Falcon Quinn and the Crimson Vapor Read online

  FALCON QUINN

  AND THE

  CRIMSON VAPOR

  JENNIFER FINNEY BOYLAN

  FOR ZACH AND SEAN, AGAIN.

  Sons good.

  Well, the Sasquatch girls are hip,

  I love their fur all splotched with crud;

  And the vampire girls, with the way they bite,

  They knock me out when they suck my blood.

  Egyptian pharaoh’s daughters really make you lose your head,

  And the Frankenstein girls, with the bolts in their neck,

  They bring their boys back from the dead.

  I wish they all could be zombie mutants

  I wish they all could be zombie mutants

  I wish they all could be zombie mutant girls.

  —Traditional

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Epigraph

  Part I: Monster Island

  Chapter 1 - The Glory of Everything

  Chapter 2 - The Filchers

  Chapter 3 - The Crimson Madstone

  Chapter 4 - The Bludd Club

  Chapter 5 - The Rescue

  Part II: Shadow Island

  Chapter 6 - The Librarian

  Chapter 7 - Dustbin

  Chapter 8 - Road Not Taken Destroy!

  Chapter 9 - The Properties of Scorpion Blood

  Chapter 10 - A Beam of Red Light

  Chapter 11 - A Little Black Rain Cloud

  Part III: Guardian Island

  Chapter 12 - Guardian Junior High

  Chapter 13 - Go, Assassins, Go!

  Chapter 14 - The Valley of Death

  Chapter 15 - Flailing

  Chapter 16 - Creative Writing for Assassins

  Chapter 17 - The Windmill

  Part IV: The Island of Nightmares

  Chapter 18 - A Rhyme for Orange

  Chapter 19 - However Improbable

  Chapter 20 - The Sinking of the Cutthroat

  Chapter 21 - The Music of the Squonk

  Chapter 22 - Smarter Now

  Chapter 23 - A Beautiful Fish

  Chapter 24 - The Union of Opposites

  Chapter 25 - Bite Me in St. Louis

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Part I

  MONSTER ISLAND

  Chapter 1

  The Glory of Everything

  The sun shone on Monster Island. Falcon Quinn, standing behind the counter of a lemonade stand, looked down the midway of the all-mutant amusement park. A world of unlikely creatures strolled through the fairgrounds. There they were: reflected in the Hall of Broken Mirrors, bouncing in the Antigravity Bumper Cars, staring in astonishment at the macabre picket fence that surrounded the Unhaunted House.

  It was a very good place to be, thought Falcon, this lemonade stand at the heart of Monster Island, with its groaning Frankensteins, the hot summer sun, the passage of Sasquatches, the loyalty of Chubakabras, the nearness of vampires, the smell of zombies, and the glory of everything.

  The summer was nearly at an end. In a matter of days Falcon and his friends would return to the Academy for Monsters on Shadow Island. For now, the sun was bright and the air was filled with the smells of hot pretzels and mummified flesh and sweet Italian sausages. He thought of the favorite phrase of his best friend, Max the Sasquatch: Our lives are unbelievably, amazingly great!

  “Hey, gimmee an egg cream,” said a deep, growling voice, and Falcon, the young angel, turned to see a wererhino, a guy named Snort, standing there. Steam rumbled from Snort’s nostrils, and there was mud on his horn. He wore a New York Yankees cap.

  “What?” said Falcon. In addition to his wings, Falcon had two eyes of shockingly different colors—one blue, one black. The black one, at this moment, began to burn.

  “I said an egg cream already,” said Snort. “Hey! I’m waitin’ here!”

  Falcon tried to be gentle. When it came to wererhinos, it was best to be diplomatic. “Listen,” he said. “I don’t have any—uh, egg creams. But this lemonade is really good. You want some lemonade?”

  “Lemonade,” muttered Snort, turning his back. He walked about twenty paces from the stand. Snort pawed the ground and lowered his enormous horn, preparing to charge. “I didn’t want to have to stampede ya,” he said. “Wasn’t my idea.”

  “Hey—,” said Falcon. “Hey, Snort. Seriously—”

  The steam from Snort’s enormous nostrils was coming out in gushing clouds now, as if issuing from the spout of the world’s largest teakettle.

  “Dude!” said a happy voice. Falcon looked over to his left and saw his friend Max, who was wearing a Hawaiian shirt and baggy shorts. The Sasquatch was holding a three-foot-long frankfurter, slathered with onions and chili and relish and cheddar cheese and hot mustard. “Check out this super chili cheese dog! It’s got bacon!”

  “One!” shouted Snort from across the midway.

  “Max,” said Falcon. “You don’t want to be here right now.”

  Max stuffed the whole chili cheese dog into his mouth. “Of course I want to be here right now,” he said, chewing. “This is like, the best possible place to be! You and me, Monster Island! A beautiful summer day! Our lives are unbelievably, amazingly”—Max spread his arms—“great!”

  “Two!” shouted Snort. Over Max’s shoulder, Falcon could see the wererhino preparing to thunder toward them.

  “Max,” said Falcon. “I’m serious! You do not want to be here right now!”

  “You keep sayin’ that,” said Max. “But you’re wrong. I’m thinking of moving here. Building, like, a little house! With a porch and junk!”

  “Max, you don’t understand,” said Falcon. “I’ve got a problem with—”

  “Dude,” said Max. “Your problem is in your mind. You want to be happy, you got to get with the program. Got to shake out all that tension! Here, take a deep cleansing breath, man. Go on—inhale! Exhale! Inhale! Exhale. You see how that releases the toxins?”

  “Max,” said Falcon, pointing now over his friend’s shoulder. “Run!”

  “Run?” said Max. “What do you mean, run?”

  “Three!” shouted Snort, and began to charge.

  “I mean run!” said Falcon. Max, just barely beginning to understand that something was going on behind him, slowly turned as the thundering rhino bore down upon him, horn first.

  “Duuuuude,” Max yelled, and jumped up in the air. A moment later he came down, although unfortunately for the Sasquatch, he landed directly on the back of the charging wererhino.

  Falcon spread the enormous white wings that until now had lain flat against his back. With a sudden pulse, they lifted him out of the lemonade stand just as Snort crashed into it. There was the sound of splintering wood as the stand smashed into thousands of pieces, and lemons went flying in every direction.

  “Hang on, Max,” said Falcon, and swept toward him.

  “Dude!” shouted Max. “I’m totally on top of a charging rhino!”

  Sonahmen Ankh-hoptet, the teenage mummy, was sitting in the audience at the Hall of Boxing Robot Presidents, wondering whether her friend Lincoln Pugh, the werebear, was ever going to work up the courage to hold her mummified, gauze-wrapped hand. Looking down at her fingers, Ankh-hoptet rather wished she’d remembered to wrap herself in fresh bandages this morning; the gauze that encircled her was still stained with a few splotches of tomato sauce from a pizza party the night before. It’s because of me, the mummy thought. He doesn’t want to hold my hand because he doesn’t like my wrappings.

  At the moment Lincoln was in his human form, a small, pale boy with red hair. Usually he al
so wore a pair of especially ugly, rectangular, orange spectacles; but he’d misplaced these recently, making him, on the one hand, somewhat less ridiculous looking but, on the other hand, terribly nearsighted. Lincoln and Ankh-hoptet sat in the dark and watched the show. In the boxing ring, lit by spotlights, a robot Abe Lincoln was beating up a robot Richard Nixon. Lincoln was fast on his feet, and in no time at all the Great Emancipator had Nixon pinned up against the ropes. He connected with a left to Nixon’s jaw, and Nixon went down. The crowd roared. Lincoln raised his hands in the air. “I am the greatest!” he said.

  At this moment a rhino horn plowed through the ring, like the dorsal fin of a shark, ripping through the canvas and sending Abe Lincoln flying into space. Just behind the moving horn was a Sasquatch, yelling at the top of his lungs.

  “What’s going on?” said Lincoln Pugh. “I can’t see without my glasses!”

  “It’s Max,” said Ankh-hoptet. “He’s—”

  “Somebody help me!” shouted Max. “I’m stuck on a rhino!”

  The rhino turned around and stabbed the Richard Nixon with his horn at the very moment the Nixon was finally back on its feet. There was a flash of sparks. “I am not a—werrp,” the robot said, and its arm fell off. “Werrrp.” The sweat on the robot’s upper lip burst into flames.

  “Uh-oh,” said Lincoln Pugh.

  “You should transform into your bear self,” said Ankh-hoptet. “And put a stop to this charging rhino.”

  “Maybe,” said Lincoln nervously as Snort stampeded through the hall.

  “Lincoln,” muttered Ankh-hoptet. “This moment calls for a hero.”

  “Yes, well,” he replied. “Sometimes the most heroic thing you can do is nothing.”

  “This is your philosophy?” said Ankh-hoptet. “The philosophy of nothing?”

  “It’s worked out okay for me so far.”

  Now Falcon Quinn flew into the auditorium, his wings beating. He tried to swoop down and get hold of Max, but Snort’s movements were unpredictable.

  “What’s that?” said Lincoln Pugh, squinting. “Is that Falcon Quinn?”

  “It is Falcon Quinn indeed,” said Ankh-hoptet with a sigh. “The angel! The hero!”

  “There, you see,” said Lincoln Pugh. “I told you it would all work out.”

  Falcon dove toward Max once more, but Snort lowered his horn and thundered toward the far wall of the room. Young monsters scattered and screamed as the rhino crashed through the wall and back out into the crowds of Hematoma Boulevard, Monster Island’s main street. There was a band of middle school marching goblins passing in front of the Hall of Boxing Robot Presidents at that moment. Snort, with Max still stuck upon his back, charged directly into the trombones. “It’s the end of the world!” shouted Elaine Screamish, a banshee who’d been watching the parade.

  “That’s not the end of the world,” said a minotaur named Picador, who was also the president of the student body. “That’s Falcon Quinn!”

  “What’s he doing?” said Maeve Crofton, a fire elemental who was also Picador’s girlfriend. She looked at Falcon flying around in circles above Max’s head.

  “Hey!” said Picador. “He’s attacking Snort!”

  At this moment there was an ear-piercing, brain-rattling trumpeting, and everyone—Snort, Falcon, Max, the goblins—stopped in their tracks and recoiled from the blasting sound. The director of the park, an elephant man named Mr. Trunkanelli, was standing in the midst of the melee, blasting on his long, gray trunk. The trumpeting sound was so loud it knocked people over and left them stunned and half dazed upon the pavement of Hematoma Boulevard.

  “What’s the big idea?” shouted the elephant man.

  “That kid attacked the other one,” said Picador. “Falcon Quinn, the angel. He was flying around, trying to hurt the rhino.”

  “Oh, he was, was he?” said Mr. Trunkanelli, narrowing his eyes. “I’ve heard about you, Mr. Quinn. I’ve heard all about you.”

  “Everybody’s heard about Falcon Quinn,” said Picador.

  Snort looked at Mr. Trunkanelli and started to cry. “I just wanted a little egg cream,” he said, sniffing. “That’s all I ever wanted. I guess that’s a crime!”

  Mr. Trunkanelli wiped his big, gray head with one hand. He looked at Max. “What’s all this about?”

  “I don’t know, man,” said Max. “I was just, like, eatin’ this big ol’ hot dog when all of a sudden, I was, like, ridin’ this rhino-cyclone!”

  “And you, Mr. Snort,” shouted Mr. Trunkanelli. “I warned you about the stampeding! What is the law, Mr. Snort? Tell me the law!”

  A big tear rolled down Snort’s face. He lowered his horn almost to the ground. “No stampedin’,” he said.

  “And yet here we are,” shouted Mr. Trunkanelli. He blasted his trunk again, and everyone covered their ears. “Goblin trombones—flattened! A lemonade stand—reduced to splinters!”

  The robot Abraham Lincoln stumbled out of the hole in the side of the Hall of Boxing Robot Presidents. “Four score—werrrp—,” he said, smoke billowing from his ears. “And seven—zzzz—” With this, the president’s head fell off, leaving nothing upon his neck but a vibrating spring. For a moment, headless Abe Lincoln stumbled around the porch. Then he tripped on his own decapitated head and fell over.

  “My Abe Lincoln!” shouted Mr. Trunkanelli, and he trumpeted again. “You busted my Abe Lincoln!”

  Falcon looked over at the weeping wererhino and felt sorry for him. “It wasn’t Snort’s fault,” he said.

  “What’s that?” said Mr. Trunkanelli.

  “It wasn’t?” said Snort.

  “No,” said Falcon. “I—I guess I forced him into it. I—tricked him.”

  “But why?” said Mr. Trunkanelli, reaching into his pocket for some peanuts. “Why would you do this? Why?”

  “I don’t know,” said Falcon. “I thought it would be funny, I guess.”

  Mr. Trunkanelli looked at Snort. “Is this true? Did this angel deliberately mislead you?”

  Snort shrugged and mumbled something.

  “What was that?’

  “Yes,” said Snort. “He did! He tricked me into it! I didn’t wanna stampede! Honest I didn’t!”

  Mr. Trunkanelli sighed and wiped his face with his hand again. “Bludd Club,” he said. “Tonight. The both of you, busing tables.” He trumpeted. “Understand?”

  Snort looked a little pale. “But—that’s where the vampires—”

  “I said Bludd Club!” yelled Mr. Trunkanelli. “Tonight!” He trumpeted again, so loudly that Max covered his ears. He turned to the goblins. “What are you all looking at? Start the parade again!” The elephant man walked into the Hall of Boxing Robot Presidents to inspect the damage. The goblins looked at one another, then at their drum major, an orc with an ornate mace. She pounded the ground with her mace four times, and the goblins began to march once more, some of them playing instruments that Snort’s stampeding hooves had bent into unrecognizable shapes. The trombones now made odd, squeaking sounds, like kazoos, and the crowd that had gathered around the three young monsters dispersed. “You know, I like that sound better than trombone,” said Max. “It’s relaxing!”

  “Thanks for nothing, Falcon Quinn,” said Snort. “Now I gotta bus tables tonight. In the Bludd Club!” Steam blew out of his nostrils.

  “You’re welcome,” said Falcon.

  “One of these days,” said Snort, “you’re going to realize your little routine doesn’t fool nobody. Everybody knows what you’re trying to do. What you are.”

  “What am I, Snort?” said Falcon, his dark eye growing hot.

  Snort looked at the angel, his wings spreading angrily, one of his eyes beginning to glow with fire. “You tell me, angel face. What are you?”

  With this, Snort turned from Falcon and Max and walked away.

  “Man, what a sorehead,” said Max.

  “What did he mean, everybody knows what I’m trying to do?” asked Falcon.

  “What did he me
an? Nothing, man! He’s a doofus!”

  “Yeah, but Max, what was he saying—that people think I’m . . . against them or something?”

  “Nah,” said Max. “Nobody says that. Only the doofuses.” Max looked nervous. “They don’t know what they’re talking about.”

  Falcon’s angel wings folded down flat against his back. “So people do say things,” he said. “Sometimes.”

  “Yeah, well, people say all sorts of stuff,” said Max. “What are you going to do, man, spend all your time listening to everything somebody says?”

  “What do they say?” said Falcon. “Max? What?”

  Max blew some air through his cheeks. “Are you hungry?” he said. “I’m totally starved.”

  “Max,” said Falcon. “Tell me.”

  Max sighed again. “Well, when we left the Academy? Last spring? That whole adventure seemed kind of wonky to some people, after it was over. I’m not saying I thought it was wonky. I’m just saying.”

  “Wonky how?” said Falcon.

  “Well, ’cause Megan Crofton . . . never came back. That’s got some people kind of grouchy, especially her sisters. You know? And then Jonny Frankenstein kind of . . . disappeared. And Peeler and Woody got, like, toasted. So, you know. Some people—the stupid ones—say they never got the whole story. That it was all part of some crazy plot or something.”

  “What kind of plot?” said Falcon. “What are you talking about?”

  “Well , it’s like—everybody knows your mother’s, like, the enemy. The leader of the monster killers and stuff. You can see how it’d make people antsy.”