Unbreakable Read Online Free Page A

chest intensified, and the room began to fade.…
    Sounds brought me back—a crash, banging on the stairs, voices. The hall lights flickered, and I finally saw what was hiding behind those luminous eyes.
    Elvis—crouched on my chest, mouth open and eyes locked on mine.
    I inhaled sharply, but there was still no air. Elvis’ ears flattened against his head, and his jaw pulled back like a snake about to strike.
    The bedroom door banged against the wall, and someone shouted, “Take the shot!”
    Elvis whipped around toward the voice, and a rush of air burned through my lungs. A guy stood in the doorway with something black in his hand.
    Who—
    He raised his arm.
    Was that a gun?
    A shot rang out, and the weight lifted. I sat up, gasping and choking on the air my body so desperately needed. A sticky mist rained down over everything, stinging my eyes, and I squeezed them shut.
    When I opened them again, I was too stunned to make a sound.
    At the foot of my bed, a girl floated in the airabove Elvis’ body. Pale and gaunt, her face marred with bruises and cuts, her blond hair hanging in tangled curls.
    Bare feet dangled beneath her white nightgown.
    It was the girl from the graveyard. Her bloodshot eyes found mine, frozen in a moment of pure terror. The girl’s neck was marked with two purple bruises, perfect imprints of the hands that must have killed her.
    A second shot hit the strangled girl’s body, and she exploded. Millions of tiny particles fluttered in the air like dust before vanishing completely.
    Hands touched my shoulders. “Are you okay?”
    Our faces were only inches apart—a guy about my age, wearing a black nylon flight jacket.
    I scrambled backward. “Who are you?”
    “My name is Lukas Lockhart, and that’s my brother, Jared.” He looked over at a guy standing by the door in a green army jacket with the name LOCKHART on a patch sewn above the pocket. A pale scar cut across the skin above his eyebrow.
    They were both tall and broad-shouldered, with the same messy brown hair and blue eyes.
    Identical twins.
    The one in the army jacket walked over to Elvis’ body, a gun wrapped in silver duct tape still in his hand.
    The gun that killed my cat.
    My stomach lurched, and I bolted off the bed.
    “Wait!” one of them shouted, his footsteps practically on top of mine.
    The staircase at the end of the hall was too far and he was too close. I’d never make it. But the bathroom was only a few feet away.
    I slammed the door behind me and locked it.
    The knob rattled a second later. “It’s Lukas. We just want to help.”
    I couldn’t think straight. Something that looked like a dead girl had just exploded in my bedroom, and now I was alone in the house with two guys I didn’t know. They had definitely saved my life.…
    But one of them has a gun.
    “You killed my cat.”
    “It’s not dead. It took off out the window.” His voice sounded soothing and gentle, which only made me more anxious. “Those were liquid-salt rounds.”
    I gasped, remembering the sticky mist in my bedroom. “So he’s okay?”
    “Your cat’s probably freaked out,” he said. “But he was alive the last time I saw him.”
    Tears of relief ran down my cheeks. “What was that thing inside him?”
    Thinking about the girl’s tormented expression and the dark bruises around her neck made my skin crawl.Something horrible must have happened to her—whatever she was.
    There was a long pause, followed by whispering on the other side of the door.
    “She was a vengeance spirit,” Lukas said. “They manifest when a person suffers a violent or traumatic death.”
    I thought about the night in the cemetery and the walk home, when I’d tried to convince myself that I hadn’t seen a girl floating in the graveyard. “A spirit? You mean, like a ghost?”
    “Yeah. A really pissed off one.” Another voice passed through the door. It was harder, like the kindness had been hammered out of it. Lukas’ brother—what was his name?