A Perfect Blood (The Hollows #10)(51)

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?”
“Winona is healthy.” Why are they scaring her like this?
“And that’s why she was puking all night?” Chris gestured for Jennifer to get her coat.
My heart pounded as the distasteful woman sauntered closer until only a few feet, some twined wire, and a canyon of morals separated us. “If it should come down to it,” Chris said, her words crisp and mocking, “your surly nature might outweigh your blood, and we’ll take Winona instead. Maybe you should be nicer.”
I jumped when she smacked the door, my face burning when she laughed. “The last person who hit my cage died under a pack of dogs,” I said, but she’d already turned away.
“Okay, let’s go,” she said, and my anger turned to hope when Eloy stood up from the monitors. They were all leaving?
“Rachel?”
It was Winona, and I turned to her, almost impatient until I saw her fear. My thoughts jumped back to what Chris had said. After a moment of hesitation, I went to her. “It’s okay,” I said, sitting so I could see if they took the dart gun. “You’re not going to die. You were just getting rid of something you couldn’t digest anymore.”
“Maybe I should die,” she said, and I stiffened. “I mean, what good am I now?”
I shoved my first response down, and settled myself more certainly beside her, rubbing my legs, aching from disuse. “Don’t talk like that,” I said, watching them bundle up with hats and thick coats.
“You sure they can’t escape?” Chris said as she tugged on her gloves, and Eloy rattled the door.
“I can lock them in the bathroom,” Gerald said, and Chris snickered.
“At least then she would stop whining about potty breaks.” Her head came up. “Okay, let’s go. We have a small window and I want to use it. I’ve been stuck down here for two days.”
She was halfway to the edge of the light, and Jennifer and Gerald fell into place behind her, talking between themselves, their tension rising. Eloy was last, and I wondered at the look he gave me as he left.Slowly their voices became faint, and with a thump that seemed to shake the air, the lights went out. Winona sighed, and I looked at her in the glow from the TV monitors. I could see them on the monitors at the stairway. Then even that light went off and the monitors glowed a dull gray of nothing.
“Couldn’t leave the light on, huh?” I said sarcastically.
Winona moaned as if in relief. “I’d rather have them off,” she said, surprising me. “The light was hurting my eyes. That annoying humming stopped, too.”
I wondered if she was hearing the electricity in the wires. Jenks said he could. It was how he’d found that worn spot in the church’s wiring last year before it burned the place down.
My chest hurt. Damn it, I was going to get us out of here. Somehow.
Standing up, I squinted at the ceiling where the wire mesh met it, wondering if there was a weak spot. I hadn’t looked yet, knowing I’d never be able to take advantage of it if they knew I’d found one. Fingers looping into the mesh as high as I could reach, I gave a tug. Nothing.
Winona sniffed, and I moved a foot down and gave it another shake. My thoughts kept going over the last half hour: the conversations being said without a word, that look Jennifer had given me when Chris whispered in her ear. What bothered me the most was that Eloy hadn’t protested their going out and grabbing someone else. He knew that putting three people in this cage was a mistake. Someone would die if they had to move fast, probably Winona, seeing that she couldn’t walk and they could make more of her with my blood. Not that they cared.
My head hurt, and I moved down another foot and shook the mesh. And what was HAPA, a military outfit, doing working with scientists and magic, the same people that HAPA blamed for the Turn to begin with? Maybe once they got their magic elixir, they were going to turn on them, make the scientists take the blame and wipe them out with the rest of Inderland. Sounded about right.
I moved another foot, to the corner. Giving it a shake, I frowned. It was even sturdier with that embedded pole. Perhaps it was a group of frustrated scientists who were backing HAPA. If they used genetic research to get rid of the Inderlanders, then maybe the genetic medicines that had saved so many human lives in the past might be considered safe again. I dropped back to my heels, rubbing my head. Maybe Chris was going to run off with her research when they were almost done, and sell it to the highest bidder? Yeah, that sounded like something she’d do.
“We’re going to die,” Winona whispered, and I slid down a foot to give the mesh a shake.
“No, we aren’t.”
She sniffed, her rough voice sounding almost normal. “You know what the stupid thing is? I’m going to die, and I’m worried about my cat.” 
I turned to her, a lump of a shadow on the floor. “That’s not stupid,” I said, then gave the mesh a kick. I was worried about Ivy and Jenks. And my mother.
“I wish it wasn’t so dark,” I said, giving the mesh another shake. “If I could touch a line, I could make a light and maybe find the weak spot in this cage.”