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

monitor, weren’t you? Before you went to community college and got a job that lets you push people smarter than you around?”

“Hey, puta, shut your mouth,” said Red. “I don’t see you trying to help us out of this.”

I shot Red a grateful look. Charlie was getting on my last nerve with remarkable speed.

“You little…” Charlie started, but I raised my hands.

“Enough. Both of you be quiet.” The doors swung back with a groan and a bright beam of spotlight sliced into my eyes. Red and Charlie let out a groan.

“Nobody move,” said a heavily accented voice. “We are in charge.” I made out two shadows behind the light, one of whom was holding a rifle, trained on us.

“He’s got a gun,” I said. “Take it easy.”

“Shut up!” the same voice shouted at me. “Get up, all of you!”

We all managed to get to our feet, Charlie tottering on a single shoe. Anna tried to shrink into herself even more while Red snarled.

“These are the rules that will enable you to live to see the light of day again,” the voice said. “One: You will not try to escape. You will not make noise and you will not cry. You will be fed once a day. You will be clean. If you are sick or filthy, no one is going to help you.”

There was a creak, and the light fell a bit, giving me a look at the men’s faces. They were white, tattooed, ugly to a man. They had that nothing-behind-the-eyes chill of career criminals, and I knew that if one of us stepped out of line she’d be dead as quickly as the gun-toter could depress the trigger of his Kalashnikov.

“You will hold still and be cleaned. If you scream, we will punish you.” The raspy-voiced leader of the pack sure had a thing for punishment.

“Come over here and say that, you pasty-faced waste of sperm!” Red snarled.

There was no response, except a humming rush and then a blast of frigid water slammed into us from the ship’s fire hose. Anna and Charlie screamed, Deedee threw up her hands to cover her face and I grabbed one of the struts in the container to stay on my feet. Magick crawled over my hand from the binding, and I yanked it away.

The water was so cold that my skin lost feeling almost immediately, and the hose coursed over each of us in turn, washing the filth out of the container and beating us down until all I could hear was the roar of the water.

“You’re warned,” said the leader. “Any back talk, any resistance, and you’ll get worse.” A plastic five-gallon bucket landed at my feet. “Use that from now on, you filthy whores.”

“Hey!” Red shouted as they started to shut the door. “Hey, what about our clothes? We’re freezing!”

The clang echoed, rattling my teeth. I started to shiver uncontrollably, my pants and blouse doing nothing to keep the cold from me. I might as well have been soaking wet and naked.

Focus, Luna. Think. There were two minders, for three weres and two witches. They knew we had nowhere to go, even if we broke the binding and overpowered them. We were in the middle of the ocean on a cargo liner, with no way to call for help. They counted on us to be passive, terrified, womanly. And we had no choice but to be exactly that, or take a bullet in the head.

I slid back down the wall, water pooling around my feet. My shaking became less from the cold and more from panic. I turned my face toward the wall, trying to hide my meltdown from the other women. I might need them later, and they needed to see me as unflappable, a leader, if we were going to live.

Anna was still crying softly, and Charlie heaved a sigh, moving away from her. “Look, someone is bound to be looking for me. I’m a very important person back in Nocturne City, a lawyer. Not like the rest of you. They’ll find me.”

“Bitch, are you out of your head?” Esperanza snapped. “She’s a cop and they’re sure as shit not breaking down the door to rescue her.”

“They’re not going to be able to find any of us,” said Deedee. “My editor wouldn’t even know I was gone until I didn’t come to work on Monday.”

“No one’s looking for me,” Red said softly. “No one in the pack cares about one bitch.”

They kept talking, and all I thought was that I had to stay focused, had to not panic, had to keep myself until control.

Because no one was coming for me, and no one would help. I couldn’t count on a rescue or a brilliant plan.

I was alone.

CHAPTER 13

A week went by, if I counted by how many times the men came and fed us expired MREs with Cyrillic lettering on the labels. The bucket got emptied, but only if we were lucky. Esperanza cursed and screamed at the men every time they came—their names were Mikel and Peter. Mikel was the one who held his gun like a girlfriend. Esperanza got hosed down each time, but it didn’t seem to do much for her temper.

I was starting to like Red. The rest of the girls drifted in and out, Charlie periodically monologuing about her fabulous life as an attorney, Deedee telling me about her grandmother, Anna crying more often than not. She was always quiet about it, but her eyes had started to get that hunted, all-whites animal look. Much longer and she was going to lose it.

Drifting gave me plenty of time to think, but not much that went through my head made sense. This wasn’t just sex trafficking—if it was, there wouldn’t be only witches and weres in the container with me. They wouldn’t be kidnapping us from the United States and sending us overseas. Quite the opposite.

Mostly, I thought about everyone that I’d left back in Nocturne. Will, Sunny, the SCS. Will would