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

as soon as she was on her feet, allowing the soothing coolness to relieve the ache that seemed to be the reality of her body now. As she ran her hands over her arms, her legs, she could feel new muscles where they had not been just a few days before. And her belly, suffering a lack of the good, rich food Cook had often given her on the days she came to work as her assistant, smaller than it had been. It made her budding breasts feel so much fuller, her new curves more rounded than before. She could imagine she was beginning to look like Davida, minus the dark curls and the intense hazel eyes. Dylan had always admired Davida’s appearance. Her coloring was so much more interesting than Dylan’s whitish, blonde curls and her pale blue eyes.
    No one else in D dorm had eyes like Dylan’s. She always felt like an oddity, always admired the brighter colors of Davida and Donna’s amazing eyes.
    But envy was wrong. So she hid her feelings.
    She hid so many things.
    She swam for a few minutes, drinking her fill before she climbed out of the water in search of food. She still had the full box of carbs, crackers that provided her energy and vitamins, if not flavor. She chewed a few, making a face as she did. Spoiled by Cook, she knew. Milk was a special treat, especially with honey added to it. Cook let Dylan have a glass every night after they did the dishes. It was a flavor that Dylan’s tongue nearly ached to taste.
    And potatoes cooked so tender that they melted in the mouth.
    And chocolate cake that disappeared the moment it landed on a fork.
    And strawberry pie and blueberry muffins and vanilla mini-cakes…
    So many treats.
    Dylan had to force herself to stop thinking about them.
    She filled her water bottles, drinking one down completely in seconds to wash away the graininess of the carb crackers. She knelt beside the river to fill the bottle again when her odd, but familiar, breeze suddenly washed over her. She looked up, searching the blue sky for some sign of her invisible friend. Still she couldn’t see anything, couldn’t prove to her rested mind that it was real.
    Last night was such a blur. She remembered so little of it. Only the gratefulness when she found this place, the thought that some being had brought her here. The lack of concern about the safety of the water, despite everything they had learned in history lessons about the radiation that destroyed the prior society. Remembered thinking it would not have brought her here if it were dangerous.
    She hesitated a moment with the bottle in the water, wondering if she had poisoned herself. Exchanged one death for another.
    The breeze came again. It pushed her, roughly, making her fall back on her haunches as she continued to kneel beside the river.
    “What are you doing?” she cried as the bottle slipped from her fingers and spilled into the dry sand.
    She picked up the bottle and dipped it again into the water. She needed water. Poison or not, she needed it. The bubbles had just begun to appear at the narrow mouth of the bottle when the breeze came again, knocking her flat on her back this time. She cried out in surprise, picking up a rock and tossing it into the sky as though she had a chance of actually hitting something.
    “Stop it!” she demanded.
    “Stop what?”
    Dylan jumped to her feet, searching the ground for her knife, her heart pounding at the sound of another voice, a deep, unfamiliar, human voice. Too far away. Her knife lay shining in the sunlight, close to the branches that still held her drying clothes. And behind that, closer to the weapon than she, stood an odd-looking stranger.
    “Who are you?” she demanded, her eyes flicking once again to the knife.
    The stranger followed her gaze, a slow smile slipping over full lips.
    “I could ask you the same question.” Blue eyes, as deep and clear as the sky, slipped over the length of her bare body. “Not wise to walk around naked in this place.”
    “Why not?”
    A dark eyebrow cocked,