Disney
world
.

Oh c
rap
, she thought. That was something that actually hadn’t occurred to her before.

She sighed and sat back against the hard seat behind her, trying to relax as the boat gently dislodged itself from the launch pad and floated quietly along the beginning of the ride.

The tunnel the docking station was under opened up, and Chloe found herself meandering alongside a “Frontier Land” restaurant on one side and a representation of a “Blue Bayou” on the other. A backdrop of swamp and twilight framed a few thoroughly detailed derelict houseboats and a shack on stilts. A wax man on the front porch of the shack rocked back and forth while a banjo plucked lazily in the background.

As the boat passed this, the tone changed and Chloe could make out a voice warning, “Dead Men Tell No Tales,
” along with a few other things she couldn’t quite understand. The boat veered to the right and sped up slightly, turning a corner.

New décor greeted Chloe. A cave entrance sported a pair of pinned flags with a skull and crossbones above it. It was the skull that was issuing the warnings, its jaw hinging magically as it spoke, its lung-less voice carrying with creepy clarity.

Despite her exhaustion, Chloe felt a renewed excitement. She sat up a little.

Darkness engulfed the boat next, and the sound of rushing water and ominous music overlapped the waning warnings. Now Chloe leaned forward and considered holding on to the
handrail. But before she could decide to do so, the boat dropped.

Chloe squealed as the ride dipped like a wet rollercoaster, taking her stomach. It lasted just long enough to make her wonder whether it would continue when it pulled up again and leveled out.
Perfect
.

She laughed, despite herself.

“I always love that part too,” came an unfamiliar, rather scratchy voice from behind her.

Chloe turned to deliver a friendly agreement to what she assumed would be another Disneyland guest when she found herself staring into eyes
that were like her own.

They weren’t
physically
like her own, of course. They looked nothing like hers, in fact. They were deep black rather than green-blue, and they were framed by layers of wrinkles. But they were like hers in the one way that truly counted.

He was an Akyri.

Contrary to everything she knew about Akyri and aging, the stranger looked to be about ninety years old, with long gray hair that was braided at the temples and a black satin top hat. He was clothed in what appeared to be a 1940’s Zoot Suit, but also wore about two-dozen love bead necklaces from the 60’s around his neck, which fell to varying lengths over his chest. In his left hand was a bag of popcorn, its red and white stripes robbed of their color clarity by the ride’s dark lighting. He smiled at her, revealing slightly crooked but healthy white teeth, and popped a kernel of corn into his mouth.

Chloe was contemplating her discovery and taking in his bizarre mode of dress and his age when the man leaned forward. “Surprise,” he said.

Chloe froze. Then her eyes widened as she registered the new and now familiar sound of rushing water.

She spun back around to
ward the front of the boat as it plummeted out from under her a second time. But just as she was leaning forward to grasp the rail, positive that this second drop would be far worse than its predecessor, the water again leveled out, proving her wrong.

Laughter from behind her was
friendly in a slightly insane kind of way. She turned to look at the old man as the scenery around them changed once more, revealing a ship wrecked at sea, caves filled with treasures, and animated skeletons that were apparently the remains of pirates who’d stabbed one another in the backs.

“You’re him, aren’t you?” she asked.

“I’m who?” the old man countered distractedly, his dark eyes twinkling as he took in the special effects. He chuckled at something he thought was funny and pointed. “Oh would you look at that, a hidden Mickey!” Then he tossed another palm-full of popcorn into his mouth and crunched away.

Chloe found herself fascinated by him. “You’re the Akyri they said lives in Disneyland. You’re the seer.”

“Have you ever found a hidden Mickey?” he asked, completely ignoring her questions in favor of asking his own.

Chloe blinked.
“What’s a hidden Mickey?”

“It’s the shape of Mickey’s head; two small circles over a larger one. They’re hidden all over Disneyland.” His smile was pleased as punch. “I’ve found almost two hundred.”

Chloe processed that. “There are two hundred hidden Mickeys in Disneyland?” How had she never before heard of them?

“Of course, some of them Walt puts up himself, so mortals can’t exactly see those all the time.”

Now Chloe was silent. Walt…. As in Walt
Disney
? Was he talking about Disney’s
ghost
creating hidden Mickeys?

On the one hand, that was nutso
– like this entire conversation was quickly turning out to be. On the other, it might be proof that this was indeed the Akyri Chloe was looking for. Either way, the conversation was veering way off track, and she needed to pull it back in.

“You
are
an Akyri. I can tell,” she started, watching his expression for any sign of agreement or concession. But there was none. He was too busy taking childlike joy in the pirates that haunted the waters of the Caribbean. She went on anyway, figuring she really had no choice. “I need your help. Something is happening –“”

“
Something’s happenin’ here, what it is aint exactly clear
,” he began singing.

Chloe’s brow arched. She waited for him to trail off and started again, “I don’t know where
I fit into all of it. I don’t know if I should…. I mean I don’t know whether to accept my place and give in….” She drifted off, realizing that she was talking circles around herself and couldn’t possibly be making any sense – and he was humming anyway, so it didn’t matter.

“The name’s DaVinci,” the man suddenly said. He smiled at one more thing that tickled his fancy and then lowered his popcorn and looked straight at her. “And you are Chloe of the Twenty-Eight.”

Chloe stared at him, taken aback. After a few stunned moments, she nodded.

“You are empty,” he said, his tone serious. And then, as if someone were switching buttons, he smiled that distracted, happy smile again and held up his popcorn. “Want some?”

“Um, n-no,” Chloe said, shaking her head. “No thank you.” She looked around, realized that the ride that had been carrying a few other people minutes earlier was now completely empty but for them, and knew it had everything to do with the old Akyri and some very strange magic.

She came to a decision. She stood, jumped over the back of her seat, and quickly sat down next to DaVinci.

“Look,” she said, “You’re obviously the guy I’m looking for. Can you help me, DaVinci?”

“Can you help yourself, Chloe of the Twenty-Eight?”

“What does that mean?” she asked, leaning forward and wishing that he would turn to look at her again rather than at the ride. Not that she could blame him, really. It was a cool ride. But it would soon be over and she didn’t know what would happen to him when it was. Would he disappear?

He pointed to something on a chest plate that hung along one wall. “Look, there’s another one.” He chuckled again, chewed some more popcorn, and then produced a soda fountain drink, seemingly out of nowhere. Chloe glanced at the chest plate. A tiny Mickey Mouse symbol could be made out at the center of its bass relief design.

As her companion slurped loudly through the straw of his drink, Chloe pinched the bridge of her nose. “DaVinci,” she said, her tone unable to hide its tiredness, “
please
. I don’t know where else to go.”

Suddenly, the old man reached out with both hands, now inexplicably empty, and grasped Chloe’s arm. Her eyes widened, and she sat up ramrod straight as the world around them spun and blurred into impossible motion.

In the space of seconds, Chloe saw lifetimes go by, both her own – and DaVinci’s. And in the span of just a few seconds more, she understood his story and knew that he understood hers as well.

When the bizarre and unexpected information exchange had passed, DaVinci released Chloe’s arm and slowly sat back. He was looking at her now, his deep, dark eyes depthlessly sad. He had stories to tell, and he’d just told them.

“Take the Coast Starlight to Portland,” DaVinci told her, for once completely lucid. “The answers you seek can be found there.”

“The Coast Starlight?”

The wrinkled Akyri nodded. “It is a train.”

“I… I know that, but –”

But by then, the old man had looked away, turning his attention to the watery path ahead. He was silent. Chloe had the impression that he was wrapped in the blankets of his memories, thick and muffling. For now, he was finished.

The boat tilted back as it began to climb its slow way up a steep ramp. To Chloe’s left, a wax figure of Captain Jack Sparrow mumbled its drunken rock-star-like nonsense about keeping some of the loot as recompense and what not. Chloe glanced at him, took in the fake treasure around him, and then looked back at DaVinci.

But DaVinci was gone.

Chloe wasn’t surprised. After what she’d just learned about him, nothing he could have done would have surprised her.

DaVinci had once gone by another name, but he’d suppressed the name right along with most of his memories. Years ago, he’d served a very powerful warlock. He’d deliberately disobeyed the warlock when he refused to carry out an order to kill an innocent mortal. As punishment, the warlock had overloaded the Akyri with dark magic. The warlock was just strong enough that he’d managed to do something to DaVinci that had never before been done to an Akyri.

He infused the defenseless man with so much black craft, DaVinci had gone mad. His body felt the weight of the darkness as well. He’d aged seventy years even as he’d simultaneously become immortal. DaVinci was now composed of a confused menagerie of magical thoughts, whims, and wills. He could no more control what he saw of the future or when he saw it than he could his own destiny. He’d been well and truly cursed.

Chloe got off the boat when it came to a stop and walked a few feet away before turning around to look down at it once more. It was empty.

Or it appeared to be.

But DaVinci was there somewhere, she knew. Maybe having popcorn with Walt. Ghosts in a small, haunted world.

Chapter
Fourteen

The Amtrak Coast Starlight was a sleeper train, meaning it had cars in it with seats that folded out into beds and could often accommodate three or more peo
ple. It ran all night, along the West Coast from LA to Seattle, so sleeping was more or less a necessity at some point in the more than thirty-hour trip.

The interior of the train was decorated in varying shades of blue, from the dark blue-grey carpets to the
navy blue seats to the electric blue found in the window curtains. The tiny drapes were outfitted with Velcro sides so they could be pinned open or shut, and the door to the cars could be locked from the inside.

Almost all
the sleeper cars came with their own toilet rooms, which could be converted into showers. They also possessed their own sinks, beds, and foldout tables. For those riding in the sleeper cars rather than the coach cars, amenities were provided, such as bottled water, soap, towels, free ice, juice, and coffee. These passengers were referred to by the staff as “sleepers,” and the term had come to represent a “first class” status.

Chloe could see why. The tickets f
or a sleeper car were not cheap, running a passenger three times as much as a plane ticket. But included with the price on an overnight trip were breakfasts, lunches, and dinners, as well as access to the famed parlor car.

The parlor car on the Coach Starlight was normally a genuine antique car from the 40’s featuring a seated lounge area, a café, a dining area, an
arcade for the children, and a theater in the downstairs area. Only sleeper passengers were allowed into it. Chloe had read about it online while booking her tickets the day before, and she’d been looking forward to seeing it.