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

She hiccupped, staring at me with wide, terrified eyes. “What do you want?”

“Just to know your name,” I said. “I’m Luna.” I reached out to put a hand on her shoulder and she flinched back, squealing in fear. “I’m not going to hurt you,” I said. “I promise.”

“My name’s Dolores,” she managed. “Dolores Stern.”

The name was vaguely familiar, and I tried to sift through the leftover fragments of my brain from my silver roofie coma for the memory. Bold print, a picture of the willowy blonde before me staring out at me from a page …

“Dolores Stern, the reporter?” I said. “You’re with the Nocturne Inquirer, aren’t you?”

“Y-yes.” She shuddered. “And you’re Luna Wilder, that werewolf cop who runs the freak investigations for the NCPD.”

“That’s one way of putting it,” I allowed. Focusing on Dolores and her trauma was allowing me to shove mine into a box and lock it. As long as I didn’t let myself think about what had led me to be here, I’d be fine. Functional. Able to get out of this alive.

I was good at compartmentalizing way before I became a cop, but it certainly comes in handy for the job.

Dolores let out another choked sound, which may have been bitter laughter. It was hard to tell. “We sure make a pair, don’t we?”

“I suppose we do,” I said. “How did they scoop you up?”

“I was talking to this asshole in a bar,” Dolores sniffed. “Lots of club girls turning up missing lately. Thought I might get a story. I only turned my back for a second to take a call because my editor was checking in … there was no way he had enough time…”

“This asshole,” I said. “Did he happen to be about six foot, slick-looking, black hair, accent?”

Dolores blinked. “You know him?”

“Ivan Salazko,” I said. So they were all in a little club together. It’d be cute if it wasn’t so nauseating. I didn’t know what I was most furious about—that I’d slipped up or that it had been that slimy little rat’s asshole Nikolai Rostov who had dosed me. I was supposed to be smarter than that, harder to get to, and he had waltzed up to me on my own front steps and snatched me. I felt my neck where the silver had touched me. There was nothing there except a dime-sized burn, which would heal in a matter of hours.

“Sounds about right,” Dolores said. “About six months ago a sister in my circle went missing. ’S what put me on to the whole thing. The police couldn’t give a crap—no offense—so I started digging and more and more women with the blood and the bite turned up gone as I went along, all of them from Russian-run clubs. I’m not stupid, so I followed the story.”

“You’re a witch?” I said, thinking that if she could pull it together it might be useful in getting us out of here. Magick can do a lot of things brute strength and a set of claws can’t.

“Shaman,” she said. “It was one of those stupid teenage things—you might have guessed ‘Stern’ isn’t a family with a long proud line of circle-scribblers in it. Anyway, your standard vision quest gone bad and then … certain powers.”

I’d only met one shaman before, and Dolores was an improvement even in her hysterical state. She hadn’t tried to kill me yet, and no one had needed to shoot her. Definitely a step up.

“Can you do something to get us out of here, if you have a chance to calm down?” I asked.

Dolores shook her head. “Steel. It Hexes up my ability to pull down power, plus they’ve put bindings on it. None of us are getting out of here, witch or were.”

So much for my brilliant escape plan. Red snorted from the corner. “Well, princess, with or without you, I’m getting the fuck out of here at the first gods-damned opportunity. The rest of you bitches are on your own.”

“Let’s not be hasty,” I said. “We don’t need anyone getting killed.”

“Bitch, are you blind?” she snapped. “We’re locked in a fucking crate. On a boat. Headed to Thailand or some gods-forsaken place where they chain you up and fuck you in the ass until you’re too old to make them a buck.”

“Oh, gods…” Dolores whimpered. I put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed.

“Not Thailand. Ukraine,” I said. Red cocked her head.

“What?”

“The shipping manifests I saw were all going to the Ukraine. That’s probably where we’re headed. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union it’s hard to keep track of what comes in and what goes out.”

“You’re just a regular little Encyclopedia Could I Give Less of a Shit? , aren’t you?” she said with a saccharine smile.

“I told you,” I said evenly. “I’m a cop. A lieutenant with the Nocturne City PD.”

She bared her teeth, testing my dominance. I didn’t bite. No pun. “Why should I believe you?” Red sighed, finally, when she saw neither of us was going to get to hump the other’s leg.

I pointed to her forearm, to a small portion of the tattoo sleeve that described a dead tree with a gravestone beneath it. “You spent three years in the McClintock Women’s Correctional Facility in Chino. The branches on the tree are the years, the gravestone means you were there for murder and the Roman numeral on it is the number of days you spent in solitary. Seventy-four. Impressive.”

She grimaced. “It was involuntary manslaughter.”

“How did you put it? ‘Could I give less of a shit’?”

Red’s defensive posture relaxed an iota. “So you’re either a cop or a fellow con.”

“Look at my outfit,” I said, gesturing at my vomit-soaked ensemble. “Could a con afford this?”

“What’s your pack?” she said. I held her gaze.

“I’m an Insoli. You?” As such, I was subject to the dominate of any pack I ran afoul of, unless my lone will was stronger. So far, so good, but I had a feeling Red might give