The little girl gasped. Not only had she not expected vampires, but she also hadn’t imagined that if there were, there would be so many. She was completely surrounded, some on the ground, some hovering in the air, wind blowing through them making such terrible sounds. And at any moment they would pile on and drain out every last bit of her.
Then, from out in the desert, came the most terrifying sound, like a pig being both strangled and stabbed at the same time. The earth rumbled, tremors like a freight train headed right for her. And then the wind took away her light.
Screeches of a scuffle surrounded her, howls, bloodthirsty and raw, shrill against the night. Bones shattered to dust. Leathery skin shredded. The ever-present whistling began to quiet and the remaining nomorodo began chittering nervously.
Then came a burst of light so bright it lit the desert purple for miles before blinding the little girl, the image of a half dozen nomorodo being mauled by a gigantic beast burned into her eyes. Whatever it was, it was too massive, too malformed to comprehend in so brief an instant.
The nomorodo begged for their lives in dry, sand-mouthed rasps, but whatever this thing was, it showed them no mercy at all. The remaining nomorodo scattered, the whistling fading quickly as they ran for their lives.
A tangle of rags blew in the wind, wrapping loosely around the little girl’s ankle, the only reminder left of its former owner. Another gust came along and took it away, dragging it off, lonely, into the desert.
Her eyes adjusted and when she looked again, the stars and moon had come back out. Standing before her was a monstrous beast, six clawed legs, fangs larger and longer than she, bristling fur from stem to stern. Atop it sat another little girl, roughly her own age, wearing purple pajamas with bright yellow stars.
The little girl atop the monster offered her a hand, helped her up onto the beast along with her.
“Thank you,” said the little girl.
“You’re welcome,” said the girl atop the monster.
“Are you . . . are you the Queen of the Dark Things?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “The Queen of the Dark Things is dead. She died in a land far, far away. My name’s Kaycee. Just Kaycee.”
And they rode off together to a safer part of the dream.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
C. ROBERT CARGILL is the screenwriter of the film Sinister, and he is currently working on the film adaptation of Deus Ex. He wrote for Ain’t It Cool News for nearly a decade under the pseudonym Massawyrm, served as a staff writer for Film.com and Hollywood.com, and appeared as the animated character Carlyle on spill.com. The author of Dreams and Shadows lives and works in Austin, Texas.
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ALSO BY C. ROBERT CARGILL
DREAMS AND SHADOWS
CREDITS
Cover design by Adam Johnson
Cover photograph © by Philippe Sainte-Laudy
Photography/Getty Images
Author photograph © by Jessica Cargill
COPYRIGHT
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Harper Voyager and design is a trademark of HCP LLC.
QUEEN OF THE DARK THINGS. Copyright © 2014 by C. Robert Cargill. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
ISBN 978-0-06-219045-1
EPub Edition May 2014 ISBN 9780062190475
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