Читать онлайн «Blood Ties Book Three: Ashes To Ashes»

This book is dedicated to Jill, Warnament,

The Wallses, Katy and Scott.

Because without you all, my head might

no longer fit through standard-sized doors.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

These people had something to do with this book getting finished:

My critique group, Chel, Chris, Cheryl, Marti, Mary and Martha by proxy.

My husband and son, who whine, complain, beg for attention and generally harass me. Until a cheque comes.

My agent, Kelly, and my editor, Linda.

Everyone who bought books one and two.

And, oddly enough, Dr Carrie Ames. She might not be real, but she does the hard part of this job.

Prologue

“Hey, Baker! You give her the seven o’clock meds yet?”

Don swung his legs from where they’d been propped on his desk, knocking the tower of empty soda cans from the corner. “Yes. I did. At seven o’clock. Check the sheet. ”

Leave it to Sanjay to ask a stupid question. Don shook his head and watched the new guy retrieve the clipboard from the hook beside the door and frown at the words. How he’d managed to live a hundred years was a mystery. Hell, Don had had close scrapes in his own twenty years as a vampire, more in his thirty years previous. How someone with double the lifespan could wander around in a state of constant confusion—

“Then this doesn’t make any sense.

“What doesn’t make sense?” Always with the drama, these Movement scientists. “I gave her the meds. ”

Sanjay’s worried brown eyes flicked up to meet Don’s gaze. “I know you did. I see it on the chart. But her brain activity is…too active. It’s like she hasn’t been sedated at all. ”

“Chill out, chill out. There’s a reasonable explanation for this. ” The newly assigned guys tended to flip out over every little thing, but he’d seen what had happened the last time the Oracle had shrugged her meds. “I’ll feed her another tranquilizer, keep her as down as I can until morning report. Dr. Jacobson will take it from there. ”

The meds for the Oracle were fed to her hourly, through a tube that first dissolved the sedative in warm blood, then injected the whole solution through intravenous lines. It was so simple. And Don hated it.

It wasn’t as if he wanted glory, like the big guys got. Or danger, like the assassins. He just wanted a job that a trained ape couldn’t pull off.