A Perfect Blood (The Hollows #10)(65)
Author: Kim Harrison

"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.

Chapter Fourteen

I see you managed to get away," the man said, casually dropping an army-green satchel on the makeshift lab bench, right on Chris’s notes. My eye twitched, and I shifted to stand in front of Winona as the woman shook in fear and shock. "Nice job f**king up a perfect exit plan, Chris. Where’s Kenny?"

Interesting, I thought as I took in the spare, athletic, somewhat military-looking man as Chris ignored him. He was dressed in jeans and had an army surplus jacket with a pre-Turn logo, a black T-shirt underneath it. His boots were suspiciously clean, but I could see a hint of dried mud on them, telling me he’d wiped them down recently. His hair was brown and cut close to his head. Average build, average height, nothing to make him stand out except perhaps the hard determination in his eyes and his stance, which would make me believe he was an alpha Were if I didn’t know better. No, this guy was HAPA, from his pre-Turn army boots tied with HAPA knots to the necklace of amber nuggets looking odd and out of place around his neck.

Gerald’s face went red, and he shot me a glance. "A clot in a suit choked him to death. They almost had Jennifer."

"I saw. You left evidence of yourselves everywhere getting her free. Thirty more seconds, and I would have shot you both instead of the clots." He set his rifle atop the monitors and faced me. "That is a mistake," he said, meaning me.

Jennifer fidgeted, head down as she subserviently moved the man’s satchel to the pile of sleeping bags in the corner and began to set up the camping cots. Gerald returned to his instruments, avoiding the rising tension between Eloy and Chris with a tired familiarity.

"I’m not going to take responsibility if you can’t follow a simple order," Eloy said.

Chris looked up, pissed and still riding the high of having done that curse. "I’m in charge in the field. Not you."

"Sure." Turning his back on her, he came to stand before the cage. "Why are there two goats in the box?" he said as he crouched, looking at us. "I told you, one corr at a time. God, that is one ugly bitch." He hesitated, turning to Chris even as he crouched before us. "She’s still alive?"

"It’s Morgan. Her blood worked!" Jennifer said as she unrolled a bag on a cot, and Eloy’s eyes flicked to mine, holding. There was no fear – it was worry laced with knowledge, and my heart pounded. He looked away first.

"She came after us, and well, why not take her?" Jennifer said cheerfully.

"That’s Morgan?" he said, and I gave him a bunny-eared kiss-kiss. "Shit," he mouthed, and I smiled bitterly at him. Yep, that was the reaction I liked. "Taking her was a mistake," he said as he stood and strode to Chris. "I told you not to put that corr on display!" he exclaimed, his back stiff as she continued to ignore him, her neck becoming red. "This is exactly what I was trying to prevent. I told you – "

Chris looked up, slamming her pen down and cutting his tirade off in midstream. "Either you told me a deliberate lie or you’re less informed than usual. I’m tending to go with the first because you have too much intel to not know the coven destroyed her magic."

"It’s cut off, not destroyed," Eloy said, glancing at me. "She’s dangerous, magic or not."

Chris shifted slightly, crossing her legs at her knees. "Morgan is helpless." She sniffed. "Her blood is good, though."

Clearly unconvinced, Eloy bent over her, putting one hand on her paper to prevent her from continuing her notes. "You deliberately disobeyed a direct order."

"I don’t work for you."

Eloy’s jaw clenched, and he straightened, clearly trying to keep from losing it. "This is a military operation, not your personal in vitro experiment! They’re going to double their efforts to find Morgan. That I can adjust for, but we are not equipped to move two people without losses. They shouldn’t even be incarcerated together."

"Relax, goat girl can’t even stand up," Chris said as she continued to write her notes.