The Dragon Lantern

by Alan Gratz

  The fox girl leaped off of Mr. Rivets, disappearing into the chaos, and the machine man lurched into Archie’s arms.

  “Mr. Rivets! Mr. Rivets, are you all right?”

  “My ocular units are disabled,” Mr. Rivets said. “But I am otherwise undamaged.”

  “Mr. Rivets, she put out your eyes!”

  “Yes, sir. That is what I said.”

  Archie scanned the area around the bonfire. A few cultists and soldiers still fought, but there was no way of telling if any of them was the fox girl. Not without Mr. Rivets’ eyes. Archie cursed. The fox girl was going to get away. But they had bigger problems. Colossus finished converting his left arm into a massive raycannon and pointed it at the wiggling, writhing buffalo herd creature, but another bomb from an aeronaut sent the monster lurching toward the steam man. Colossus’s blast shot over the Manglespawn, just grazing it. With a bellow that shook the air, the monster slammed into the steam man and knocked him back. Dull Knife windmilled Colossus’s arms and tried to turn away, but he couldn’t stop the steam man’s momentum. With a groan and squeal of metal, Colossus toppled over and slammed into the ground with a teeth-chattering THOOM.

  “Colossus is down!” Archie told Mr. Rivets, running for the fallen steam man.

  “Archie? Archie? Where are you?” Mr. Rivets said. He finally stopped moving around. “I’ll just wait here for you then, shall I?”

  Archie ran into Custer in the darkness. “Captain! Captain, we have to get Colossus back on his feet!”

  “That skull,” Custer said, his eyes still glazed over and staring at the effigy. “There’s something … not quite right about it.”

  “Yeah, no kidding!” Archie said. “Captain, leave it. We have to get Colossus back up, or we’re never going to defeat that monster.”

  “That skull,” Custer said, walking toward the effigy. “There’s something … not quite right about it.”

  Custer was repeating himself. Between the horror of what he was seeing and whatever it was about the skull that was mesmerizing him, he was too far gone to be any help. Archie looked around for Lieutenant Pajackok, but didn’t see him. He’d have to do this himself.

  Archie climbed up to peer in the broken window on Colossus’s face as the buffalo monster rampaged around the clearing.

  “Clyde? Dull Knife?” Archie called. All he heard in response was Buster whimpering.

  “Hang on! I’m coming,” Archie said. He slid down through the eye hole and dropped like a rock inside, smashing into levers and instruments on the way down. Buster lay at the back where Archie landed, hurt but alive. Dull Knife and Clyde were still strapped into their chairs, but neither was moving. Archie tried to wake them. He hated to do it, but they were the only ones who could drive the steam man. Clyde roused, still dazed, but Dull Knife wouldn’t wake up.

  Archie considered for a moment taking Dull Knife’s place at the controls, but one look at the complicated array of levers and switches and pedals and Archie realized how stupid that was. He would never be able to operate the steam man.

  Which meant Colossus wasn’t getting up again.

  WHAM! The cabin lurched, and Archie was thrown against the wall. The Manglespawn! It would trample Colossus and them with it if he didn’t get them out. Archie threw open the hatch in the head and called to Mr. Rivets. It took the machine man a few tries to orient himself, but soon he wandered close enough for Archie to hand Dull Knife, Clyde, and Buster out to him. Archie climbed out after them and threw Dull Knife and Clyde over his shoulder, carrying them to the wall of the canyon, as far away from the buffalo creature as he could get. He would have to come back for Buster.

  “What’s … what’s the captain doing?” Clyde muttered.

  Archie set Dull Knife and Clyde against the wall of the canyon and turned. Custer was at the foot of the effigy, firing an oscillating rifle at the skull on top of it at almost point-blank range. The skull glowed red-hot as though it were metal, not bone, and a piercing squeal-like scream echoed throughout the canyon. It rose in pitch as the skull glowed hotter and hotter, and though he couldn’t explain why, Archie knew it was going to explode.

  “Duck!” Archie said. He just had time to cover Clyde when there was a loud FWOOM, and a bright orange wave of energy hit them like a blast of hot summer wind. Archie closed his eyes and wrapped Clyde up tighter, the energy searing his back. The Manglespawn buffalo creature roared in agony and rage, and then the light went out, the heat turned off, and everything was suddenly quiet again.

  Archie let Clyde go slowly, and they stood.

  “Where’s Dull Knife?” Clyde asked.

  Archie stared at the place where he’d set Tahmelapachme. The man was gone. In his place on the canyon wall was a dark shadow of a body and arms and a head. Archie put his fingers to the rock wall. The silhouette was part of the rock. Dull Knife had been vaporized by the blast, his atoms burned into the canyon wall.

  They found more shadows farther along the wall—twisted, agonized shapes of men and women, soldier and cultist alike, who had been blown to smithereens by the skull’s explosion. Not a thing was left in the canyon except Archie, Clyde, Mr. Rivets, and Colossus. The effigy, the mystical flame, the buffalo monster, even the aeronauts who’d been overhead were all gone. Only Archie, who was almost invulnerable, and Clyde, whom he’d protected, had survived.

  “Buster!” Clyde yelled with a start. He ran back to where they’d left the dog, and Archie ran with him. “Buster!”

  But Buster was gone. All that was left of him was the shadow of a dog burned into Colossus’s chest.

  “No! Buster!” Clyde cried. He went to his knees, sobbing, and put his head and hands to the black silhouette of the dog. “I’m sorry,” he bawled. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have left you. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to leave you, boy. I was supposed to be there to protect you, and I wasn’t.”

  Archie put a hand on Clyde’s shoulder while the other boy sobbed. “I’m sorry,” he told Clyde.

  Something clattered down the wall of the canyon behind Colossus, like rocks tumbling, and then there was a crack! like a stone splitting. Archie’s first thought was an avalanche—that somehow the blast had loosened the rock walls of the canyon and a boulder had broken loose. But then he heard more rocks tumbling, and more cracks—two, three, four, five. Archie lost count of the cracks as they echoed around the canyon. It was still dark, but in the dim light of the red moon he watched the black silhouette of Dull Knife pull its head, arms, and torso out of the rock wall. Then it stood, lifting itself on legs and feet torn from the dirt of the canyon floor. Beside it, one of the other shadows came to life, ripping itself from the rock wall and lurching forward.

  Toward Archie and Clyde.

  “Clyde, get up,” Archie said, backing away. “Clyde, get up. Get up, get up, get up.”

  Clyde must have heard the fear in Archie’s voice. He wiped his eyes on the sleeves of his UN Steam Cavalry uniform and stood.

  “What … what in the name of Hiawatha is that?” he asked.

  Archie didn’t know, but whatever it was, he knew it wasn’t good. He grabbed Clyde and pulled him away. The rock creatures lurched awkwardly, stone grinding on stone as they walked, but they were clearly coming for Archie and Clyde.

  “Mr. Rivets?” Archie called, never taking his eyes off the rock creatures. “Mr. Rivets?”

  “Here, Master Archie,” Mr. Rivets said, and Archie steered them toward his voice.

  “What are they, Mr. Rivets?”

  “I’m afraid with my ocular units disabled, I do not know what ‘they’ refers to, sir.”

  “They’re … they’re rock people,” Archie said. “They pulled themselves out of the wall where the shadows of all the other people used to be. The shadows burned into the wall when Custer destroyed that skull and everything got vaporized.”

  “Ah,” Mr. Rivets said. “As you no doubt observed, those misguided souls were using the energy from the skull to amalgamate a herd of buffalo int
o one giant monster. I suspect that when Captain Custer destroyed the skull, that energy was released, ‘fusing’ all the living matter within range into the substrate behind it and creating the barely sentient creatures you describe.”

  “What’d he say?” Clyde asked.

  “He said everybody else got blasted into the rock and brought it to life, and now they’re all rock monsters coming to kill us.”

  “I did not say the creatures mean you any harm, Master Archie.”

  “No, but trust me, Mr. Rivets, they do!” One of the shadows that had pulled itself from the wall took a swing at Archie. He ducked, but not fast enough, and the blow sent him crashing to the ground.

  “Ow,” Archie said.

  “That was … that was Dull Knife!” Clyde said. The rock creature swung at him, but he ducked out of the way.

  “I’m afraid these creatures will bear little resemblance to the people you knew who gave them life,” Mr. Rivets said. “The human brain is too complex an organ to merge well with solid rock.”

  Archie sidestepped another of the creatures and punched it. Its head exploded in a shower of rock and dirt, but the body kept coming.

  “Yeah, brainless,” Archie confirmed. “Stay behind me!”

  Archie would have been all right if there had been just a few of them, or if they’d all come at him one at a time. But there were lots of them, and they came at him from all sides.

  “The steam man!” Clyde cried. “We have to get inside Colossus.”

  As a plan, Archie liked it. He turned and started punching his way through the rock men, ignoring the ones at his back and sides. Clyde clung closely to him, protected from behind by Mr. Rivets, who held tight to Clyde’s belt. When they finally got to the fallen steam man, Archie swapped places with Clyde and Mr. Rivets to hold the rock creatures at bay while they climbed in.

  “Uh-oh,” Clyde said.

  “What do you mean ‘uh-oh’?” Archie asked. “What’s ‘uh-oh’?”

  “I mean that uh-oh!” Clyde said.

  Archie glanced quickly over his shoulder, then did a double-take.

  Colossus was moving.

  The rock creatures pounded on Archie’s back while he stared, openmouthed, at what he was seeing. Colossus the steam man put a hand to the ground, heaved itself up, and stood, towering over them.

  Which was impossible, because no one was sitting in the driver’s seat.

  “Uh-oh,” said Archie.

  12

  “Uh-oh,” Fergus said.

  A Haitian guard wearing a blue tunic emblazoned with the large gold fleur-de-lis of Louisiana put up a white-gloved hand, and he and his partner, a Karankawan guard in the same getup, crossed their spears to bar Hachi and Fergus from entering the throne room. Blue aether crackled around the blades of the spears.

  “I’ll kill the one on the right. You kill the one on the left,” Hachi whispered.

  Fergus knew she was kidding. At least he hoped she was kidding. “We’re here as guests of Marie Laveau,” he told the two guards.

  The guards didn’t move their spears. “The Voodoo Queen, she never visits the royal court,” the Haitian guard said.

  “Tonight I’m making an exception,” said a deep, smooth voice behind them.

  As promised, Marie Laveau had changed. She wore a striking white dress that swept down off her right shoulder and back up over her left shoulder like a Roman toga, and on her head she wore a matching white headscarf done up so that it made seven points at the top, like a cloth crown on her head.

  She also wore a new body.

  The Marie Laveau Fergus and Hachi had met earlier was replaced with a younger version, perhaps half her age. The high cheekbones and striking eyebrows were the same, but the wrinkles were gone. Her skin was light brown and glistened slightly in the gaslight. She was still full-figured, but now she was thinner and firmer, and, Fergus couldn’t help but observe, jaw-droppingly gorgeous.

  “She changed,” he said. “She said she was going to change first, and she changed.”

  Beside him, Hachi frowned at the woman, doubting what her eyes were seeing. But Fergus knew it was Laveau, and so did the guards.

  “Madame Laveau!” the Karankawan said.

  Marie Laveau strode forward with the confident, measured gait of a thirty-five-year-old woman and took Fergus and Hachi by the arms.

  “I am here to see Queen Theodosia, by open invitation,” she told the two guards. “And tonight I am joined by two companions. I’m sure Her Majesty will not object.”

  “No! Of course!” the Haitian guard said, and he and his partner quickly raised their spears to let them pass.

  Laveau swept them inside and down a short corridor to the throne room.

  “You told me my fortune today,” Hachi said to Laveau. “You said I was going to go on a long journey.”

  “I told you no such thing,” Laveau said. “I said you will defeat Blavatsky, but that the answers you seek already lie with the Strongman. You test me. You doubt who I am. But believe me when I tell you, I am Marie Laveau.”

  There were two more guards just inside the door to the queen’s throne room, but unlike the guards at the front door, these were more zombi. Their dead, hollow eyes stared straight forward, and Fergus caught a whiff of dead animal, artlessly covered by a heavy dose of perfume. Marie Laveau’s arm stiffened as they walked past.

  “Zut alors. Black, evil magic that is,” she whispered. “These are dark times for New Orleans.”

  In the throne room, all the whispering was about Marie Laveau. Every eye in the room watched her, either in sly sideways glances or open stares. Fergus stared at everyone else. Besides a handful of zombi servants carrying plates of food and drinks around, there were perhaps thirty people in the room—men and women, First Nations and Haitians and Yankees—all dressed in a fashion Fergus had never seen before. Unlike Hachi’s simple, understated red dress, the women wore big crinkly dresses of all colors that had acres of fabric on the bottom and tight, low bodices and poofy sleeves on top. The men weren’t much better. They had poofy sleeves too, and wore what looked like thick, round rugs over their shoulders and tights on their legs. For once Fergus didn’t feel like the oddest-dressed person in the room in his kilt and boots and white button-down shirt.

  The chamber itself was as gaudily attired as the people in it. Tall blue columns separated windows whose fancy carved molding was gilded with fading gold paint. Blue-and-yellow drapes as ratty as the carpet in the long hall were tied back from the windows, and elaborate candelabras dripped melted wax onto tables throughout the room. Fergus picked at the flaking gold paint on one of the candlesticks and found iron underneath. Everything here had been gilded to make it look beautiful and expensive, but the illusion was wearing thin.

  As was the queen. Theodosia was a frail old woman in her eighties, with a plain face and a broad round chin. On her gray head she wore a jewel-encrusted crown, but otherwise she was dressed like the rest of the women in her court. Her voluminous blue-and-yellow dress looked like it was made out of the same heavy material as the drapes. At a glance, Fergus figured the getup must weigh fifty pounds. How the old lady could walk was a mystery.

  Queen Theodosia’s entrance was announced by heralds with trumpets, and the court bowed to her as she came in. Fergus shot Hachi a questioning glance—do we bow? Hachi grimaced and rolled her eyes, but gave a little half-hearted bow, and Fergus followed suit.

  Theodosia was followed by a skeletal-looking man in a long black jacket with a tall, wrinkled, ugly face and a thin, wild widow’s peak of white hair. Fergus didn’t believe in the Grim Reaper, but if he did, this fellow could give him a run for his money.

  “General Andrew Jackson,” Laveau whispered. The Andrew Jackson who had defended New Orleans against a New Spain invasion in 1815 and again against a Galveston pirate attack in 1823, and whose statue and name graced the square in front of the palace.

  The Andrew Jackson who had died twenty-five years ago and been resurrected by
Madame Blavatsky as a zombi.

  Theodosia swept across the room and made right for them.

  “Madame Laveau, you honor us again after all these years with your presence!” Queen Theodosia said. She put out her hands, and Laveau took them and bowed again. “How long has it been?” the queen asked.

  “Almost forty years, Your Majesty,” Laveau said. “I was here for your inauguration.”

  “Of course,” Theodosia said. “And of course you don’t look a day older than you did then. We would ask you how you do it, but our bokor tells us she has discovered how.”

  “Your Majesty?” Laveau said.

  Queen Theodosia said something in Acadian that had Blavatsky’s name in it, and Fergus saw Hachi tense. They were bringing her in. Fergus stepped closer to Hachi, more as a show of support than anything. Tonight was supposed to be a fact-finding mission. Hachi wasn’t supposed to go after Blavatsky right away, not until they’d found a way to get her alone. But this was a woman who was there when Hachi’s dad and ninety-nine other men from his village were murdered. Hachi’s need for revenge might override her good sense—and if it did, there was nothing Fergus could do to stop her. Maybe nothing anybody could do. Not even zombi Andrew Jackson.

  The crowd of upholstered courtiers parted, and Madame Blavatsky strode into the throne room. She was a stark contrast to the beautiful Creole women around her: a solid, serious-looking, middle-aged Yankee woman with her hair parted down the center and pulled back into a tight bun. She wore a simple black dress over her ample bosom and big hips, and the only jewelry she wore was a thick copper necklace looped loosely many times around her neck.

  Blavatsky bowed low to her queen.

  “Madame Marie Laveau, may we introduce you to our royal bokor, Madame Helena Blavatsky,” Queen Theodosia said.

  “The pleasure is mine,” Blavatsky said. “Your power is spoken of all over the city.”

  “As is yours,” Laveau said, though Fergus didn’t think she meant it the same way. “And may I introduce my companions—Fergus MacFerguson and Hachi Emartha.”

  “Of Chuluota,” Hachi said.