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

Anton’s weight slammed into me and he took me to the floor, tangling his hands in my hair, slamming my head into the concrete. Lights flamed and dulled in front of my eyes and my vision went blurry.

How had he made that jump? What the hell was he?

Questions for another time, all. Anton bared his teeth, fangs fully extended now, and angled for my throat. I struck out with my free hand, feeling for anything, and finally closed my fist around the end of a rusty iron meat hook.

It would have to do. As Anton closed his teeth around my throat for the finishing blow, I swung the hook up and buried it between his shoulder blades.

A crunch, like a cleaver cutting into a bunch of fresh celery. Anton quivered on top of me and then went still except for a convulsive twitching through his limbs. I felt a warm trickle of blood over my collarbone and shoved him away from me, rolling out from under his weight.

The hook didn’t look to have hit anywhere vital, not even a deep wound and very little blood, but from the way he was gasping and twitching, I wagered Anton was not long for this world.

I found my Sig, and backed away from the body, the irrational fear that it would get up again and start chasing me bubbling up from the animal part of my brain.

It’s happened before, and I wasn’t taking any chances. I slipped up the stairs, hearing the heavies muttering to each other in the freezer and Nikolai snapping at them. Get back to work sounds the same in any language.

I headed for the emergency exit, shoving open the heavy fire door. I was tired, bleeding, sore everywhere from the tussle with Anton, and I was shaking with delayed shock. So I nearly jumped out of my skin when the fire alarm started screeching.

It just figured—a condemned warehouse and they still worry about fire safety. I took off at a run and made for my car. I threw myself into the Nova and fumbled for my keys, jamming them into the ignition and gunning the engine.

Nikolai came barreling out of the warehouse with a gun, stepping into my path. I pressed my foot down on the gas. He could be pavement pizza or he could get out of my way. I didn’t care particularly which he chose right at the moment.

He leaped out of the way, and I sped out of the office park, laying rubber on the main road and speeding all the way back into the city.

My rage dissipated as the road hummed under the Nova’s tires, and all that was left was fatigue and shock. I’ve encountered a lot of weird people in my time, but Anton was something new. He’d come close to winning our little dance and that didn’t sit well. If I met another like him, I’d be Hexed.

Hands shaking, I took the exit off of the Appleby Expressway into downtown and tried to hold it together. I felt like I wanted to vomit, but I sat in the car instead after I parked at the Plaza, sweating and shaking.

I gripped the steering wheel and looked at myself in the rearview mirror. I’d done something unforgivably stupid and probably just Hexed any chance I’d had to start with of closing Lily’s case. “Nice going,” I told myself with a sneer. Nothing to do now except go back to my office, call the body in to Bryson and Batista, and deal with the fallout of letting my monster have its head.

Just when I thought I had a handle on the were, it tricked me again, laughed at me from dark corners. I wished, not for the first time, that I could just rip it out of me, be a plain human again. Mundane had to be better than this.

CHAPTER 11

Lane followed me into my office when I arrived back at the SCS. “You don’t look so good,” she said.

I slumped in my chair and ran my hands down my face. “I’m lucky to be alive, never mind looking fresh and fabulous, Natalie.”

“So I take it bursting into a Russian mobster’s office and confronting him didn’t yield the fruit that it always does in the movies?” Lane said, sitting on the edge of my desk.

I glared at her. “I’m really not in the mood right now, okay?” I rolled my neck, trying to work out a few of the kinks, and then buzzed Bryson’s desk. “David, can you and Javier come in here for a second?”

“Sure thing, LT,” he said. He gave me the same look as Lane when he clapped eyes on me. “Shit, Wilder, did you run yourself through a cement mixer?”

“There’s a body at Rostov’s meatpacking plant,” I said. “It’s a were, so it’s an SCS beef. Can you and Javier take CSU and go down there?”

Batista paced. “And how do you know about this body?”

“I created it,” I said shortly. “I’ll be in tomorrow and you can take my statement.”

“Internal Affairs is gonna shit a brick,” Bryson said.

“Were body,” I repeated. “SCS case. It’s not a hard one to figure out, David.”

Batista touched him on the arm. “Come on. We’ll grab Anderson and get right on it, Lieutenant.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Less questioning, more following orders. Go on, shoo.”

Once they’d left, Lane gave me her motherly, disapproving look. “It sounds like things got way, way out of hand with Rostov, Lieutenant.”

“I know what I’m doing,” I said, stubbornly.

“I’m going to give my opinion here,” she said. “And then you can get angry, because that’s what you do.”

I rolled my eyes at her. “Please. Enlighten me.”

“I think you’d do anything to get this guy,” she said. “Obsession can be a very narrow edge to walk, Luna.”

“Are you my shrink now?” I asked, probably more snappish than she strictly deserved.

“Just someone who’s been where you are,” Lane said. “Mine was the father of a ten-year-old