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

“I’ll look forward to getting you alone, then, beautiful,” he said, licking his lips. He grabbed me and shoved me into Esperanza, who in turn stumbled out of the crate, hissing as the light hit her eyes for the first time in a week.

A tumbledown truck was waiting for us, and once we’d been shoved in the back and the door rolled shut, we moved again, bouncing over rough ground.

“Just like home,” I muttered. “It feels so good to be back.”

We drove for hours, or even days—my sense of time was so Hexed that I could have been in there for a year. When we stopped for the last time, it was in a bleak warehouse. Peter hauled us out of the truck while Mikel held his trusty Kalashnikov on us. We frog-marched across the warehouse and into a warren of cinder-block corridors that exuded the same dampness as an old tomb.

There were cells, metal doors half-rusted, mesh with no glass attached, faint spray letters the only hint to what the warehouse had been before the gangsters took it over. There were girls in the cells, dozens of them, dirty, matted hair and skinny to a woman.

Mikel prodded us into the farthest cell, and slammed the door, locking a padlock that was the newest thing in the warehouse. The three men retreated, the lights went out, and we were alone in the dark again.

The next morning—I could tell it was morning because of the convenient hole in the ceiling that let in a fall of rain during the night and weak sunlight now—Mikel and Peter reappeared. There was a third figure behind them, and Peter stood aside deferentially.

I nudged Deedee. “That’s got to be a boss.”

“Fantastic,” she muttered. “Can’t wait to meet him.”

Charlie stood up. “Excuse me. I don’t belong here with them. You want money? I’ve got money. I could probably buy this whole godforsaken country with what I make in a year. Just tell me how much and let me out of here so I can call in a wire transfer. As much as you want. American dollars. Simple, right?”

The slim figure was silent in the shadow thrown by the door to our makeshift cell, and Charlie swallowed. It was the first time I’d seen her actually display some emotion. “Speak English?” she asked loudly. “Lots of money. All for you. Me, go home.”

Stepping forward, the figure smiled at Charlie. “I speak English,” she said in a cultured accent, Russian with a touch of Brit from whomever had taught her the Queen’s language. “I speak, I would wager, better English than you do.”

Charlie blinked. “You’re a woman,” she said flatly, as if that was the most shocking thing about this entire situation.

“You’re so very observant,” said the figure. She was barely a woman—tiny and willowy with flowing dark hair and hard green eyes, she looked more like a teenager. The only thing that made her seem like something other than a figment of my fevered imagination was the twin scars bisecting her right cheek from her mouth to her ear and to the corner of her eye, as if someone had stroked two fingers of hot iron against her perfect Snow White skin.

“My name is Ekaterina. As of this moment, I am your mother, your priest, your warden and, if you displease me, your disciplinarian. Do exactly as you are told and we’ll get on famously. Disobey me and you will find out very quickly how bad my temper can be.” She snapped her fingers at Mikel. “Get those four. Leave the one with the tattoos. She’s good for the sport only with all of that ugly ink.”

Mikel jerked his rifle at us. “Up, you four. Blonde, brunette, skinny, loudmouth. The ugly one stays.”

Esperanza’s eyes filled with panic. “Don’t leave me here. Don’t you fucking leave me alone.”

“It’s going to be fine,” I tried to reassure her. “I’m not going to forget about you. Just stay calm.”

Red lunged for me and grabbed my wrist. “Don’t you fucking leave me!”

I had an unwelcome memory of Lily Dubois, her waterlogged dead hand clamped around my skin. “Esperanza,” I said quietly. “You have to try not to panic. I’m getting us out of here. I promise. ”

Peter grabbed our wrists and tried to jerk us apart. I snarled at him, baring my fangs. He backhanded me, the sting putting the taste of blood on my tongue, and then grunted something at Mikel in Ukrainian. Mikel stepped in and jabbed the butt of his Kalashnikov into Esperanza’s forehead. She let out a yelp and fell backward, clutching her head and going still.

Peter grabbed me by the back of the neck and threw me out of the cell and into the opposite wall of the hallway. I rebounded and came for him, determined to break his nose, his ribs, tear out his throat and hurt him for everything he’d put me through. I didn’t care if I ended up shot. The were clamped down on my vision and I could see in shades of silver, monster-vision at its finest.

“Enough!” Ekaterina stuck her arm in between us, shoving me back with surprising strength. “Do that again,” she murmured in my ear, “and it’s the sport for you as well. Don’t think you’ll be spared because you’re pretty. I can make short work of that angelic face.”

Aside from the fact that she was the first person in history to refer to me as angelic in any capacity, Mikel was now pointing the rifle directly at me, and my human sense of self-preservation kicked in.

My vision cleared, and I was back to being freezing, filthy and starving, with more invested in staying upright than in clawing the smirk off of Mikel’s face.

“Better,” Ekaterina said with a curt nod. “I can see that I’m going to have to watch you. What’s your name?”

She took my chin between her fingers, and even though I had a good four inches on her, I felt