A Perfect Blood With Bonus Material Read online

  I winced, drawing back from the door as a clearly disappointed Jennifer noisily dropped a dart gun back into the box. As Chris snorted, Jennifer got her blood-gathering stuff together and cautiously knelt before Winona to tie her arm off. Gerald, too, was watching, his back to the monitors and his arms crossed over his chest. Eloy’s eyes never left me as he assessed the threat I posed. Maybe I should have cried in the corner like Winona.

  “Thank you,” he said, and Winona jumped when the needle slid in.

  Jennifer undid the rubber band around Winona’s arm, nervously sneaking glances at the woman’s mutilated face. It really was horrific. Chris made a scoffing sound and dug her spoon for the last bits of soup. “Bloody waste of time. We should have just darted them.”

  “Got it,” Jennifer said, and Winona pulled her arm back, her eyes widening as she discovered it was double jointed. She gingerly rubbed the spot since Jennifer hadn’t thought to give her a cotton ball to stop the bleeding. I could see why. I might use it and the tourniquet I’d pulled off my arm earlier to escape with. God!

  Jennifer got to her feet, and Chris set down her soup mug and met her at the machine.

  “A few more blankets would be nice,” I said. “You’re down a man. We can use his.”

  Chris tossed the old vial out and dropped in a new one. “Don’t open that cage, Eloy.”

  “Winona needs her clothes,” I said softly. “And I have to go to the bathroom. You’ve got to have a way worked out by now. I’m what, the eighth person you’ve held?”

  Winona gasped, and I mentally kicked myself. Chris hit the go button on the machine and turned, smiling beatifically at me.

  “Wha appen oo da uhders?” Winona stammered, then took a breath and tried again. “What appened do da uh-thers?” she said more slowly, her brown, goat-slitted eyes showing fear.

  I sat down beside her, my thoughts going to the woman they’d buried in the basement of the museum. “They died from Rosewood syndrome,” I said, unable to give her the entire truth.

  “My sisder died of th-that when she was th-three months old,” Winona said, and I nodded. Her speech was getting better.

  “You’re a carrier,” I said, giving Eloy a disparaging glance as he got the last dregs of soup. “That’s why they abducted you.”

  The machine dinged, and Chris reached for the tape. I held my breath, wondering if Winona would be able to do demon magic. But Chris frowned, handing the strip to Jennifer to paste in her lab book. I exhaled, relieved.

  “That’s good,” I whispered. “You’re not a demon, Winona.”

  The woman pulled her hand from mine and hid her face in her arms, now draped over her thick knees. “Whoopie friggin’ do,” she said to the cold cement. “If ah look like this, you’d . . . dink ah might have some of da perks.”

  Perks? I looked at my band of silver. I’d never thought of demon magic as being a perk and to having been labeled as one, but the madness I was now wallowing in wasn’t working, either.

  Chris methodically cleaned the machine and ran a clear sample through to recalibrate it. “So are we good here for a few days?” she asked Eloy.

  Eloy had put himself half in the dark on one of the rolled-up sleeping bags, again watching me. “Should be. I contaminated everything the FIB and the I.S. had before it got back within city limits. All they have now is a sample of dog spit. If they use it to make a finding charm, they’ll lose an entire day until they figure out they’re following a stray,” he added, watching me for my reaction.

  I shrugged at him, wondering if we would get any of that soup.

  Eloy took his eyes off me, and I stifled a shudder. “We should be good for four days. Maybe longer. They’ll probably try to find us using Morgan’s hair. Good thing I put you so far from the city center this time.” Tilting his head back, his Adam’s apple moved as he got the last swallow of soup.

  Jennifer leaned over her lab book and tore a strip of tape from a dispenser. “I don’t understand how they found us this last time. Too bad we can’t transform her, too,” she said as she taped Winona’s results down. “Change her so far that the charms won’t recognize her,” she added, her head tilted as she assessed the latest addition to her scrapbook from hell.

  Arts and crafts. Would the woman’s talents never cease?

  “Change her?” Eloy said, looking alarmed.

  “I’m not risking changing her blood by mistake,” Chris said, and Eloy looked concerned as he eased down on a cot and stared at the low ceiling, his hands laced behind his neck and his boots on the sleeping bag. His military training was showing, and I wondered how he’d gotten through the armed services with the same attitude that got him into HAPA.

  “They’ll find us,” I said, as much for myself as for Winona, and I mentally marked where Jennifer slid the lab book away. I wanted it when I got out of this cage. The floor was cold, and I shifted uncomfortably.

  “Doubt it,” Eloy said to the ceiling. “You really don’t have any contact with the lines, do you?”

  My brow furrowed, and I was silent for a moment. “Why?”

  Getting up, Eloy went to talk to Gerald.

  “Why?” I shouted, and Winona winced. Fear slid through me, and I turned to her. “Winona, you’re a witch. Can you see ley lines with your second sight?”

  She nodded, catching her head before it snapped forward this time. “We’re underground,” she said, looking scared.

  I totally understood—you never knew what you’d see when you used your second sight underground—but I gave her hand a squeeze and she finally nodded. Closing her eyes, she seemed to relax as she brought up her second sight. Then she tensed. “Dere are two lines crossing not twenty feet from ’ere,” she said, her eyes opening.

  I exhaled slowly, hopelessness soaking into me. Eloy had picked this place well. Two lines crossing so close would make it difficult for charms to find us. The searcher would have to be almost on top of us. Add to that the fact that they probably wouldn’t widen the search outside of Cincy’s city limits for a few days. We were on our own.

  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.

  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 w
ith 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 her 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.