by Kim Harrison
One of the vampires with her stopped the door from closing so I could ride up with them, and I rocked back with my thumbs in my pockets. “You’re kidding, right?” I said, and he shrugged, letting the door go.
“There are more of us than you!” the woman howled as the doors began closing again. “We’re everywhere! You’re dead.”
Jenks landed on my shoulder. “Can’t they shut her up?”
“Dead!” she shouted through the metal doors, and the elevator hummed to life, rising.
Behind me, I could hear Dr. Cordova reaming Glenn out. No one would be coming up anytime soon, and I reached for the fire door to the nearby stairway. The stairwell was dark and unlit, but Jenks was dusting heavily enough to see by. The walls were cold and damp, and I wrapped my arms around myself for the first couple of flights, letting go when my exertions warmed me.
“Don’t let it get to you, Rache. She’s just an ignorant lunker,” Jenks said as he rested at one of the turns.
“Person,” I said, head down to watch my footing. “She’s a person. Scared and ignorant. She doesn’t know better.” That’s what I kept telling myself, but I’d never been called a chubi before, even at school, not even by the mean girls.
The elevator was open and empty when I got to the top of the stairs and left the stairway. It was just as dark in the empty warehouse, but the lighter square of darkness showed clearly where the wide double doors were now flung open. The silhouettes of the two vampires with the woman still handcuffed to her rolling chair showed clearly, and then I jumped at the twin pops of a gun.
“What the hell?” Jenks said softly, banking his dust.
The vampire pushing the handcuffed woman dropped. My eyes widened, and I put a hand to my mouth, my pulse jumping as the remaining one turned to a new figure in a long coat. It was the blonde. I could tell from here.
“Get Glenn!” I shouted at Jenks, and I started running.
The pop of a gun went off again, missing the remaining vampire as he dodged it and the glowing ball of magic the blond woman threw at him. It was her. She was trying to rescue her friend! And nearly everyone was downstairs listening to Dr. Cordova yell at Glenn!
That woman was gleefully throwing spells like it was a carnival game, making me wonder again at HAPA’s new acceptance of magic even as they tried to wipe us out. Maybe she wasn’t HAPA at all.
Jenks’s wings were a clatter by my ear as I pounded to the open door, and I glanced at him. “Go get Glenn!” I told him again, and not waiting for his answer as I spilled out into the lighter darkness and cracked cement.
The vampire ducked another gunshot, then lunged at the woman, his hands outstretched to grab her.
“No!” I shouted in warning, and the woman still tied to the chair spun to me, her expression ugly as she struggled to free herself. But the vampire had touched the blond woman in the lab coat, who laughed maniacally as she coated him in a hazy green glow. He pulled back too late, clawing at his throat and screaming as he went down.
The sound was chilling, his shriek of pain in the black night. “Stop!” I shouted as I ran forward, my hand reaching to the small of my back to find . . . nothing. Damn it all to hell, the I.S. guy took my gun!
Both vampires were down, one still, the other writhing madly, clawing at his throat and leaving bleeding gouges. I hesitated over him, unable to do a thing as he died. The blond woman was kneeling behind the woman in the chair, the keys to the cuffs from the first vampire catching the faint starlight. “You stupid bitch!” I shouted as I lunged for them. The blonde was still working the cuffs. I had seconds.
“Turn me!” the woman in the chair screamed, and I jerked back as she kicked out at me, her tiny feet thumping harmlessly into my leg. I drew back and pulled myself together to give her a quick front kick and snapped her head back, but with a howl of revenge, she exploded out of her chair before I could recoup, her little fists flailing. She was out. I couldn’t bring them both down unless I moved fast.
“Rache! Look out!” Jenks shrilled.
Shocked, I spun to him, then cried out as the rolling chair Suzie-Q had been in hit me square on. It took my knees out from under me, and I fell, hitting the cold pavement and yelping as soft body parts met hard, angular chair bits. Fall number two, I thought, holding my elbow as I sat up and kicked the chair away. Great.
“Where did they go?” I whispered, then jumped when someone grabbed my arms and shoved me down, face-first, onto the cement—again.
“Hey!” I yelped when my arms were yanked behind me and someone else jammed a sweet-smelling rag in my mouth.
I bit down hard, and a woman hissed as the rag was yanked away. “You Inderlander bitch!” the blond woman said, then smacked my face.
“Jenks! Get help!” I shrieked, then winced when something hit my head. I think it was a size 6 shoe, brown leather with a little rhinestone bow. More pissed than hurt, I wiggled, snarling up at the woman.
“Try her gut, Jenn,” the blonde said, and my eyes widened as the brunette wound up and kicked me right in the solar plexus.
My air puffed out, and I curled in on myself, face grinding into the pavement. I couldn’t breathe. Oh God. It hurt, and I struggled to hold on to my lunch, my arms pulled behind my back and my face bruised. My splat gun was long gone, and there was a wet spot on my thigh that I think was my broken vials.
“Get the bug,” I heard the blond woman say matter-of-factly, and her lab coat came and went before my eyes. “Damn it, get the bug before he scratches my fucking eyes out, Jennifer!” she said again, louder.
Jennifer? That crazy woman in the chair was named Jennifer?
“Sons of bitches!” Jenks shrilled. “You friggin’ sons of bitches!”
I had no magic. I was down. Despite all my preparations, I was helpless. Wayde was right. Trent was right. I was wrong, and now I was going to pay dearly for it. The blonde held my hands behind my back, and the familiar feeling of plastic went around my wrists. “Stop,” I gasped as my air finally came back, and my fingers cramped when the strip was tightened too far.
The smell of propellant hissed into the air. Jenks hit the ground, struggling to run so they wouldn’t step on him. His wings were glued shut. Oh God. Run, Jenks!
A car was coming from the distant parking lot, its headlights shining on me. Hope leapt in me. They’d heard the noise and were coming. “Over here!” I shouted, then grunted when Jennifer kicked me again. I squinted as the car pulled up to the warehouse door, its tires screeching. But my hope vanished when the window was rolled down and the man who’d run out with the woman who’d been in the cage shouted for the women to get in. Oh God. I was in trouble. From the trunk, thumps and screaming sounded.
Bobbing flashlights were coming closer from deep within the warehouse, and I frantically kicked out, fighting. If I could keep from being put in that car, I’d be okay. “Over here!” I shouted, squirming. “We’re over here!”
In the glow of the headlights, the blond woman stood confidently, her fingers moving in a charm I recognized. Panic filled me. “Down! Everyone get down!” I shouted, but it was too late, and with a victorious glint in her eyes in the bright light from the car’s headlights, the woman clapped her hands.
“Dilatare!” she shouted, and I cowered as a boom of sound pushed from her. The officers cried out and the lights fell and rolled as the force hit them. My eyes clamped shut, and my ears began to ring.
“That should do it,” the woman said in satisfaction, her voice muffled to my spell-stunned ears; then she turned to me. “This is for hitting Jennifer,” the blond woman said, her foot pulling back.
Her boot met my head, and I felt myself move, my body sliding across the cement a few inches. My head felt like it was exploding, and my breath eased from me in a soft sigh. A pair of masculine arms went under my arms, shortly followed by the pinch of being lifted and half dragged to the running car. I
barely recognized the wonderful smell of fine leather car upholstery as my face hit it, and then the car light went off as the doors thumped shut.
“Suck it up, Gerald! I’m not going to sit in the back with that animal!” the woman said. “Drive!”
The engine thrummed, and my eyes shut, and I felt unconsciousness, creeping out from the pain, take me. But before I passed out completely, I had one last thought.
Five cots. But we had seen only four captors.
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, wanting 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.”
