Incubus Read Online Free Page A

showered down. The silence was profound, but brief.
    Screams sounded inside and outside the sanctuary. I couldn’t summon the energy to look up.
    “Braedyn!” Lucas called, voice hoarse.
    I moved my arms away from my head gingerly, and slivers of glass tinkled to the ground. Glass
    littered the floor around me. Lucas was half-crawling, half-scrambling forward to meet me. I dragged
    myself up into a sitting position.
    Lucas threw an arm around me. In seconds we were surrounded. Mr. Landon was shouting, his
    usually jovial face a mask of panic. Annie was screaming into the phone, eyes streaming. And beyond
    them, a shell-shocked crowd of my classmates watched in horrified fascination.
    The only thing that felt real was Lucas’s arm around me. I realized I was clinging to him
    ferociously when Mr. Landon tried to pull us apart.
    “Are you hurt?” he was asking. “Braedyn, are you hurt?”
    “Don’t,” I whispered, tightening my grip on Lucas’s shirt. Mr. Landon pulled back helplessly.
    “How long?” he asked Annie. “How long until the ambulance gets here?”
    I didn’t hear Annie’s response. I was looking at Lucas’s face. “Did you see?” I whispered. “Did
    you see her eyes?” Lucas nodded grimly. So I wasn’t crazy. The woman who’d attacked us?
    She was a Thrall .
    We were still clinging to each other 15 minutes later when the paramedics arrived.

    Chapter 2
    As far back as I could remember, the moon had been a comforting beacon in the darkness. But tonight,
    the thin crescent sliver seemed distant, unfeeling. My shoulder ached. A student who’d seen the attack
    reported that the woman had leapt for me, clubbing that tire iron across my shoulder. I supposed I was
    lucky that the fracture was my only serious injury from the day. Most of the large stained glass shards
    had fallen out of the window with the woman. The few smaller fragments that had rained down on me
    left only superficial cuts on the skin of my hands and my lower back. My jacket had ridden up during
    my slide across the floor; otherwise, I might have escaped with even fewer cuts. My arm was bound
    up in a complicated sling, but I knew I’d only have to wear it for a few days, not the month or more
    the doctors had prescribed. There were a few perks to being Lilitu. One good night’s sleep would ease
    the pain, three or four would heal the fracture completely.
    I glanced out the window to the Guard’s house next door. Lucas’s drapes were closed, but I could
    see the light was on. It was close to midnight, but he was still awake. Probably getting grilled by
    Gretchen again, going over the whole attack in excruciating detail. As the Guard’s resident spotter in
    Puerto Escondido, Gretchen would have been on high alert just knowing there was a Thrall in town.
    But the Thrall had just attacked Lucas, the last family Gretchen had in this world. She’d drive herself
    to find the Lilitu responsible, no matter what it cost her.
    A Thrall in town. We hadn’t seen one since Ais’s death. It hadn’t surprised either Lucas or me to
    learn that after she’d fallen through the stained glass window, the Thrall had rolled to her feet and
    stood up. What did shock us was that instead of returning to the sanctuary to renew her attack on us,
    the Thrall had fled the scene. Thralls don’t give up. Once they have their orders, they pursue their
    objective until they are killed or incapacitated—or until the orders are rescinded. I couldn’t guess
    what the Lilitu who’d sent that Thrall intended. I only knew that it meant a Lilitu was back in Puerto
    Escondido.
    I tried to tell myself we’d all known it was just a matter of time before the Lilitu resurfaced. Ais
    had made it pretty clear that a growing number of Lilitu were hell-bent on breaking through the Wall
    that separated our worlds. This war was ancient, but the final battle was coming.
    Knowing it was coming and seeing it begin were two very different things.
    I shivered under the