A Perfect Blood (The Hollows #10)(62)
Author: Kim Harrison

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.