Free The Vampire Games: A Dystopian Paranormal Romance by Stephanie Archer

hard.”
    Would I work hard and learn to fight? Turn myself into a warrior?
    There was no alternative. Even if I went home, the vampires owned Hidden Oaks. They owned my parents, my school.
    I was never going to college.
    But I might be able to go back to the surface and start a war.
    “I’ll work,” I said grimly.

11
    W eeks passed , and I made good on my promise.
    I worked. I worked harder than ever before in my entire life.
    The exercises weren’t beyond me in terms of stamina, but I didn’t know how to use my body like a weapon, so we started out with drills to sharpen my movements. Most of it was barehanded stuff. Fists and feet and knees and elbows.
    It must have been a week before Alisyn announced it was time for me to try a weapon.
    “I thought that weapons weren’t allowed in the Coliseum,” I said. “It’s all fistfights.”
    “That’s why they made these,” Alisyn said. She wiggled her fingers into a crimson glove with black pads on the palm. “This is what you’ll be facing in there.”
    Alisyn seized my wrist. My hand went numb.
    I yelped and jumped back. All sensation had disappeared in an instant. It would have been impossible to know my hand was there if I couldn’t still see it.
    “It’s not exactly a weapon, and you’re still basically in a fistfight. But the charge makes you clumsier.” Alisyn handed me a glove of my own. “Easier to kill. If it helps, I’ve heard it makes fatal injuries hurt less, too. I wouldn’t know. I never lose.”
    “What sadist designed these?” I asked, gingerly sliding my hand into the glove.
    “Lord Hector. Shadow Keep.”
    The coyote-faced vampire who had sent me into the Grinder.
    It was easy to imagine him seeking loopholes to make nasty little surprises for the fights like the shock gloves.
    I wondered how the shock gloves would work against vampires like Lord Hector.
    Thoughts like that made me throw myself into the training. I wasn’t eager to fight in the arena, not exactly, but I still wasn’t holding anything back. Because if I had my way, the arena fights weren’t the only ones in my future.
    This was training all right.
    Not just training so I could survive until they offered to Create me. But training for what would come afterward.
    What would happen once I got home.
    I threw myself into learning.
    According to Alisyn, that was part of my problem. The way I threw myself into things without thinking. That was, she said, the reason I kept losing to her so badly. “Count to five in your head,” she said after she introduced the gloves, “and look around before you decide on a move.”
    I barked a laugh. “Five seconds? You’ll kick my butt in five seconds.”
    “You’ll lose if you don’t take it,” Alisyn said.
    So I took five seconds.
    And yeah, I got my butt kicked a lot.
    At first, I didn’t entirely see the point. When I counted, I lost the element of surprise by pausing.
    But I also did things a little differently when I took time to think.
    The world slowed down in those five seconds. I could feel the beating of my heart in my palms, squeezed gently by the shock gloves. I felt air enter my expanding lungs. My vision became clearer, and my thoughts followed along.
    I noticed when Alisyn was mimicking an injury in a subtle way. I’d pick an alternate direction when it seemed more useful. Things like that.
    Terror wasn’t propelling me, and that made a difference.
    It also reaped unexpected rewards. Like when I scanned the room on the third or fourth day and saw a figure lurking in the shadows.
    He was in the back corner opposite the fake window, where the shadows were deepest. Wearing all black, he blended into the darkness.
    Except for his bright-blue eyes.
    I would have been able to see those eyes through the darkest night and deepest fog.
    “Ignore Phillip,” Alisyn said when she noticed I was staring at him instead of doing the run she’d requested. “He’s going to be in and out a lot.”
    Easier said than done.
    I