Novels by Danielle Carico

Wrestling the sproutlings into order took far longer than Joanna had planned. Ten of them had to be counted, separated from the other ten, and convinced that guarding a wall was a promotion and not a punishment. Two refused to let go of Piper’s vines. One climbed a tree in the garden and wouldn’t come down. Another was found halfway through eating a fence post and had to be talked out of it, mostly by bribery with a level four core.Piper handed over the final sproutling, a small, stubborn one with a particularly glossy blossom. “Those are the ten,” she said. “Including the ones I mentioned. The tree-eater, the biter, and that one.” She jerked a vine toward the little sprout, who was sidling toward the barbecue grill by the hot spring. “That girl needs to stop flirting with the g

After breakfast, Joanna went to collect the toxin from Michelle and see the soldiers off. The plan was simple. She would teleport the route first to scan for hangups, while the convoy drove the whole way to Dillon in a day. The knot in her stomach hadn’t loosened since the dream, and it made her want to get to Dillon fast.In the lab, Michelle handed over a sealed, padded case. Inside, rows of glass vials held a fine, pale powder, the processed spores. “Handle it like it’s a sleeping dragon,” Michelle said. “Do not open these without masks.”“Understood.” Joanna slipped the case into her space and nodded to Warren, who gave her a thumbs-up from behind a respirator pushed up on his forehead.Out in the courtyard, two large military trucks sat idling, and s

Joanna stood in a room she didn’t remember entering.It was dark, and the dark felt thick, like something she had to push through to move. The walls were bare concrete, stained black in long vertical streaks where water seeped down from somewhere above. It dripped in a slow, uneven rhythm into puddles she couldn’t see. The air tasted of mildew, old blood, and something sharp and chemical underneath.She tried to step forward, but her body wouldn’t answer. She could only watch.Five men knelt against the far wall, chained at the wrists and ankles to iron rings set into the concrete. Rough burlap sacks covered their heads, cinched at the throat with twine. Their shoulders sagged, and their breathing came in shallow, wet rasps. Despair rolled off them in waves so heavy she could feel it pressing on he

The next morning, the base woke up grumbling.Jolie and Jake were openly irritated that they had missed the fight, and Jolie kept muttering about “the one day I do paperwork.” Leo, arm still in a sling, was in the middle of telling the story for the fourth time, and the deer-headed monster had grown another set of antlers since breakfast. Will, Allen, and Raven all wore the same aggrieved look of people who had been left out of the good part.Joanna huffed in amusement, then put on her sternest face. “Nobody is going back out there until you’ve absorbed your cores. That’s an order. Level up first, brag later.”A chorus of reluctant “Yes, Boss” followed her down the hall.She messaged Briggs several times that morning. Each

Catching her breath, Joanna smiled at the team, a tired, crooked, proud smile, and then glanced back at the wreckage of the deer-headed horror.Something was moving near its ruined head.Piper had crept up behind the carcass, vines slipping delicately into the split skull, and was easing out a core the size of a melon. It pulsed a deep, bruised purple-black, glistening with sap. She was being very quiet about it. Suspiciously quiet. Her blossoms were turned the other way, as if that would help.“NO, you don’t!” Joanna yelled.She blinked across the road and snatched the core out of Piper’s vines a heartbeat before it vanished into a blossom. It was heavy and warm, and it hummed against her palms.

“That’s... Piper?” Levi whispered.“That’s Piper,” Joanna said quietly. “Be very glad she likes us.”The sproutlings gave a delighted, bloodthirsty trill.The deer-headed creature took a single step back.For the first time, the calm intelligence in its eyes flickered with something like wariness. Its antlers dripped. The ranks of level fives behind it shifted but held, tilting their heads in unison.Piper went still. Her blossoms stopped swaying, and a faint green shimmer rippled up her vines and across the air between her and the beast. The silence stretched, thick enough to choke on. The creature’s black vines twitched in answer, slow and rhythmic, and the pulse beneath