The Travelers: Book Two Read Online Free PDF Page A

she wasn’t scared at all. She knew that smell. She knew this place. But where was it?
    Her heart raced, but she couldn’t feel it in her chest; she only heard the roar of her blood rushing through her ears.
    The trail of blood seemed like it would never end.
    The pit in Izzy’s stomach grew and turned over and over, churning a tsunami of panic.
    She stepped through a doorway and the scene changed. There was rubble everywhere. A feeble cry for help. Silence.
    The blood roared in her ears and she strained to hear the call again.
    She stumbled over a pile of debris, catching herself with her hands; white-hot pain lanced through her but she held in her cry, hoping to hear something else. Blood trickled from her palms and dripped on the rocks underfoot.
    The rocks slipped away from under her. One by one they crumbled and slid down the heap until she was no longer there.
    The scene fell away and Isabel found herself in a large empty space.
    She spotted it on the horizon: a small mound that could have been anything, but it wasn’t nothing. Everywhere else she looked was nothing.
    She ran to the something.
    It looked like another rock until she grew closer.
    Her blood turned to ice.
    It was a person.
    She couldn’t breathe; she couldn’t remember breathing this entire time, but it didn’t bother her until that moment.
    She gasped, trying to catch a breath that wouldn’t come. Her lungs burned with emptiness. She felt like her chest would explode.
    She knelt next to the body.
    It was cold and still. Stiff.
    Her blood continued to drip and she balled her hands into fists to stem the tide.
    Izzy thought she might be sick, but the burn in her lungs forced her to inhale instead.
    Dizziness encroached on the far reaches of her mind. Her vision tunneled.
    But she had to see who it was…
    She turned the body, bracing herself for the mask of death on their face.
    Her eyes fell on the face, but the tunnel was already there. The body slipped away from her fingertips.
    She fell.
    And fell.
    She thought she would keep falling straight to the center of the Earth.
    Izzy awoke in her bed with a jump.
    She gasped for breath, trying desperately to fill her lungs though they’d never really been empty. Her chest still ached from the lack of oxygen.
    Her heart raced and her stomach roiled against her. She thought about the pale gray skin of the person in her dream and shuddered.
    The blood everywhere…
    It was the warehouse. She was sure of it. But it was just a dream, wasn’t it?
    She debated warning the others, but after the way they’d all turned their backs on her, she didn’t know. She didn’t really want to have everyone calling her crazy again.
    It was just a dream; there was nothing to worry about.
    Izzy pulled herself out of bed; a thin layer of sweat coated her skin and she didn’t particularly feel like laying in a damp bed.
    She made her way into the bathroom and reached for the hot water. In the light of the bathroom she saw something she hadn’t before; something that made her heart stop.
    Angry red raised scars criss-crossed her palms.
     
    <<<>>>
     
    “Aaron! Open the door!” A woman called to him before banging her fist against his door furiously again.
    “Goway,” he muttered, pulling the blankets over his head.
    “Fine, you asked for this!”
    He heard something slip between the door and the jamb and then a click as his door swung open. In his drunken stupor he’d neglected his usual six-lock ritual.
    “What the—” He pulled himself out of bed, ready to bite the head off of whoever dared break into his house.
    He spotted the blond in his kitchen, clearing off enough counter space to make a cup of coffee.
    “Gemma, what are you doing here?”
    Her eyes met with his, but her jaw stayed resolutely set. She clearly thought he should already know the answer to that question.
    “If you’re here for an intervention, you’re wasting your time.”
    She made the coffee in silence.
    Aaron realized he was standing