A Perfect Blood

by Kim Harrison

Page 13

 

  Chapter Thirteen

  My forehead was pressed into something small and cold, and it hurt. My outstretched arm was tingling, as if something was wrapped tight around my biceps. The floor was equally cold and hard, and it smelled like bleach-washed stone. I could hear a series of soft noises that could only be described as a shuffling clatter. Behind that was a soft weeping.

  A woman's high-pitched voice said, "Hurry up, will you? I've almost got this thing calibrated," and my eyes flashed open.

  I was on the floor with my arm stretched through a narrow gap in the mesh of a cage, my head pressed into the wires. A syringe was stuck in me, and Jennifer was reaching to undo the tourniquet. Her eyes opened wide when they met mine, and her little mouth dropped into an O.

  "Hey!" I shouted, painfully yanking my arm back through the mesh and sitting up. Jennifer's grip slipped from my wrist, but her hold on the syringe was tighter, and it pulled out of me, leaving a long, throbbing scratch.

  Jennifer fell back on her butt, her round, baby-doll face showing fear. In a corner, a man in overalls, on his hands and knees, glanced up from wiring a TV monitor to a panel, then went back to work. I recognized him as the man who had been driving the car. The woman from the cage was in here with me, and she hid her face and sobbed, scrunching deeper into her corner.

  "Holy shit!" Jennifer breathed, looking behind her to the blond woman in the lab coat. "You see that?" she said, scooting back to stand up. "You see how fast the chubi came to?"

  "Maybe I should've kicked her harder," the blonde said, then turned back to the tabletop machine she was fiddling with.

  "You call me that one more time, Jennifer, and I'm going to choke you in your sleep," I said, unwinding the tourniquet and dropping it beside me. "You're not getting any of my blood. Got it?" Oh my God. I was stuck in a cage who knew where? At least Jenks was okay.

  Jennifer went white. "She . . . she knows my name!" she said, her face ashen and her grip on the syringe going white-knuckled. "How do you know my name?" she shouted, totally freaking out. "He was right! You're a demon!"

  The woman trapped with me sobbed harder, her hands now over her head as if I were going to beat her. Yeah, that was a laugh. I was just as scared as she was. Where in the hell was I? It looked like one of those basement lockups they use to keep expensive equipment from wandering away, the painted mesh going from ceiling to floor on three sides, the fourth being the basement wall made of mortared stone.

  My head hurt, and I rubbed at the new hole in my arm and scooted back. The cage wasn't very big. Maybe ten by eight, and just under six feet tall. We were definitely in a basement, one being used for storage by the amount of clutter stacked at the edges - no windows, low ceiling, thick stone walls by the absence of any other sound. The floor was old cement, and I could see a faint light from a bare bulb in the distance past the clutter. The light here was from floor lamps that looked like they belonged in the '50s.

  "Chris! The witch knows my name!" Jennifer babbled, her pretty little size 6 shoes backing up on the poured cement floor.

  Chris turned from the machine she was working with, her expression cross, as if things were clearly not going well in calibration land. "Will you shut up!" she said harshly, the scratches Jenks had given her looking red and sore. "She probably heard it before she woke up, the same way you just told her mine, you idiot!"

  Jennifer caught back her fear, her dark eyes squinting in anger from under her long eyelashes. "Fool," Chris muttered, jotting down a number before fiddling with a dial and dropping a vial of clear liquid into the machine's hopper and pushing a big black button.

  The machine started humming, and Chris turned, stretching for a metal folding chair. Snapping it open, she sat in it, her back to me as she waited for the machine to cycle through. The man at the monitors grunted happily. Getting off the floor, he flicked a switch. One of the monitors blossomed to life to show a narrow empty stairway, a bare bulb with its paint worn away from the tread. Satisfied, he began working with another camera.

  Jennifer hesitated, then sneered and flipped me off as if it was my fault. I didn't get this. Chris was clearly the power-hungry bitch, but what was the gutter-mouthed china doll doing here? She'd been freaky scary when we caught her, but fringe organizations promoting species eradication usually didn't mesh with women named Jennifer who had rhinestones on their shoes.

  "I got enough to run a sample," Jennifer said, setting the syringe beside Chris. "When we need more, I'll just dart her. "

  Like an animal? Not good. Not good at all. This wasn't the first time I'd been locked up: Alcatraz, demon jail, Trent's ferret cage, a hospital bed. If I could escape that one twenty years ago, then this one was only a matter of time. But as I looked over the bleak surroundings, warm and damp, I wondered. This was bad. Really bad.

  "I'm Rachel," I said to the lump in the corner.

  "Winona," the woman said, lifting her head from her seated fetal position just enough to see me. Her brown eyes were terrified. "Don't touch me. Please. "

  She sounded frantic, and I stopped moving closer. Her tasteful pair of slacks and a blouse were wrinkled by several days' use, but expensive. Her low heels were functional. She was an office professional by the looks of it. Someone who would be missed right away. Either they were confident no one would find us, or she had something they needed that was worth the risk.

  My head hurt, and I felt it carefully and found three sore spots. I only remembered being kicked hard enough to hurt once. My gut hurt, too, and I lifted my shirt and saw an ugly bruise just shy of my kidneys. A little higher, and Chris would have cracked a rib. Bitch. I reached to push my hair out of my eyes, finding someone had tied a knot it in. My face screwed up in anger as I realized it was a HAPA knot. Real funny.

  My band of charmed silver slipped down as I worked the knot free, and my anger grew. I supposed I could break my hand and slip it off - and fry my brain in the process. I was a day late and a dollar short in talking to Trent.

  Winona was crying, her brown hair falling over her drawn-up knees, and after I got rid of the knot, I inched closer. "Hey, are you okay?"

  "Why do they want us?" she quavered.

  The answer wouldn't make her feel any better. "I don't know," I lied.

  In the corner outside our cage were five rolled-up sleeping bags and several bags from a chain grocery store. Two locked army green boxes were stacked near them. There was no kitchen, but a beaker of soup was warming up on a Bunsen burner on a makeshift counter. My stomach growled, and I took that as a good sign. It was obvious they hadn't been here long, but it was equally obvious that much of it had been waiting for them.

  Someone likes to plan, I thought, and I rubbed my head.

  The tabletop machine made a clattering of noise and spit out a small strip of curling paper. Chris tore it off and looked at it. "Spectrometer is good to go," she said, popping open the little drawer and tossing in the empty vial. "Where's her sample?"

  "Here. " Jennifer took the needle off and handed her the end of the syringe with my blood in it. "Be careful. "

  Chris's eyebrows were mockingly high. She looked from the blood to me before turning her back on me. "I don't think she's really a demon, charmed silver or not. "

  Jennifer leaned back against the card-table counter, crossing her ankles and trying to look nonchalant. "Me neither," she said, her flippant voice giving her lie away. "We caught her easy enough. She didn't do one demonic thing. "

  My eyes narrowed and I leaned forward, curving my fingers through the mesh. "Let me out, we'll see how demonic I can be. "

  Ignoring my threat, Chris popped another vial into the machine and hit the button. "I think it more likely that Captain America is wrong about her. "

  "What about the coven?" Jennifer's shoulders stiffened. "They called her one. They put that on her. "

  She was looking at my bracelet, and I sneered at her pretty little face, w
anting to smash it.

  "Propaganda," Chris said simply, busy with the machine.

  "Yes, but he was right about us needing to move. " Bending down with her hands on her knees, Jennifer looked at Winona as if she was an animal in a zoo, interesting but easily forgotten.

  Chris grimaced. "I think he was the one who gave us away," she muttered as she went back to her work.

  Jennifer stood. "Maybe we shouldn't have strung that guy up in the park. They weren't looking so hard for us before that. "

  "If we hadn't, Morgan would never have become involved," Chris said, preoccupied.

  The man at the monitors, almost forgotten, made a noise of disagreement. "Eloy didn't give us away," he almost growled, his thick fingers manipulating one of the cameras. "Staying was a bad decision. Your bad decision, Chris. I'm not so convinced taking her was a good idea, either. " He glanced at me. "Even if she's not a demon, she's too violent and we're not set up to hold two people. "

  Chris never moved, focused on the machine. "I didn't ask for your opinion, Gerald. "

  The man's eyes narrowed, deepening his few wrinkles as he scowled. "That putrid clot in the suit killed Kenny. "

  Taking a deep breath, Chris turned, spinning smoothly on the metal chair. Her expression was mocking, and her hair was starting to float. She was tapping a line. Jennifer flicked her attention between them, clearly nervous. "Don't you have more cameras to install?" the distasteful woman said harshly.

  In a noisy motion, the man stood, his cameras tucked in the crook of his elbow as he stiffly walked toward the edge of the clutter. "You are a cold, unfeeling bitch. " I heard him hit something out of my sight with a grunt, and Chris smiled.

  Looking smug, she spun back to the machine. "I don't think Morgan's blood is going to be any different from any other corrs we've taken," she said, and I became more uneasy. They knew my name. They knew the coven had labeled me a demon. I'd thought that I could ride this wild horse, but it was running away with me and I couldn't get the bit out from between its teeth.

  The machine whined harshly and spit out another curling bit of paper. Jennifer grabbed for it, taking a step back out of Chris's reach. Her eyes widened, and an awestruck "Dudes!" slipped past her lips.

  "Give it to me," Chris snapped, lurching to her feet to take it. Frowning, she dropped back into her chair, sitting sideways so that she only had to turn her head to see me. I could tell it was bad news for me by the way Jennifer was shifting from foot to foot.

  "Look at her Rosewood levels," the younger woman said, pointing down over Chris's shoulder. "My God! She should be dead!"

  Exhaling, Chris handed the strip to Jennifer. "I've never seen such a narrow spike. Hold off on pasting it in the data book. I'm going to run it again. "

  But Jennifer had already pulled a worn theme book from a cardboard box and was leafing through it. I recognized it as one of the books Chris had saved from the industrial park, and I was wondering about their backgrounds when Jennifer taped the strip in, then signed and dated it.

  Her brow furrowed, Jennifer studied the page. I could see about eight strips pasted in. Eight people, six of whom were probably dead. Her careful data taking was going to land her in jail for murder. "You should be dead," Jennifer said when she looked up.

  "That makes two of us," I snarled, and Chris chuckled as she popped in a new vial and hit the go button.

  "A Rosewood spike doesn't mean she is a demon. " Chris stood and stretched, going to stir the soup with a glass rod. "It means she's a freak of nature. "

  "But it's the increased level of the Rosewood enzyme that's killing them," Jennifer said, her finger on my printout. "Not necessarily the transformations themselves. She should be dead with what she has. Clearly she's got something, maybe another antigen, that's counteracting the first, allowing her to survive. If we can find out what it is, then we can keep them all alive - "

  "Why?" Chris interrupted her. "We're not a hotel. "

  "No, you're a butcher," I said, ignored, and Winona trembled in the corner. "Oh, crap, I'm sorry," I whispered, and she drew back from me.

  "Keeping them alive isn't the goal," Chris said, making me angrier yet. "Getting closer to the ideal is. As far as I'm concerned, the shortened life expectancy is a boon. What would we do with them otherwise? Stack them up like wood?"

  My God, this woman was unbelievable.

  Jennifer dropped her eyes, looking uneasy as she leaned against the counter and hugged herself. Clearly she had some smarts if she was spouting off about antigens. Maybe I could work on her guilt and convince her to let us go.

  The machine spit out another strip of paper, and after Chris read it, she set it on fire using the Bunsen burner. "I have a better way to find out if she's a demon or not," she said, watching the paper go up with a weird green flame from the ink.

  "What?"

  Jennifer's voice sounded scared. Hell, I knew I was, and I scooted forward to the front of the cage, getting into the light. "Yeah, what?" I said boldly, but I wasn't. They had at least three drops of my blood left in that syringe.

  Chris sauntered to me, crouching until the hem of her lab coat brushed the dirty floor. It was demeaning, being looked at like that, and I stiffly got to my feet, trying to hide where I hurt.

  "The coven put charmed silver on her," Chris said as she rose as well, her eyes going to my wrist. "She can't do ley-line magic, but her blood is still good. I'm going to try one of those curses again - using her blood to invoke it. "

  Oh. Shit.

  I looked at Winona, my thoughts zinging back to that monstrosity of a broken body found in the basement of the Underground Railroad Museum. That had been done with witch blood. Using mine might have even worse consequences. "Don't do this," I said, retreating from the wire mesh. "Please. "

  Seeing my fear, Chris smiled. "If it works properly, then Morgan is a demon and we have a good source of blood to pattern the synthetic stuff on. "

  "Don't do this!" I said, then jumped when Chris smacked the cage and Winona cried out.

  "And if it doesn't work," the woman continued as she held the syringe with my blood in it up to the light to estimate how much was left, "we can use Morgan to shift the tolerance for the Rosewood antigens forward that much more. " Chris set the syringe aside and smiled. "Like every other chubi we've had. "

  I pressed into the fieldstone wall, fingering my band of silver. This was bad. Really bad.

  "Um," Jennifer said, shifting nervously as she slid from the table. "He said not to do anything until he gets back. "

  "The hell with him. " Motions stiff, Chris strode to a cardboard box and began digging through it. "I'm not going to sit on my ass and wait. I'm the one doing the science, not him. If she's a demon, I want to know. Where's that damned book? The one with no title?"

  Book? With no title? Oh, no, I thought, fear sliding into me when Chris made a happy sound and lifted out an old leather-bound book with frayed pages and a broken binding. It was a demon text, filled with demon curses. I could tell from here.

  "Uh, ladies?" I said when Chris dropped the book on an open space and pulled her folding chair up to it. "I know you're all excited about thinking you're the superior species and all, but you seriously need to rethink this. "

  Chris's lips pursed. "Oh, that's interesting. " I stared as she whispered Latin, practicing. "I need a strand of hair," she said, and I pressed deeper into my corner. Jennifer came to stand before the mesh door, and I growled at her, "Come in here, and you'll find out how it feels to have my foot in your face. " But she only plucked a strand from the mesh, handing it to Chris and wiping her hand on her pants.

  "I don't like using magic," she said, glancing at me. "Eloy says it's evil. "

  "Eloy is old school who calls blowing things up progress. " Chris held the strand up between two fingers. "He has his place, but it's not making decisions. Magic isn't what makes them animals. It's that they prey on sentient beings. "
<
br />   "Kind of like what you're doing here, eh?" I said, but I was trembling inside. I had no idea what she was going to do, but it was going to be nasty.

  Chris's attention flicked to me, then back to the book. "Anoint the hair, and break it while you say Separare. It's a communal curse, already twisted and just needing to be invoked. "

  Separare. That was Latin for sunder, wasn't it? Crap, what was she going to do? I pushed forward. "Don't do this," I said, gripping the mesh of the cage and giving it a shake. "I'm warning you!"

  But what could I do, caged like a dog?

  My pulse thundered and Winona looked up, scared, as Chris took a drop of my blood from the syringe and pulled my hair through it. "Separare!"

  I braced for anything, staring as Chris's eyes grew wide. With a howl of pain, she shoved the demon book off the counter. It hit the floor as Jennifer gasped in fear, a few pages coming loose from the binding and drifting almost within reach.

  "Chris!" Jennifer cried out as the woman gasped and hunched over in pain. "What's wrong?" she said, holding on to Chris's shoulders and trying to keep her from falling off the chair.

  Was it the imbalance? I thought, feeling myself as if looking for a gunshot wound, but nothing felt different, nothing hurt. I heard Winona shift, watching now.

  "Bitch . . . " Chris rasped, still hunched in pain as she glared at me.

  "What happened?" Jennifer asked, bending over her in concern.

  Chris shoved Jennifer away. "I'm fine!" she snapped, finally able to straighten up. Her eyes were bloodshot as she glared at me, her skin pale. "Not so helpless after all. Demon. Demon whore!" Taking a breath, she looked at her hands. They were trembling. "The bitch bounced the curse back at me. "

  Jennifer looked confused, but I wasn't. "Uh, if that band of charmed silver prevents her from doing magic, then how could she bounce it back at you?"

  "I don't know!" Shaking, Chris stood up, bending to snatch the pages that had fallen out and shoving them into the front of the book before turning to glare at me, reminding me of Jenks with her hands on her hips like that. "Maybe curses don't work on demons. Maybe that's why the last woman died so fast. "

  Winona caught her breath, terror making her eyes wide.

  I edged back from the front of the cage, relieved. The curse hadn't bounced back because I was a demon. Like Trent had said, if the curse worked through the demon collective, it wouldn't recognize me and would bounce back. I was safe. But Winona wasn't.

  "I'm going to try it on the other one," Chris said, and a drop of ice ran down my spine. Winona had gone white, her fingers gripping her knees stiff and clawlike.

  "No, you're not!" I shouted.

  But Chris was drawing a long brown hair through her fingers, coating it with blood. I looked at Winona. Oh God. I couldn't stop this. "Winona," I whispered, and the woman's eyes met mine, scared. "I'm sorry. "

  "Separare!" Chris shouted, and the strand of hair broke.

  Winona's eyes bulged, and she stiffened. Her desperate, despairing cry of pain echoed in the small area. She pushed to her feet, and I lunged for her, grabbing her before she could run into the wire mesh. I felt helpless, but I tried to make the pain go away by just being there, giving her something to feel besides agony.

  "It's okay," I whispered, tears coming from me as she screamed in pain, her entire body stiff with it. "It's okay. It will go away. I promise. " I didn't know if she could hear me, but her screams turned to sobs as she shook.

  "It worked!" Chris crowed. "Jenn! It worked perfectly! We have it! I can do anything!"

  I brought my head up as I rocked Winona, the woman slowly starting to relax as the pain ebbed. The blond sadist was almost dancing, her finger and thumb red with my blood and the gluttonous light of power in her eyes.

  "It's getting better," I said to Winona, wishing I could help her. "See, it's going away. "

  "I want to go home," she cried as she slipped from me to the floor and huddled, her hair hiding her face. "I just want to go home. "

  "Me too," I said, feeling helpless. She'd be okay until they decided to do something else. "I'm so sorry. You shouldn't be here. "

  Gerald shuffled in, his expression irate and the cameras gone from his hands. "Keep it down," he said, weaving past the woman in the lab coat doing a happy dance as if she'd made a touchdown. "I can hear you all the way to the stairway. " He looked at Winona, huddled in the corner with me, glaring at all of them. "What did you do?"

  "It worked!" Chris sang, and Jennifer made notations in a second workbook, her expression pulled up as if she was smelling something rank. I knew it was the idea that Chris had done magic, not that she'd caused someone great pain. "I did a curse, and it worked. Morgan's blood is demonic. We have working demon blood, and it didn't cost my soul to do it!"

  Which sort of answered the question of how they'd gotten a curse to hide that woman in the basement of the Underground Railroad Museum. They'd tried to get blood from a demon and had to settle for a curse to hide their mistakes. Whoever had twisted it was probably either laughing his ass off at their efforts or cheering them on to their destruction. God, I hoped it wasn't Newt.

  I'd had it, and I fingered my silver band, feeling long past stupid. I had been so blind, clueless. If I'd been a normal witch, not having magic wouldn't have been a problem, but what ran in my veins was unimaginable power. It came with the ability to protect that power - and I had thrown it away. This was my fault. All of it.

  "You made a woman feel pain," I said sarcastically. "Congratulations. I can do the same thing with my foot and it doesn't take a curse to do it. "

  "She's not a woman, she's an animal," Chris said, and my face burned.

  The man frowned, then settled himself at the monitors, turning them on to show three new angles of dark basement. "Just keep it down," he said, turning his back as if a woman sobbing in the corner was an everyday occurrence. "They have tours upstairs, you know. "

  And now I knew it, too.

  Jennifer slid her notebook in front of Chris, and the blond woman initialed it with a happy flourish. "I still don't like you using magic," Jennifer said as she put the notebook with the rest in the cardboard box. "It's evil. "

  "Magic is what is going to win this war," Chris said as she returned to her demon text. "If all it took was men with guns, we would've won it already. " The zeal of the stupid in her, Chris began turning pages as if it were the winter solstice gift catalog, earmarking pages and cooing in delight at the new possibilities.

  I gave Winona a last touch on the shoulder, then stood at the door to the cage. It was solid, locked with a chunk of metal. "You're not going to survive this," I said, shaking. I meant it to the bottom of my soul. I hated bullies, and that was all Chris was. A magic-using bully who had a problem with not everyone thinking as she did.

  "I already have," Chris said lightly. "Mmm. I've got her baselines. Let's try the mutation curse. "

  The mental vision of the woman buried in the basement rose up.

  Jennifer turned from where she'd been arranging the sleeping bags. "To change her blood? Why? It's demonic already. "

  "Not Morgan," Chris said, and I felt a wash of fear for Winona. "But we'll use her blood, not the stuff from the previous corr. Since her blood can invoke demon magic, it will work and then we'll have two of them. "

  My lips parted, and I looked at Winona. She was as terrified as me, and she hadn't seen the ruin of that woman buried in the basement. Jennifer had, though, and she looked uneasy.

  "No," I breathed, coming forward to hold the mesh and give it a shake. "Jennifer, you saw what it did to the last woman. It hits them too hard. For the love of God! Don't do this!"

  "Shut up!" Chris dropped the demon book on the table. More pages separated, leaking out like blood.

  "He's not here," Gerald said, and Chris just about lost it.

  "I don't care!" she shouted. "If I say we do it now, we do it now! He could be in an F
IB lockup for all we know! Get the corr out of the box and put her in the circle!"

  Oh God, they were going to do it.

  "You're not touching her!" I shouted, heart hammering. Winona was behind me, pressed into the wall, but Gerald grabbed a forked stick and opened the door to the cage. I watched the key go back into his pocket, knowing I'd never get hold of it.

  I jumped for the open door, only to find the fork on my neck. Choking, I found myself pushed to the wall, my fingers trying to make a gap to breathe. Winona was screaming, and someone reached in and pulled her out. I tried to stop them, but Gerald knew what he was doing, and he didn't let up until they had her out and on the floor in a terrified huddle.

  He pulled the stick off me. I held on to it, hoping he'd pull me out, too, but I let go when his foot came at me. I should have taken the hit.

  The mesh door rattled shut, and I howled in anger. "I am not an animal!" I screamed at them, rattling it some more. Winona was crying on the floor. Jennifer had sketched a modest circle around her in the open area, and Chris was looking at her notes, as calmly as if preparing a class lecture.

  "Don't," I pleaded, my hands hurting, swelling where I'd hit the cage. "Please. Don't. You're going to kill her!"

  "Not if your blood is as good as I think it is. " Chris looked up from her notes. "Get her out of her clothes. The last time we tried shifting one in his clothes, they stuck to his skin. "

  Winona lunged for the gap in the boxes in a silent panic, only to be brought down by Gerald. I could do nothing as she fought him while he took off her clothes, and I screamed at them, crying at my helplessness. This was the ugliest thing I'd seen. I hated them. I hated that I was helpless. I hated that I was grateful the curse wouldn't work on me and I wasn't the one naked in that circle. "Why are you doing this?" I shouted, my voice harsh.

  Winona sobbed, cowering in a pile of white skin and long brown hair in the middle of the circle, her skin red where Gerald had gripped her. Tears ran down my face. I swore I'd make them feel the same pain, the same hopelessness they were forcing on her. I didn't care if I burned in hell for it. It was my fault.

  "Why?" Chris let three precious drops of blood fall into a small copper pot that had taken the soup's place over the Bunsen burner. The scent of burnt amber rose, and my gut clenched when Chris made an "mmm" of approval. "Your kind is unnatural. Your very existence is a blasphemy," she said as she added what looked like a bit of shed snake skin. "If I'm successful, I can give humans back their rightful place. Maybe remove you altogether. "

  "Do you even hear yourself? See what you're doing?"

  Chris ignored me, but Jennifer looked disgusted.

  "Making her into a demon doesn't help you!" I tried again, and Chris laughed.

  "We're trying to make demon blood, stupid, not a demon. What she looks like is just a side effect of the process," she said as she donned her gloves. They were anticharm. I could tell by the maker embroidered on the cuff. "Just think. If this works, you've saved countless lives. "

  I could have screamed, it was all so stupid, and I fingered the band of charmed silver. If only I wasn't wearing it, I could freeze her with a word and Winona and I could go home. "You've got my blood," I said. "Let her go. "

  Gerald stood between Winona on the floor and the opening to the stairway. He looked at Jennifer, and then Chris, clearly willing to do just that, but Chris was lost in the throes of unimaginable power, and I felt something in me die as she shook her head.

  "I have been inching forward forever," she said as she stood over Winona. "I've seen the effect of this curse change as the blood did, becoming closer to actually working. Maybe with real demon blood, we'll get a real demon. Maybe she'll look just like you. "

  Her smile was mocking, and I bowed my head. I knew that wouldn't happen. So did Chris. She wanted the twisting of limbs and the pain. She liked it. What was wrong with her?

  "Chris . . . " Jennifer said uneasily, but it was too late. Chris had already stepped across the circle to join Winona, and a barrier of green and black had risen, preventing any interference.

  "Winona!" I said loudly, hoping she could hear me. "I'm so sorry. Winona, listen to me! It will be okay. I'll get you back to normal. It will be okay!"

  Oh God, let it be okay.

  "You are such a liar," Chris said, and laughing she finished the curse. "Ta na nevo doe tena!" she said triumphantly, and I swear the shadows grew, daring to come out farther than the light confined them. It wasn't Latin. It sounded . . . elvish? Winona gasped, then screamed.

  "God, let me be the one to stop them," I asked as Winona made a choking gurgle and clenched under a wash of green and black. I could do nothing as she writhed on the cold floor, Chris watching in delight as Winona's legs turned to spindles with hooves, and her head became heavy with two horns. A curly red pelt blossomed over her, and her long brown hair fell out in sheets. A black tail lashed, as long as her legs. She coughed, her voice harsh and as gray as her skin became. Tears streamed down her face, now hard with a too-strong jawbone and forehead. She was unrecognizable.

  "I will undo this," I whispered to her, finding her goat-slit eyes and holding them with my gaze. "Just hold on. I promise," I said, weeping with her. "I promise. "

  I never made promises. But I did this time, and I meant to keep it.

  The circle fell, and Chris clapped her hands. "Look! It worked!" she crowed, dancing out of the circle. "It was easy! So damn easy!"

  Gerald looked down at the woman at his feet weeping on the floor. "She looks the same as the last woman did. "

  "But she's not dying like the other one did!" Chris said triumphantly. "I told you it would work!" She peered at Winona, her lips curling. "You are an ugly son of a bitch. "

  I was going to be sick. I knew it. "I promise," I mouthed to the woman, horrified as she touched her hair that had fallen out, and defiance sparked in her. Her lips pressed down until her new canines made them bleed. She tried to stand and make a run for the unseen stairway, but she was unbalanced, unable to stand on her new hooves, and she sprawled ungracefully, her thin black tail whipping about to send her lost hair flying.

  "Get her!" Chris demanded, flushed, making the scratches Jenks had given her stand out. "Put her in the cage with the other one!"

  Gerald gingerly grabbed Winona's shoulder and leg, and threw her into the cage when Jennifer opened it. Winona hit me in a tangle of bone and tail, and I scrambled to escape. I was too slow, and the door was shut by the time I got to it. Jennifer backed away, fear in her eyes.

  I looked at Winona, huddled in the back of the cage again. I reached out and touched her shoulder, warm and fuzzy under my hand, and she shivered as a harsh croaking came from her while she tried to breathe through her sobs. "Give me her clothes," I said flatly. "We aren't dogs. "

  "No, you're demons," Chris said, and she turned her back on us, excited, as she went to her textbook.

  "Give me a blanket!" I shouted, but no one listened.

  A warning beep had started at the monitors, and Gerald turned. Jennifer froze, and Chris looked bothered. "It's just him," Gerald said as a dark shadow passed under the first of the cameras.

  My head came up, and I tried to see around Gerald. Someone had shot the two vampires when Chris was freeing Jennifer - Captain America, Eloy, who was apparently good with a sniper rifle. You are mine, moss wipe.

  "Good," Chris said, standing tall and firm beside her new demon book, a hundred ugly possibilities at her fingertips. "I want to talk to him. "

  "Me too," I said as a man with a rifle and scope walked in.