Daemon’s Mark by Caitlin Kittredge (web ebook reader .TXT) 📕

They were all trying to talk me out of doing something stupid, and they were all right. I was the one putting my case in jeopardy. If I even had a case.

I shut my eyes, tried to push back the monster that lived in my hindbrain. It was a useful monster, to be sure—it shared my life and my blood, my fears and desires. It was the dark half of me, the side that ran on all of the impulses I fought in a given day of one of the worst jobs the civilized world has to offer.

I lost.

The door was open before I realized my feet were on the pavement, the salt air on my face and stinging my eyes.

“Luna!” Will bellowed. “Luna, goddammit!”

A body chugged up beside me, and I recognized Bryson. Lane was just behind him, her gun already out. Huh. Maybe I’d misjudged her Girl Scout act.

“Nocturne City police!” I bellowed, as a mobster loaded the last of the girls into the container and slammed the door. Above me, the crane whined as its magnetic arm lowered. “Stand where you are!”

I don’t know what I’d expected, really, but it wasn’t for the fattest of the heavies to open his long duster and pull out a Kalashnikov.

Bryson had time to say “Oh, shi’” before we all hit the dirt.

Automatic-weapon fire is like being trapped inside a pinball machine—it’s louder than the voices of the gods and a spray of bullets in your general direction feels like the air is punching you. Bryson and I took cover behind a Port Authority cart parked between us and the mobsters, and Lane rolled behind a Dumpster. Batista and Will were dug in beside the van, returning fire.

“I told you to stay inside!” Will bellowed at me.

Amid the chaos, the crane arm caught the container of girls and whisked it upward and out of my vision. I went low, between the small, fat wheels of the cart, and aimed for Kalashnikov’s legs. Two shots, one for each. He went down, but impressively didn’t stop firing. Tough fat bastard.

One of the mobsters had the presence of mind to back the car between us and them as both sides opened up like we were John Dillinger and Melvin Purvis. Handgun slugs tore the poor little cart to shreds, and Bryson cursed as it rocked and threatened to tip over.

“Wilder, we do not have the fuckin’ advantage here!”

The mobsters grabbed the guy I’d tagged and got him into the Jaguar. The car’s engine roared and I came up, planting two slugs in its bumper out of pure spite.

The Jag fishtailed, righted and then, as quickly as the shooting had started, the car was gone. The container. Everything except a stink from the spent shells and a roaring in my abused ears.

I lowered my gun. “Shit,” I said viciously. “Everyone all right?”

“We’re okay, LT,” Bryson said. Will holstered his weapon, shaking his head. At least he had the grace not to say I told you so.

“We’ve got plenty of evidence,” Lane said to me, almost gently. “We’ll have them IDed and arrested in a couple of hours with these photos and recordings to speed warrants along.”

I looked at the spot the container had occupied. “Somehow that’s not making me feel any better,” I murmured.

Will tried to put his arm around me, give me a squeeze, but I shrugged him away. He gave me a hurt look and I kept my face stony. Those girls with their vacant eyes were all I wanted to think about right now. Men who would do this to innocent people had a monster inside, too.

I couldn’t wait until I introduced them to mine.

CHAPTER 9

“You should sleep,” Will said when he saw me under the lights of the motor pool.

“No,” I said. “I should find out who those men are before they ship those poor girls off to god knows where.”

“Luna…” Will sighed and pushed his hand through his hair. “You have to take a step back and remember that this is a case, not a crusade.”

I blinked at him. “Excuse me? I know you didn’t just get federal and all-knowing with me, your hysterical little woman.”

Will shook his head. “Don’t start. You know that’s not what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean?” I snapped. Lane, Bryson and Batista gave us our space, offloading the cameras and the recording equipment without a word. Once IA had gotten done with their shooting report, it had nearly been morning, and I was no closer to finding one shot-up gangster and his friends.

“Do you really want to have this fight in front of your subordinates?” Will asked me softly.

“Is that what we’re doing?” I said. “Fighting? Because from where I sit it just looks like you’re ordering me around.”

“Listen,” Will growled, grabbing me by the arm. “I know your damage, all right? I know you have a pathological fear of being pushed around, but I’m telling you this as a fellow professional—you are going to have to let this go. You have no case, even if you could get a warrant for the container that the FBI doesn’t sit on. Nothing those men did was beyond a misdemeanor until you started waving your gun around.”

“You know as well as I do that something rotten is going down over there,” I said. “You know that the Russians got Lily Dubois killed. You know nothing good is going to happen to those poor women who are probably on their way to some third-world hellhole this very second.”

Will shoved his hands through his hair, leaving a ruined trail of golden strands across his face. “Knowing and proof are two very different things, Luna. I learned that the hard way, just like you. That’s all I’m going to say, since I can tell I’m already in the doghouse.”

I turned away from him, so furious that I knew if I stayed I’d slap him across the face. How dare he be so condescending and smug and, well, right?

Absolutely