August Read Free

I’d reached for beside my bed was empty. I was in a small room, with a cupboard and a chair beside me, and a laboratory-style sink in the corner. The pale green walls and green vinyl squares on the floor reminded me of the intensive care unit Gabbi was in when I last saw her. The door in the wall opposite me had a small window in it.
    There was a strong mix of anaesthetic vapours and disinfectant–that distinct hospital smell. I flopped back, exhausted and confused.
    I had no memory of being saved. I must have lost consciousness when all the oxygen was used up in the coffin underground. But how did I get here?
    I looked up and saw the steel bars on the tall windows, just like Leechwood Lodge Asylum. Now I knew for sure I was in some kind of policehospital or a locked ward in a normal hospital … for criminals.
    Boges and Winter had somehow helped me cheat death, but by getting out of one terrifying situation, I’d ended up in another fix. I had no idea how I was going to get out of this one.
    I hoped my friends weren’t in trouble with the police for aiding and abetting a criminal. They were the only reason I was alive. Without them, Vulkan Sligo or Oriana de la Force would have done away with me by now.

    I carefully swung my legs over the side of the bed, to try and get a glimpse of what was outside the window, but all I could see was another wall with windows in it just like the one I was looking out from. If I peered upwards, I could see a small square of sky. Even it looked grey and grimy. I shuffled over to the sink, trying carefully to avoid dislodging any of the cords around me, and banged the cold water tap on with my elbow. As I turned my head sideways to lean in and get a drink, something glinted, caught in the drain fitting. It was hard fishing it out with my tied hands but eventually my fingers closed around a small piece of flat metal. It was the larger half of a broken scalpel blade. Somethinglike that could come in handy, I thought, so I took it back with me to the hospital bed, and slid it into a stitched pocket in the mattress.
    I lay there staring at the ceiling panels, going over the last twenty-four hours. Who had tried to kill me? Who had leapt out of the coffin that I’d mistaken for a counter? And who had buried me? It was one thing to murder someone, but to try and take them out by burying them alive? What kind of monster was I dealing with?
    That familiar scent I’d caught a whiff of when I was attacked was frustrating me … I couldn’t place it. Did it belong to Oriana? Was it her perfume? Or Sligo’s aftershave? My mind kept jumping from one question to the next, but I couldn’t find any answers.
    My thoughts were abruptly interrupted by the sound of a heavy lock unlatching. The door swung open and two men walked in. One was dressed in the pale green clothes of a nurse, and the other looked like a detective, wearing a dark suit under a beige overcoat and carrying a briefcase.
    ‘God, the press was going crazy out there,’ he said to the nurse, while smoothing down his hair. ‘I’ve never seen so many photographers and journos in my life. It was like squeezing through a pack of wild animals. Bloody vultures.’
    ‘He’s conscious,’ said the nurse, dismissively.
    ‘I can see that,’ he replied, sternly. He spun the chair beside the bed around and sat on it, then pulled a leather-backed wallet out of his pocket, flipping it open to show me his ID. ‘Senior Sergeant Dorian McGrath,’ he said, before snapping it shut again. ‘Just so we both know who we are.’
    McGrath had a narrow, shrewd face with wispy eyebrows above hazel eyes. Pale bristles shone on his jawline.
    He stared at me while the nurse fussed and fumbled with a monitor nearby. McGrath seemed irritated, scowling in the nurse’s direction, then turning his attention back to me.
    ‘You’re a very lucky boy, Callum Ormond. The doctors say just another minute or two down there and you would have suffered brain