A Perfect Blood (The Hollows #10)(44)

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.
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.