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

No. My were snarled, howled and scraped its teeth over the inside of my head, but I couldn’t rouse myself. They’d dosed me too strong; I couldn’t think, couldn’t move …

None of it mattered in the next second as a new parade of images took over from my hope that someone would find me before the truck reached the port.

Will, Sunny, my grandmother. Faces and images Ihadn’t seen for years, as if my mind was flipping through a mental catalog and not liking what it saw.

Hands levered me up again, faces slid past, and I felt my gut rebel. Weres heal fast and my body was doing its level best to expel whatever I’d been dosed with before I was irrevocably fucked.

I managed to vomit onto the shoes of the girl next to me, as we were shoved into an echoing metal space. The cargo container, of course. The girl groaned and tried to slide away from me, and ended up falling over.

The metal walls of the crate brought a cold certainty with them—no one was coming for me. No one was going to rescue me. No one knew where I was, and by the time Will missed me or Bryson and Lane thought to track the GPS in my cell phone and found it in the hands of the bum who had undoubtedly stolen it to pawn, I would be halfway around the world.

I still had no power over my own body, so I did the only thing I could do, that hadn’t happened since I was a small child—I curled into a ball and started to cry.

When I woke up, I thought I was dead. I’d had the notion before, but this time I was absolutely sure. I smelled bile and piss, I ached everywhere, I was cold and my surroundings were rocking in steady time, like the beating of a heart.

I could hear crying, too, sobbing, hysterical and ongoing. Wasn’t the Christian hell supposed to be full of the wailing of sinners or something equally melodramatic?

“Shut up!” someone shouted, banging on metal and making my head echo. “Jesus fuckin’ Christ, what’s her problem?”

The sobbing continued, and I ordered my eyes to open. If I was in hell, I at least wanted to see which of the seven I’d landed in. I hoped it wasn’t the fire hell. I don’t do well with heat, even if it is a dry heat.

I recognized my racing thoughts for what they were—panic. Maybe there was hope after all. Could there be much purpose to panic in the afterlife?

The first thing my eyes caught was a steel wall, swinging shadows slicing back and forth like some kind of macabre puppet show. The same witch’s alphabet I’d seen in the meatpacking warehouse cascaded along in ripples of shadow, like a moving river of magick. It hurt, so I dropped my eyes from it to the floor.

There was a shoe lying on its side—a nice shoe, a Louboutin—level with my face, and I reached out for it, as something tangible and real.

Where the Hex was I? I tried to sit up and felt as if I’d hit my head against a Dumpster. Dizziness and pain raced through me and I threw up again, all over the front of my shirt.

“Fuck, bitch, what’s wrong with you?” the same voice shouted.

Wait, again? I’d thrown up before. Recently. Something poked through the black cloud that had taken the place of my brain, flashes of stumbling, vertigo, my stomach welling up into my throat …

“Oh, shit,” I breathed, clapping a hand over my mouth. “I got dosed.”

“Welcome the bright penny to the club,” snarled the woman. “Yes, sweetie, you’re not supposed to drink the roofie cocktails. Lesson learned?”

Underneath the stench of the filth sloshing back and forth on the floor of the container, I placed the musky smell that had been tickling my nose as female weres—a lot of them, scared and pissed off. I reached out for the side of the container and levered myself up.

“I wasn’t roofied.”

Rostov. He’d shut me up in here, just like the group of women I’d been trying to save.

“Hell you weren’t.” The voice laughed, bitter as a pill on your tongue. “Look at you. You’re a hot mess.”

Silver, burning from the inside out …

My stomach lurched, but fortunately there was nothing left. I put eyes on the bigmouth. She was short and busty, clipped bright red hair still half-spiked from a night out in the mosh pit. Her outfit was the sort of carelessness that punks cultivate when they’re trying too hard—tight bondage pants, ripped men’s tank, full sleeves of tattoos bright with cherry blossoms and dragons and other pilfered symbolism. “Mind keeping your voice down?” I rasped. “My head is killing me.”

“Yeah? Aren’t you special.” She folded her arms, making the dragons flex. “On the bright side, I’m about to kill little Miss Sobs-a-lot over there if she doesn’t shut the fuck up! ”

Red beat her fist against the container wall again. That was where we were. A cargo container, painted with workings on the inside, airless and dark. “Let me out, fuckers! I’m an American! You can’t do this to me.”

“If they were inclined to let us out, they would have done it,” I said, suddenly weary. “We’re in here until we get to our port of call.” There was no mistaking the lurch and roll underneath us for open sea, now that I was conscious.

“Oh, yeah, and what are you, some kind of expert on freak kidnappings?” Red snarled. Her claws were out, flexing in fear.

“No,” I said wearily. “I’m a cop.”

Her mouth opened at that, but I turned away from her and crawled over to the girl who was sobbing. Her noises had taken on a hypnotic rhythm, droning, like an animal caught in a trap.

“Hey,” I said, trying to get a look at her. “Hey, what’s your name?” I didn’t bother asking if she was all right.