A Perfect Blood th-10 Page 26

  Eloy looked back at me, cocky and satisfied. He didn’t have to say a word.

  Winona was looking at her hooves, unaware of how deep in the crapper we were, and I wasn’t going to tell her. “I always thought my feet were too big,” she said, her voice raspy but her diction clearer. A heavy tear brimmed and fell, making a shiny line on her dark, almost leathery face.

  I leaned over to give her a hug, feeling her changed bone structure. “It’s going to be all right,” I lied. “I will do everything I can to get us out of here.” That had been the truth, but it was just as true that we were in big, big trouble. We were on our own and pretty much helpless unless I could get the bracelet off safely.

  I was starting to wonder why I had put it on in the first place.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The last of the peanut butter was sticking to my teeth, as it always did, and I took a swallow of the tepid water. It was hard with minerals; we were on a well. He wasn’t lying when he said that we were out of the city, I thought as I set the plastic glass down and pulled my knees to my chin. I’d been stuck in this cage for almost twenty-four hours, but there was a feeling in the air that I didn’t trust. I’d been watching Eloy to try to figure out what was up. He’d come in early this morning, grumpy and stiff, making me think he had spent the night outside on sentry detail.

  Jennifer had left an hour ago wearing a pair of nursing scrubs and a doppelgänger curse invoked with my blood. Chris had spent the morning getting twenty years of dust out of the workings of one of the older-looking machines, now glinting a dull silver. Gerald was on a bathroom break with Winona, serving as both her balance and jailer.

  Winona was a good girl. She could use the bathroom any time she asked. They let me go only when both Eloy and Gerald were around, and Eloy was gone more often than not. Right now, he was fiddling with Gerald’s security cameras, trying to get them to pan. He was somewhere in the basement, visible through one of the monitors as he stretched and sweated. A light flashed on the panel, and Eloy grimaced, reaching around to try again.

  Sucking on my teeth, I leaned back against the wall as I sat on the cold floor, a stinky sleeping bag the only thing between me and the cement, watching the subtle flow of emotions and feeling of expectancy. Everything had changed earlier this morning after a hushed, intense argument between Eloy and Chris. It had taken place out of my hearing and almost out of my sight, at the edges of the light. Eloy got his way in the end, though, whatever it was.

  The snap of Chris carefully closing the box of her vials drew my attention, and I sighed. She had been counting them again. God, she was worse than Ivy.

  Ivy, I thought, feeling my chest clench. By now she must be worried to the point of tearing someone’s throat out, but she and Jenks would find me—and get me out of this cage. I fingered my band of silver, thinking I’d been more than stupid about this. No wonder Trent thought I was brainless. He’d been trying to tell me, and I hadn’t listened. I guess I hadn’t watched the right movies to know that with ultimate power comes ultimate responsibility. My blood was power, and I had a responsibility to keep it safe—even if that meant I had to hurt someone in the short term.

  I didn’t like it. But it was a moot point if I couldn’t get out of here and fix things, and my jaw clenched as I watched Eloy through one of the monitors, squinting as the camera panned back and forth. Nodding in satisfaction, the man walked out of the camera’s range. He flashed up on a second monitor before vanishing behind the new camera in turn.

  “Hey, how about a bathroom break?” I said loudly. Chris had left a screwdriver on the counter after replacing the back of the machine, and I wanted it.

  “Use the bucket,” Chris said, not bothering to turn around.

  “Winona didn’t have to use the bucket,” I said, then looked at the monitor and the gray shape coming down the stairwell, one hand on the railing, one hand holding a shopping bag.

  “Shut up, you stupid little chubi,” Chris said, pushing back from her chair as if she’d been killing time up until now. Sure enough, she went to her cot and grabbed her thick, army-green coat, shrugging into it as she muttered under her breath.

  “Bathroom?” I prompted, ignoring the slur.

  Chris searched her pockets until she found a tissue and wiped her nose. “Hold it,” she said as she threw it away. Not looking up, she yelled, “Gerald! Jenn’s back! Let’s get this over with!” Rolling her eyes, she turned to the monitors, now showing Eloy and Jennifer. He’d taken her shopping bag for her all polite like. The woman didn’t look like herself, being about twenty pounds heavier and just as many years older. It had to be her, though, seeing that Eloy was talking to her and the matronly seeming woman looked right up at the camera and waved.

  I fidgeted, balling up my napkin and throwing it at the bucket. My blood had made the doppelgänger curse work, and it bothered me, even though voluntarily giving them ten cc’s of blood had gotten me a much-needed trip to the bathroom last night. I was an unwilling demon, doling out wishes to an insane practitioner. At least Al could say no. I suppose I could say no, too, and pee in a corner. Maybe I should have. But then they just would have darted me.

  “You think you’re part of this, but HAPA is going to kill you when they don’t need you anymore,” I said, and Chris stiffened. “Why do you think Eloy is here? To keep you safe? They’re using you, and as soon as they don’t need you, you’re dead.”

  “You open your mouth one more time, and I’ll dart you this shy of a coma,” she snarled, but I’d seen her flash of fear. Maybe she was smarter than I’d given her credit for.

  The fast-paced sound of heels on cement grew loud, and Jennifer click-clacked into the circle of light, looking refreshed and red cheeked if nothing like herself. Eloy set her bag on the floor and went to Gerald’s security camera, making sure the joystick worked.

  “Why are you bothering to fix those?” Chris said snidely. “They don’t need to pan.”

  “Why are you opening the back panels of those old machines?” Eloy said dryly. “They aren’t going to work any better with the dust out of them.”

  Chris leaned against the makeshift lab bench, the nylon of her coat scraping it as she looked him over. She was ugly with her short hair, no makeup, the scratches from Jenks healing—and the fear I had reminded her of. “You do your job, I do mine.”

  “Uh-huh,” he muttered, still standing hunched over the equipment.

  “Wow, it got cold out there!” Jennifer said, her gaze going over the small room and seeing that Winona and Gerald were absent and that Chris had her coat on. “I thought we were staying in tonight,” she said, picking her bag up and setting it on the counter. A new name tag attached to the pocket of her scrubs peeped out past her unbuttoned coat.

  “Captain America has plans,” Chris said shortly. “Any problems getting the stuff?”

  Jennifer glanced at me, and I gave her a bunny-eared kiss-kiss. “No,” she said, her eyes darting away. “The charm worked great. In and out, no problem.” She shifted her shoulders as if shaking off a chill. “I feel like I need to take a shower, though.”

  “It’s a curse, not a charm,” I said loudly, and a flash of fear crossed her as she took wrapped sterile syringes out of the bag. “You should see how black your soul is now.”

  “Your aura is fine,” Chris said. “Don’t listen to the corr bitch.”

  “Filthy,” I mouthed at Jennifer, and she paled. Hey, I took my digs when I could get them.

  Jennifer set a small bottle of injectable something beside the syringes. “Why are we getting a new subject already?” she said, clearly still uneasy. “We can’t move three people if we have to bug out. Eloy says the next base isn’t ready yet. If something goes wrong and we have to leave, we’ve nowhere to go.”

  Chris frowned, crossing her ankles and barking, “Break that curse and put your bar clothes on.” Turning to the dark, she shouted, “Gerald, get goat girl back in her cage! Let’s go!”

  Goat girl? Oh, I owed he
r some serious foot-in-gut for that one.

  Jennifer didn’t move, but the curse washed from her, leaving her in clothes too big and a very concerned expression on her face. “Four people can’t move three.”

  I stifled a shiver when Chris smiled at me. “We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.”

  What she meant was, they’d take the most useful and kill who was left. I suddenly felt like I was on the Titanic.

  Jennifer spun to Eloy. “You’re going along with this?” she asked, and Eloy shrugged.

  All my warning flags went up, and Chris noticed I was watching Jennifer intently. Her eyes never leaving mine, she said, “Can I talk to you for a moment, Jennifer?”

  My eyes narrowed in suspicion as Chris put a hand on the woman’s shoulder, whispering into her ear. Jennifer’s eyes went wide, then she looked at Eloy as he stood and stretched, finally bending to check that his boots were tied. Frowning in thought, Jennifer went behind the curtain she’d hung last night between her cot and Gerald’s, changing into her bar clothes, I expected.

  Eloy stood beside the syringes and picked up the tiny bottle, squinting as he read what it contained. “You know this is toxic, right?” he said, jiggling it in his palm. “You’ll have to wait twenty-four hours for it to work its way out of the subject’s system before you can alter him.”

  Alter? My face burned, and I sat up, pulling my cold back from the stone. “Why not just say mutilate, Eloy? That’s all it does.”

  “That’s not for the next subject,” Chris said, annoyed. “That’s for her if she becomes a liability.”

  Eloy nodded, and he set the bottle down with a tap. Her frown deepening, Chris turned to the stacked clutter. “Come on, Gerald!” she shouted. “It doesn’t take that long to use the can!”

  “We’re coming!” came back faintly. “She can’t walk that fast, for God’s sake!”

  Jennifer pushed the curtain aside, dressed in some slinky black dress, high heels adding four inches to her height. She looked at me and beamed. I felt like the butt of a joke being told out of my earshot, and I touched the corner of my mouth to see if I had peanut butter on it. The awkward trip-trap of Winona’s hooves became obvious, and my pulse quickened. The door to the cage was going to open.

  Gerald’s hunched form eased into the light, Winona looking small and frail on his arm as she wobbled, hanging on for dear life. They’d given her blouse back to her, and it looked odd with her thick thighs and cloven feet showing from under it. Balancing on her tiny feet with that heavy head must be hard. She looked okay, if having wrinkly gray skin, a curly red pelt, goat feet, and a tail somewhere between a monkey’s and a stingray’s was okay.

  Winona gave me a smile, her oversize canines making her look like she was growling, but I smiled back, tensing to jump at the door.

  Angry, Chris turned to Gerald. “Hurry up. I’m tired of smelling these stinking corrs!”

  “All right, all right!” Gerald muttered, his head down as he wove Winona through the last of the boxes and toward our cell.

  I got to my feet, eyes on the door. “Hey! What about my bathroom break?”

  “Use the bucket,” Chris said, arms crossed as Winona grabbed the wire mesh for balance while Gerald fished the key from his pocket. There was only one, and Gerald had it.

  “On your knees, facing the wall,” Gerald demanded, and shoulders slumping, I turned my back on them and dropped to my knees. I don’t know what movie he’d been watching, but it was effective. No big loss, I thought as I heard the door open and Winona totter in. Even if I did manage to get out, I wouldn’t get anywhere. Not with them standing around watching.

  Hearing the door shut and lock, I stood and turned, reaching to take Winona’s thick hand. Her eyes met mine in thanks, and I helped her to her side of the cell and supported her until she was down. They really didn’t need to cage her. She could barely stand.

  Chris put the bottle of sedative in her purse with a couple of syringes. “I doubt moving three people is going to come up,” she said. “We’ve never had a subject live longer than three days.” She looked at Winona. “This is what, day two?”

  “Winona is healthy.” Why are they scaring her like this?

  “And that’s why she was puking all night?” Chris gestured for Jennifer to get her coat.

  My heart pounded as the distasteful woman sauntered closer until only a few feet, some twined wire, and a canyon of morals separated us. “If it should come down to it,” Chris said, her words crisp and mocking, “your surly nature might outweigh your blood, and we’ll take Winona instead. Maybe you should be nicer.”

  I jumped when she smacked the door, my face burning when she laughed. “The last person who hit my cage died under a pack of dogs,” I said, but she’d already turned away.

  “Okay, let’s go,” she said, and my anger turned to hope when Eloy stood up from the monitors. They were all leaving?

  “Rachel?”

  It was Winona, and I turned to her, almost impatient until I saw her fear. My thoughts jumped back to what Chris had said. After a moment of hesitation, I went to her. “It’s okay,” I said, sitting so I could see if they took the dart gun. “You’re not going to die. You were just getting rid of something you couldn’t digest anymore.”

  “Maybe I should die,” she said, and I stiffened. “I mean, what good am I now?”

  I shoved my first response down, and settled myself more certainly beside her, rubbing my legs, aching from disuse. “Don’t talk like that,” I said, watching them bundle up with hats and thick coats.

  “You sure they can’t escape?” Chris said as she tugged on her gloves, and Eloy rattled the door.

  “I can lock them in the bathroom,” Gerald said, and Chris snickered.

  “At least then she would stop whining about potty breaks.” Her head came up. “Okay, let’s go. We have a small window and I want to use it. I’ve been stuck down here for two days.”

  She was halfway to the edge of the light, and Jennifer and Gerald fell into place behind her, talking between themselves, their tension rising. Eloy was last, and I wondered at the look he gave me as he left.

  Slowly their voices became faint, and with a thump that seemed to shake the air, the lights went out. Winona sighed, and I looked at her in the glow from the TV monitors. I could see them on the monitors at the stairway. Then even that light went off and the monitors glowed a dull gray of nothing.

  “Couldn’t leave the light on, huh?” I said sarcastically.

  Winona moaned as if in relief. “I’d rather have them off,” she said, surprising me. “The light was hurting my eyes. That annoying humming stopped, too.”

  I wondered if she was hearing the electricity in the wires. Jenks said he could. It was how he’d found that worn spot in the church’s wiring last year before it burned the place down.

  My chest hurt. Damn it, I was going to get us out of here. Somehow.

  Standing up, I squinted at the ceiling where the wire mesh met it, wondering if there was a weak spot. I hadn’t looked yet, knowing I’d never be able to take advantage of it if they knew I’d found one. Fingers looping into the mesh as high as I could reach, I gave a tug. Nothing.

  Winona sniffed, and I moved a foot down and gave it another shake. My thoughts kept going over the last half hour: the conversations being said without a word, that look Jennifer had given me when Chris whispered in her ear. What bothered me the most was that Eloy hadn’t protested their going out and grabbing someone else. He knew that putting three people in this cage was a mistake. Someone would die if they had to move fast, probably Winona, seeing that she couldn’t walk and they could make more of her with my blood. Not that they cared.

  My head hurt, and I moved down another foot and shook the mesh. And what was HAPA, a military outfit, doing working with scientists and magic, the same people that HAPA blamed for the Turn to begin with? Maybe once they got their magic elixir, they were going to turn on them, make the scientists take the blame and wipe th
em out with the rest of Inderland. Sounded about right.

  I moved another foot, to the corner. Giving it a shake, I frowned. It was even sturdier with that embedded pole. Perhaps it was a group of frustrated scientists who were backing HAPA. If they used genetic research to get rid of the Inderlanders, then maybe the genetic medicines that had saved so many human lives in the past might be considered safe again. I dropped back to my heels, rubbing my head. Maybe Chris was going to run off with her research when they were almost done, and sell it to the highest bidder? Yeah, that sounded like something she’d do.

  “We’re going to die,” Winona whispered, and I slid down a foot to give the mesh a shake.

  “No, we aren’t.”

  She sniffed, her rough voice sounding almost normal. “You know what the stupid thing is? I’m going to die, and I’m worried about my cat.”

  I turned to her, a lump of a shadow on the floor. “That’s not stupid,” I said, then gave the mesh a kick. I was worried about Ivy and Jenks. And my mother.

  “I wish it wasn’t so dark,” I said, giving the mesh another shake. “If I could touch a line, I could make a light and maybe find the weak spot in this cage.”

  My breath caught, and I turned around to Winona. “Hey, you’re a witch,” I said, and she made a barking cough of a laugh. “No, I mean you can touch a line, right?” I said, and the shadow she was nodded. Her little horns caught the dim light and gave me the shivers.

  “I don’t know any magic,” she said. “Especially any as complicated as making a light.”

  I quit my testing of the wire mesh and came back to her. “I do,” I said as I stood over her, the first hints of an idea making me jittery. “I can teach you.” I sat down in sudden thought, remembering how thick and stubby her hands were now. Still, she had fingers, and a ley-line charm shouldn’t be beyond her.

  “Really?”

  It was the hope in her voice that did it. Stubby fingers or not, we had to try. “Maybe we can use it to get out of here,” I added, taking her hand in mine and studying it. “I know a spell that warms things, burns them up. If you heat up the wires . . .”