Blood Pact - By Tanya Huff Page 0,8

well lately, and, well, she came into work this morning, said how she'd been trying to get in touch with you, made the coffee like she always does, came out of Dr. Burke's office and... and, well, died."

The world stopped.

"Ms. Nelson?"

"What happened?" Vicki heard herself ask the question, marveled at how calm her voice sounded, wondered why she felt so numb.

"Dr. Burke, the head of the Life Sciences Department, well, you know who Dr. Burke is, of course, said it was her heart. A massive coronary, she said. One minute there, the next... " Mrs. Shaw blew her nose. "It happened about twenty minutes ago. If there's anything I can do... "

"No. Thank you. Thank you for calling."

If Mrs. Shaw had further sympathy or information to offer, Vicki didn't hear it. She set the receiver gently back in its cradle and stared down at the silent phone.

Her mother was dead.
Chapter Two
"Dr. Burke? It's about number seven... "

"And?" Receiver tucked under her chin, Dr. Aline Burke scrawled her signature across the bottom of a memo and tossed it into the out basket. Although Marjory Nelson had been dead for only a couple of hours, the paperwork had already begun to get out of hand. With any luck the university would get off its collective butt and get her a temporary secretary before academic trivia completely buried her.

"I think you'll want to see this for yourself."

"For heaven's sake, Catherine, I haven't got the time for you to be obscure." She rolled her eyes. Grad students. "Are we losing it?"

"Yes, Doctor."

"I'll be right over."

"Damn." The surgical glove hit the wastebasket with enough force to rock the container from side to side. "Tissue decomposition again. Just like the others." The second glove followed and Dr. Burke turned to glare at the body of an elderly man lying on the stainless steel table, thoracic cavity open, skull cap resting against one ear. "Didn't even last as long as number six."

"Well, he was old to start with, Doctor. And not in very good physical condition."

Dr. Burke snorted. "I should say not. I suppose I'm moderately surprised it lasted as long as it did." She sighed as the young woman standing by the head of the cadaver looked crushed. "That was not a criticism, Catherine. You did your usual excellent job and were certainly in no way responsible for the subject's deplorable habits when alive. That said, retrieve the rest of the mechanicals, salvage as much of the net as you can, be very sure all of the bacteria are dead, and begin the usual disposal procedures."

"The medical school... "

"Of course the medical school. We're hardly going to weight it with rocks and drop it into Lake Ontario, although I have to admit that has a certain simplicity that appeals and would involve a lot less additional work for me. Let me know when it's ready, I should be in my office for the next couple of hours." Hand on the door, she paused. "What's that banging noise?"

Catherine looked up, pale blue eyes wide, fingers continuing to delve into the old man's skull cavity. "Oh, it's number nine. I don't think he likes the box."

"It doesn't like anything, Catherine. It's dead."

The younger woman shrugged apologetically, accepting the correction but unwilling to be convinced. "He keeps banging."

"Well, when you finish with number seven, decrease the power again. The last thing we need is accelerated tissue damage due to unauthorized motion."

"Yes, Doctor." She gently slid the brain out onto a plastic tray. The bank of fluorescent lights directly over the table picked up glints of gold threaded throughout the grayish-green mass. "It'll be nice to finally work with a subject we've been able to do preliminary setup on. I mean, the delay while we attempt to tailor the bacteria can't be good for them."

"Probably not," Dr. Burke agreed caustically and, with a last disapproving look in the direction of number nine's isolation box, strode out of the lab.

The pounding continued.

"Where to, lady?"

Vicki opened her mouth and then closed it again. She didn't actually have the faintest idea.

"Uh, Queen's University. Life Sciences." Her mother would have been moved. Surely someone could tell her where.

"It's a big campus, Queen's is." The cabbie pulled out of the train station parking lot and turned onto Taylor Kidd Boulevard. "You got a street address?"

She knew the address. Her mother had shown her proudly around the new building just after it opened two years ago. "It's on Arch Street."

"Down by the old General Hospital, eh?