The Dragon Lantern (37 page)

Clyde steamed up in Buster, ready to fight, but Archie signaled for him to wait and grabbed James by the arm. “Jesse, don't do this. Philomena Moffett's here somewhere—one of the kids they experimented on at Dodge City. The one who killed everyone in Beaver Run. She killed Sings-In-The-Night in Don Francisco!”

That gave James pause, but he shook his head and leaned in close. “Listen, kid. I like you. You're not like all these other meatbags who wouldn't wind their Tik Toks unless they needed a cup of tea. And I know there's nothing I could do to stop you from tossing me into the next territory. But this doesn't concern you. You let me take care of my business here, and nobody gets hurt. You interfere, and my boys'll start shooting innocent people.”

Archie let Jesse James go and found Kitsune in the crowd. Her eyes asked him if they were going to fight the FreeToks. Archie frowned and shook his head. What were they supposed to do? He couldn't let people get hurt—not when all James really wanted was to steal their machinery.

James motioned to his FreeTok gang, and they spilled off the truck and ran for the Tik Toks and steamcars. Two of them climbed into the parked locomotives. James stayed behind to work the crowd.

“Now,” he said, “I understand we have members of the press on hand for today's heist. I'm afraid I don't have time for an interview, but I'll gladly pose for photos, gents!” James spotted the men and women set up in front of the locomotives. “And lookit here—we've already got one all lined up!” he said. “Move aside,” he told a woman in the middle. “Squeeze over so I've got room.”

The woman hurried away, but the rest of the VIPs stayed frozen where they were, afraid James would shoot them if they moved.

“Archie, you want in on this?” James asked, offering him a place by his side. Archie just frowned at him. “Suit yourself,” James said. “All right. Where's the photographer at? I'm ready for my publicity photo!”

“All ready, Mr. James,” called a voice Archie had heard before. Kitsune and Clyde recognized it too, and they all three turned their heads to where Philomena Moffett stood, one hand on the shutter release of a big accordion camera, the other on the Dragon Lantern, sitting high on a pole like a camera flash.

“Say cheese,” Mrs. Moffett said, and she opened the lantern wide.

33

Hachi and Fergus bowed to Marie Laveau as she came into the room. “Your Majesty,” Hachi said.

“Stop it,” Laveau said. “Nobody bows to me.”

“But you're the queen now,” Fergus told her. “Not just the Voodoo Queen, but the queen of Louisiana.”

When Theodosia died and Aaron Burr's short family line ended, Louisiana needed a new leader. And there had been no question who it would be. As the storm cleared and the waters receded, the people of New Orleans had come by the hundreds to Marie Laveau's door begging her to be Louisiana's queen, and at last she had accepted. But she had refused to sit on the throne in the palace the Burrs had built, choosing instead to rule from behind the counter in her shop, where she and her masked assistants met them now.

Whether or not she wanted the job, Fergus thought, Marie Laveau looked every inch a queen. She wore her beautiful middle-aged body, and over that she wore an elegant white dress and a sparkling pearl necklace. On her head, instead of a crown, she wore a blue tignon with yellow fleur-de-lis on the fabric, the headscarf twisted and pinched up into knots like the spikes of a proper crown.

“I am a voodoo queen, for a voodoo nation,” Laveau said. “I will govern how the power of Li Grande Zombi in the lake is used—and I will teach my people all about the Mangleborn, so no one makes the same mistake again. There will be no more secrets.”

An entire nation who knew about the Mangleborn! Fergus wondered if that was wise, then wondered why it wouldn't be. The Septemberists worked so hard to keep the existence of the Mangleborn a secret, but that meant some people discovered them accidentally, without understanding what they were doing. Like he had tinkered with lektricity without realizing the consequences. Could everyone know about the Mangleborn without it scaring them to death or driving them mad? Well, if there was one place in the Americas where they could understand the Mangleborn, it was New Orleans, where the dead sometimes walked the streets.

“Will you even teach them the secret to your long life?” Hachi asked, like she was sharing a joke with Laveau. Hachi's right arm was in a sling, and Fergus knew her stomach was bound tightly with a corset of bandages where Laveau, wearing her older body, had operated on her. But even weak from her injuries, Hachi had been in a good mood ever since Laveau had told her there was another way to get answers from the dead Helena Blavatsky.

“No,” Laveau said coyly. “That is perhaps one secret that I will keep for myself. Shall we begin the s
é
ance?”

Laveau gestured toward the stairs to the second floor, where Erasmus Trudeau stood beaming at them. He bowed low to Fergus and Hachi as he unlatched the chain that kept customers downstairs.

“Miss Hachi,” he said. “Master Fungus.”

“Fergus.”

Erasmus gave him a big white smile.

Laveau had set up a round table in a small room on the second floor with five chairs. Erasmus pulled one out for Laveau, and Fergus did the same for Hachi. Laveau thanked Erasmus; Hachi frowned at Fergus. When Erasmus was finished, he took a place by the door.

“You're not joining us?” Fergus asked.

“Oh no. Erasmus, he agree to be de queen's personal bodyguard. But I tell her already, dat voodoo magic stuff not part of the deal.”

“Then who are the other two chairs for?” Fergus asked.

Hachi smiled. “Will your mother and daughter be joining us?” she asked the queen.

“Her mother and daughter?”
Fergus asked.

Hachi glanced at Erasmus by the door, but Laveau smiled. “He knows. I thought I'd better share my secret with my bodyguard, at least. He'd be bound to figure it out.”

“Figure what out?” Fergus asked. “What are you talking about?”

“We're talking about how Marie Laveau knew that first night why Blavatsky's spell to give Theodosia eternal youth wasn't going to work. Because there
is
no spell that gives you eternal youth.”

Laveau put a hand to her cheek. “Oh, but if only there were,” she said.

“But—we've seen you change!” Fergus said.

“No,” Hachi said. “You've seen Marie Laveau, Marie Laveau the Second, and Marie Laveau the Third.”

Laveau's two assistants pulled off their masks. Underneath were the seventy-year-old Laveau and the ten-year-old Laveau. They smiled mischievously at Fergus's stunned look.

“Mother, daughter, granddaughter,” Hachi said, “all named Marie Laveau. They pretend to be assistants when they're not being the official Laveau so they can listen in on conversations and know what people are talking about later when it's their turn.”

“You—but—I thought—how…?” Fergus spluttered. He turned to Hachi. “You knew? For how long?”

“I guessed the minute I saw the new Marie Laveau that first night at the palace, and I kept an eye on them all after that,” she said.

“I'm an idiot,” Fergus said.

Queen Laveau laughed. “No. But luckily the people of New Orleans are as willing to believe the impossible as you are. Together with the daughter I hope my own daughter has one day, and her daughter, and her daughter on down the line, we will forever be Marie Laveau, the eternally young queen of Louisiana.”

“Long live the queen,” Fergus muttered.

“I promise we won't tell,” Hachi said.

“We know you won't,” the older Marie Laveau said, taking a place at the table. The youngest Marie Laveau sat down beside her. “And now,
ch
è
re,”
the old Laveau said, “let us ask Helena Blavatsky what she knows about your past.”

*   *   *

A man right beside Archie screamed as his skin erupted in porcupine spikes. A woman near him melted into a puddle of mucus. Another man grew a duck bill, shaggy yak hair, and a lion's tail. The lantern didn't affect everyone—just half the crowd, maybe less—but the resulting chaos was immediate. Some of the Manglespawn created by the lantern were like Sings-In-The-Night: They weren't evil, just frightened and confused by their mutations. They ran away screaming. Archie knew they would have to be rounded up later, but for now they weren't a threat. The rest became inhuman animals. Monsters. Those turned on anything that moved—human or monster or Tik Tok—biting and clawing and oozing. The air was filled with roars and shrieks and wailing, and it was impossible to tell which was human and which was Manglespawn.

Archie kicked a slathering snail-thing away from a screeching woman who wouldn't get up off her knees. Archie had to pick her up to haul her to safety. “Get the people separated from the monsters!” Archie yelled to Kitsune.

Kitsune shook off her momentary horror at the things the people around her had turned into and began working her illusions on the humans, herding them toward the edges of the crowd. High above them, Clyde didn't need any guidance—Buster was already wading into the crowd, stomping on monsters and hurling others into the distance.

Archie found Jesse James blasting away at a mob of creatures that had once been VIPs posing for a photograph.

“What in the name of the Emartha Machine Man Company is going on?”
he cried.

“It's Mrs. Moffett! I told you! One of the experiments from Dodge City!” he told the FreeTok. “She used the thing they used on her on all these people!” Archie pulled a coiling vine-creature off James and tossed it away. “I need you and your gang to help me protect all the people who weren't turned!”

James blasted a writhing mass of snakes right in what Archie guessed was its face. “Protect the meatbags?” James said. “Forget it. We're grabbing the Tik Toks and the locomotives and getting out of here.”

Archie grabbed James by the shoulders and spun him around to face him. “They treat you like soulless automatons because that's what they think you are,” Archie told him. “This is your chance to prove to them you're not.”

Jesse James stared back at him through his glass-and-metal eyes, then cursed. “Cole! Clell! Robert!” he called, amplifying his voice. “You and the other boys, form a circle around that locomotive! We're getting these people out of here!”

One of them started to argue, but James cut him off. “Just do it!” He turned to Archie. “We better get some good press for this,” he said.

“The best,” Archie promised. “I know a dime novelist.” He ran back into the fight, slugging a cross between a bear and a bird. “Get the people to the trains!” he called to Clyde, Kitsune, and Mr. Rivets. “Jesse James is going to get them out of here!”

Buster plucked a woman up and put her inside the protective circle the James Gang had made, and Archie saw Kitsune chasing a terrified man in that direction. Archie almost hated to wonder what she was making him see.

WOMWOMWOMWOMWOM!
A sonic wave hit Archie, knocking him head over heels through the crowd. Monsters and people went flying with him. When he'd finally tumbled out of the wave's reach, he picked himself up and found Mrs. Moffett in the crowd. It was easy; she was coming right for him.

Mrs. Moffett clenched her fists at her sides and screamed again—
WOMWOMWOMWOMWOM!
—but this time Archie was ready for it. He dug his heels in the hard-packed salt flat and leaned into the pounding sound. It beat against him like the waves of the Don Francisco Bay.

Mrs. Moffett kept coming at him. The sound waves got stronger, harder to fight, but then she ran out of breath and had to stop, taking in huge gulps of air. Archie staggered toward her, his ears ringing, and threw a wild punch at her. She danced out of the way on her octopus legs.

“You should be honored,” Mrs. Moffett told him, still sucking in deep breaths. “You're witnessing history. The start of the Monster War.”

A dog-creature leaped for a cowering woman nearby, but Buster was there to swat it away. Mrs. Moffett screamed at the steam man, and Buster staggered, knocked sideways under the oscillating sound waves.

“Don't get close!” Archie yelled. He charged Mrs. Moffett, but she turned her sonic scream on him again. Without his feet planted, he flew through the air and slammed into the ground.

Mrs. Moffett glided over to him on her tentacles. “The way the Dragon Lantern works,” she said, “is by activating latent Mangleborn DNA in humans. It's there, in some of us, after millennia of interbreeding. Hideous, horrible interbreeding between Manglespawn and humans. And sometimes Mangleborn and humans. Or maybe we're related, somewhere back in the mists of time. Maybe we're
all
monsters of one kind or another.”