A Perfect Blood (The Hollows #10)(49)

“Thank God,” Gerald muttered, almost forgotten at the monitors.
“We’ll get the sample somehow,” Chris finished, looking at me and sighing as if I was an errant child.
“Way to think ahead, Einstein,” Eloy said, and she frowned.
“You’re not touching Winona,” I muttered. I had the sudden urge to use the bathroom. This might be a problem if I kept threatening them, but I couldn’t stop myself.
Jennifer slid the last book away and turned, smiling brightly. “Want me to dart them?” she asked, eyes going to a box on the counter.
“No,” Eloy said, exhaling softly. I didn’t like the way he was looking at me, like I was an animal he wanted to study—but one too dangerous to keep for long.
“Yes,” Chris said, immediately countermanding him. “At least she would shut up. I thought the whining and crying was bad, but this is worse.”
“Let me try,” Eloy said, and Chris leaned back on the narrow counter. The light from the single bulb in the center of the room made her expression hard to read. Eloy put his hand up as if asking for patience. “I’m sure I can reason with them,” he said, the expression on his face empty as he looked at me.
“And I’m just as sure that Dorothy’s flying monkeys are going to come out of your ass,” I said, and Gerald rose with a stretch to get some soup, chuckling.
Eye twitching, Eloy stood before me, his hip cocked as if his feet were sore. He was inches from the cage. I could throttle him if I could get my hands through the mesh. “Will you let us get a blood sample from Winona?” Eloy asked calmly, as if he was reasonable and I was an idiot. 
“No.” I lifted my chin, feeling powerful though I was on the wrong side of the cage. They wanted something. Bad enough to give a little, maybe?
Gerald growled something, and Jennifer sniffed as Chris turned to watch, amused. “You really think asking her is going to work? Jenn, just dart them.”
“Wait!” Eloy said, inching closer, his gaze becoming canny, as if he knew I’d been caged before and had escaped. I wasn’t cowering in the back, but snapping at the lock, and he respected that even as he thought I ought to be exterminated.
“You stole Kalamack’s machines,” I said. Not a flicker of change marred Eloy’s expression, but behind him, Jennifer’s mouth dropped open in a sweet little O of surprise. Honestly, how had she gotten mixed up with these people? My lips quirked as I got my answer from her, and Eloy dropped back a step, clearly peeved by her lack of finesse.
“Will you ask her to stick out her arm so we can take a blood sample?” he asked again.
I edged closer to the mesh, mocking him. “You’ve been stealing machines and living off the back of civilization like the scum you are. Moving around like this isn’t cheap, either. HAPA doesn’t have that deep a pocket. You’re a backwoods, ignorant fringe group that should have died out with the space program in the forties. Who’s funding you?”
Eloy never dropped his gaze from my eyes, but I could see the tension in his shoulders. “HAPA is bigger than you think,” he said. “Our people are everywhere.” Behind him, Chris went back to her work and Jennifer took the second mug of soup, which Gerald had poured her. The hierarchy was being played out more clearly than if they had been lions on the savanna.
“Who is funding you?”
Eloy smirked. “If you don’t convince her to let me take some blood, they’ll put you to sleep.”
Winona’s breath caught. Put us to sleep, and then take more blood from both of us. “Why are you talking to me?” I said, disgusted. “She is her own person. Ask her yourself.”
Eloy turned to her, his lip curling when he saw her face, but I hadn’t won anything in our verbal pissing match. “Can we please have some blood?”
Winona awkwardly flipped him off with her thick fingers, and I almost applauded.
“Have it your way,” Eloy said, and my heart pounded as he turned away. Jennifer made a happy sound, setting her cloverleaf mug down and starting for a box.
These people are nuts! I thought, then sighed when Winona scrambled in a crawl to the front and shoved a skinny, red-fuzzed arm through the wire mesh with frantic haste. “You don’t have to do this,” I said, but if I was honest with myself, I was relieved.
Winona shrugged. “Ah don’ wan oo be spelled,” she slurred, her face going almost black in embarrassment as she tried to speak. “Oh, dhit,” she moaned, feeling her mouth. “Ah dink mih ’onge is ’orked.”
I winced, drawing back from the door as a clearly disappointed Jennifer noisily dropped a dart gun back into the box. As Chris snorted, Jennifer got her blood-gathering stuff together and cautiously knelt before Winona to tie her arm off. Gerald, too, was watching, his back to the monitors and his arms crossed over his chest. Eloy’s eyes never left me as he assessed the threat I posed. Maybe I should have cried in the corner like Winona.
“Thank you,” he said, and Winona jumped when the needle slid in.
Jennifer undid the rubber band around Winona’s arm, nervously sneaking glances at the woman’s mutilated face. It really was horrific. Chris made a scoffing sound and dug her spoon for the last bits of soup. “Bloody waste of time. We should have just darted them.”“Got it,” Jennifer said, and Winona pulled her arm back, her eyes widening as she discovered it was double jointed. She gingerly rubbed the spot since Jennifer hadn’t thought to give her a cotton ball to stop the bleeding. I could see why. I might use it and the tourniquet I’d pulled off my arm earlier to escape with. God!
Jennifer got to her feet, and Chris set down her soup mug and met her at the machine.
“A few more blankets would be nice,” I said. “You’re down a man. We can use his.”
Chris tossed the old vial out and dropped in a new one. “Don’t open that cage, Eloy.”
“Winona needs her clothes,” I said softly. “And I have to go to the bathroom. You’ve got to have a way worked out by now. I’m what, the eighth person you’ve held?”
Winona gasped, and I mentally kicked myself. Chris hit the go button on the machine and turned, smiling beatifically at me.
“Wha appen oo da uhders?” Winona stammered, then took a breath and tried again. “What appened do da uh-thers?” she said more slowly, her brown, goat-slitted eyes showing fear.
I sat down beside her, my thoughts going to the woman they’d buried in the basement of the museum. “They died from Rosewood syndrome,” I said, unable to give her the entire truth.
“My sisder died of th-that when she was th-three months old,” Winona said, and I nodded. Her speech was getting better.
“You’re a carrier,” I said, giving Eloy a disparaging glance as he got the last dregs of soup. “That’s why they abducted you.”
The machine dinged, and Chris reached for the tape. I held my breath, wondering if Winona would be able to do demon magic. But Chris frowned, handing the strip to Jennifer to paste in her lab book. I exhaled, relieved.
“That’s good,” I whispered. “You’re not a demon, Winona.”
The woman pulled her hand from mine and hid her face in her arms, now draped over her thick knees. “Whoopie friggin’ do,” she said to the cold cement. “If ah look like this, you’d . . . dink ah might have some of da perks.”
Perks? I looked at my band of silver. I’d never thought of demon magic as being a perk and to having been labeled as one, but the madness I was now wallowing in wasn’t working, either.
Chris methodically cleaned the machine and ran a clear sample through to recalibrate it. “So are we good here for a few days?” she asked Eloy.
Eloy had put himself half in the dark on one of the rolled-up sleeping bags, again watching me. “Should be. I contaminated everything the FIB and the I.S. had before it got back within city limits. All they have now is a sample of dog spit. If they use it to make a finding charm, they’ll lose an entire day until they figure out they’re following a stray,” he added, watching me for my reaction. 
I shrugged at him, wondering if we would get any of that soup.
Eloy took his eyes off me, and I stifled a shudder. “We should be good for four days. Maybe longer. They’ll probably try to find us using Morgan’s hair. Good thing I put you so far from the city center this time.” Tilting his head back, his Adam’s apple moved as he got the last swallow of soup.
Jennifer leaned over her lab book and tore a strip of tape from a dispenser. “I don’t understand how they found us this last time. Too bad we can’t transform her, too,” she said as she taped Winona’s results down. “Change her so far that the charms won’t recognize her,” she added, her head tilted as she assessed the latest addition to her scrapbook from hell.
Arts and crafts. Would the woman’s talents never cease?
“Change her?” Eloy said, looking alarmed.
“I’m not risking changing her blood by mistake,” Chris said, and Eloy looked concerned as he eased down on a cot and stared at the low ceiling, his hands laced behind his neck and his boots on the sleeping bag. His military training was showing, and I wondered how he’d gotten through the armed services with the same attitude that got him into HAPA.