Christmas. Judy doesn’t like them, so she never got one.”
“Thank the Lord!” Judy said, rising, clapping her hands together. She turned sheepishly to Sean. “Lieutenant Canady, I thank you for your time. And I am so sorry I wasted it.”
“I don’t think it was a waste of time, Judy. We need answers around here right now, and I hoping anyone will come in when they’re afraid, just as you did.”
“You’re a fine young man, Lieutenant.”
He smiled. He was pushing fifty. He wasn’t sure that made him a
They left his office, and he had just started to pick up his phone when there was yet another tap at his door. The desk sergeant was back.
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“No. You did the right thing,” Sean said.
As soon as the sergeant left and closed the door behind him, Sean picked up his cell and called Bobby Munro. “Stay there,. Stay in that room and don’t leave until I get there.”
“Right, Lieutenant,” Bobby said.
“Jonas still there?”
“Sir,” Bobby said very softly, “he hasn’t left even to take a leak.”
Let’s hope to hell he’s as decent as he seems, Sean thought, then asked, “So what’s going on there? Everything fine?”
“Yup. The doctor was in this morning. He hopes she’ll come to soon, and that she’ll be fine. It’s looking good. Well, as good as it can look, at any rate.”
“Cansee you the chalk board that lists the nurses assigned to the room?” Sean asked.
“Yeah, I can see it from here.”
“Is someone named Leticia coming on?”
“Yeah, how did you know?”
“Don’t let her in the room,” Sean said.
“Um, actually, that would be a problem, Lieutenant.”
“Why is that?”
“She just walked in. She’s here right now,” Bobby told him.
The pulse in the throat, he had told her. “Find the pulse in the throat. You’re a nurse, so you won’t have any problem. You’re starving, and you will be in this pain until you fill yourself with what you need, but you must be careful. There is only one who can stop your pain. You must go to her room. There will be someone there, so you must be careful, but you are a nurse, and you can go right in and ease your pain.”
The words pounded in Leticia’s head. She had very little memory of exactly what had happened; she only knew that she was supposed to do as she had always done. Go to work. Sign in. Once she had done what he had commanded, all would be well. He would find her again. She would be rewarded as she had never been rewarded before.
She found the patient, Deanna, who was lying there in silence. There were also two men in the room, one sitting by the bed and watching Deanna intently. The other was a cop, but he was on the phone. She had seen him in the room before. Bobby. The cop’s name was Bobby. For some reason, evern though so much was a blur, she knew his name.
She walked over to the bedside and replaced the IV drip, just as she normally would. Then she leaned lower. She could hear the pounding of the woman’s heart, could see the pulse in her throat.
She felt a streak of agony worse than anything that had plagued her so far. A hunger unlike anything she could have imagined before. It tore at her insides like a razor blade. It demanded satiation.
She opened her mouth, and she felt another stark and terrible pain as her teeth actually…stretched. Somewhere, in the very back of her mind, she knew that biting another woman and seeking to drain her of their very last drop of her life’s blood was wrong.
But the hunger…
The hunger was unbearable….
She paused suddenly, terrified.
The pain continued to brutally tear at her stomach, but something worse, something as powerful as an atomic bomb, had exploded within her mind.
She was nearly blinded.
Yet she saw.
There was a chain around the woman’s neck.
A chain and a cross.
Leticia remembered Aunt Judy and Pete, how she’d wanted to be a nurse to save lives, how she had loved to sing with the choir and…
No! The pain raked her and made her bleed inside. She was insane with hunger, ravenous. She had to feed.
