The Monster War Read online

  “That’s good, innit?” Fergus asked. “She’s the head of the Septemberist Society. She’s the one who sent you after it to begin with.”

  “No. It’s bad,” said Archie. “Twenty-five years ago, the Septemberist Society tried to make a new League of Seven using the Dragon Lantern on orphans. It went really, really badly. The kids turned into monsters.”

  “And Moffett was one of those kids,” Clyde explained.

  “You’re saying Philomena Moffett is—”

  “A woman with tentacles for legs and a sonic scream that can knock over mountains,” Clyde said.

  “Crivens,” said Fergus.

  “She joined the Septemberist Society to destroy it from within,” Archie said. “Then she found out about the Dragon Lantern—”

  “And had us go get it for her,” said Fergus.

  “Now she’s marchin’ east, using it on everybody she meets,” Clyde told the team. “We have to go stop her. Now. Six of us is plenty. It’s even more than we thought we’d have.”

  “All right,” said Fergus. “I’ll allow that all that is really, really bad. But are you saying we don’t go get Hachi first? What if she’s in danger? What if she activated her beacon because she needs our help?”

  “There is an army of monsters marching across America,” Clyde said. “I think that wins out.”

  “Well, I’m going after her,” Fergus said, “monster army or no monster army.”

  “We shouldn’t split up again,” Kitsune said.

  “She’s right,” Archie said. “We should all go after Hachi.”

  “Archie—” Clyde said.

  “We have to get her, Clyde. We’re the League of Seven,” he told them all. “One two three four five six seven. There’s a reason it’s seven. It’s always been seven, every time. Every new generation. We found five and six just in time,” he said, nodding at Gonzalo and Martine. “And now it’s time to get number seven. We need her. We need to be seven to beat Moffett.”

  Clyde was leader enough to know when he had a civil war on his hands, and how to stop it.

  “Okay,” he said. “Okay. We go get this Hachi person first. I just hope she’s worth it.”

  Fergus put a hand on Clyde’s shoulder. “She is, mate. Trust me. She is.”

  12

  Archie could see the clearing over the tops of the trees from the cockpit inside Buster’s head. The clearing near Orlando, Florida, where Thomas Edison had tried to raise a Mangleborn. The clearing where Archie had first met Hachi and Fergus just a few months ago.

  The clearing where, twelve years ago, Hachi’s father and ninety-nine other men had been murdered, and Archie had been born.

  From ten stories up, the stone altar at the center of the clearing looked so small. So insignificant. And so did the girl sitting on the ground beside it.

  Clyde stopped the giant steam man a hundred yards from the clearing.

  “That her?” Clyde asked.

  Archie nodded. It was Hachi all right. She still wore her long black hair in a braid, and the same brown skirt, blue shirt, and leather bandolier.

  “She doesn’t look like she’s in danger,” Clyde said from the pilot’s seat.

  “Nae,” said Fergus. He sat behind Clyde in the drummer’s chair that had once been Clyde’s. “She looks like she’s waiting for someone.”

  “You,” Archie told him.

  Fergus gave him a wan smile. “I hope she is. But I think it’s you she’ll be wanting to talk to first.”

  “Oh no,” Archie said. Hachi knew the truth about what had happened here at Chuluota. The truth about him. He didn’t want to face that.

  “It’s got to be done,” Fergus said. “You’ve both got to get past this.”

  “And fast,” Clyde reminded him.

  Archie sighed. If he and Hachi were ever able to get past what had happened in this clearing twelve years ago, it wouldn’t be fast. But Archie knew Fergus was right. They couldn’t just go on like it had never happened. They had to be able to work together without always wondering what one was secretly thinking about the other.

  “All right,” Archie said. “I’ll go.”

  Archie climbed down through the steam man’s floors. Martine was busy examining the apparatus that launched aeronauts, and Gonzalo and Kitsune sat at the galley table talking while Mr. Rivets served them coffee.

  “We found Hachi,” Archie told them. “She’s not in trouble. I’m going to get her.”

  Kitsune hopped on top of the table and peered out one of the gun ports, trying to catch a glimpse of her.

  “You want somebody to ride shotgun?” Gonzalo asked.

  “I think I better do this alone. But thanks, Gonzalo.”

  “Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to come with you?” Mr. Rivets asked. “Miss Hachi and I have developed something of a rapport.”

  “No, that’s okay, Mr. Rivets. Thanks.”

  Archie left the rest of the League behind in Buster and tromped through the jungle-like forest toward the clearing. It took him back to that night months ago when he’d walked this same path behind his parents, who were under the spell of Malacar Ahasherat. The Mangleborn was still trapped far below the surface, thanks to Archie, Hachi, and Fergus, but he could feel the Swarm Queen tugging at his brain.

  Jandal a Haad, she whispered sleepily.

  Archie tried to put the thought from his head as he stepped into the clearing. Hachi had to know he was there—if the giant steam man looming over the clearing wasn’t obvious enough, Archie’s clumsy crashing through the jungle would have told her he was on the way. She didn’t look up until he got close.

  “Hey Hachi,” he said at last.

  “Archie,” Hachi said.

  Archie looked around the clearing, trying to think of something to say.

  “Did you have to wait long?” he asked lamely.

  “Twelve years,” Hachi said.

  Archie had meant since she’d activated her beacon, of course. Hachi knew that.

  Archie swallowed. “Did you—did you kill them all? The people responsible for the death of your parents?”

  “All but one,” Hachi said. She pulled a raygun out from behind her and aimed it at him.

  Archie put up his hands in surrender, even though the raygun couldn’t really hurt him. They both knew that. “Look, Hachi, I—”

  BWAAAT! Hachi shot Archie right in the chest. The shot staggered him, more out of surprise than anything, and burned a huge hole in his shirt.

  “Hachi—” Archie tried again.

  Hachi stood and advanced on him, an aether pistol in each hand.

  BWAAAT! She shot him again, scorching off another part of his shirt but not hurting him at all. She went back and forth with the rayguns, shooting one while she waited for the aether aggregator to fill on the other.

  BWAAAT! BWAAAT! BWAAAT!

  High above them, Buster whistled nervously and stirred, wanting to come to Archie’s aid. Fergus had to be holding Clyde and Buster back.

  BWAAAT! BWAAAT! BWAAAT!

  Hachi kept shooting him, a look of pure hatred on her face. Archie put his hands up, more to protect himself from the blinding light than anything. His shirt was in tatters and his skin had scorch marks on it, but he could barely even feel the blasts. There was nothing Hachi could do to hurt Archie short of dropping a mountain on him or pushing him down a giant hole, and they both knew it.

  “Hachi—” Archie said.

  Hachi threw the rayguns aside and pulled out a long, curved blade like the one the meka-ninja had used.

  Shing! Shing! Shing! Hachi slashed Archie with it—left, right, left again—hacking at him like she was trying to chop down a tree. Archie put his hands down and stood still, letting Hachi hit him. When her sword broke, she cast it aside with the raygun and pounded on Archie with her fists, finally collapsing into his arms, tears streaming down her face. He hugged her close, not wanting her to see his own tears.

  “Why won’t you die?” she whispered.
/>   “I’m sorry,” Archie told her. “If I could, I would. I would swap places with your father in a heartbeat.”

  “You did,” Hachi told him.

  Archie hadn’t thought about it like that before, but she was right. The lives of one hundred men had been swapped for his. They had traded places. A one for one hundred exchange.

  “I wish it had never happened,” Archie said. “Any of it. I wish I hadn’t been born. I’m sorry.”

  Hachi sniffed and pulled back. Now it was her turn to look away. “I know. I know it’s not your fault,” she told him. “It’s just so hard not to hate you. You’re the reason my father was murdered.”

  “I hate myself,” Archie told her. “I don’t want to live. I won’t. I’ll find a cave somewhere. A hole in the ground. The bottom of the ocean. I’ll disappear, so the people who did this don’t get what they wanted. I won’t be their hero. I won’t be anything.”

  “No, you blinking flange!” Hachi said. She tried to shove him in the chest, but Archie didn’t budge. “No, you have to live! Don’t you see that, you idiot? As much as I hate it, you have to live. Do you understand?”

  “No,” said Archie.

  Hachi grabbed his shoulders. “You’re all that’s left of them. Don’t you see? If you crawl in a hole somewhere, it’s like they died for nothing. You have to live the lives that were taken from them. All of them. You have to live a life worthy of a hundred lives. You have to fight for all the people who died to create you. You have to be the best slagging person who ever lived. Otherwise you dishonor their memories. Promise me. You have to promise.”

  “All right,” Archie said. “I—I promise.” He looked at Hachi, bent and weak, so unlike herself. She’d been ruined by all this as badly as he had. “But I am an idiot, compared to you and all these other people. You have to help me,” Archie told her. “You have to help me live the life the men of Chuluota should have had. You have to help me be the man your father would have been.”

  Hachi was crying again, and she didn’t bother to dry her eyes. She nodded and leaned down, hiding her eyes in Archie’s white hair.

  Archie looked away, embarrassed, and saw the twisted wreckage of Edison’s lightning tower in the clearing. The busted, abandoned equipment. The carved stone altar.

  “Why did you come back here?” Archie asked.

  Hachi stood up straight and wiped an arm across her eyes. “I had nowhere else to go,” she said. She sniffed. “Nothing else to do. Now that I’ve gotten my revenge on all the people who murdered my father, I don’t know what to do with myself. I almost didn’t activate the beacon.”

  “You do have a place,” Archie said. “In the League of Seven. We found all the others. You’re the last one we had to collect. Me and Fergus, we told the others we weren’t leaving without you.”

  Hachi gave a half-sob, half-laugh. “Fergus,” she said.

  “He misses you,” Archie told her.

  Hachi sniffed again. “I miss him too.”

  “Come on,” Archie said.

  Hachi held him back. “Archie—about the League. I found something else out when I tracked down all the people who’d been here that night twelve years ago. They were working for the Septemberists.”

  “What?” Archie couldn’t believe it. “But—Edison, Blavatsky, they weren’t Septemberists. The Septemberists worked against Edison.”

  “They hired them, Archie. Edison and Blavatsky and the others didn’t know where the money came from, or how they’d been brought together. But think about it—who else would know just the right bad guys to bring together except the people who were keeping an eye on them?”

  “But—but why?” Archie asked.

  “To make you,” Hachi told him. “To make the superhero who would anchor their League.”

  Suddenly it all made sense. Why wouldn’t the Septemberists fund a secret group to create him? They’d done the same thing twenty-five years ago at Dodge City—built a secret facility to try to create a new League of Seven. Archie was just attempt number two. He sat down on the stone altar as the truth sank in.

  “They brought them together, and gave them the idea to make you,” Hachi told him. “Maybe they even let the ancient book with the instructions fall into their hands. We saw the library they’ve got at Atlantis Station. They brought them together, gave them the idea, and the money to do it. If it didn’t work, the murders were on somebody else—people they wanted to get rid of in the first place. But if it did … they would just bust up the group and swoop in and take you and raise you for their own. Which is exactly what they did.”

  They knew. The Septemberist Society knew how Archie had been created, because they were the ones behind it all. That’s how Moffett had known. She wasn’t the one to set it up—she’d come along too late for that—but she’d found the evidence, digging for proof of the Septemberists’ involvement in her own creation. She and Archie really were alike. The Septemberists had made them both what they were, trying to create a brand new League. Only Archie had been the lucky one—if you called having a hundred men murdered so you could live “lucky.”

  Archie passed a hand over the maze of lines in the top of the altar where their blood had run. “They did the same thing to Moffett. Now she’s marching across the country with the Dragon Lantern, turning people into Manglespawn as revenge. Everything that’s happening now—Moffett, the Monster War, the Shadow League, the rise of the Mangleborn, the League of Seven—the Septemberist Society’s secret plotting and scheming caused it all. They created the problem they made us to fix.”

  “We can’t work for them anymore, Archie,” Hachi said. “They’re as bad as Edison and Blavatsky and all the others.”

  Archie nodded. “But we still have to stop Moffett,” he told her. “We still have to be a League of Seven, even if we were created for all the wrong reasons. Just like I have to still be a hero. We stop Moffett, then we take care of the Septemberist Society.”

  Hachi nodded. It was agreed. She held out her hand, and Archie took it, letting her help him up off the altar. She squeezed his hand before letting it go. They were okay. As okay as either of them was ever going to get.

  Archie looked down at the altar, and he felt the anger over it all build up inside him like steam in a boiler. He slammed his fist down on it with the strength of a hundred men—KraKOOM!—and smashed it to pieces.

  They watched the dust and rubble settle, and Archie knocked the last of the pieces over with his foot. “The hundred men who live inside me,” he asked. “Will you teach me their names?”

  Hachi looked surprised. “Yes. If you want.”

  She took his arm as they walked back out of the clearing for the last time.

  “So … we have a giant steam man now?” she asked, looking up at Buster.

  “Yeah,” Archie said.

  “Brass.”

  13

  Buster met The Kraken just south of the Chickasaw city of Memphis, at the border of Louisiana and Pawnee territory. Martine’s sub had come up the Mississippi River while Buster marched west, and neither of them had seen Moffett or her Monster Army. She either had to be farther west still, or farther north.

  “I think she’ll hit Cahokia in the Clouds,” Hachi said. “I would. It’s a big city. She can do a lot of damage there.”

  “Cahokia’s another couple days’ march north up the river,” Clyde said. “Me and Buster need a break. We’ll stay in Memphis overnight.”

  Hachi frowned. “But Buster’s a steam man. He can’t get tired.”

  “Tell that to Buster,” Clyde said.

  The big steam man lay on his side like a big dog, head on the ground, arms and legs stretched out straight in front of him. Clyde had marched him hard to get this far this fast, and he was sound asleep.

  “Overnight then, I guess,” Hachi said. “Anybody ever been to Memphis before?”

  The Chickasaw city stretched out on the bluffs beyond them. Like Standing Peachtree, Memphis had a few skyscrapers reaching up to
ten stories tall, with a monorail snaking in and around them and across the wide Mississippi River. There was even a giant Ferris wheel, poking up among a scattering of long rectangular buildings in a park beside the river. But what dominated the skyline were the three pink marble pyramids the ancient Aegyptians had built long, long ago. They were step pyramids, a series of square terraces stacked on top of each other that got smaller and smaller as they went up, like a wedding cake, and they towered over everything else. Like the Houston Astral Dome and Cahokia in the Clouds, the Memphis pyramids were one of the Seven Wonders of the New World.

  “Memphis,” Señor X scoffed. “This isn’t an old Aegyptian city. I’ve been to the real Memphis, in Aegypt, and the pyramids there don’t look anything like these. Aegyptian pyramids are smooth. Triangular. Like the one the Septemberists use in their symbol.”

  Archie and Hachi shared a look. He still wore his Septemberist pin, with the pyramid eye inside a seven-pointed star, but when all this was over, he was done with the society for good.

  “If it’s not Aegyptian, what is it?” Gonzalo asked him.

  “Atlan,” Señor X said.

  “Atlantis?” Archie asked.

  “No. Atlan. Where the Azteks came from. The founding members of Lemuria. They buried a Mangleborn under those pyramids before moving south. Atlantis came later.”

  Clyde shook his head. “I’m still not sure I believe any of this stuff about ancient civilizations.”

  Fergus nodded. “I felt the same way. Until I saw Atlantis Station.”

  “Even if it’s not Aegyptian, it sounds brass,” Gonzalo said.

  “Want to see it?” Kitsune asked.

  Gonzalo hesitated. “Yes,” he said at last, and he took a deep breath and arranged himself like he was bracing to be run down by a mechanical bull. “Go.”

  Nothing happened—nothing the rest of them could see, at least. But a change came over Gonzalo. On the trip to Memphis he’d put on a white cowboy hat and tied a black blindfold over his eyes—it scared criminals to no end to be chased by a boy with a blindfold on, he told them—but he swept his head back and forth like he could see the city straight through it.