The Vampire Games: A Dystopian Paranormal Romance by Stephanie Archer

Author:Stephanie Archer [Archer, Stephanie]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9781523221097
Publisher: Masterful Books
Published: 2016-01-03T05:00:00+00:00

* * *

I didn’t sleep well that night.

It should have been easy to pass out. I hadn’t had any troubles sleeping at night yet, since Alisyn always worked me so hard. I had no choice but to succumb to utter exhaustion the instant that my head hit the pillow.

Fear was stronger than the exhaustion that night.

My bedroom seemed so small, and the walls separating my room from Phillip’s chamber above felt thinner than ever. I spent half the night standing at the bottom of those stairs, gazing up the spiral, wondering what Phillip would do if I reached the top.

Nothing he did to me could be worse than what was going to happen after I returned from visiting Dawn Hold.

But I didn’t go upstairs.

Morning came, which I only knew because the guards brought breakfast to me. I ate as much as I could tolerate.

I picked out clothes from the dresser that weren’t workout clothes for the first time. My hands were shaking as I sifted through the options. They were mostly dresses. I found the one pair of jeans and a loose white shirt. Both fit me perfectly.

Alisyn was waiting for me in the entryway when I emerged.

“I’m not training today,” I said. “I’ve got the day off.”

“I know; that’s why I’m here. I’m heading out into Dawn Hold too. Phillip asked me to walk you down. But I have an appointment, so you’ll be on your own.”

Freedom.

In a hold with vampires.

Every gift in this place seemed to have two sides to it.

Alisyn led me outside the rooms.

For the first time, there were no guards waiting to stop us. I didn’t see any vampires at all until we reached the end of the hallway, which opened into a much larger cave.

Alisyn led me out to Dawn Hold and said goodbye at its entrance.

I was too busy staring at my surroundings to respond.

She laughed and walked away.

I’d expected more of what I’d seen before: industrial caves with humans crushed underfoot, a sadistic torture room.

But Dawn Hold was a pristine village at the bottom of a massive cavern.

I stood high against the wall, at the top of a path leading down to the network of cobblestone roads. The buildings were built of bronze and polished brass, shutters opened and shut by slowly grinding cogs. The gabled roofs were almost cartoony in their steep slopes, like they had been built out of taffy and stretched tall.

All its light came from bioluminescent plants glowing in craters. Fireflies darted by my head as I followed Alisyn down the road, etching flaming spirals into the moist air. It was easy on my eyes and probably not offensive to the vampires, either.

“Oh my…” I whispered.

The village was full of life. I hadn’t expected that.

It was crowded with pale people drifting between the houses. Shockingly, they were dressed a lot like me. If they hadn’t been so pallid and crimson-eyed, I might have thought they were ordinary people from the surface.

But these people had never seen sunlight and they survived by drinking blood from that other cavern filled with unconscious humans.

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