Page 15 of Brimstone Bound
I sat down on a chair and flipped open the folder. When I saw what it contained, I drew in a sharp breath.
‘We wouldn’t normally work so quickly on a case like yours,’ Dr Hawes told me. ‘But due to the location of your body, and the fact that you were obviously murdered, you were moved to the front of the queue.’
I didn’t speak. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the contents of the file.
‘I didn’t make a mistake,’ she said. ‘And I wasn’t even the first person to declare you dead.’
All I could do was offer the tiniest of nods. The first document in the file was a printout of various photos. It was clear they’d been taken at St Erbin’s Church.
‘When were these taken?’ I asked, my voice barely audible as I stared at my very own corpse lying across two graves. It wasn’t pretty. My eyes were glassy and bulging, and I was soaked in blood. All the photographic evidence pointed to one single fact – that I had indeed been dead. As the lady had said, deader than dead.
She pointed to the time stamp. ‘Just before midnight.’
‘Last night?’
Dr Hawes nodded.
My eyes flicked to the clock on the wall. Assuming it was correct, it was now a cat’s whisker before 11am. That meant I’d been out of it for twelve hours before I’d been … resurrected. I touched the pulse point on my wrist. My heart was definitely still beating.
‘May I?’ she asked.
Swallowing, I held out my arm. With only the briefest tremor, she checked my pulse. ‘Hmm. It sounds normal to me.’ Her brow furrowed.
‘I’m not a vampire,’ I said unnecessarily.
‘I know,’ she answered quickly. ‘I’ve had a vamp in here before, and you’re not one of them.’
‘How do you know?’
‘You’re not pretty enough.’ She smiled, the colour starting to return to her cheeks. ‘And the heart rate of vampires, even newly turned vampires, is very slow when compared to humans. Werewolves’ heart rates are very fast. Yours is normal.’
I gazed at the photographs. ‘It doesn’t seem possible.’
‘You don’t remember anything?’ Professional interest was replacing her shock. For my part, I just felt sick.
‘I remember getting attacked,’ I replied. ‘I didn’t see my attacker’s face. I don’t know who it was, but I remember what it felt like.’
She was openly curious. ‘And?’
‘It fucking hurt,’ I said frankly.
She met my eyes. I turned away, unable to cope with the sympathy in her gaze. Then she snapped her fingers. ‘There is something that might help,’ she said suddenly. She grinned. ‘Come with me.’
She took off, marching out of the room and down the corridor. I padded after her, the half-ruined body bag that was covering my modesty flapping around my ankles.
‘The desk is usually manned,’ she said, as much to herself as to me. ‘But Dean is taking advantage of a quiet period and having an early lunch.’ We turned a corner to where the morgue’s small front desk was located.
‘Where exactly are we?’
‘Fitzwilliam Manor Hospital,’ she answered. She went to the computer and started tapping at the keyboard. Then she paused and looked up. ‘Sorry. I was too shocked to take in your name the first time around. What is it again?’
‘Emma,’ I told her. ‘Emma Bellamy.’
‘You can call me Laura. I think we deserve to be on first-name terms now, don’t you?’ She tapped away some more then gave a crow of delight. ‘Here. You’re right here.’
I joined her and peered at the screen. ‘Is that…?’
Laura nodded proudly. ‘Yep. CCTV. It’s the footage of where your body was.’ She coughed. ‘Where you were. Not your, uh, body.’
