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

But when I thought about it, the answer was always no. Dmitri and I didn’t work long-term. It was a flash, a melting point of lust, and that was all we’d ever really had.

“You’re a bad liar,” Dmitri said, moving again, rubbing his hands up and down my arms. After days in the Belikov brothel, close contact with another were was about on par with kissing one of Dr. Kronen’s rotted corpses.

“How’s the daemon?” I said, knowing that the question would snap him back. He grunted and dropped his hands.

“Do you really want to know?”

“Since we’re all hot for the personal questions, yes. I do.” I crossed my arms.

Dmitri pulled back the arm of his shirt and I hissed. Whatever I’d expected to see, it wasn’t that.

Bitten by a were possessed by a daemon, Dmitri had been infected with daemon blood, and the corruption had slowly overtaken his own monster, turning him into a man who had violent blackouts, fits of anger that terrified me more than I’d ever let on. It weakened him, too, made him a prisoner of the daemon as his own pack magick was leached away.

Now the curved black scar, which had looked like a crescent brand, was red and swollen at the edges; the veins that trailed out through Dmitri’s pale skin blackened as they crossed it.

“Hex me,” I whispered, reaching out for his arm in spite of myself. I took a second look at Dmitri. He had deep rings under his eyes and he’d lost weight—a lot of weight. Where there had been a solid hunk of were was skinny, bones showing at the shoulders and low in his ribs. His hair was greasy and his scent was coppery with sickness.

“Dmitri,” I said. “What’s happening to you?”

“Don’t I wish I knew.” He laughed humorlessly, pulling his arm out of my grasp and rolling his shirtsleeve down. “Now, come on downstairs and meet the rest of my pack. I need to tell them what happened.”

“A member of your pack sent you into the compound in the first place?” I said as I followed him down a narrow flight of stairs. It was a house, faded and rotted at the edges, but still homey. A parade of severe black-andwhite pictures of someone’s ancestors glared reprovingly at me as we descended.

“Sure did,” Dmitri grunted. He was uncomfortable now, reverting to that Me-Tarzan monosyllabic thing he did when something grazed too close to one of his trigger points. The daemon bite was changing him, more than I’d thought possible.

I was definitely revisiting that. But not now. “Your pack member must be pretty damn persuasive if he talked you into going in there.”

Dmitri dropped his eyes. “She. Yes. It was an emergency.”

The plot thickens. “She have a name?”

He grunted. “You’ll meet her.” And that was all I got out of him as we walked through the warrenlike rooms to the kitchen. It was huge, from a time when you needed space for ten servants to be milling around, a wood-fired cooking stove hulking in one corner and a wide farm sink in the other.

Weres were thick there, standing at the ancient refrigerator or sitting at a battered harvest table playing cards. All conversation died away as soon as they caught my scent.

“Everyone,” Dmitri said in English, “this is Luna.”

I tensed, anticipating the wrath that was going to come my way any second. Dmitri’s pack, the Redbacks, and I aren’t exactly on great terms. He gave up his pack leader status to be with me, and I’d had a few run-ins with the pack elders who oversaw all Redbacks, all over the world. They hadn’t been inviting me out for drinks when it was all over.

Kirov, the driver, stood up from the table and came over to me. “A pleasure, miss. Always happy to rescue a lady in distress.” His accent was much heavier than Dmitri’s, and his smile seemed genuine. When I shook his massive rough-palmed hand, he nearly pulped my fingers.

“Thanks for your help, again,” I said. “I’m so happy to be out of there you don’t even know.” Maybe this particular pack house didn’t know me from Eve. Maybe I had gotten lucky.

“So you are the one who Dmitri gave up everything for,” a female voice said. “You’re the one who made him leave Nocturne City.”

Should have known. I was never that lucky.

“Margarita, don’t do this,” Dmitri said. “I don’t hold it against Luna. You know that.”

I sized up Margarita as she wound toward us through the other weres. She was shorter than me, but not by much, with stunning auburn hair that was too bright not to be natural. Blue eyes and flawless skin. She looked more like an Irish princess than a Ukrainian were, but what did I know?

She also had a fantastic body, slender and curved, and she came over and took Dmitri by her fantastic, delicate hand. “Care to explain to me why you are here, Miss Wilder?”

“Well, let’s see,” I said, mimicking her conciliatory bullshit tone. “There was the kidnapping from my hometown, and it all goes sort of vague, but I’m pretty sure it ends with me being grievously injured in a fight to the death and Dmitri saving me, like the white knight he aspires to be. That work for you, sugar tits?”

Kirov muffled a snort. Dmitri just sighed. “Luna, this is who I was telling you about. Margarita, I found her in that horrible place. You can’t expect me to not help her.”

Margarita rolled her eyes. “Did you have to bring her here? ”

“The Belikovs will have their weevils scouring Kiev for her. It was the safest place I could think of.”

Margarita grunted, as if this were an inadequate answer at best, but I ignored her. Dmitri turned to his buddy.

“Kirov, do you think you could fix a girl up with something to eat? It’s been a while.”

He nodded, leading me over to the grumbling Soviet-era icebox. “Take your pick. We have sandwiches, sausage rolls,