Dying Bites: The Bloodhound Files-1 Read Online Free PDF Page A

You’ll get the same salary any agent does, plus a healthy bonus for your . . . situation.”

    “Kidnap victims rate a higher pay grade? Well, that makes up for everything.”

    “Come on. Let’s get something to eat.”

    I follow him out the door. It occurs to me that so far, all I’ve seen of this world has been two small rooms, and I’ve only met two—well, three, if you count undertaker guy—
    people. That’s about to change.

    I’m not sure what to expect, but all I get is an empty corridor that seems more like part of an office than a hospital. We walk down it and into what looks like a smallish cafeteria. The nurse with the blue-streaked hair sits in one corner, across from a bulky black man in scrubs. Both glance at us, then go back to their meals.

    It’s completely mundane until we get to the food counter. Eggs, bacon, ham, sausage—
    a little protein-heavy, but nothing that strange. Then I notice the rows of plastic bottles half-submerged in a tray of melting ice.

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    I pick one up. Looks like tomato juice. The logo reads: JUICY PIG in brilliant crimson, and below that is a cartoon bat wearing a monocle and saying, “Bloody good!”

    “Want that heated up?” the bearded man behind the counter asks.

    “No,” I say, putting it back. “I’ll stick with eggs, thanks.”

    Once again, there’s no windows. I guess in a society full of vampires, that makes sense, but it just reinforces the fact that I’m here against my will. I’m not that hungry—the ghost of last night’s tequila is currently haunting my lower abdomen—but I make myself eat.

    Dr. Pete has a ham steak, scrambled eggs, and coffee, and I study him as we eat. I feel kind of strange, almost drugged—the jumpy, nervous feeling in my stomach is slowly being smothered by a completely irrational feeling of ease. Of course, the Urthbone could have almost anything in it—
    I abruptly realize that what I’m experiencing is exactly what Dr. Pete warned me about. The sense of relaxed competence is coming from him—I’m feeling what he’s feeling.

    And just as suddenly, I’m not—because the idea that my emotions aren’t my own provokes an immediate feeling of anger and revulsion, which apparently trumps the doctor’s warm fuzzies. Good to know; I can always count on my natural orneriness to kick in, usually at inappropriate times.

    But part of me wants to give in, to go back to that feeling. Dr. Pete, it seems, is one of those people who love their job; he feels at home here, feels confident and strong and valued. I think there was a two-hour period when I felt that way at the Bureau, right between considering myself an incompetent newbie and hitting old-timer burnout. I don’t remember it very well.

    But Dr. Pete knows that feeling intimately. It strikes me that I’m being played, that the reason the good and sincere doctor was assigned to me was exactly because of how I’d Dying Bites – Bloodhound Files 01
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    respond. Maybe they even thought I’d be attracted to him—he is cute, in a slightly unkempt, puppy-doggish kind of way.

    Well, if that’s what “they” thought, they’re barking up the wrong agent. I don’t do romance, in the same way that I don’t do heroin, Russian roulette, or nude alligator wrestling. I consider all of the above to be stupid, self-destructive, and demeaning, and these are things up with which I will not put.

    I’m a survivor. Everybody knows that in order to survive you have to be adaptable, but nobody tells you that “adapting” means being able to give up the things you care about. Or, sometimes, the people.

    Dr. Pete notices me glaring at him accusingly. “Whuh?” he says, his mouth full of eggs. I feel his confusion, coupled with wariness—Is this woman going to do something crazy?—and my anger subsides a little. Great. Welcome to the roller coaster, don’t forget to strap in. And I thought PMS was