Chapters (79)
- Cover
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- Forty
- Forty-One
- Forty-Two
- Forty-Three
- Forty-Four
- Forty-Five
- Forty-Six
- Forty-Seven
- Forty-Eight
- Forty-Nine
- Fifty
- Fifty-One
- Fifty-Two
- Fifty-Three
- Fifty-Four
- Fifty-Five
- Fifty-Six
- Fifty-Seven
- Fifty-Eight
- Fifty-Nine
- Sixty
- Sixty-One
- Sixty-Two
- Sixty-Three
- Sixty-Four
- Sixty-Five
- Sixty-Six
- Sixty-Seven
- Sixty-Eight
- Sixty-Nine
- Seventy
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Praise for Destroy All Monsters
- Books by Sam J. Miller
- Back Ad
- About the Publisher
She stood, tall and thin and all in black, and then she put her hand to her stomach—and I saw something strange in her face. Pain. She was old, and she was human. It was easy to forget those things with someone as strong as Cass. I reached out to take her hand and she blinked, startled back to the present moment.
“Are you okay, Cass?”
“Of course,” she said, looking away from me too fast. “Just working too hard, lately.”
Cass had dedicated her whole life to the Truth; to exposing secrets and bringing darkness to light. So of course she was a terrible liar. But I let her have the lie, because if she was sick or something, I didn’t want the truth.
I left on foot; I’d kept Maraud in the paddock at the Underbridge all day. I didn’t like all the nasty stares she got, lately. The Shield’s “Destroy All Monsters” tags were having the desired effect—people were more and more hostile toward othersiders and the beasts they shared the city with. Maraud would snap the head off of anybody who started real trouble with me, but that was exactly the point. Decapitation, even if it were justified, would be a whole big mess I just didn’t need.
Angry faces were everywhere. Ultramarine armbands. Every one of them made my heart sink a little, and chilled the blood in my veins a couple degrees. A teenaged girl held a baseball bat with nails driven through it; two little boys clutched broken beer bottles by the necks and stared at me with cold, fearless hostility.
I took pictures of it all, because I didn’t know what else to do with the fear I felt.
I stumbled onto the rally by purblind dumb chance. In a park in Riversea Terrace: a rough, crime-ridden neighborhood where hardly any othersiders lived. I saw a crowd, and I headed for it.
Signs said “Destroy All Monsters” and “Abolish All Magic” and “Down with the Queen” and “We Will Not Live in Fear.”
It was not a huge rally. A couple hundred people. No podium, no microphone. Just a man, up front, barely fifty feet away from me, standing on the steps to a fountain that had run dry a decade ago, featuring a dragon that had long since been decapitated. Spray-painted blue, now.
“I am your Shield,” he said. “I will protect you from them.”
No mask. No uniform. I’d been imagining something from a nightmare, from a myth. A perfectly sculpted image. Perhaps wearing an anarchist’s mask. This guy’s hair was a mess, and his button nose and rosy cheeks and arrogant smile could have belonged to anyone. He could have been anyone. And here he stood, in a public park, out in the open, unafraid of the Palace or the police or the wrath of any othersider.