White Meat by Sally Spedding

Author:Sally Spedding [Spedding, Sally]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-11-06T04:00:00+00:00

Twenty Three

Saturday 29th July. EST. A new day.

He wants to reclaim my new heart. That most precious part of me, but it will never be his, whatever lies he has spun. As surely as the inland taipan - the secretive, most toxic of all our serpents - which can slay one hundred victims with a single bite, so can he - the gunyan - harm too many.

For the sake of our sacred homeland and all its dwellers, for the sake of my unquiet soul, you must kill him and leave his body to whatever creatures are too hungry to pass him by…

Angelica pressed her hands around her own head and shook it to lose that strange, grating voice. Like an incubus in her brain, it was beginning to drive her mad.

“What’s up with you?” the white-coated Karl Womack grabbed her right arm and twisted it round for his needle to find her basilic vein. To draw her liquid harvest into its sleek, glass body. “Is it that damned terrorist again?”

“What are you talking about? Ouch! Why the hell are you doing this?”

“To be sure, that’s all.”

“Of what?”

“That my heart’s in good shape for a re-sale. Somewhere far, far away.”

My heart? He’s sick. Jack Feering had been my surgeon, not him…

She felt unsteady all over again. This wasn’t happening. It was surely just another bad dream. But no. The sting was real enough, and the pull of blood from her body.

“And whose will replace it? At what cost?”

“I’ll tell you in the morning. It’ll be like Christmas Day all over again. My gift to you.” He pressed a small plaster over the wound and hurried over to a workbench where he added the red phial to a row of others filled with blood. All weaker than hers, she noticed, wondering if Mel Shaughnessy and Jamie Corcoran were represented there and if so, where they were now? She’d finally remembered their names, but that only made her feel worse.

And what about herself? The pre-med and anaesthetic would come next. Then the knife… She’d been there before. Done it. She had to try again to find her work mates, to test herself. To believe she wasn’t alone. That she had, together with Maban Tiaga, the strength of mind and body to win.

“Wait here. Calm down.” He ordered, moving towards the door. “Your blood pressure’s unworkable…”

Unworkable?

Before she could stop him, he’d locked her in, giving her half an hour to think things through. And by the time the wall clock showed ten minutes was up, she’d realised why her replacement heart had to go.

*

Karl Womack returned, slamming both harpoons into the corner and cursing that his target, the IT consultant, had given him the slip. How, having finished with her, he’d make another sortie to bring the Pom’s body back for safe keeping.

Humour him, for God‘s sake…

“He’ll never make it,” she said. “He can’t even find his way round Victoria Park…”

“If you’d not let him go at Belville, I wouldn’t have to go to all this dangerous trouble.

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