A Perfect Blood

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