Unbreakable (7 page)

Lukas stood in front of a metal door, sorting through a bunch of keys.

Maybe this was a storage facility.

Five black dots that resembled the face of a die were spray painted above the lock, and a thick white line ran along the base of the door. It reminded me of the residue left on the streets after the snowplows came through.

Lukas noticed me staring and pointed at the symbol. “That’s a quincunx, a voodoo ward to protect the place.”

I nodded as if I knew what he was talking about. “Do you keep valuable stuff here?”

He gave me a strange look. “We keep all our stuff here.”

It took me a second to realize what he meant. I tried to hide my surprise, but I didn’t know a lot of people who lived in warehouses.

Lukas gestured at the white line in front of the door. “Make sure you step over the salt line without breaking it. Spirits hate rock salt.” After the way the girl had exploded in my bedroom, that was an understatement.

As I walked inside, I prepared myself for the possibility that we were sleeping in a rat-infested building. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Exposed pipes ran along the ceiling and gray steel beams reached up from the floor. White sheets hung from a wire that ran the length of the building, dividing the enormous room into two sections.

A break between the sheets revealed four neatly made mattresses, and shelves overflowing with clothes and books. A matching couch and chairs were positioned around a coffee table littered with papers and soda cans.

The floor vibrated from some serious bass, and I followed the sound of the White Stripes’ “Icky Thump” to the far end of the building.

This side of the warehouse looked like a cross between a library and a metal shop. Books rose in tall stacks along
the walls, with maps and drawings of strange symbols taped above them. Another cryptic design was painted in the middle of the floor—a heptagram enclosed within a circle, with more unfamiliar symbols intricately drawn between the lines. It must have taken someone hours to sketch that kind of detail on such a massive scale.

Power tools littered every available surface—from drills and sanders to screwdrivers and table saws, their orange extension cords tangled on the floor. Gun racks covered an entire wall, but the weapons resting on them didn’t look like regular guns. Most of the barrels didn’t match the bodies, as if someone had welded two different firearms together.

Someone like the kid sitting behind the workbench with a soldering iron in one hand, and a weapon straight out of a science-fiction movie in the other.

A hoodie shrouded his pale features, revealing only a long strip of blond bangs. A huge pair of headphones hung around his neck, and he was so caught up in his work and the music blaring from the speakers that he didn’t notice us right away. How old was he? Fourteen?

“Hey, you guys are back,” he shouted over the music, pushing his protective goggles on top of his head, which only made him look younger. “Check out what I’ve been working on.”

He held up the remains of an automatic weapon
complete with protruding bolts, crude soldering marks, and duct tape wrapped around the handle. The tape must’ve been his trademark.

Please be normal.

But what were the odds? The kid was building guns like they were model cars.

“Can you turn that down?” Lukas yelled, pointing at the speakers.

“No problem.” The boy leaned back and spun a dial behind him. He grinned at me and tossed the gun, or whatever it was, on the table. “You found her.”

What was he talking about?

Jared dropped the duffel bag and his shoulders relaxed. He lifted the weapon off the table and nodded his approval. “Looks good.”

Lukas gestured at the kid. “Kennedy, this is Priest. Engineer, inventor, mechanic, and a few other things we haven’t figured out yet.”

Priest flashed an impish grin. “Technically I’m a genius, but I prefer jack-of-all-trades. It sounds cooler. What’s your specialty, Kennedy?”

“My specialty?” I was pretty sure he wasn’t referring to my grilled cheese.

“You know, combat and weapons like Jared or mechanical engineering like me? What’s your poison?”

Combat and weapons? Was he kidding? I’d never seen
a gun before last night, when Lukas and Jared showed up in my room. Now I was staring at dozens of them.

Priest waited for me to impress him with a mind-blowing talent I didn’t possess. Drawing didn’t seem on the same level as weapons and engineering.

“Umm…”

Lukas walked over and clamped his free hand on Priest’s shoulder, giving it an affectionate squeeze. “We’ll get to that later. Kennedy’s probably beat. We had a run-in with a poltergeist at her place.”

Priest’s eyes widened. “For real? What happened? Spill.”

Lukas recounted the story while Priest hung on every word. He wanted all the details. Exactly how powerful was it? How close did the knives come to hitting us? I couldn’t believe his reaction. The kid was completely fascinated by a situation that would’ve terrified most people, including me.

Jared took a black metal toolbox down from the top of the fridge and sat on the floor, waving me over. I hesitated until he opened the box and I noticed the medical supplies inside.

“How old is he?” I whispered, tilting my head in Priest’s direction.

“Fifteen.”

“How old are you?”

“Seventeen,” Jared answered without looking at me.

I waited for him to ask me the same question. “Don’t you want to know how old I am?”

“I already know we’re the same age.” They probably had some kind of file on me, full of information I didn’t want them to know. Jared took out a bottle of peroxide and some gauze. “Let me see your hands.”

I held them up and wiggled my fingers. “They’re fine.”

“Really?” Jared rotated my wrist gently, revealing a trail of bloody scrapes across my palm. I tried to ignore the way my skin tingled in the places where his fingers touched. Resting my hand on his leg, he started to work the tiny bits of gravel out of my skin. He was so gentle that I barely felt it.

Not what I would’ve expected from a guy who was heavily armed and always so serious.

I stared at his long eyelashes. In any high school, the girls would be lining up for him. Was he in school before his father died? I wanted to ask, but it felt too personal while our hands were touching like this.

I settled for something else. “What did Priest mean when he asked about my specialty?”

“The original members of the Legion were experts in different areas—symbology, weaponry, alchemy, mathematics, engineering—and those specialties have been passed down,” he said. “They’ve probably changed a little in a couple hundred years, but you get the idea.”

“More proof that I’m not a member, and neither was my
mom. I don’t have any talents except drawing, and my mother spent all her time cooking.” I tried to sound casual as he finished wrapping my hand. “So unless vengeance spirits are into art or baked goods, you’ve got the wrong girl.”

Jared pressed the last piece of tape against my palm with his thumbs. He lifted his head slowly and his eyes met mine. “I don’t think you’re the wrong girl.”

I knew he wasn’t talking about me the way a regular boy might, but it felt like he was.

“Priest said your area of expertise is combat and weapons?”

He examined the excessive amount of tape crisscrossing the bandage. “It’s definitely not first aid.”

I pretended to inspect his work, my skin still tingling from his touch. “What does that mean exactly?”

Lukas walked over and stepped in front of his brother, staring down at him. “It means Jared can kick some serious ass.”

Jared seemed uncomfortable. He tossed what was left of the tape into the toolbox and stood up, disappearing behind the worktable without a word. Lukas took his brother’s place on the floor next to me. They looked so much alike that it almost felt like Jared was still sitting there.

“What’s your specialty?” I asked, filling the awkward silence.

“Patterns.”

“You lost me.”

Lukas laughed, and I noticed a subtle physical difference between the two brothers. They had exactly the same intense blue eyes and long, straight lashes, but when Lukas smiled, his eyes opened up like a break in the clouds. The storm in Jared’s never parted.

“Areas with an increase in paranormal activity have certain patterns—electrical storms, severe weather fluctuations, dramatic increases in suicide and violent crime. My job is to find those patterns, which usually involves hacking into the mainframes at hospitals, news stations, and police departments.” He sounded almost apologetic. “It’s not as cool as combat and weapons, but we don’t get to pick our specialties. We inherit them from the Legion member who chooses us.”

Lukas’ eyes dropped to the ground.

“Hacking computers sounds pretty cool to me,” I said.

“When I was a kid, my dad sparred with me all the time. He even taught me how to take his guns apart and make salt rounds. I thought he wanted me to replace him. But when the time came, he picked Jared.”

I wondered if that was the source of the tension between Lukas and Jared, a father picking one son over the other. Judging by the strained expression on Lukas’ face, it was at least one reason.

“Analyzing that kind of information seems complicated. Maybe your father knew that you were better at it.”

“You sound like my dad.” He forced a smile. “It’s not all analysis. I destroy my share of vengeance spirits, too.”

“Not tonight.” A girl’s voice echoed through the room, deep and authoritative. “You need to hit the books and find the Marrow.”

A tall girl towered over us, arms crossed tightly over her chest.

“Your wish is my command,” Lukas teased. He stood up and offered me a hand. “Kennedy, this is Alara.”

She didn’t strike me as particularly friendly, wearing what resembled authentic military-issue cargo pants, a leather tool belt, and a T-shirt that read
TAKE NO PRISONERS
. But that wasn’t what threw me. The girl was beautiful—with long wavy hair, perfectly smooth caramel-colored skin, and dark almond-shaped eyes. The silver hoop in her eyebrow made her look even more formidable.

Alara gave me the once-over, evaluating me on criteria I probably didn’t meet. “So you’re the mysterious fifth member?”

“I’m not—”

“It was a close call,” Lukas interrupted. “We got there just in time.”

“That’s what you get for having cats.” Alara frowned at me, an expression her features settled into easily. “Do you know how many cultures have folklore about cats stealing people’s breath?”

I didn’t.

“But how often has it actually happened?” Lukas asked offhandedly. The color drained from his face immediately.

Alara raised her eyebrows. “This month? That would be five.” She ticked off our murdered family members one at a time on her fingers.

I turned to Lukas. “Why would you have a cat if you knew that was possible?”

“They can see spirits, which makes them a convenient warning system,” he said. “Up until now, the whole cats-killing-people-in-their-sleep thing was more of an urban legend.”

“You didn’t have a cat?” I asked Alara.

Her frown deepened and she touched the silver medal around her neck, bearing yet another symbol I didn’t recognize. “My grandmother was Haitian. She knew better. The cat must’ve climbed through an open window.”

The more I learned about the invisible world lurking around us, the more I wanted to be oblivious again. But it was too late for that. Until I found a way to convince these people, and a demon, that I wasn’t the fifth member of their secret exorcist society, my life was in danger.

“Wait.” Alara stared at me, eyes wide, as the realization settled over her. “Are you messing with me?”

Any answer I gave her would be the wrong one.

“She doesn’t know anything about the Legion,” Lukas
said, before I had a chance to respond. “No one ever told her.”

A shudder ran through her body. “Oh my god.”

She knew what I was now—what I had been all along.

A liability.

L
ukas studied a creased US map spread over the coffee table, while everyone else flipped through a stack of newspapers on the floor. I hadn’t been at the warehouse long, and Alara’s plan to hit the books was already in full force.

I leaned over the map. “What are you looking for?”

“See this?” Lukas pointed to the red circles drawn around various cities and towns: Johnstown, Pennsylvania; Salem, West Virginia; Sugarcreek, Ohio; Wilmington, Delaware; Washington, DC. “I tracked paranormal surges over the last month and all these places had serious activity. We were looking for you, but I realized there was a pattern based on the other cities we checked first.”

It never occurred to me that they had looked anywhere else. “How did you figure out where I lived?”

“Hacked into local police servers and cross-referenced the cities with surges against death records. I looked for kids about our age that had parents who died the same night as the other members of the Legion. Then we took a road trip.”

I couldn’t believe they had worked so hard to find me. “What about school?”

Priest glanced up from the newspaper, headphones covering his ears. “Homeschooled. The public education system in Northern California wasn’t equipped to meet my needs.”

Jared shrugged. “We didn’t live in the best neighborhood in Philadelphia. No one really cared if you showed up at school. We traveled with our dad a lot, so we weren’t there much anyway.”

Alara ripped an article out of the newspaper in her lap. “I just bailed. Girls’ school sucks.”

With her combat boots, eyebrow ring, and chipped silver nail polish, she looked more like art school material. My hand itched at the thought of drawing.

Lukas traced the perimeter of the circled cities with his finger. “I think the Marrow might be somewhere in here.”

“What’s the Marrow?”

“It’s the location of Andras’ power supply in our world. Sort of like his personal supernatural power plant,” he explained. “Demons gain strength by taking control of human souls—either temporarily while we’re alive, or
permanently after we die. The more souls they control, the more powerful they become.”