Читать онлайн «Blood Ties Bundle: Blood Ties Book One: The Turning / Blood Ties Book Two: Possession / Blood Ties Book Three: Ashes to Ashes / Blood Ties Book Four: All Souls' Night»

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

One

The End

I read a poll in the newspaper once that said the number-one fear of Americans aged eighteen to sixty-five is public speaking. Spiders are second, and death a distant third. I’m afraid of all these things. But most of all, I’m afraid of failure.

I’m no coward. I want to make that perfectly clear. But my life turned from nearly perfect to a horror movie in a matter of days, so I take fear a lot more seriously now.

I’d followed my life plan almost to the letter, with very few detours. I’d gone from plain old Ms. Carrie Ames to Dr. Carrie Ames just eight months prior to the night I now refer to as “The Big Change. ” I’d broken away from the sleepy, East Coast town I’d grown up in, only to find myself in a sleepy, mid-Michigan city. I had a great residency in the E. R. of the public hospital there. The city and surrounding rural communities provided endless opportunity to study and treat injuries inflicted by both urban warfare and treacherous farm equipment. Living my dream, I’d never been more certain that I’d found the success and control over my destiny that had always seemed to elude me in my tumultuous college years.

Of course, sleepy mid-Michigan towns get boring, especially on frozen winter nights when even the snow won’t venture out. And on a night exactly like this, after only having been home for four hours from a grueling twelve-hour shift, I was back at the hospital to help deal with a sudden influx of patients. The E. R. was surprisingly busy for such a forbidding evening, but the approaching holiday season seemed to affect everyone with a pulse. Thanks to my rotten luck, I was charged with attending trauma cases that night, patients with serious injuries and illnesses that put them in imminent danger of death. Or, more specifically, carloads of mall-hoppers who showed up in pieces after hitting black ice on 131 South.

After I’d admitted three patients, I found myself in great need of a nicotine fix. While I felt guilty for sticking the other doctors with a few extra cases, I didn’t feel guilty enough to forgo a quick cigarette break.

I was heading for the ambulance bay doors when John Doe arrived.

Dr. Fuller, the attending physician and most senior M. D. in the hospital, ran alongside the gurney, barking instructions and demanding information from the EMTs in his no-nonsense Texan accent.