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

as well as pretty,” Grigorii said. “No, we’re not. There are men who have a need for blood, for pain and humiliation.” His face darkened and he folded his arms. “You will service them, until you are either dead or useless to a man, and then you will be used as bait in our combat ring.” A smile twitched across his lips. “My only regret is that my chance to break you in was so rudely canceled. You are premium stock, Joanne.”

It wasn’t the proposition that did it—spend enough time in my line of work and you hear every lame sexual innuendo in the book, and a few that haven’t made it yet. It was the way he said stock, and the look in his eyes that said that to him, I really was nothing more than a thing that had arrived for his use.

How many girls who didn’t have my fortitude had he used up and spit out like things?

I launched myself at the mesh. It wasn’t that thick, and I was pissed the Hex off. Grigorii would find out firsthand what the seven hells had no fury like.

There was a snap, I smelled burning hair, and I was on my ass across the cell, back up against the brick, electricity dancing across my nerve endings for the second time that day.

Grigorii stood up, laughing outright now. “Oh, Joanne … breaking you is going to be a fine thing to watch. You take care now. I’ll be seeing you soon enough.”

I was trying to restart my heart and command my shocked lungs to breathe, breathe, dammit, but I still managed a snarl. “I’ll be … counting … the seconds. Asshole.”

Grigorii walked away without another word, leaving me with my thoughts. When you’re me, and trapped halfnaked in a cage, it’s not a great place to be.

I listened, mostly, since there was Hex-all for me to look at. I couldn’t even see any other cells, which I’m sure was the idea. People break faster when they’re isolated.

Someone else was breathing a few dozen feet away, and whoever it was smelled like BO and dirt, which I probably did, too, if not worse. Further still, I could hear the low bubble of voices and music, which had to be the party room for the fights. Beyond that, faint enough to tickle my ears but little more, I could hear screaming.

“Bright lady,” I muttered, wrapping my arms around myself. It was the closest I ever came to praying. Even with direct evidence of places and people who were not human, I had a hard time believing any gods who might possibly be listening gave a damn about me. Especially now.

Time went by like a slow river current, carrying my thoughts and panic along with it. You don’t expect to be the victim when you’re someone like me. I relied on myself, on my strength and my skills and my inner monster to deliver me from bad situations. I never conceived that I could switch places with the people whose deaths and disappearances I investigated.

But I had. And my monster had failed me. I was still here.

So what are you going to do about it, Wilder?

“Good question,” I whispered, leaning my head back against the wall. A door banged, letting in a snatch of godawful Russian pop music as well as shouts of approval. I smelled fresh blood on the air and I buried my nose in the T-shirt, which also stank. But at least it didn’t make me want to chew someone’s throat out.

Two men in the uniform I’d come to recognize asthat worn by cogs in the Belikov machine—windbreakers, longish hair, tattoos—dragged a girl past me. She was alive, but barely. A sucking echoed along the corridor every time she breathed from a collapsed lung.

Her face, as she passed, was a mess—I wouldn’t even have pegged her as human if I couldn’t see her body. One leg was twisted, broken, and she moaned softly as she bumped over the concrete.

“What are you looking at?” one of the men snapped.

I averted my eyes, but as soon as they passed, I slid over to the front of my cell and peered out, careful not to touch the mesh again.

A door banged open again, and with it came the sound of traffic, and more importantly, the scent of outside air.

Suddenly, nothing about my current situation mattered. Not the cold, not the hopelessness of what my shenanigans with Grigorii and the telephone had caused.

Because I knew where they took the weres who lost the fights.

And I was going to use it to get myself free.

I tried to sleep, tried to rest, although my empty stomach kept sending pangs letting me know that it would like some food now, thank you. I ignored it as best I could. I’d need everything I had to make this work.

Perversely, my mind cast back to Enter the Dragon, the scene where Bruce Lee is sneaking around the compound at night and happens upon all of the slave girls. I always thought Lee, from the movie, was a total asshole for not letting those girls go. I also wondered why they didn’t just escape, really—it wasn’t like anyone was paying attention.

At least I had an answer to that now.

I’d watched the film with Will, curled up on the sofa in his expensive loft, bathed in the glow of his expansive plasma screen, everything right and normal with the world. Just me, my boyfriend and Bruce Lee. As close to perfection as I’d likely come.

I laced my hands behind my head and stared at Ceiling Castro some more. I didn’t let myself think about what would happen if this didn’t work. It had to work. Nothing else had gone right for me since I’d gotten that 187 call to Lily’s body.

This would work. I was still me, and my crazy plans didn’t fail. At least, not often. Even after Alistair Duncan, the witch who’d summoned a daemon with seven dead