The Dragon Lantern (34 page)

“Don't worry about it,” Archie told him. But Archie was worried. Why was he hearing the song of a Mangleborn here? Now?

“There she is!” Clyde said.

Buster loomed over Mrs. Moffett. She stood on a rooftop with the Dragon Lantern, watching Alcatraz prisoners fight in the courtyard below.

Sings-In-The-Night met Archie and Kitsune in Buster's mouth. “Take Kitsune,” Archie told her, and he jumped.

If there was one thing Archie was good at, it was falling.

Archie slammed into the rooftop behind Mrs. Moffett, almost crashing straight through. As he climbed to his feet, Sings-In-The-Night landed next to him with Kitsune.

Mrs. Moffett smiled at them. “So. You've brought friends this time,” she said. “Do you really think three children, a giant steam man, and a dozen Dog Soldiers can stop me?”

Archie didn't understand—Dog Soldiers? Kitsune winked at him, and he understood: She was making Mrs. Moffett think they had brought reinforcements.

“Give me the Dragon Lantern,” Archie told her.

“I can't just now,” Mrs. Moffett said. “I need to use it again. Do you know who those men down there are?” she asked. “They are the worst criminals in the Republic of California. Maybe the worst criminals in all of the North Americas.
Monsters
, just like me. Just like you. And I'm going to take six of them with me. That's what I told them. I'm recruiting, you see. I'm putting together my own league. I call it the ‘Shadow League.' Has a nice ring to it, don't you think? That's why they're fighting—to see which of them will get to escape with me.” She patted the Dragon Lantern lovingly. “If only they realized what winning meant. Well, Sings-In-The-Night and I understand, don't we?”

“You can't use that on more people, Mina,” Sings-In-The-Night said. “How can you, when you know how painful it is. How awful…”

“Don't you think someone else should experience that pain, Sings?” Mrs. Moffett asked. “Don't you think everyone should know what we went through?”

“I think they should know, yes. But not like this. These men don't deserve that. Nobody does.”

“Everybody
does,” Mrs. Moffett said. “Californians, Cheyenne, Pawnee, Texans, Cherokee, Iroquois, Yankees.
Septemberists
,” she said, looking straight at Archie. “Anyone who would trade the lives of children for their own safety and comfort. So I'm going to show them. I'm going to show them what happens when you let children be sacrificed so everyone else can live quiet, happy lives.”

“Nobody sacrificed me,” Archie said.

Mrs. Moffett laughed. She laughed long and hard. “No. No, they didn't sacrifice
you,
did they, Archie Dent?” She laughed again. “But they didn't use the lantern on you either.”

“What do you mean?” Archie said. “You said it was.”

“I lied,”
Mrs. Moffett told him. “Your fox girl can appreciate that, I think. The lantern wasn't used to create you; it was used to create
me
. That's why I wanted it back. But you needed that fairy tale to go after it for me.”

Archie fumed. “You never knew, did you? You never knew where I came from, or what was done to me.”

“Oh, no, I know all of those things,” Mrs. Moffett told him. “It was all in the Septemberists' records. The ones you only get to see when you become the society's chief. It made for fascinating reading.”

“Tell me,” Archie said.

“Join me, and I'll tell you.”

“What?”

“Join my Shadow League! The Darkness is in you. It has been all along. They
speak
to you. You
hear
the Mangleborn. Do you know how rare that is? But you fight it. You reject this amazing gift you have. Join me, and you'll never have to deny it ever again. You're the shadow, after all, aren't you? Given how
they made you,
I should think you're the darkest shadow of all.”

“She's lying,” Kitsune said. “She doesn't really know where you come from. She's trying to trick you.”

“The invitation's open to you too,” Mrs. Moffett said to Kitsune. “You'd be a wonderful addition. And you, Sings-In-The-Night.”

“No,” the flying girl said.

“But this is what we were made for, you and me,” Mrs. Moffett said. “Look at us!” she said, rising up on her tentacles. “We're monsters, both of us! They
made
us this way—and I was made to be a
leader
!
”

Mrs. Moffett opened the Dragon Lantern on the men who were left standing in the courtyard below, and they began to shriek.

“No!” Archie cried. He charged at Mrs. Moffett, but she turned and screamed.
WOMWOMWOMWOMWOM!
The roof collapsed under Archie's feet. Sings-In-The-Night snatched up Kitsune and took off, but Archie fell again. He crashed down through empty prison cells and was buried in broken bricks and twisted metal.

JANDAL A HAAD,
a voice sang in his head. The same voice from before.

“No!” Archie cried. He spat dust and flailed with his arms and legs, knocking debris away from him. “No! My name is Archie Dent!”

ENKIDU. HERACLES. ARCHIE DENT. ALWAYS DIFFERENT, BUT ALWAYS THE SAME
, the voice sang, and Archie's head was flooded with images of the League's other shadows, all mindlessly, furiously breaking and smashing and thumping things, and always hurting the ones they loved. Who was doing this to him? Mrs. Moffett? Kitsune? Only Mangleborn had been able to get inside his head like this, but there weren't any Mangleborn around. And still the visions came. Rayguns, lektricity, Manglespawn—none of them hurt like this hurt, the agony filling him, making him want to tear his own skin off to get it out. He was Heracles killing his own children. He was Enkidu howling naked in the forest. He was Archie Dent attacking Hachi and Fergus with a metal club in the prison of Malacar Ahasherat. The visions tormented him with pain and sorrow, and he pounded on his own head, trying to drive them away.

A giant brass hand brushed away the rest of the rubble on top of him, and Buster tried to pick Archie up. But the visions still filled him with rage. Archie batted the big brass hand away and punched at what was left of the prison wall, blowing it apart. Above him, Mrs. Moffett clung to a piece of the wall with her tentacles, the Dragon Lantern still turned on the mutating horrors just beyond him.

“Tell me!” Archie cried, pounding on the brick wall. “Tell me how I was made! Tell me where I come from!” The wall crumbled and fell on him, and he kicked and swatted at the bricks like they were a swarm of gnats. “Get off me! I hate you! Get off me!”

Above him, Mrs. Moffett sent Buster staggering with another sonic scream, then turned it on the other steam man that had arrived. There wasn't another steam man—it was another one of Kitsune's illusions—but it bought Buster time to get away from the sonic wave.

BE STILL, JANDAL A HAAD
, the dream voice sang, knocking Archie to his knees.

One of the horrors Mrs. Moffett had created jumped on Archie, its lava skin hissing, and Archie tore it off and used it to beat down what was left of the building's walls.

“Archie! She's getting away!” Sings-In-The-Night called as she flew by. Archie didn't care. He picked up a twisted prison cell door and hurled it at her to make the bird girl leave him alone.

JANDAL A HAAD, BE STILL,
the voice in his head said again.

“Who is that?” Archie cried, spinning around. “Who are you? Where are you?”

I AM GONG GONG, JANDAL A HAAD,
the voice said.
WHY DO YOU WAKE ME?

“My. Name. Is. Archie. Dent!” Archie cried, pounding the rubble at his feet with his fists with every word.

And then the earth underneath him moved.

Buster staggered, trying to keep his footing. The water tower crumpled. Cracks appeared in the buildings that hadn't fallen.

“Earthquake!” someone yelled. But this was no earthquake, and it wasn't Mrs. Moffett's screams again. The island was turning over in the water, and as it did, an enormous fin emerged on the side that was rising.

Alcatraz Prison was built on the back of a Mangleborn.

“Well, I didn't see that coming,” Mrs. Moffett said.

Archie slid on the tilting ground and slammed into the wall of one of the buildings. As the island turned, the buildings leaned and then started to collapse. Buster scrambled up them like a mountain climber, trying to stay away from the water.

“Archie!” Clyde called. “Archie, we have to get out of here! The island's alive!”

Archie didn't care. Still angry, he ran across the face of one of the sideways buildings and threw himself at Mrs. Moffett. He hit her before she could scream, knocking the Dragon Lantern from her hands. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Archie knew he should dive after it, that the Dragon Lantern was what really mattered, but he was consumed by rage. Mrs. Moffett had lied to him. The Mangleborn beneath them was driving him crazy
.
The world was falling apart around him. He brought his fists together and smashed them down on the sideways building he and Mrs. Moffett stood on. It collapsed, and they tumbled into a labyrinth of crumbling prison cells.

Mrs. Moffett scrabbled up out of the rubble, trying to keep her balance as the world turned. She ran the back of her hand across her mouth and came away with blood, and she smiled.

“I told you you were a monster,” she said to Archie. “This is who you are. This is why you were created. To
destroy
.”

Archie picked up a broken toilet and hurled it at her with a roar. She moved faster than any real person could, her tentacles pulling her sideways across the shattered building, and the toilet exploded where she'd been standing. The Dragon Lantern clattered down through the broken building, and she slithered after it.

JANDAL A HAAD
, Gong Gong murmured inside Archie's head.
JANDAL A HAAD, LET ME SLEEP.

Archie swung his fists at the floor. He swung his fists at the falling bricks. He saw Mrs. Moffett through his fury, clambering toward where the Dragon Lantern lay half buried in the wreckage. She was almost to it when Sings-In-The-Night swooped down and snatched it away.

“Archie! I've got it! I've got the lantern!” she called.

A thick tentacle whipped out from the writhing mass under Mrs. Moffett and caught Sings-In-The-Night by the leg.

“And I've got you!” Mrs. Moffett crowed.

It took the Jandal a Haad a long moment to process what was happening. Through the red-rimmed haze of his all-consuming rage, he watched as the bird girl fluttered in Mrs. Moffett's grasp, trying to break free. The bird girl called to him for help. The stone boy panted, fists still balled, anger still coursing through his veins, the voice in his head telling him to pick up a rock and throw it, kill them both; but the bird girl called out to him again, her words finally penetrating his madness.

“Archie!” Sings-In-The-Night cried. “Archie, help me!”

Archie
. That was him.
His
name was Archie. Not Jandal a Haad. He was a person, not a monster. He had a name. He had a family. He had friends. And Sings-In-The-Night was one of them. Sings-In-The-Night was his friend, and she needed help. Archie fought down the fury inside him, still breathing hard. He had to focus. Remember who he was. He had to stop Philomena Moffett. He had to save Sings-In-The-Night. Slowly, with difficulty, Archie's rage ebbed, only to be replaced by horror.

Mrs. Moffett had Sings-In-The-Night, and Archie was too far away to help her
.

“Hold on! I'm coming!” Archie cried, his voice ragged from screaming. Archie tried climbing across the crumpled iron bars toward her, but they gave way and he fell. He clung desperately to a disintegrating wall and tried to pull himself back up.

Sings-In-The-Night's wings tore at the air, trying to pull her free, but Mrs. Moffett's tentacles anchored them like roots to the rubble. She pulled Sings-In-The-Night down, a tentacle coiling up around the bird girl's leg while another slipped up around her neck. Sings-In-The-Night let out a choking gasp.

“Clyde! Kitsune! Help!” Archie called as bricks rained down on him. He could feel the wall he clung to collapsing.

“They created me to be a leader,” Mrs. Moffett told Archie, her voice quiet and calm in the crashing chaos around them. She took the Dragon Lantern from Sings-In-The-Night, and the bird girl put her hands to the tentacle around her throat and tried uselessly to pull it loose. “But I was always a shadow,” Mrs. Moffett said. “We all were. Monsters. Just like you, Archie. And you know what monsters do, Archie Dent. They destroy everything they love.”

Crack.
Mrs. Moffett's tentacle snapped Sings-In-The-Night's neck, and the bird girl's body went limp.

“Nooooo!”
Archie cried.

The wall he was holding gave way, and he fell like a stone into the cold, dark sea.