Chapter Six

The first thing I heard was the buzzing. It tickled my eardrums at first then, as I gained consciousness, it became more insistent – and more annoying.

I moved slightly and there was a strange rustle. What the hell was I lying on? It felt like plastic, or rubber sheeting perhaps. There was an acrid tinge to the air that definitely smelled of rotten eggs, and there was an unpleasant taste of ash in my mouth. This didn't make any sense.

It took more effort than it should have done to open my eyes. It was like they'd been glued together and I virtually had to peel open my eyelids. I blinked, trying to adjust my vision. I was so hot – and what was this crap around me? I plucked at it. I'd been right: it was definitely some sort of white plastic sheeting, but it was singed and burnt like someone had taken a flamethrower to it.

I sat up, shoving it to one side. That was when I realised I was naked.

I jerked with such force that I fell off the table and landed with a heavy thump on the cold, linoleum-covered floor. I groaned and looked around. It wasn't a table, it was a metal gurney. That was when the memory of the attack came flooding back to me.

I must be in hospital. It was the only thing that made sense. The incessant buzzing was coming from an overhead strip light that cast a stark light around the room. I licked my lips and tried to call out to alert a passing doctor or nurse but I could only croak. If I wanted help, I'd have to go and look for it.

Staggering to my feet, I grabbed the remnants of the plastic and wrapped it around myself. This was a strange hospital room: for one thing, the bed wasn't a proper bed, it was just a slab. And there was no IV line or comforting ECG beeping next to me, although I could see a metal tray with various implements lying neatly across it. Several scalpels and … I stared. Was that a rib spreader?

I backed up, colliding with another metal trolley and sending various bits and pieces clattering to the floor. Without thinking, I bent down to pick them up. When I saw the flames flickering around my toes, I let out a brief shriek and frantically slapped at them to put them out.

My heart was hammering against my ribcage. What in bejesus was going on? I straightened up. With shaking fingers, I touched the side of my neck where I'd felt the knife pierce my skin and slice through my artery. There was nothing there. No mark, no bump. It wasn't even sore. I reached up to the back of my head where I'd been thumped. There was nothing there either.

Breathing hard, and growing more and more convinced that this was some sort of crazy-arsed nightmare, I looked around for some kind of clue as to where I was and what had happened.

My gaze fell on the clipboard hanging on the side of the gurney. I grabbed it and stared at the words: Jane Doe. DOA. Approximate age: 30. Identifying features: mole on left thigh. Apparent cause of death: exsanguination from knife wound on throat.

The clipboard slid out of my hand and fell to the floor.

Dizzy and disorientated, it was a few moments before coherent thought returned to my brain. What was obvious now was that the plastic I'd wrapped myself in was the remnants of a body bag. What was also obvious was that someone somewhere had made a terrible mistake. I most definitely was not dead. I poked myself again just to be sure. Nope. Not a ghost. I straightened my shoulders. Heads were going to roll for this.

The door to the small room opened and a white-coated woman with dark hair tied in a tight bun strolled in, whistling tunelessly. She walked up to the gurney, stared down at it and blinked. Then her head slowly rose and her eyes met mine. Her mouth opened in a silent scream.

‘Hi,' I said.

Her jaw worked uselessly.

‘I'm Emma.' I glanced at the ID clipped to her coat. ‘You're Dr Hawes? Have you been a pathologist for long? I gestured at myself. ‘Because you might need some re-training.'

I'd never seen anyone look so pale. ‘You were dead,' she whispered.

‘Clearly not.'

She lifted her chin. ‘No. You were definitely dead.' She shook herself, her hand automatically going to the small gold cross around her neck. Her gaze drifted to my neck and I knew that it wasn't the knife wound she was searching for – it was fang marks. But I'd never met a vampire in my life and, even if my attacker had been of the blood-guzzling variety, it took far more than one bite to turn someone into a vamp. Even I knew that much. You had to drink at least half a cup of the blood of the vamp who bit you to be turned.

‘You made a mistake,' I told her.

‘No. I didn't.' She remained where she was. I had the sneaking suspicion that she was actually frozen to the spot. ‘You were definitely dead. Deader than dead.'

‘Then how do you explain this?' I asked. My voice hardened. ‘And where the fuck are my clothes?'

Her tongue darted out, wetting her lips. ‘Stay there.' She turned and almost ran out of the door.

Fuck that. I tightened my grip around the body bag-cum-latest-fashion-item and marched after her. I wasn't going to let Dr Hawes out of my sight, not until I got my stuff back and received some sort of explanation – and apology – for whatever had happened to me.

She moved quickly down the corridor and into a room on the right. I followed. Unfortunately for the good doctor, she didn't realise that I was behind her. When I coughed, she jumped about a foot in the air. ‘Don't come any closer!' she shouted.

I held up my hands and the body bag slipped. Adjusting myself, I tried again to show her that I meant no harm. ‘I'm not going to hurt you,' I said, exasperated. ‘I just want to find out what happened and get out of here.'

‘That makes two of us.' She picked up a brown manila folder and thrust it at me. ‘You. Were. Dead.'

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.'

I squinted. This wasn't the time for semantics. ‘Why does a morgue need CCTV?'

Laura made a face. ‘We've had lab assistants in the past who haven't been entirely respectful towards the bodies. And when I say they weren't respectful, I mean we've had assistants who—'

I hastily interrupted her. ‘I don't need to know.'

She glanced at me. ‘Yeah. Fair enough.' She swivelled the screen so I could get a better look. ‘Anyway, if we rewind the footage maybe we'll get some clues about what happened.'

I wasn't sure I wanted to watch; unfortunately, I knew I had to. I put my hand out, steadied myself on the desk and drew in a breath. ‘Let's do it.'

Laura clicked on the footage. ‘There,' she said. ‘That's you.'

2.16am. I was already in the body bag so thankfully I didn't have to look at my corpse again. I watched as I was wheeled into a narrow room. There were several shelves and what looked like several other bodies. I shuddered. ‘Where's that?'

‘The cold chamber. Fortunately not the negative one.'

‘Pardon?'

Laura explained. ‘We have two cold chambers for storage. One is maintained at four degrees. That temperature doesn't halt decomposition, but it slows it down. It gives us time to conduct post-mortems, or to hold bodies until families can collect them for their own funeral arrangements. The other chamber is for when bodies remain unidentified and we need to hold them for longer. It's essentially a freezer.'

Goosebumps rose across my skin and I rubbed my arms. I felt cold just thinking about it.

Laura ran the footage forward. ‘There,' she said, jabbing at the screen. We watched her enter the room and slide out my body bag again. She unzipped it, allowing the camera a clear glimpse of my unnaturally still body. She paused at my face for a moment and then zipped up the bag. ‘That's me coming to get you to prep you for the post-mortem. I didn't need to feel your pulse to know that you were dead.' She whistled. ‘Baby, you were gone. I was just double checking that I had the right corpse before I moved you.'

Something else I didn't want to think about too closely. ‘Post-mortem? I thought it was pretty obvious how I'd died,' I said, frowning.

She shrugged. ‘You were murdered. A post-mortem is protocol.'

I knew that. It didn't prevent me from shivering.

We watched as she wheeled dead Emma from one room into another. She busied herself getting her equipment ready, then the door opened and a man popped his head round the door.

‘That's Dean,' Dr Hawes explained. She sounded eager now. ‘He was telling me I had a phone call.'

‘Related to me?'

‘Nah. The geriatrics ward. They wanted to confirm that the body of one of their deceased patients had been moved.'

On the screen Laura nodded and walked out of the room, leaving my bagged corpse on its own. She smiled at me with morbid excitement. ‘Five minutes later, I walked back in and you were standing up. So this is the part where things are going to get really interesting.'

My stomach was churning. ‘Is there any chance that I was still alive? That I was just in a kind of coma or stasis or something, and nobody noticed?'

‘No. There is no chance.' She ticked off her fingers while keeping her gaze on the screen. ‘Paramedics saw your body. A doctor signed you off as dead. Last night's morgue crew checked you over when you came in. There are the photos.' She sucked in a breath. ‘And now there's this.'

We both stared. There was no denying what we were seeing. The body bag – my body bag – was on fire. The stench of rotten eggs that had been in the room had been from me. Sulphur. Or rather…

‘Brimstone,' I whispered. ‘Fire and brimstone.' My mouth felt dry. ‘Rewind the tape. Play it again.'

Laura swallowed. ‘On it.'

We watched again. To all intents and purposes, it looked as if my corpse simply spontaneously combusted. Flames appeared out of nowhere, licking upwards through the white plastic from my head to my toes. It was only when the fire had flickered out that I began to twitch, then move, sit up and fall gracelessly off the gurney.

‘I've seen a lot of shit in here,' Laura told me. ‘But I've never seen anything like that before.'