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

said. Dmitri guided me into the back seat and shut the door.

“Drive. Those witch gangsters aren’t going to be thrilled when they find out I walked off with one of their girls.”

I couldn’t believe it was so easy for him. But that was the problem with Dmitri—everything was easy for him. He had never acted like anything was his fault when we were together, so why should he start now that he was here? Here, saving my ass. Dammit.

The car wound through narrow streets, gray stone buildings and small storefronts giving a deceptively quaint look to the place. I squinted out the windows. “Where the hell are we?”

“Kiev,” said Dmitri. “My home.”

“It’s lovely,” I said, deadpan, and leaned back against the seat. I didn’t intend to fall asleep, but my eyes fluttered closed, and when I woke up, Dmitri was putting me to bed.

I came awake alone, in a small room that was furnished with shabby furniture, but was clean and dry. Clothes were sitting on the chair by the bed, jeans, atank top and a plaid overshirt. Even underwear. Everything was my size.

The bed felt like heaven, but I pushed back the covers and got dressed, shoving the stained, bloody T-shirt into the trash can with deep satisfaction.

“I have to say, I’m sad to see that skimpy thing go,” Dmitri said from the doorway. “But you look better without all of that blood on you.”

I spun around, putting my hands up reflexively. “How long have you been standing there?”

“Relax,” he said. “Not long.”

“Dmitri Sandovsky, I was kidnapped and sold to a brothel. The next time you tell me to relax, I’m going to knock your fucking teeth in. Are we clear?”

He raised his hands, palms up. “I’m sorry. I apologize. I’m just still in shock that you’re even here.”

I sat back on the bed, wincing. Dmitri’s face instantly darkened. “What’s wrong?”

“I got cut,” I said shortly. The Russian’s face flashed in my mind, broken neck and all. I felt a surge of nausea.

“Where’s your bathroom?”

Dmitri pointed. “Down the hall … Are you all right?”

I bolted up and ran into the small white-tiled space, dropping my head over the toilet. There was nothing in my stomach, but I retched anyway, miserable, until Dmitri crouched next to me and pulled my sweaty hair out of my face.

“It’s fine. It’s fine, Luna. I’m here now.”

I looked up at Dmitri, into the eyes that I’d spent almost a year trying to forget, and I felt the dam on my emotion break with a snap against my chest. I leaned my head on his shoulder and started to sob.

“I screwed up, Dmitri. I screwed up and I’m here, and I was in that horrible place…” I couldn’t breathe, so I just sobbed some more.

Dmitri put his arms around me. “Luna, the girl I knew would never screw up that badly. Everything is going to be all right.”

I sniffed hard, and scrubbed at my eyes. “You don’t know the whole story.”

Dmitri stood up and opened the medicine chest over the sink. He pulled out antiseptic and bandages, and handed them to me. “You need help?”

I unzipped my jeans and pushed them down to my knees, not caring that he was still around. “No.” I soaked a bandage in peroxide and dabbed at the cuts, wincing. “I don’t understand why these fucking things haven’t healed up yet. He didn’t even cut me that deeply.”

“Looks like you ran into a Poison Talon,” said Dmitri.

“Let me guess,” I said, biting down hard on the inside of my cheek so I wouldn’t yell from the sting. Whimpering in front of my ex-boyfriend was not on the agenda, for this day or any other. “Their claws secrete something that keeps me from healing up?”

“Bingo,” said Dmitri. “Nasty bastards, the whole bunch of them.”

I taped down bandages over my cuts and pulled my jeans back on. Dmitri’s eyes darkened, but he didn’t say anything and neither did I. “You didn’t answer my question,” I said.

“Which one?” he said, handing me a washcloth. I ran cold water into the sink and started to wash off all the blood that I could.

“Why you were in that brothel,” I said.

Dmitri sighed. “It’s complicated.”

“Complicated like, you-pay-for-sex complicated, or you’re-in-the-mob complicated?” I wrung out the cloth and looked him in the eye.

“Luna, do you honestly think I need to pay for sex? Or would join the mob? Especially the Belikov mob?”

I looked at myself in the mirror. I was sporting a nasty bruise along my cheekbone from where Esperanza had clocked me and scratches on my clavicle from Grigorii. I buttoned the shirt to cover them. I didn’t want to remember Grigorii. “I don’t know, Dmitri,” I said. “I don’t know much right now.”

He sighed. “I was there to help a pack member. It was something that needed to be handled delicately, because the Belikovs are the biggest witches in this city and fucking nasty types on top of that. And then … there you were. Imagine my surprise.”

“Likewise,” I said. Dmitri moved closer to me, and I backed up until I was against the sink.

“I missed you, Luna. Every day since I left. There wasn’t an hour that you weren’t in my thoughts.”

I looked away from him, fixing my eyes on a crack in the tile wall rather than even try to answer.

“Luna?” he said again.

“We ended, Dmitri,” I said finally. I stepped forward so he’d either have to back up or do a Super Bowl–style chest bump with me. “I’m eternally grateful to you for getting me out of that place, but there’s no us anymore, and frankly it would be miles less stressful if we could just agree on that and move on.”

He sighed, running a hand through his hair. “Do you ever think that no more us was a mistake?” he asked softly.

“Never,” I said, too quickly to be anything but a lie. Of course I wondered if I’d backed out too soon. Of course I wondered if things ever could have