Sliceblood

THE HOSPITAL IS OPEN. THE HOSPITAL IS HUNGRY. THE HOSPITAL IS *PREGNANT*. St. Gestatia's Hospital was built on a cursed burial ground. The burial ground was built on a second, eviler burial ground. And beneath the second burial ground, something is waiting, and it has been waiting for a very long time. Into this nightmare of damp corridors and flickering strip-lights strides Dr. Rick Blade, MD: Master of Death, fifty-four years old, with shoulders like a wardrobe and a jaw like a sideboard. He has faced down plague, politics and one extremely hostile canteen. He has never doubted himself. Not once. Then the vending machine in the lobby starts selling organs instead of crisps. Behind it stands Vendarax, a demon of terrible courtesy who accepts teeth as currency and always, always offers a coupon. With him: a lift that breathes, a fax machine that knows your name, a Matron whose shoes make no sound, and a hum that grows louder with every floor. Blade has until the delivery to cut out the truth. And the truth, when he finds it, is worse than any surgeon should have to hold in his hands: The hospital is alive. And it is about to give birth. Part medical thriller, part supernatural siege, part love story conducted through a load-bearing wall, SLICEBLOOD is the book that Dr. Rick Blade's critics have been begging me not to publish, and that the medical establishment has pointedly refused to review. Twenty-four chapters. Three trimesters. One delivery that will change the NHS forever. "The finest novel ever set inside a building." — The Author Book One of The Emerick Codex of Forbidden Terror.