Anton drew himself up, baring his teeth. “I’ll enjoy tearing pieces off of you, bitch.”
Bitch, bitch, bitch. Didn’t he know any other gender-specific insults? “Do it, then,” I said, trying to circle him so that my back was to the stairs, to the exit.
Anton lashed out at me with a hand that sprouted claws under my eyes, faster than any were I’d run into before. Crap. I was already losing and he was just getting started. The claws caught my shirt, tearing ribbons across my midsection.
I danced away, keeping myself in profile, presenting a small target. Anton snarled and then gathered his legs under himself and leaped, a spring straight up and out. It was terrifying, like watching a zombie jump at the camera in a scary movie, and my split second of hesitation cost me.
Anton’s weight slammed into me and he took me to the floor, tangling his hands in my hair, slamming my head into the concrete. Lights flamed and dulled in front of my eyes and my vision went blurry.
How had he made that jump? What the hell was he?
Questions for another time, all. Anton bared his teeth, fangs fully extended now, and angled for my throat. I struck out with my free hand, feeling for anything, and finally closed my fist around the end of a rusty iron meat hook.
It would have to do. As Anton closed his teeth around my throat for the finishing blow, I swung the hook up and buried it between his shoulder blades.
A crunch, like a cleaver cutting into a bunch of fresh celery. Anton quivered on top of me and then went still except for a convulsive twitching through his limbs. I felt a warm trickle of blood over my collarbone and shoved him away from me, rolling out from under his weight.
The hook didn’t look to have hit anywhere vital, not even a deep wound and very little blood, but from the way he was gasping and twitching, I wagered Anton was not long for this world.
I found my Sig, and backed away from the body, the irrational fear that it would get up again and start chasing me bubbling up from the animal part of my brain.
It’s happened before, and I wasn’t taking any chances. I slipped up the stairs, hearing the heavies muttering to each other in the freezer and Nikolai snapping at them. Get back to work sounds the same in any language.
I headed for the emergency exit, shoving open the heavy fire door. I was tired, bleeding, sore everywhere from the tussle with Anton, and I was shaking with delayed shock. So I nearly jumped out of my skin when the fire alarm started screeching.
It just figured—a condemned warehouse and they still worry about fire safety. I took off at a run and made for my car. I threw myself into the Nova and fumbled for my keys, jamming them into the ignition and gunning the engine.
Nikolai came barreling out of the warehouse with a gun, stepping into my path. I pressed my foot down on the gas. He could be pavement pizza or he could get out of my way. I didn’t care particularly which he chose right at the moment.
He leaped out of the way, and I sped out of the office park, laying rubber on the main road and speeding all the way back into the city.
My rage dissipated as the road hummed under the Nova’s tires, and all that was left was fatigue and shock. I’ve encountered a lot of weird people in my time, but Anton was something new. He’d come close to winning our little dance and that didn’t sit well. If I met another like him, I’d be Hexed.
Hands shaking, I took the exit off of the Appleby Expressway into downtown and tried to hold it together. I felt like I wanted to vomit, but I sat in the car instead after I parked at the Plaza, sweating and shaking.
I gripped the steering wheel and looked at myself in the rearview mirror. I’d done something unforgivably stupid and probably just Hexed any chance I’d had to start with of closing Lily’s case. “Nice going,” I told myself with a sneer. Nothing to do now except go back to my office, call the body in to Bryson and Batista, and deal with the fallout of letting my monster have its head.
Just when I thought I had a handle on the were, it tricked me again, laughed at me from dark corners. I wished, not for the first time, that I could just rip it out of me, be a plain human again. Mundane had to be better than this.
CHAPTER 11
Lane followed me into my office when I arrived back at the SCS. “You don’t look so good,” she said.
I slumped in my chair and ran my hands down my face. “I’m lucky to be alive, never mind looking fresh and fabulous, Natalie.”
“So I take it bursting into a Russian mobster’s office and confronting him didn’t yield the fruit that it always does in the movies?” Lane said, sitting on the edge of my desk.
I glared at her. “I’m really not in the mood right now, okay?” I rolled my neck, trying to work out a few of the kinks, and then buzzed Bryson’s desk. “David, can you and Javier come in here for a second?”
“Sure thing, LT,” he said. He gave me the same look as Lane when he clapped eyes on me. “Shit, Wilder, did you run yourself through a cement mixer?”
“There’s a body at Rostov’s meatpacking plant,” I said. “It’s a were, so it’s an SCS beef. Can you and Javier take CSU and go down there?”
Batista paced. “And how do you know about this body?”
“I created it,” I said shortly. “I’ll be in tomorrow and you can take my statement.”
“Internal Affairs is gonna shit a brick,” Bryson said.
“Were body,” I repeated. “SCS case. It’s not a hard one to figure out, David.”
Batista touched him on the arm. “Come on. We’ll grab Anderson and get right on it, Lieutenant.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Less questioning, more following orders. Go on, shoo.”
Once they’d left, Lane gave me her motherly, disapproving look. “It sounds like things got way, way out of hand with Rostov, Lieutenant.”
“I know what I’m doing,” I said, stubbornly.
“I’m going to give my opinion here,” she said. “And then you can get angry, because that’s what you do.”
I rolled my eyes at her. “Please. Enlighten me.”
“I think you’d do anything to get this guy,” she said. “Obsession can be a very narrow edge to walk, Luna.”
“Are you my shrink now?” I asked, probably more snappish than she strictly deserved.
“Just someone who’s been where you are,” Lane said. “Mine was the father of a ten-year-old girl who’d been systematically abusing her for five years. My captain put me on unpaid leave when I started following him from place to place, and he reported me to Internal Affairs when I hit the guy in the face with my baton.”
I looked up at her. Lane didn’t seem like she had the stones for anything except procedure. “What happened?”
“I got ordered to go to anger management classes and the prick sued the department for a fat settlement.” She gave me a sad smile. “At least the little girl isn’t in his custody anymore. Even if he never did see a day of prison.”
“Prison is too good for some people,” I said softly.
“Agreed,” said Lane. “But it’s not up to us to decide that, is it?”
“Not judge and not jury,” I agreed. “Just the long, often ineffectual arm of the law. It sucks.”
Lane patted me on the shoulder. “Go home. Hug your loved ones. And take a shower. You smell like old meat.”
She went back to her desk, shutting my office door gently behind her.
I leaned back in my chair and pressed my hands over my eyes. I knew I looked tired and wrung out, and that I’d been acting less like a lieutenant and more like a detective who’d gone over the edge. I hadn’t let a case sink its teeth into me like this one in a long time.
This used to be me, always. This shell, with circles under her eyes and too much coffee in her system. I used to snap at the drop of a hat because I would get so tired my were would take over.
Lane was right, much as I hated to ascribe that quality to someone as sanctimonious as she. I picked up my phone and called my cousin Sunny.
“Luna,”
she greeted me. “Troy said you’d come to see him and you were in a bad way.”
“I need to talk,” I said. I couldn’t think of anything else that conveyed what sort of a time I’d been having.
“Of course,” Sunny said. She’d known me my whole life. She knew when it was serious.
“You know that wine bar on Grove Street, the snooty one that you dragged me to a few months ago?”
“Vines? Yes, of course,” Sunny said.
“Meet me there,” I told her. I needed someplace far away from my usual haunts of Devere Street and Waterfront. A tony Cedar Hill wine bar was just the ticket.
“I’ll leave now,” Sunny said. “I was going to stay in and cook dinner for Troy, but he can fend for himself for a night.”
“He’s been doing it for twenty-five years,” I agreed. Mac was once divorced, long ago, and had been a content bachelor until he met my cousin. I was still trying to figure that one out. “But don’t hurry,” I said. “There’s one thing I need to do first.”
“You’re insane,” Will said when I’d laid out the whole humiliating story of my day. “Absolutely around the bend. In what universe did this seem like a good idea?” We were standing in the light drizzle outside of the federal building, underneath the overhang where the smokers from his office congregated.
“Thank you for your support and sympathy, dear,” I told him. Will rubbed his forehead with his index finger.
“That came out wrong. I meant, I don’t really know what to say. I’m glad you’re all right, certainly, but you can’t think there won’t be a reprisal…” That was my Will, practical to the point of insensitivity.
“I’ve dealt with the mob before,” I said, thinking of my dealings with the O’Halloran family, a gang of caster witches who had done their damnedest to erase me from the planet. “It’s gone bad before, too.” Car bombs, beatings, and when that didn’t work, a plunge off of the Siren Bay Bridge. They were persistent, I gave them that.
“If Rostov finds you again anytime soon, it won’t be just ‘bad,’” Will said. “It will be you, in tiny pieces, as a message to anyone else who tries to screw with their business. And not just you, Luna. The Russians don’t believe in loose ends. They’ll go after your whole family. Sunny, your grandmother, me … anyone who cares enough to get revenge for your murder. If you won’t stop this for your own sake, back off for theirs.”
“I don’t exactly have a choice here, Will,” I snapped. “I’m dead if I don’t do this because then I will never get hard evidence on who killed Lily Dubois and her pack will rip me to shreds. With Rostov, at least, I know what I’m dealing with.” Mostly. Anton’s snarling face flew back to my mind.
Will reached out and ran a thumb down my cheek. “You’re awfully sure of yourself, Luna, and I respect that and I respect you and all of the crap that a supportive boyfriend is supposed to say, but you don’t know. You just don’t know what’s going to happen.”
“Neither do you,” I said, leaning over and kissing him lightly. “And you worry too much. You must be getting old.”
“Very funny,” Will told me and then he faced me, taking my hands in his. He pressed them against his chest, so I could feel the steady flutter of his heart under the crisp cotton of his dress shirt. “Luna, I didn’t want to have this talk in the smoker’s area of my work, but I have to say it—I care about you, a lot. More than I’ve cared about a woman in a while. Like fifty, sixty years.”
I met his eyes, their inky depths usually so inscrutable that I could spend hours looking. Will’s eyes were one of the things I liked about him, along with the smile, and the body, and the evil sense of humor. “Thanks. You know how to make a girl feel special.”
Will gripped my hands tighter. “Marry me.”
“What?” I said, oh so coherently. Will’s mouth quirked.
“You heard me.”
“Marry you?” I sputtered. “Will … I … you … How long have you been planning this?”
“Well, originally there was a night of great sex, a few bottles of wine, a box under your pillow when you woke up next to me, but then you came and told me about this, and…” He sighed. “You mean something to me, Luna. I love you, and I want you to be my wife, and I may not get the chance to ask again so will you please put me out of my misery and say yes or no?”
A litany of excuses flew through my head. It’s only been six months. You’re cursed, I’m a were—it would never work. I fear commitment like a vampire fears a spicy marinara sauce … “Will…” I sighed. He was still holding my hands, and I gently extricated myself. “I just don’t know.”
His face fell, and he stepped back, running his hands through his hair and dislodging a blond chunk to hang in front of his eyes. “Not the answer I was wanting to hear.”
“I know, and I’m sorry, but this was just so sudden and no one has ever proposed to me before, so I don’t know the etiquette…” I babbled, trying to salvage something from this.
“The etiquette is, you say yes, ” Will said testily. “And I don’t embarrass myself.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t think this is supposed to be about you being embarrassed,” I said gently. He grimaced, and paced a few steps away from me. I stayed where I was, suddenly feeling very cold and small in the scheme of things.
“This isn’t about trying to control you or trying to make you settle down or my own happiness,” Will said.
“This is about us, being together. If you don’t love me in the same way, tell me now and I’ll walk away and we can end this before it causes some real pain.”
I looked at my feet. Six months was, in the larger timeline, no time at all, but to me it was huge. Six months was the longest I’d managed to be with anyone, except Dmitri, and we’d had enough fights and problems to make maybe a handspan of weeks in those six months actually good.
Will was not Dmitri. He was solid, dependable, loving. And more than any of that, he accepted meexactly as I was. He’d never tried to make me change or conform to his ideas of what a woman should be.
I didn’t want Will out of my life. I just wasn’t sure I wanted to be his wife. “Please don’t go,” I said. I came to him and wrapped my arms around his waist. Will had a few inches on me, enough so that I could lay my head on his shoulder.
He sighed and stroked my hair. “I cocked this up royally, didn’t I?”
“It’s not you,” I said. “It’s me.”
“That’d be funny if we weren’t standing right here,” he said. “What do you need, Luna? A guarantee that I won’t make you wear a frilly apron? Me to proclaim adoration from the rooftops? A complete list of every other woman in my life? What?”
“Well, since that last one would take literally years,” I said, “I’m not gonna go there.” I pulled back and pushed the gold strands of hair out of his face. “I just need time, Will. Time to process. Time to decide.” Part of me whispered that if I were really sure one way or the other I’d know already, but I told it to shut the Hex up.
He shut his eyes, and I knew gut-level that this was the end. He was going to throw up his hands, like all of the men in my life eventually did. I was just too much trouble for my own good.
Will opened his eyes and gave me a crooked smile, one that did a fairly good job of masking the hurt in his expression. “Time, I’ve got.”
I blinked. “Really?”
“Really. For you, doll, I’m prepared to wait.”
I started to shake with relief for the second time that day. “Thank you,” I said, covering Will’s mouth with kisses. “Thank you.”
“You’d better get going,” Will said, checking his watch. “You’re going to be late meeting your cousin.”
“We’ll talk about this more when this case is closed,” I said. “I promise.” Whatever I decided when I had time to actually think, I’d never meant anything more.
Will kissed me chastely on the cheek and squeezed my hand. “Be careful, Luna. I mean it. I know you’re a tough broad but the Russians
are tougher.”
I gave him a reassuring smile. “Honey, they’ve never met anyone like me. Trust me on that one.”
———
Vines, the wine bar I’d told Sunny to meet me at, was a discreet stone building on a discreet corner in Cedar Hill. The waiters all wore black, as did most of the customers, and the music was the kind of self-conscious world tracks that no one actually likes to listen to.
But it was quiet, it was dim and no one looked atyou to do anything except size up your hair and clothes. Once the clientel realized that I was in a wrinkled pair of suit pants and an off-the-rack blouse, they ignored me.
Sunny was in the corner with a glass of water, twisting it between her fingers. “You’re late,” she said when I slid in across from her. “I was starting to think you’d ditched me.”
“Will proposed,” I blurted. Sunny’s mouth opened a fraction, and she froze, her perfectly curved eyebrows in a perfect arch. Sunny is the petite, polished, pretty one in the family. I’m the one with surprise proposals.
“Come again?”
“He proposed marriage. Legal union between two consenting adults.”
Sunny grabbed a passing waiter. “House Merlot. Make it quick.”
“I hate Merlot,” I protested.
“You stroll in here looking like you just punched a semitruck in the face and tell me that your immortal boyfriend proposed. It’s not for you.” She folded her arms. “Now, why don’t you explain why you look like you just rolled out of a gutter in Times Square, circa 1979?”
“I…” I sighed. “That’s the other part of what I need to talk to you about. There was this enforcer, with this Russian gangster I paid a visit to today and it was like … he was a were, but he wasn’t phased. Wasn’t even close.”
“Not a Redback?” Sunny asked. I shot her a black look.
“Not like Dmitri, no. No phasing at will. He was just strong, and fast, and…” Frightening. “A little crazy,” I finished.
Daemon’s Mark Page 11
