Free FOUND (Angels and Gargoyles Book 1) by Brenda L. Harper Page A

dirty, books she found. Some were familiar, books she had read in her studies at Genero, some she had only heard of in discussions of the things lost in the war that had devastated the previous society. But they weren’t lost. They were sitting right here for anyone to walk in and take.
    “What is this place?” Dylan asked as she walked up behind Wyatt. He was studying a shelf of soft-cover books, his fingers moving along their spines as he read the titles. “Is it a library?”
    “A bookstore.”
    “A bookstore? What is that?”
    He glanced over his shoulder at her. “A place where they sold books in the previous society.”
    “Why would they sell books? Weren’t they free for everyone to read?”
    He shook his head as he continued to search the titles for something in particular. “Their society was obsessed with money. It was how they got the things they needed to live happily.”
    “What do you mean?”
    He sighed as he slowly turned, his eyes falling immediately to the small stack of books she had gathered almost absentmindedly and held pressed to her breasts. “We only need food, water, and companionship to help us survive. But them…they needed other things, material things.”
    “Like books?”
    “Like books and clothes and computers and things they called games and these little pieces of plastic that played music.”
    “Music?”
    “Didn’t your mother ever sing to you?” He turned back to the shelf of books, his finger automatically moving to the last spine he had read.
    “Mother?”
    He groaned. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I forgot you don’t have families in Genero. Your…” He paused, searching for the right word. “Guardian. Isn’t that what you call them?”
    A memory of Davida singing to her in the darkness of her dorm room immediately flashed in her mind. “Davida sang to me sometimes, when I had trouble sleeping.”
    “That’s music,” he said, as his fingers tripped over the books, and he finally found something he had been searching for. He tugged the book from the shelf and studied the cover for a long second before shoving it into his own bag. His finger moved back to the shelf, continuing along the remaining books, forcing him to crouch down as he moved to the books on the lower shelves.
    Dylan saw more books in a little alcove to his left. She stumbled over some of the debris that was scattered even in this section of the store to reach it. These books were different, bigger and heavier than the ones in her arms. She pulled her bag off her shoulder and shoved the books she had already chosen inside before she began looking through these new books. She pulled one off the shelf and opened it. Inside there were pictures of the human body, but the outer layers had been torn away to reveal bone and muscle, showing the reader how they lay together. Another page showed the bones alone with labels that gave each a name.
    Dylan picked up another book, and it showed pictures of people in the same sort of clothing, all the same gray and white colors, including the little hats on top of their heads. There were names of people and places under these pictures, of battles that took place in some long ago war. Another book described another war, showed vehicles that rode on water and others that appeared to ride the air. She ran her fingers over the pages and images flooded her mind, images of a time and a place that was different from hers, different from that of the people who last inhabited this city.
    She pushed the book away, her mind too overwhelmed to handle any more information.
    She began to turn when she felt a harsh breeze move over her.
    Hide.
     

Chapter 15
     
    “Wyatt!”
    Dylan dropped behind the shelves that ran along the sides of her little alcove. A moment later, Wyatt came around the corner in a low crouch.
    “Stay here,” he whispered.
    “What is it?”
    He glanced at her, his blue eyes filled with something she did not understand. “Just stay here,” he said