Three Days to Dead (Dreg City, Band 1) - Softcover

Buch 1 von 6: Dreg City

Meding, Kelly

 
9780553592863: Three Days to Dead (Dreg City, Band 1)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0553592866 ISBN 13: 9780553592863
Verlag: Dell, 2009

Inhaltsangabe

They’ll never see her coming. . . .

When Evangeline Stone wakes up naked and bruised on a cold slab at the morgue—in a stranger’s body, with no memory of who she is and how she got there—her troubles are only just beginning. Before that night she and the two other members of her Triad were the city’s star bounty hunters, mercilessly cleansing the city of the murderous creatures living in the shadows, from vampires to shape-shifters to trolls. Then something terrible happened that not only cost all three of them their lives but also convinced the city’s other Hunters that Evy was a traitor—and she can’t even remember what it was.

Now she’s a fugitive, piecing together her memory, trying to deal some serious justice—and discovering that she has only three days to solve her own murder before the reincarnation spell wears off. Because in three days Evy will die again—but this time there’s no second chance. . . .

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

A native of the Delaware seashore, Kelly Meding briefly attempted life in the bustle of the Northern Virginia/DC Metro area, before retreating back to the relative quiet of the Eastern Shore. She lives in a small town near the beach, with a neurotic cat who occasionally meows at ghosts. Kelly received her Bachelor's Degree in Communication in 2002 and she hasn't used it since, preferring instead to wile away her non-writing hours on the sales floor of a national retail chain. After discovering Freddy Krueger at a very young age, Kelly began a lifelong obsession with horror, science fiction, and fantasy, on which she blames her interest in vampires, psychic powers, superheroes, and all things paranormal. When not writing, she can be found crafting jewelry, enjoying a good cup of coffee, or scouring the Internet for gossip on her favorite television shows.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter One


71:59

I don't recall the first time I died, but I do remember the second time I was born. Vividly. Waking up on a cold morgue table surrounded by surgical instruments and autopsy paraphernalia, to the tune of the medical examiner's high-pitched shrieks of fright, is an unforgettable experience.

I vaulted off the table, my mind prepared to execute a move that my chilled body hadn't quite caught up to, and promptly lost my balance. My knees didn't bend; my ankles stayed stiff. I landed on my bare hip, earning another shock of cold and something quite new: pain. Sharp and biting, it lanced up my hip and down my thigh, orienting me to two facts: I was on the floor and I was completely naked.

Something metal clanged to the floor, rubber squeaked on faded tile, and the screams receded. Far away, a door slammed. The soft hum of machinery mingled with the hiss of my ragged breathing. Fluorescent light glared down from gray overhead fixtures. I smelled something sharp, bitter, and completely foreign.

My bruised hip protested as I sat up. The room tilted. A sheet dangled from the edge of the table I'd fallen from. I wrapped the thin, papery material around my shoulders. It did little to cut the chill.
Coroner's table. Naked. Scalpel on the floor. What the holy friggin' hell?

I searched my addled memory, hoping for an explanation as to why I was bare-ass naked on a morgue floor.

Nothing. Zilch. Awareness wrapped in cotton batting. No cinematic instant recall for me.

My chest seized and I began to cough—a wet rasp from deep inside my lungs. I spat out a wad of phlegm and continued coughing until I thought my chest would turn inside out. When the spasms ceased, I grabbed the side of the table and pulled. My feet responded. Knees bent. I managed to stand up, using the surgical table as a crutch, and found myself staring down at its shiny surface.

And a stranger's face.

A curtain of long, wavy brown hair framed a curved chin and high cheekbones. Not mine. A smattering of freckles dotted the bridge of her nose. Definitely not mine. I touched my cheek, and the stranger touched hers. All wrong. I was pale, with blond hair, blue eyes, and no freckles. And younger. The dark-haired woman with track marks inside her left elbow and an open, but healing, gash down the inside of her forearm was not Evangeline Stone. She was someone else.

Another sharp tremor raced down my spine, creating gooseflesh across my back and shoulders. Wyatt. I was on my way to see Wyatt Truman. We'd agreed to meet at our usual spot by the train yards. I arrived. Waited. And then what?

Something bad, apparently.

I gazed around the small autopsy room with its plain gray walls and yellow tiled floors. Two identical beds lay on either side of a floor drain. An instrument tray lay upended on the floor. A wall of doors, roughly three-foot-by-four each, had to be where they kept the bodies. How long had I been in there?

Why had I been in there?

Wyatt would know. He had to know. He knew everything. He was my Handler; that was his job.
Did he know where I was? Or who I was, for that matter?

Opposite the refrigeration unit was a desk and beyond that a door marked PRIVATE. I stumbled toward it, clutching the sheet around my shoulders, still having some trouble with my extremities.

I limped into a small bathroom containing a sink, two stalls, and a bank of four gray lockers. I tried each one. The last opened with a sharp squeal, and the eye-watering stink of old tennis shoes wafted out. My stomach churned. Inside I found a pair of navy sweatpants in XXL and an oversized white T-shirt. Nothing else useful.

I dropped the sheet and tugged the shirt on, not surprised that it swam all over my thin frame. I was a few inches taller than I'd been. Bigger breasts, rounder hips—less the blond waif, and more the curvy woman. Definitely an upgrade. I rolled up the extra material and knotted it around my torso. The sweatpants went on next, and even with a drawstring, they were ridiculously huge.

It didn't matter. The clothes just needed to get me out of there. I blotted my hair in the sheet, removing some of the excess moisture now that it was starting to thaw. The pants slipped, and I hiked them back up. A red hole peeked through the top of my belly button, hinting at a vanished piercing.

Voices bounced through the other room. I tiptoed to the door and pulled it open just far enough to peek outside. The technician was back, waving her hands wildly. Short, red hair bobbed around her shoulders each time she turned her head. Her companion was an older man, white-haired and wrinkled, dressed in surgical scrubs. He picked up the chart hanging from the end of the bed I'd previously occupied and skimmed the contents.

"Dead bodies don't just come back to life, Pat," the man said.

"I know that, Dr. Thomas, but she was dead. I was here when she was brought in early this morning. I pulled out the drawer when her roommate came to identify her."

Roommate? My roommates were gone. I didn't even have a couch to crash on anymore, now that the Owlkins were dead and their apartment building razed.

"She was still dead when Joe put her on the table for me," Pat continued, "but then I got a phone call. When I got back and pulled the sheet, she was pinking up. I swear, I thought I was seeing things, but then she sat up."

"I see," Dr. Thomas said, in a tone that clearly indicated he didn't believe her. "The physical examination showed that she died of acute blood loss. How do you think a dead body without blood sat up and walked out of the room?"

Pat gaped at him, her mouth opening and closing, but producing no response.

"The last thing we need," Dr. Thomas said, "is a lawsuit from that girl's family, because we misplaced the body. So I suggest you stop acting hysterical and find her, or you'll be looking for another job."
Dr. Thomas spun on his heel and stalked through a pair of swinging doors, leaving Pat behind. She stared at the settling doors, hands limp by her sides.

"I'm not crazy, you son of a bitch," she said in a small voice. Not much of a fighter, that one. Then her entire body went rigid. Slowly, she turned in a small circle, eyeing the room. Her head snapped toward the far corner, as though she'd heard a noise. I held my breath and waited.

"Hello?" she said. "Chalice? Chalice Frost? Are you there?"

Chalice Frost? I could only imagine the sort of teasing she'd endured as a child. Probably why she (I?) had turned to drugs. Not that I possessed any memory of such a thing; I only had the track marks on my arm as proof. The gash, too, and the longer I stared at it, the more convinced I became that the exposed flesh had knitted, drawing the skin closer together. Healing.

"Get it together, Pat. It's your blood sugar, that's all. It's off, so you're seeing things."

It was just too painful. I stepped into the autopsy room, still clutching the front of my borrowed sweatpants in an ongoing attempt to protect my modesty. The door shut with a solid thump. Pat jumped and spun around. Her mouth fell open, eyes widening to impossible proportions.

"If it helps," I said, the voice strange to my ears, "you aren't really crazy."

She adopted an unhealthy pallor, then fainted dead away. Her head bounced off the tiled floor with a sickening crack. I winced. She lay still, her chest slowly rising and falling.

"So much for not scaring anyone," I muttered. Chalice's voice was deeper than mine. It felt powerful, like I could scream to wake the dead. No pun intended.

I crouched next to Pat and checked her head, but...

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Verlag
Dell
Erscheinungsdatum
2009
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0553592866
ISBN 13 
9780553592863
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
416
Kontakt zum Hersteller
SC
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/

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