Dangerous Creatures (44 page)

Link was singing, the radio was playing, and the wind was blowing. Rid’s window was down and her hand was hanging out to feel the warmth of the sun. There were cows on one side of the highway and horses on the other. Everywhere she looked, round bales of hay sat tied up with string, like birthday presents.

Ridley felt pretty good, for someone with a banged-up heart and a bounty on her head. Her ring tapped against the side of the car, but she couldn’t see if it was glowing, and right now she didn’t care.

Which was also the reason she didn’t see the truck coming right at them.

Sugarplum—

People said the gas tank alone burned more than two stories high.

Hot Rod, don’t you leave me—

The back of the Beater? Smashed like a dropped accordion.

Stairs. Flames. The sky.

“Stairway to Heaven” kept playing right up until the radio caught fire.

To be continued…

Acknowledgments

S
O MANY PEOPLE HAVE WORKED   
together to bring our readers the continuing adventures of Link and Ridley and the Caster world in the Dangerous Creatures novels. The last six months have been nothing short of miraculous.

Our agents, Sarah Burnes (and everyone at the Gernert Company, on behalf of Margie) and Jodi Reamer (and everyone at Writers House, on behalf of Kami), have collaborated, as always, with grace and general awesomeness.

Our editors, Kate Sullivan (for Margie) and Erin Stein (for Kami), as well as our former editor, Julie Scheina, have been not just patient and brilliant but passionately #TeamLinkAndRidley from the start.

The publishing, sales, editorial, marketing, publicity, school and library services, art direction, and copyediting groups at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers have continued to work tirelessly on behalf of Casters everywhere.

The teachers, librarians, booksellers, bloggers, journalists, tumblr-ers, tweethearts, Facebook followers, cousins, aunts, uncles, friends, writer friends, YALLFestians, and most of all DEAR READERS (NOTE: THIS IS YOU) who make up the larger Caster world have become the GREATEST FANDOM OF ALL HUMAN HISTORY.

We offer up a giant, Wesley Lincoln–sized thank-you to all of you.

But most especially, we want to thank our families. You, darlings, are the collective loves of our respective lives. You Charm us every day.

Lewis, Emma, May & Kate, and Alex, Nick & Stella, we’ll save you the biggest cherry lollipops of them all.

XO,

Margie & Kami

Copyright

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2014 by Kami Garcia, LLC, and Margaret Stohl, Inc.

Excerpt from
Icons
copyright © 2013 by Margaret Stohl, Inc.

Excerpt from
Unbreakable
copyright © 2013 by Kami Garcia, LLC

All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

Little, Brown and Company

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Visit our website at
lb-teens.com

Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

First Edition: May 2014

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Garcia, Kami, author.

Dangerous creatures / by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl.

pages cm

Summary: “Siren Ridley and her rocker boyfriend Link move to New York City to make it big with their supernatural band mates in Sirensong, but Caster trouble follows them”—Provided by publisher.

ISBN 978-0-316-37031-8 (hardback) — ISBN 978-0-316-37626-6 (special edition hardcover) — ISBN 978-0-316-40545-4 (international paperback edition) [1. Supernatural—Fiction. 2. Sirens (Mythology)—Fiction. 3. Rock groups—Fiction. 4. Love—Fiction.] I. Stohl, Margaret, author. II. Title.

PZ7.G155627Dan 2014   [Fic]—dc23   2013048080

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

RRD-C

Printed in the United States of America

E3

GUARD YOUR HEART.…

TURN THE PAGE FOR A PEEK AT MARGARET STOHL’S ROMANTIC THRILLER
ICONS
!

AVAILABLE NOW HOWEVER BOOKS ARE SOLD

The Pietà of La Purísima

F
eelings are memories.

That’s what I’m thinking as I stand there in the Mission chapel, the morning of my birthday. It’s what the Padre says. He also says that chapels turn regular people into philosophers.

I’m not a regular person, but I’m still no philosopher. And either way, what I remember and how I feel are the only two things I can’t escape, no matter how much I want to.

No matter how hard I try.

For the moment, I tell myself not to think. I focus on trying to see. The chapel is dark but the doorway to outside is blindingly bright. That’s what morning always looks like in the chapel. The little light there prickles and stings my eyes.

Like in the Mission itself, in the chapel you can pretend that nothing has changed for hundreds of years, that nothing has happened. Not like in the Hole, where they say the buildings have fallen into ruins, and Sympa soldiers control the streets with fear, and you think about nothing but The Day, every day.

Los Angeles, that’s what the Hole used to be called. First Los Angeles, then the City of Angels, then the Holy City, then the Hole. When I was little, that’s how I used to think of the House of Lords, as angels. Nobody calls them
alien
anymore, because they aren’t. They’re familiar. We never see them, but we’ve never known a world without them, not Ro and me. I grew up thinking they were angels because back on The Day they sent my parents to heaven. At least, that’s what the Grass missionaries told me, when I was old enough to ask.

Heaven, not their graves.

Angels, not aliens.

But just because something comes from the sky doesn’t make it an angel. The Lords didn’t come here from the heavens to save us. They came from some faraway solar system to colonize our planet, on The Day. We don’t know what they look like inside their ships, but they’re not angels. They destroyed my family the year I was born. What kind of angel would do that?

Now we call them the House of Lords—and Ambassador Amare, she tells us not to fear them—but we do.

Just as we fear her.

On The Day, the dead dropped silently in their homes, never seeing what hit them. Never knowing anything about our new Lords, about the way they could use their Icons to control the energy that flowed through our own bodies, our machines, our cities.

About how they could stop it.

Either way, my family is gone. There was no reason for me to have survived. Nobody understood why I did.

The Padre suspected, of course. That’s why he took me.

First me, and then Ro.

I hear a sound from the far end of the chapel.

I squint, turning my back to the door.

The Padre has sent for me, but he’s late. I catch the eye of the Lady from the painting on the wall. Her face is so sad, I think she knows what has happened. I think she knows everything. She’s part of what General Ambassador to the Planet Hiro Miyazawa, the head of the United Embassies, calls the old ways of humanity. How we believed in ourselves—how we survived ourselves. What we looked up to, back when we thought there was someone up above.

Not something.

I look back to the Lady a moment longer, until the sadness surges and the pain radiates through me. It pulses from my temples and I feel my mind stumble, folding at the edge of unconsciousness. Something is wrong. It must be, for the familiar ache to come on so suddenly. I press my hand to my temple, willing it to stop. I breathe deep, until I can see clearly.

“Padre?”

My voice echoes against the wood and stone. It sounds as small as I am. An animal has lurched into my leg, one of many more entering the chapel, and my nostrils fill with smells—hair and hides and hooves, paint and mold and manure. My birthday falls on the Blessing of the Animals, which will begin just hours from now. Local Grass farmers and ranchers will come to have the Padre bless their livestock, as they have for three hundred years. It is Grass tradition, and we are a Grass Mission.

Appearing in the door, the Padre smiles at me, moving to light the ceremonial candles. Then his smile fades. “Where’s Furo? Bigger and Biggest haven’t seen him at all this morning.”

I shrug. I can’t account for every second of Ro’s day. Ro could be lifting all the dried cereal cakes out of Bigger’s emergency supplies. Chasing Biggest’s donkeys. Sneaking down the Tracks toward the Hole, to buy more parts for the Padre’s busted-up old
pistola
, shot only on New Year’s Eve. Meeting people he doesn’t want me to meet, learning things he doesn’t want me to know. Preparing for a war he’ll never fight with an enemy that can’t be defeated.

He’s on his own.

The Padre, preoccupied as always, is no longer paying attention to himself or to me. “Careful…” I catch his elbow, pulling him out of the way of a pile of pig waste. A near miss.

He clicks his tongue and leans down to chuck Ramona Jamona on the chin. “Ramona. Not in the chapel.” It’s an act—really, he doesn’t mind. The big pink pig sleeps in his chamber on cold nights, we all know she does. He loves Ro and me just as he does Ramona—in spite of everything we do and beyond anything he says. He’s the only father we have ever known, and though I call him the Padre, I think of him as my Padre.

“She’s a pig, Padre. She’s going to go wherever she wants. She can’t understand you.”

“Ah, well. It’s only once a year, the Blessing of the Animals. We can clean the floors tomorrow. All Earth’s creatures need our prayers.”

“I know. I don’t mind.” I look to the animals, wondering. The Padre sinks onto a low pew, patting the wood next to him. “We can take a few minutes to ourselves, however. Come. Sit.”

I oblige.

He smiles, touching my chin. “Happy birthday, Dolly.” He holds out a parcel wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. It materializes from his robes, a priestly sleight of hand.