A Perfect Blood (The Hollows #10)(69)
Author: Kim Harrison

"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.

Chris put the bottle of sedative in her purse with a couple of syringes. "I doubt moving three people is going to come up," she said. "We’ve never had a subject live longer than three days." She looked at Winona. "This is what, day two?"