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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

Now, I’m pretty tall, and muscular, so people tended to assume I knew how to fight. What frightened me was the confidence on his face. Like he’d marched right into a lion’s den and didn’t believe the lions could hurt him. It enraged me.

“You lost?” I asked him.

“I’m exactly where I need to be,” he said. “It’s you who aren’t supposed to be here. You aren’t supposed to be anywhere. You’re an abomination. All of you.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “You really believe that?”

“We haven’t forgotten the Night of Red Diamonds,” he hissed.

“Neither have we.”

Just a few years back, the simmering tension between people with magic and people without it boiled over. A big bloody brawl in the streets; each side said the other was to blame. And whatever the real story was, at the end of the night there was a whole lot of blood and a whole lot of broken glass in the street. Glittering like red diamonds.

That was when street gangs started targeting us. Othersider businesses were burned down. People began calling on the queen to make our magic illegal, or to drive us out of Darkside altogether.

“There will be a reckoning,” he whispered, stepping closer.

A rock struck him, in the head. Not too big, and not too hard. He knelt there, his face reddening, one hand holding himself up and the other clenched into the tightest fist I’d ever seen. I dropped to my knees, to be eye level with him, to capture the chaos in the background, the blurry crowd and the flames, and took a photograph.

He stood up, breathing heavy. Ran off. I remained on my knees. My friend Shoshana waved, from the window of a shack across the way. She held her hand out in front of her, and rocks rose up into the air, waiting for the next jerk who came along looking for trouble.

It wasn’t long before we had the armbands in retreat.

I glanced down at my camera. What I had captured—if it came out— It was powerful. The best picture I’d ever taken. Cass would be proud.

I headed for the dinosaur paddock.

“Come on, girl,” I said, when I got to Maraud, and kissed the smooth pebbled texture of her purple skin.

The streets smelled like patchouli oil and cigarette smoke. On my way out, for the first time I saw the graffiti. An ultramarine silhouette, life-size, on one of the pillars that held up the bridge. A man, broad-shouldered, legs apart, hands clasped behind his back.

Spray-painted underneath: “He Is the Answer.”

But who was “he”?

And if he was the answer, what the hell was the question?

Five

Ash