Dead on Arrival (4 page)
Authors: Anne Rooney
Upstairs in the coma unit, Helena stirred. She had not moved for three months. Her arm was bandaged, covering the wounds from her attack.
She groaned, and at the same time her vital signs dipped on the monitor and an alarm rang at the nurse station. Within seconds the room was full.
‘Resus team!’ a nurse called. ‘She’s flat-lining!’
But although the monitor showed she was dying, Helena sat up. She wrenched the monitor cable from her chest.
A nurse shook the heart monitor.
‘Stupid thing. Either it’s broken or she’s the living dead.’
A doctor put a hand on Helena’s arm.
‘Shh. Slowly. You’ve been very ill.’
Helena looked at the veins on the back of the doctor’s hand and opened her mouth. Her eyes gleamed. But she was weak, and had to lie back again.
For now.
Anne Rooney does not eat meat, in case the taste of blood becomes too appealing.
When not writing books she haunts the cemeteries and catacombs of Paris and Venice and raises non-vampiric daughters and chickens in Cambridge. She studied at a haunted college and her first car was a haunted van; the undead hold no fears for her.
by Anne Rooney
www.annerooney.co.uk
Published by Ransom Publishing Ltd.
Radley House, 8 St. Cross Road, Winchester, Hants.
SO23 9HX, UK
www.ransom.co.uk
ISBN 978 178127 178 0
First published in 2012
This ebook edition published 2013
Copyright © 2013 Ransom Publishing Ltd.
Text copyright © 2012 Anne Rooney
Images copyright © Ivan Bliznetsov, lightkey (cover); UteHil
A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library.
All rights reserved. This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
The right of Anne Rooney to be identified as the author of this Work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.
