VAMP RISING (By Moonlight Book 1) by Evie Ryan Read Free Book Online

beams, unsurprisingly, were logs. It was easy to forget she was still indoors unless she looked up. The ceiling of the Training Center was a steel grid of glass windowpanes, which allowed natural light to flood through. 
                  It had been the longest ten minutes of her life since Joseph had deposited her here. At first she was merely self-conscious and couldn’t seem to stop shifting and twisting inside her dress. It fit her like a glove, which she hadn’t expected. The black slinky material, which she couldn’t quite place (she’d never encountered a fabric quite like this) had shrunk to her figure the second she’d put it on until it hugged every inch of her like a second skin. The wedged heels had adhered to her feet in the same manner. Both were made for her, and though she felt her every curve was exposed, she also felt confident she could run and jump and fight wearing it. Though she had no idea why she would need to do so.
                  Gwen wouldn’t have felt as self-conscious about the dress if the other students (was that what they were, students?) had been wearing similar, but they weren’t. Throughout the Training Center men and women were running about, tumbling across the floor, climbing the equipment, and otherwise making use of the obstacle courses, as their trainers (Coaches? Mentors?) shouted at them about form and concentration. Everyone seemed to be dressed in athletic appropriate garments. The trainees were all wearing uniforms of khaki pants and olive green cotton shirts, both of which seemed to have a lot of give and flexibility, as they moved through their respective exercises. The trainers, though not dressed quite so athletically, looked ready for the great outdoors. The jeans, work boots, and flannel shirts they wore gave them a lumberjack appearance that seemed both fitting and out of place.
                  If Gwen thought the Training Center was surreal, if she thought waking up in a strange facility in the middle of the wilderness was utterly bizarre, and if she found it impossible to process the notion that she had died , then she was even more disturbed that those individuals who’d claimed to be in charge of her recovery had told her virtually nothing about what had happened, how they brought her back to life, and why she couldn’t return to Seattle. Being pragmatic and having a strong will, she was already plotting her escape. As soon as she was feeling more herself she’d get the hell out of here.
                  That was the problem, though. She wasn’t feeling like herself. When she had woken up in the I.C.U. (she assumed that’s what it was, intensive care where her vitals could be monitored) she hadn’t noticed how truly off she’d felt, because she had been consumed with the jarring fact that she had no idea what was going on. But now that she had gone through the paperwork with Joseph, been escorted to her room and given a brief tour of the facility, which everyone kept calling a Sanctuary for reasons she couldn’t pinpoint, and then brought here to wait for God only knows what, Gwen realized that she felt vaguely weak, yet incredibly strong, as though her muscles were fatigued, but the tiredness didn’t compare with her tremendous energy level. Mentally, Gwen had always been sharp as a tack, quick witted, and could read social cues like second nature, but now she felt like her mind was often going blank. She couldn’t perceive her own thoughts, which seemed somehow replaced with gut feelings. Intuitive , came to mind, but it made her uneasy. She felt oddly inhuman, like she was an animal, but hoped that was a side effect of whatever medication they’d given her. Maybe painkillers were messing with her mind. Maybe that blood transfusion (that’s what it had been, right?) had done something to her nervous system.
                  As Gwen watched the others tumbling about the room, she wondered