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Chapters (79)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Epigraph
  4. One
  5. Two
  6. Three
  7. Four
  8. Five
  9. Six
  10. Seven
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Sixteen
  20. Seventeen
  21. Eighteen
  22. Nineteen
  23. Twenty
  24. Twenty-One
  25. Twenty-Two
  26. Twenty-Three
  27. Twenty-Four
  28. Twenty-Five
  29. Twenty-Six
  30. Twenty-Seven
  31. Twenty-Eight
  32. Twenty-Nine
  33. Thirty
  34. Thirty-One
  35. Thirty-Two
  36. Thirty-Three
  37. Thirty-Four
  38. Thirty-Five
  39. Thirty-Six
  40. Thirty-Seven
  41. Thirty-Eight
  42. Thirty-Nine
  43. Forty
  44. Forty-One
  45. Forty-Two
  46. Forty-Three
  47. Forty-Four
  48. Forty-Five
  49. Forty-Six
  50. Forty-Seven
  51. Forty-Eight
  52. Forty-Nine
  53. Fifty
  54. Fifty-One
  55. Fifty-Two
  56. Fifty-Three
  57. Fifty-Four
  58. Fifty-Five
  59. Fifty-Six
  60. Fifty-Seven
  61. Fifty-Eight
  62. Fifty-Nine
  63. Sixty
  64. Sixty-One
  65. Sixty-Two
  66. Sixty-Three
  67. Sixty-Four
  68. Sixty-Five
  69. Sixty-Six
  70. Sixty-Seven
  71. Sixty-Eight
  72. Sixty-Nine
  73. Seventy
  74. Acknowledgments
  75. About the Author
  76. Praise for Destroy All Monsters
  77. Books by Sam J. Miller
  78. Back Ad
  79. About the Publisher

Every muscle was on fire. Ankles, knees, wrists, elbows—every joint was aching, bent at an unnatural angle. I felt her power, felt how easy it would have been for her to jerk her head to the side and split me into a thousand pieces. How hard it was for her not to.

No wonder you wanna keep that a secret, I thought. Pretty nasty surprise for anyone unlucky enough to piss you off.

And then I thought: I totally deserve this.

Our eyes locked. I saw hers widen.

“Oh my gods, Solomon,” she said, and the fog of rage lifted, and I fell to the ground. She knelt down in the mud next to me. “I’m so, so sorry.”

Looking at me, the way my limbs were bent, the way my face was still twisted up in agony—that finally started her crying. And when she did, so did I.

I felt her inside my muscles again, soothing this time, finding every little stab of pain and snuffing it out.

All the pain except the one in my heart. That one just kept getting bigger and bigger, as the truth set in. She gathered me up in her arms.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “He’s gone. No one knows what happened to him.”

Connor. Gone.

Was he kidnapped? Broken? Dead?

Radha held me, and I held her.

Three charred corpses lay in the mud around us. “Your friend fought like hell,” a neighbor said. “Took out a whole bunch of them. But there were just so many. They got him too. Took them both away.”

Niv. Ready to sacrifice himself, for the people he loved. Just like when he ran away with Ash, knowing he’d be risking execution, because he put her safety above his own.

Pretty soon I’d have to get up from the ground, go meet Ash. Figure out how the hell we were going to save our friends.

I was so, so tired.

I howled. Wind echoed it. Rain fell down on us like we had done something horribly wrong, like we hadn’t suffered enough.

Forty-One

Ash

It rained like we had all done something terribly wrong. Like God was punishing us. My windshield wipers could hardly keep up. Nobody was out. The roads were ours.

“Stop the car,” Solomon said, after fifteen wordless minutes. I’d tried talking to him—asking him questions, about what went on back at the precinct—but he hadn’t answered. Just cried, as quietly as he could.

I couldn’t take him to my house. That’s the first place Mr. Barrett would have gone to. And I’d turned my phone off, so my parents couldn’t reach me when he told them about the idiotic thing I’d done. And I didn’t know where else to go. Where it was safe. So we kept driving.

“Please, Ash,” he whimpered. “Please stop.”