Raw Deal (Bite Back) Read Online Free PDF Page A

those injuries. Half my throat had been torn out. It must have looked as if there was more blood soaking the dirt around me than remaining in me. But I wasn’t dead, and five days later you could hardly see the scars. I was raving and screaming, but I was alive and physically healed.
    The army hadn’t believed in vampires. And if you were talking Hollywood vampires, they still didn’t. Vampires didn’t turn to dust when you killed them—I was still clutching my attacker’s severed head when they found me. Sunlight and religious artifacts had no effect. But they drank human blood all right, and the army wanted to know if I was going to.
    I hadn’t yet. I was stable. There were some physical changes: it was harder to injure me, and I healed quickly. My health, strength and stamina had improved. I saw better in the dark than the average person. The army was very, very interested. Or at least, the little part of the army I’d been involved in. No one else knew, and part of the conditions of my ‘release’ was that it had to stay that way. The drawbacks—the nightmares, the paranoia—those the army weren’t so interested in. ‘Just Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. You’ll get over it. Oh, and you can’t go talk to a head doctor, by the way. Security issues.’
    “I’m getting along,” I said out loud. “Police work is better than the accounting job.” My voice sounded creaky. “I’m finding my feet, and I’m doing everything you asked as well.”
    The colonel flipped his folder open. “Well, as long as the medical team is happy with your answers, you won’t need to come back in for another checkup yet.”
    Crap. He had to remind me. I’d do pretty much anything to stay away from them, even answer their questions. I’d never been claustrophobic until they’d strapped me to a bed and left me in that tiny room. The only thing that had kept me from screaming and thrashing till I passed out again was that they’d been watching me. Even when they weren’t there in person, their cameras had focused cold, unblinking eyes on me, 24/7.
    ‘The subject is distressed…’
    One of them had actually said that. The sound of his voice floated out of the maelstrom of memories, cold and detached. I shivered.
    I’d found a way to force the reactions back down inside, to show them nothing of what I was feeling. I used that again now, determined not to let the colonel see how rattled I was.
    “Nightmares?”  he asked abruptly, his pen hovering over a printed list.
    “Fewer. The same ones. They’re getting real old now,” I lied.
    “Any other sleep problems?”
    “No.” That was true. The nightmares didn’t leave time for anything else.
    “Anxiety, unexplained physiological changes, sensations of heat, cold, racing heart, arrhythmia?”
    Like right now.
    “None of them,” I said.
    The colonel paused beside an exhibit.
    “Outside of the nightmares,” he read from his list, “do you repeatedly visualize or think about events in the army?”
    “No,” I lied again. I tried to avoid it. I’d loved my life in Ops 4-10 and now I could never go back. Thinking about it was torturing myself. I had to break this habit. This was the new me. Out here, on my own. Standing strong. Not looking back.
    “Blackouts?”
    Prickles of cold ran down my back. We were heading off the PTSD track. The medical team had theorized that I would experience psychogenic blackouts if my ‘condition’ progressed.
    “No.” Not yet. Not ever, I hoped. There would be no repeal if I turned. I’d spend the rest of my life in restraints, being studied by scientists who would dispassionately note down how distressed the subject looked.
    The colonel folded the pad under his arm and gazed at the Western scene we’d stopped in front of. I wasn’t fooled. There were more questions to answer.
    “Are you still running, Sergeant?”
    “Yeah. It’s not as regular now because of my hours.”
    “Have your fitness or stamina levels improved