Exclusive IJB Read!

Here’s an excerpt from my bestselling middle grade novel, The Iron-Jawed Boy. This is yet another scene where I really got to play with visuals. And spiders.

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And then he saw it…something…multiple somethings…long and leathery arms creeping out a hole in the middle of the ceiling. They slithered down the walls, into the reach of the moonlight, and Ion gasped. They weren’t arms. They were vines—fat, green vines veiled in bulbous, throbbing zits.

Ion took to the middle of his bed, somewhere in between panic and utter confusion.

More vines spilled down the walls, until the walls could no longer be seen.

Ion focused and as the hairs on his arms rose, out from their tips whipped thin bolts of electricity. The vines washed down onto the floor, and Ion tightened his fists, the electricity growing thicker.

The hissing came from all around, and then, pop, pop, pop like the violent death of a balloon bouquet. Ion could only watch now as the throbbing zits on the vines exploded with green juices…and hairy, black spiders.

He screamed as spiders sprayed through the air, landing on his bed, his tunic, and a few on his face. Ion fired lightning in every which direction, but with each bolt and crack of thunder that came, so followed more pops and more spiders. When the vines coiled around the legs of his bed, the spiders gathered at the end of Ion’s mattress, right there on the sheets, climbing on top of one another, until a great tower of black, hairy legs and fangs stood before him. He fell back in horror, and the spiders fell away to the floor, leaving in their wake a teenage girl with blazingly red hair, and green eyes that burned with a vengeance.

 

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