by Kim Harrison
Book? With no title? Oh, no, I thought, fear sliding into me when Chris made a happy sound and lifted out an old leather-bound book with frayed pages and a broken binding. It was a demon text, filled with demon curses. I could tell from here.
“Uh, ladies?” I said when Chris dropped the book on an open space and pulled her folding chair up to it. “I know you’re all excited about thinking you’re the superior species and all, but you seriously need to rethink this.”
Chris’s lips pursed. “Oh, that’s interesting.” I stared as she whispered Latin, practicing. “I need a strand of hair,” she said, and I pressed deeper into my corner. Jennifer came to stand before the mesh door, and I growled at her, “Come in here, and you’ll find out how it feels to have my foot in your face.” But she only plucked a strand from the mesh, handing it to Chris and wiping her hand on her pants.
“I don’t like using magic,” she said, glancing at me. “Eloy says it’s evil.”
“Eloy is old school who calls blowing things up progress.” Chris held the strand up between two fingers. “He has his place, but it’s not making decisions. Magic isn’t what makes them animals. It’s that they prey on sentient beings.”
“Kind of like what you’re doing here, eh?” I said, but I was trembling inside. I had no idea what she was going to do, but it was going to be nasty.
Chris’s attention flicked to me, then back to the book. “Anoint the hair, and break it while you say Separare. It’s a communal curse, already twisted and just needing to be invoked.”
Separare. That was Latin for sunder, wasn’t it? Crap, what was she going to do? I pushed forward. “Don’t do this,” I said, gripping the mesh of the cage and giving it a shake. “I’m warning you!”
But what could I do, caged like a dog?
My pulse thundered and Winona looked up, scared, as Chris took a drop of my blood from the syringe and pulled my hair through it. “Separare!”
I braced for anything, staring as Chris’s eyes grew wide. With a howl of pain, she shoved the demon book off the counter. It hit the floor as Jennifer gasped in fear, a few pages coming loose from the binding and drifting almost within reach.
“Chris!” Jennifer cried out as the woman gasped and hunched over in pain. “What’s wrong?” she said, holding on to Chris’s shoulders and trying to keep her from falling off the chair.
Was it the imbalance? I thought, feeling myself as if looking for a gunshot wound, but nothing felt different, nothing hurt. I heard Winona shift, watching now.
“Bitch . . .” Chris rasped, still hunched in pain as she glared at me.
“What happened?” Jennifer asked, bending over her in concern.
Chris shoved Jennifer away. “I’m fine!” she snapped, finally able to straighten up. Her eyes were bloodshot as she glared at me, her skin pale. “Not so helpless after all. Demon. Demon whore!” Taking a breath, she looked at her hands. They were trembling. “The bitch bounced the curse back at me.”
Jennifer looked confused, but I wasn’t. “Uh, if that band of charmed silver prevents her from doing magic, then how could she bounce it back at you?”
“I don’t know!” Shaking, Chris stood up, bending to snatch the pages that had fallen out and shoving them into the front of the book before turning to glare at me, reminding me of Jenks with her hands on her hips like that. “Maybe curses don’t work on demons. Maybe that’s why the last woman died so fast.”
Winona caught her breath, terror making her eyes wide.
I edged back from the front of the cage, relieved. The curse hadn’t bounced back because I was a demon. Like Trent had said, if the curse worked through the demon collective, it wouldn’t recognize me and would bounce back. I was safe. But Winona wasn’t.
“I’m going to try it on the other one,” Chris said, and a drop of ice ran down my spine. Winona had gone white, her fingers gripping her knees stiff and clawlike.
“No, you’re not!” I shouted.
But Chris was drawing a long brown hair through her fingers, coating it with blood. I looked at Winona. Oh God. I couldn’t stop this. “Winona,” I whispered, and the woman’s eyes met mine, scared. “I’m sorry.”
“Separare!” Chris shouted, and the strand of hair broke.
Winona’s eyes bulged, and she stiffened. Her desperate, despairing cry of pain echoed in the small area. She pushed to her feet, and I lunged for her, grabbing her before she could run into the wire mesh. I felt helpless, but I tried to make the pain go away by just being there, giving her something to feel besides agony.
“It’s okay,” I whispered, tears coming from me as she screamed in pain, her entire body stiff with it. “It’s okay. It will go away. I promise.” I didn’t know if she could hear me, but her screams turned to sobs as she shook.
“It worked!” Chris crowed. “Jenn! It worked perfectly! We have it! I can do anything!”
I brought my head up as I rocked Winona, the woman slowly starting to relax as the pain ebbed. The blond sadist was almost dancing, her finger and thumb red with my blood and the gluttonous light of power in her eyes.
“It’s getting better,” I said to Winona, wishing I could help her. “See, it’s going away.”
“I want to go home,” she cried as she slipped from me to the floor and huddled, her hair hiding her face. “I just want to go home.”
“Me too,” I said, feeling helpless. She’d be okay until they decided to do something else. “I’m so sorry. You shouldn’t be here.”
Gerald shuffled in, his expression irate and the cameras gone from his hands. “Keep it down,” he said, weaving past the woman in the lab coat doing a happy dance as if she’d made a touchdown. “I can hear you all the way to the stairway.” He looked at Winona, huddled in the corner with me, glaring at all of them. “What did you do?”
“It worked!” Chris sang, and Jennifer made notations in a second workbook, her expression pulled up as if she was smelling something rank. I knew it was the idea that Chris had done magic, not that she’d caused someone great pain. “I did a curse, and it worked. Morgan’s blood is demonic. We have working demon blood, and it didn’t cost my soul to do it!”
Which sort of answered the question of how they’d gotten a curse to hide that woman in the basement of the Underground Railroad Museum. They’d tried to get blood from a demon and had to settle for a curse to hide their mistakes. Whoever had twisted it was probably either laughing his ass off at their efforts or cheering them on to their destruction. God, I hoped it wasn’t Newt.
I’d had it, and I fingered my silver band, feeling long past stupid. I had been so blind, clueless. If I’d been a normal witch, not having magic wouldn’t have been a problem, but what ran in my veins was unimaginable power. It came with the ability to protect that power—and I had thrown it away. This was my fault. All of it.
“You made a woman feel pain,” I said sarcastically. “Congratulations. I can do the same thing with my foot and it doesn’t take a curse to do it.”
“She’s not a woman, she’s an animal,” Chris said, and my face burned.
The man frowned, then settled himself at the monitors, turning them on to show three new angles of dark basement. “Just keep it down,” he said, turning his back as if a woman sobbing in the corner was an everyday occurrence. “They have tours upstairs, you know.”
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 bo
ne 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.”
“No, you’re demons,” Chris said, and she turned her back on us, excited, as she went to her textbook.
“Give me a blanket!” I shouted, but no one listened.
A warning beep had started at the monitors, and Gerald turned. Jennifer froze, and Chris looked bothered. “It’s just him,” Gerald said as a dark shadow passed under the first of the cameras.
My head came up, and I tried to see around Gerald. Someone had shot the two vampires when Chris was freeing Jennifer—Captain America, Eloy, who was apparently good with a sniper rifle. You are mine, moss wipe.
“Good,” Chris said, standing tall and firm beside her new demon book, a hundred ugly possibilities at her fingertips. “I want to talk to him.”
“Me too,” I said as a man with a rifle and scope walked in.
Chapter Fourteen
“ I see you managed to get away,” the man said, casually dropping an army-green satchel on the makeshift lab bench, right on Chris’s notes. My eye twitched, and I shifted to stand in front of Winona as the woman shook in fear and shock. “Nice job fucking up a perfect exit plan, Chris. Where’s Kenny?”
Interesting, I thought as I took in the spare, athletic, somewhat military-looking man as Chris ignored him. He was dressed in jeans and had an army surplus jacket with a pre-Turn logo, a black T-shirt underneath it. His boots were suspiciously clean, but I could see a hint of dried mud on them, telling me he’d wiped them down recently. His hair was brown and cut close to his head. Average build, average height, nothing to make him stand out except perhaps the hard determination in his eyes and his stance, which would make me believe he was an alpha Were if I didn’t know better. No, this guy was HAPA, from his pre-Turn army boots tied with HAPA knots to the necklace of amber nuggets looking odd and out of place around his neck.