Read Online Unmarked by Kami García - Free Book Online Page A

brother would always be able to find me.” She mentionedmy father’s name casually, as though he was someone I saw every day instead of the man who had abandoned me.
    “Where’s Alex now?” Elle asked.
    “I’m not sure.” Faith gave her a strange look and rushed past us.
    Bear trailed after her, unfazed.
    The hallway spilled into a great room, where a fireplace crackled in the corner and a sweet floral scent drifted from the kitchen.
    Alara eyed the room suspiciously. “This place doesn’t look like it belongs to someone who tapes trash bags over their windows.”
    The same thought crossed my mind, until I saw the rest of the room.
    Stacks of canvases depicting apocalyptic scenes leaned against the walls—cavernous holes torn in the ground with hands reaching up from inside them; a guy chained in a cell, with a strange symbol drawn on his back; people being dragged through the streets by metal collars around their necks. The images looked like they were straight out of Dante’s
Inferno
or one of Hieronymus Bosch’s paintings of hell.
    Haunting portraits of spirits with pallid skin and angry eyes were lined up alongside more disturbing paintings of figures with flat, pupil-less black eyes. Faith emerged from the kitchen, her attention shifting nervously between the six of us and the paintings.
    I approached one of the larger canvases. A figure writhed in pain behind the bars of a cell. Steam or smoke rose from his body. “You paint? Me too.”
    Faith glanced at the image, then looked away as if she couldn’t stand the sight of it. “Hopefully, your work is nothing like mine.”
    Priest stood in front of an
Inferno
-style piece. “You’ve seen some of this stuff, haven’t you?”
    “Most of them are only nightmares.” My aunt leaned against a tall painting and used her weight to slide it down the wall. The canvas moved, revealing a bookcase behind it.
    “And the others?” I asked.
    “Things you should pray you never see,” Faith said, pulling books off the shelves two and three at a time, until she found what she was looking for—a brass doorknob attached to the back of a shelf. She turned the knob and the bookcase opened like a door.
    The closet behind it was packed from floor to ceiling with what looked like disaster supplies.
    “Your aunt is officially crazy,” Elle whispered.
    Faith tossed duct tape, rope, batteries, and ammo onto the floor behind her. Once she had cleared a few feet of space, she struggled to drag out a huge burlap sack.
    “Need a hand?” Lukas walked toward her, and Bear growled. Lukas stepped back, his hands raised. “Relax, Cujo.”
    My aunt snapped her fingers and the Doberman loped down the hall and stood guard at the front door. Faith ripped the string across the top of the sack, and rock salt spilled onto the floor. She used a plastic milk jug with the top cut off as a scoop and raced through the house pouring salt lines along the windows and doors, which were already heavily salted.
    “I’m sorry about your mother. But you shouldn’t have come here.”
    “If you tell us what’s going on, maybe we can help,” Alara said in the even tone she usually reserved for volatile spirits.
    Faith slid a rubber band from a yellowed newspaper and gathered her hair in a ponytail with it. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
    “I’m pretty sure we will.” Priest scooped a fistful of salt from the sack and pulled up his sleeve. He rubbed the crystals over his wrist and lines carved themselves into his skin.
    Faith watched in awe as the cuts formed one-fifth of Andras’ seal. The original Legion members had used the seal to summon him, and each of them had branded a section of the symbol into his skin, in an attempt to bind the demon.
    Jared, Lukas, and Alara dusted their own wrists with salt. One by one, their marks appeared, each forming another part of the seal.
    I stared at my boots and counted the scratches on the toes, anything to distract myself from the envy