A Perfect Blood

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.
    Jennifer hesitated, then sneered and flipped me off as if it was my fault. I didn’t get this. Chris was clearly the power-hungry bitch, but what was the gutter-mouthed china doll doing here? She’d been freaky scary when we caught her, but fringe organizations promoting species eradication usually didn’t mesh with women named Jennifer who had rhinestones on their shoes.
    “I got enough to run a sample,” Jennifer said, setting the syringe beside Chris. “When we need more, I’ll just dart her.”
    Like an animal? Not good. Not good at all. This wasn’t the first time I’d been locked up: Alcatraz, demon jail, Trent’s ferret cage, a hospital bed. If I could escape that one twenty years ago, then this one was only a matter of time. But as I looked over the bleak surroundings, warm and damp, I wondered. This was bad. Really bad.
    “I’m Rachel,” I said to the lump in the corner.
    “Winona,” the woman said, lifting her head from her seated fetal position just enough to see me. Her brown eyes were terrified. “Don’t touch me. Please.”
    She sounded frantic, and I stopped moving closer. Her tasteful pair of slacks and a blouse were wrinkled by several days’ use, but expensive. Her low heels were functional. She was an office professional by the looks of it. Someone who would be missed right away. Either they were confident no one would find us, or she had something they needed that was worth the risk.
    My head hurt, and I felt it carefully and found three sore spots. I only remembered being kicked hard enough to hurt once. My gut hurt, too, and I lifted my shirt and saw an ugly bruise just shy of my kidneys. A little higher, and