Page 128 of An Inheritance of Monsters

I stared up at him, muscles clenched, another memory popping into my head. “Is Sierra… dead?”

“No.” He gestured lazily, and I glanced over and found her propped in the corner, tied up as tightly as I was. Her hair was caked with blood, her eyes closed; I guessed she’d also been given the Carson Candelabra Treatment just before I’d made my way into the dining room. “She’s alive and breathing. Just unconscious.”

“Exactly what do you need me for?” My thoughts were catching up slower than my vision.

He looked down at me and scoffed, a sound of pure incredulity. “What for?”

Carson rounded the dining table and reached for something that’d been laying on his seat, bringing it back to me.

When he laid the Black Book on the table, I wanted to explode right out of these ropes in a mad fury and rip his head off with my bare hands. “You stole my book!”

Iknewhe was the one who’d stolen it. I’d probably walked within inches of it and had never even realized it was there.

“Obviously.” Carson patted the cover fondly. “Well, if you want to get technical, Jack stole it.”

“I don’t give a damn which of you did it.” My jaw ached from how hard my teeth were grinding together. “I care that you lied to my face about it.”

Another lazy hand wave. The lights shone in his gelled hair as he flipped the cover open. “He stole it because he thought your notes would give us a leg up on this episode, but Junes… after what I found in here, I realized none of that matters.”

As he talked, I tried to twist my hands, searching for any looseness that would allow me to slip my hands out of the ropes. They abraded the thin skin of my wrists, burning deeper with every twist, but if I could just find one loose knot…

“Deadspace,Spirit Squad, the Sci-Fi Network… who cares?” Carson looked up from the Black Book, his color hectic, and I stopped twisting. “Those are nothing compared to this.Nothing. This is a whole new world. New species. New physics.”

A short, appalled laugh escaped me. “You’re playing with fire and you don’t even know it.”

“I know we’re going to be billionaires,” he said swiftly, flipping another page. I caught a glimpse of my sketch of Zirin, his fingers lingering on my drawing. “Why would I settle for pennies from the Network when I could sell a real-life fucking monster to universities? To scientists? Hell, I’ll even accept private offers. Some Saudi prince probably wants his own monster menagerie.”

“‘We’?” I asked, my tone flat. “Or you?”

Carson stopped flipping pages and abandoned the notebook, crouching next to me and putting a hand on my leg. “We. Look, Junes, I know you’re still angry about the Storm Grove paper, and I know you discovered this world—the Void—on your own. I’m willing to let you take half the credit, half the pay… if you just work with me on this.”

I stared at him in total disbelief.

He’d stolen my notebook, made horrible plans to sell off the monsters like they were some sort of exotic pets, hurt Sierra, and slammed me in the head with a candelabra… and he was willing to let metake credit?

Unbelievable.

“You realize the monsters won’t just allow themselves to be sold off to Saudi princes, right?” I asked coldly. “They’re not animals. They have minds and wills of their own.”

Carson shrugged. “Sure. And with enough tranquilizers, we should have no problem getting them in a cage. Or killing them outright. I don’t think you get it. People are going to pay out the ass for these things, dead or alive, and that means we’re going to have access to some of the top technology in our world.”

Thesethings. I hated Carson more and more with each passing second, my heart racing so fast I felt it throbbing in my throat and temples.

I tried to take several shallow breaths and calm myself, even as rage boiled through me.

It didn’t pay to be stupid in the heat of the moment.

And if Carson thought he’d swayed me to his side… well, maybe I’d have a fighting chance at getting out of these ropes and feeding him to Voraal.

“Okay. Okay.” I exhaled slowly, meeting his excited gaze. “You’re right about that… it’s a lot more thanSpirit Squadwould ever make.”

He nodded, the beginnings of a grin playing about his lips. “I read all the notes you left on them. These shadow monsters, theV’uthli, sound like they’ll be a bitch to capture, but even just one of thoseKlee… god, Juno, picture it. Once we’ve caught and sold off enough of them, we could finance a whole research center right here on the island. The West-Weaver Paranormal Research Institute.”

I licked my dry lips, frantically trying to recall every note I’d written while trying to look convinced by his words.

I knew I’d made lists of women, my own name among them… I’d drawn the monsters in the best detail I could manage…

And I’d written about the Fuseli Comet. How its arrival heralded the end of the Earth as we knew it.

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