A Perfect Blood (The Hollows #10)(47)

And now I knew it, too.
Jennifer slid her notebook in front of Chris, and the blond woman initialed it with a happy flourish. “I still don’t like you using magic,” Jennifer said as she put the notebook with the rest in the cardboard box. “It’s evil.”
“Magic is what is going to win this war,” Chris said as she returned to her demon text. “If all it took was men with guns, we would’ve won it already.” The zeal of the stupid in her, Chris began turning pages as if it were the winter solstice gift catalog, earmarking pages and cooing in delight at the new possibilities. 
I gave Winona a last touch on the shoulder, then stood at the door to the cage. It was solid, locked with a chunk of metal. “You’re not going to survive this,” I said, shaking. I meant it to the bottom of my soul. I hated bullies, and that was all Chris was. A magic-using bully who had a problem with not everyone thinking as she did.
“I already have,” Chris said lightly. “Mmm. I’ve got her baselines. Let’s try the mutation curse.”
The mental vision of the woman buried in the basement rose up.
Jennifer turned from where she’d been arranging the sleeping bags. “To change her blood? Why? It’s demonic already.”
“Not Morgan,” Chris said, and I felt a wash of fear for Winona. “But we’ll use her blood, not the stuff from the previous corr. Since her blood can invoke demon magic, it will work and then we’ll have two of them.”
My lips parted, and I looked at Winona. She was as terrified as me, and she hadn’t seen the ruin of that woman buried in the basement. Jennifer had, though, and she looked uneasy.
“No,” I breathed, coming forward to hold the mesh and give it a shake. “Jennifer, you saw what it did to the last woman. It hits them too hard. For the love of God! Don’t do this!”
“Shut up!” Chris dropped the demon book on the table. More pages separated, leaking out like blood.
“He’s not here,” Gerald said, and Chris just about lost it.
“I don’t care!” she shouted. “If I say we do it now, we do it now! He could be in an FIB lockup for all we know! Get the corr out of the box and put her in the circle!”
Oh God, they were going to do it.
“You’re not touching her!” I shouted, heart hammering. Winona was behind me, pressed into the wall, but Gerald grabbed a forked stick and opened the door to the cage. I watched the key go back into his pocket, knowing I’d never get hold of it.
I jumped for the open door, only to find the fork on my neck. Choking, I found myself pushed to the wall, my fingers trying to make a gap to breathe. Winona was screaming, and someone reached in and pulled her out. I tried to stop them, but Gerald knew what he was doing, and he didn’t let up until they had her out and on the floor in a terrified huddle.
He pulled the stick off me. I held on to it, hoping he’d pull me out, too, but I let go when his foot came at me. I should have taken the hit.
The mesh door rattled shut, and I howled in anger. “I am not an animal!” I screamed at them, rattling it some more. Winona was crying on the floor. Jennifer had sketched a modest circle around her in the open area, and Chris was looking at her notes, as calmly as if preparing a class lecture.
“Don’t,” I pleaded, my hands hurting, swelling where I’d hit the cage. “Please. Don’t. You’re going to kill her!”
“Not if your blood is as good as I think it is.” Chris looked up from her notes. “Get her out of her clothes. The last time we tried shifting one in his clothes, they stuck to his skin.”
Winona lunged for the gap in the boxes in a silent panic, only to be brought down by Gerald. I could do nothing as she fought him while he took off her clothes, and I screamed at them, crying at my helplessness. This was the ugliest thing I’d seen. I hated them. I hated that I was helpless. I hated that I was grateful the curse wouldn’t work on me and I wasn’t the one naked in that circle. “Why are you doing this?” I shouted, my voice harsh.
Winona sobbed, cowering in a pile of white skin and long brown hair in the middle of the circle, her skin red where Gerald had gripped her. Tears ran down my face. I swore I’d make them feel the same pain, the same hopelessness they were forcing on her. I didn’t care if I burned in hell for it. It was my fault.“Why?” Chris let three precious drops of blood fall into a small copper pot that had taken the soup’s place over the Bunsen burner. The scent of burnt amber rose, and my gut clenched when Chris made an “mmm” of approval. “Your kind is unnatural. Your very existence is a blasphemy,” she said as she added what looked like a bit of shed snake skin. “If I’m successful, I can give humans back their rightful place. Maybe remove you altogether.”
“Do you even hear yourself? See what you’re doing?”
Chris ignored me, but Jennifer looked disgusted.
“Making her into a demon doesn’t help you!” I tried again, and Chris laughed.
“We’re trying to make demon blood, stupid, not a demon. What she looks like is just a side effect of the process,” she said as she donned her gloves. They were anticharm. I could tell by the maker embroidered on the cuff. “Just think. If this works, you’ve saved countless lives.”
I could have screamed, it was all so stupid, and I fingered the band of charmed silver. If only I wasn’t wearing it, I could freeze her with a word and Winona and I could go home. “You’ve got my blood,” I said. “Let her go.”
Gerald stood between Winona on the floor and the opening to the stairway. He looked at Jennifer, and then Chris, clearly willing to do just that, but Chris was lost in the throes of unimaginable power, and I felt something in me die as she shook her head.
“I have been inching forward forever,” she said as she stood over Winona. “I’ve seen the effect of this curse change as the blood did, becoming closer to actually working. Maybe with real demon blood, we’ll get a real demon. Maybe she’ll look just like you.”
Her smile was mocking, and I bowed my head. I knew that wouldn’t happen. So did Chris. She wanted the twisting of limbs and the pain. She liked it. What was wrong with her?
“Chris . . .” Jennifer said uneasily, but it was too late. Chris had already stepped across the circle to join Winona, and a barrier of green and black had risen, preventing any interference.
“Winona!” I said loudly, hoping she could hear me. “I’m so sorry. Winona, listen to me! It will be okay. I’ll get you back to normal. It will be okay!”
Oh God, let it be okay.
“You are such a liar,” Chris said, and laughing she finished the curse. “Ta na nevo doe tena!” she said triumphantly, and I swear the shadows grew, daring to come out farther than the light confined them. It wasn’t Latin. It sounded . . . elvish? Winona gasped, then screamed.
“God, let me be the one to stop them,” I asked as Winona made a choking gurgle and clenched under a wash of green and black. I could do nothing as she writhed on the cold floor, Chris watching in delight as Winona’s legs turned to spindles with hooves, and her head became heavy with two horns. A curly red pelt blossomed over her, and her long brown hair fell out in sheets. A black tail lashed, as long as her legs. She coughed, her voice harsh and as gray as her skin became. Tears streamed down her face, now hard with a too-strong jawbone and forehead. She was unrecognizable. 
“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.”