The confectioner’s window is a mouthwatering sight.
A miniature garden complete with caramel truffle walls, a spun-sugar pagoda, marzipan birds, a rock-candy fountain, and a couple carved from chocolate that kiss one another within the shade of a sprawling bon-bon tree. The whole scene is shaded by an awning to keep the sweets
Hayden DuPont peeled away the bear’s gut and poked his head into the morning air. Mushy fur sagged as Montana wind sliced through the beast’s opening. Intestines and fluids dripped. DuPont’s breath plumed. Relief flooded his chest.
Alive.
Naked and caked in dried blood, he crawled from the bear’s protective womb and toddled
With a final cry, I swept the ogre’s foul head off his body and sidestepped as he crashed to the ground beside his two brethren. Before the dust settled, I bounded up the hill to their lair, whence black smoked billowed. They kept their ill-gotten treasures within—and their captives, who cried piteously
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“You are, without doubt, the laziest dragon hunter I have ever encountered,” scoffed Dorvan’s unwelcome visitor, a young knight.
“Oh? What gave it away?” Dorvan sat outside his cottage with his feet propped up on a stool. He did not even look up as he turned a page in his book.
“I once thought
Gredna surveyed the sand and scrub ahead, tapping a claw to her muzzle. How could they get home?
Rocky mounds closed in on them from three sides. The hollow looked familiar, but no tracks marked the area.
Her brother, Hokle, crouched on all fours by a streambed, moonlight glinting off his tan scales
I collapsed in the shade of an acacia tree, panting. My legs still tingled from the countless scratchy beards that had stampeded our direction.
Beside me, Archibald Waverly, renowned safari guide and wild mustache expert, lay flopped on the ground, pith helmet askew. “That was a close one.”
It was a moment
“What makes it work?” I asked, leaning back in my chair.
“We don’t really know,” Dr. Tine shrugged. “Some energy source that we haven’t been able to figure out. Our scientists who worked in the lab with the last one ended up getting sick, and some of them died within months. Nasty stuff.
Something was killing the chickens. Outside the window, in the coop, their squawks broke the silent Kentucky night beyond the homestead’s walls—chaotic bursts of fear and agony.
A boy of fifteen, Roland Chadwick sprang out of bed while his younger brother and sister gazed at him wide-eyed from the mattress the three of them shared
The moon bathed the graveyard in silver light, reflecting off the polished marble of younger headstones. The older markers seemed to hide from the light, becoming one with the shadows around them. At least that’s what Cassie told herself as she tripped over the second one of the evening. Cursing under her breath
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Our world is captured by the Fears—the wraiths of mankind. They haunt us and hunt us, because we are the Children of the Promise. The last hope for the human race.
Which is why I’m leaning against the side of a building in the heat of the sun, watching people
“Licenses, please.”
“Sure thing, Warden.” The hunter brushed back her curly red hair and leaned her rifle against a nearby pine. She patted the front of her camouflage vest, searching, turned out her empty pockets, and glanced at her burly partner.
The male hunter stuck up a finger. “Hey, maybe they never gave
Freezing rain slicked the sidewalk and dripped from the remaining bulbs around the dark marquee. I sighed, my breath frosting in the air. Really, an abandoned movie theater? Some people have no sense of subtlety.
I ducked through the broken door, boots crunching on shattered glass, and followed
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