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

Hot pain reached out, all through me, and I snarled at Esperanza. “Do it now or we’re both getting dragged out of here on a slab.”

Esperanza balled her fist and drove it into my face. She had a hell of a right cross. My head snapped sideways against the tile and I felt her palms on me, coating me with cold, sticky blood. I flopped around, trying to make it look much worse than it was.

Esperanza shifted off of me, to hoots and cheers. “You better not fuck up this time,” she hissed at me, and then her weight was gone and I felt hands on my wrists. I moaned and lolled, trying to sell recent brain damage as a possibility.

“Grigorii,” a voice said. Mikel. “Take her out and dump her, yes?”

We stopped moving, and a cold hand wiped away some of the blood. Hex me. If he figured out I wasn’t hurt …

“What a bloody waste,” Grigorii sighed. “And no, she stays here. A fight fan has requested her for his companion.”

“She can barely move…” Mikel said. “That redheaded bitch dented her skull.” Was it my punch-drunk imagination or was there a tinge of disgust in his voice?

“The customer is always right, Mikel,” Grigorii said. “Ours is not to question why. Take her upstairs.”

Mikel switched to a fireman’s carry, muttering something that I’m sure was about getting blood all over himself dragging my heavy ass around. I cracked one eye and saw we were going upstairs, through the parlor, back to the rooms of the girls who didn’t have to fight.

After my days in the basement, it was almost welcoming. Mikel knocked. A voice rumbled at him, and I was deposited on a bed. Mikel withdrew, and I steeled myself for yet another battle. Whatever man wanted to fuck a half-dead, defenseless victim, I was more than happy to usher him into the next life. And the one after him, and as many as they sent to me.

Fight. Kill. Survive. That was what my mind was now, prey to my monster.

A hand brushed hair off of my forehead. It was large and callused, and the body that went with it sat on the bed beside me. “Are you all right?”

I made my move, and grabbed the hand touching me, shoving hard to throw the man off the bed. He fell with a thud and a curse and I was over him and against the door, scrabbling for the handle with my sticky bloodsoaked fingers.

“Luna.”

The voice stopped me in my tracks. It was rusty, accented, stained with tobacco smoke but so familiar. I still heard it sometimes, in bad dreams. I turned, shaking.

“Dmitri.” I didn’t have to question. I knew it would be him.

He stood, coming toward me, arms wrapping around my shoulders and pulling me against his chest. “Luna,” he said against my hair. “Luna, what the fuck are you doing here?”

Shaking, I pulled back from him. “Me? What the Hex are you doing here, Dmitri?”

He shook his head. His hair was longer, and it fell in his eyes. “Never mind. There’s time for questions later. Right now I have to get you out of here.”

“Good luck,” I said. “What do you think I was trying to do when you decided to get noble, genius? They take the girls who are beaten out of here!”

He blinked at me. “I didn’t realize…”

“No,” I said, jabbing a shaking finger into his chest. “You didn’t. So thanks a lot, Dmitri. Once again, your pathological need to play white knight has fucked up my perfectly good plan.”

His face drew into the frown I remembered so well. Dmitri and I had never been able to just sit still with one another—it was always fighting, sex, or sometimes both, one right after the other. “Oh, I’m the one that screwed up? I’m not the one who got herself tossed into a blood-sport cage match in the middle of a Ukrainian whorehouse!”

“Oh, so we’re going right back to the blame, are we?” I shot back. “Fine by me. By all means, go ahead and explain your virtuous and noble reason for being here in the first place!”

Dmitri’s nostrils flared. “We need to get out of here, Luna. Now. Do you want to fight, or do you want to run?”

I curled my fists, uncurled them. “Lead the way, Galahad.”

“Always with that mouth,” Dmitri growled. “You can never just let anything be.”

“Not this damsel,” I agreed as he eased the door open. “I hate to break it to you, but you can’t stroll out with me. I’m a commodity. And I don’t have any clothes on.”

“I’m trying to ignore that last part,” Dmitri muttered. “As to the first, just be quiet and stick close.”

Now I remembered why I hated alpha males so much. They always had that damn know-it-all attitude, too smug for words. “I’m not budging unless you share this plan with me,” I said as we slipped into the hall. Dmitri cocked his eyebrow at me.

“You’d rather stay here?”

“Talk fast,” I said as he started to walk.

“Cased the place before I came in,” he said. “There’s a service entrance off the catering kitchen in this building that backs up to a loading dock on the street. Kirov is waiting with a car.”

“Kirov would be your sidekick in short pants?” I said, acid on my tongue.

“He’s a member of the pack,” Dmitri said, opening a nondescript door that I’d passed in my search for a phone. Stairs, an empty hallway, a ghostly kitchen full of rusted equipment and dripping refrigerators, and I was out the door, as simple as that.

Dmitri smirked at me as I wrapped my arms around myself. It was freezing cold, but I didn’t care. I was free.

“Your car is this way, milady.”

I really hated alpha males.

Kirov, Dmitri’s friend, was a stocky man with a long ponytail that would have looked better on someone taller and thinner. He raised his eyebrows at me. “Not as pretty as you described, Dmitri.”

“Up yours, Fabio,” I