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

gone by nightfall. She would not survive another day out in this heat.
    So she walked in whatever direction the mysterious taps told her to.
    Several hours passed. Each time the breeze came, Dylan waited for the tap that inevitably followed. She found herself hoping that wherever this thing was leading her it was not a trap, not a painful end to her short life. A part of her was quickly losing her fear of death. Although she did not want to die, it was more of an apathy than a real fear. She understood now that she was not meant to survive this test. Who could? Nothing in her education had prepared her for such a thing. She knew how quickly her body would shut down without moisture. But she knew nothing about this landscape, about how to go about finding water. She was wandering in circles. Even if she survived the three days, she would never find the rendezvous point.
    It was over and she knew it.
    Yet.
    Yet she continued to walk. Even as the sun disappeared from the sky and the moon took its place. Even as the coolness of the night air caressed the same pain she had felt the night before on her face, her arms. Even as she attempted to lick her bleeding lips, to offer some relief to the cracks that bled each time she moved her mouth.
    One more tap to her shoulder, and Dylan found herself stumbling across a thin layer of grass that had sprung up under her feet at some point. She couldn’t remember when the trees began to appear, either. But they were there, a few blocking her path here and there. She walked around them, tripping over the vines that grew at their bases, catching herself with her sore hands against the rough bark of a tree.
    Then the vines, the trees, gave way to yellow sand that was marked here and there with boulders, darker sand, and grass that was longer and thinner than any she had seen before. And the moon shining on the earth.
    A reflection, she realized.
    A reflection on water.
     
     

Chapter 11
     
    Dylan could not believe her eyes. She blinked several times. The breeze came over her, settled over her head, and a gentle touch pushed her forward. She dropped her bag and walked to the water, walking into it until it came to her waist. And then she began to cry.
    “Thank you,” she whispered. She wanted to scream, wanted to cry up to the heavens, but a whisper was all she could manage. “Thank you.”
    She fell backward and let the water catch her. As it rushed over her head, her face, she opened her mouth and let it run inside. She swallowed a few times, but then needed air. She straightened just enough to raise her upper lip above the water, drank in air through her nose. Then she opened her mouth and let the water just sit on her tongue. So sweet and cool. She had never felt anything so amazing in her life.
    She drank until her belly sloshed with each step she took. On the shore, she slipped from her odd coveralls and draped them over tree limbs she cut from the trees with her knife. And then she moved back into the water, unable to get enough of either the taste of the water or the feel of it on her sore muscles.
    The moon was high in the sky when the cold finally began to seep into her bones. She climbed out of the water and wrapped the short piece of clothing around her shoulders. It occurred to her to start a fire, but exhaustion hit her like a bomb, going off in her head until she could not keep her eyes open a moment longer. She curled up on the coarse sand and was asleep before she had settled completely on the pillow of her arms.
    She must not have moved much in her sleep. Her arms and legs ached when she woke, stiff along the edge that had pressed hardest into the sand throughout the night. She sat up, surprised to see a small fire beginning to go out in the sand a few feet from her. She did not remember lighting a fire, but thought it possible she had done it in the semi-conscious state of exhaustion. She must have. How else would the fire have appeared?
    She crawled back into the water