Daemon’s Mark

by Caitlin Kittredge

  Dmitri chuckled. “Touchy. You must really like the guy.”

  “The precious spawn of your prolific loins,” I reminded him. The whiskey against my still virtually empty stomach brought out the vocabulary words. “Tell me the details.”

  “Masha isn’t what you’d call a model kid,” he said. “She got into a lot of trouble—fights, boyfriends, probably a little pot.”

  Could have been me at fourteen. “Yeah, funny how that happens when there’s not a father in the picture.”

  Dmitri snarled. “Don’t do that. You said you’d help.”

  “I said that. I said nothing about not making snarky remarks to keep myself from punching you in the teeth for lying. Go on.”

  “She was cutting school a lot, and hanging out with some wannabe gangsters. Margarita eyeballed one of them after she went missing and I followed him for a while, to the Belikovs’ compound. You know the rest.”

  “Which gangster?” I said. “Why Masha?”

  “Some ponytailed asshole who likes to wave a gun around. And I’m thinking for the same reason you were there. Were girls turn a profit.”

  “Mikel,” I said. “I’ve had the pleasure. But Masha wasn’t in the compound.”

  “No,” Dmitri growled, tapping one index finger on the bar like a restless secondary heartbeat. “She was gone, and I didn’t have time to look around once I saw you.”

  “Okay,” I said. “So we go back there and we ask some politely phrased questions.”

  Dmitri smirked. “Same old Luna. Always willing to go running in like the sheriff.”

  “Speaking of,” I said. “Why haven’t you gone to the real police? Or is that a dumb question?”

  “The pack has a lot of friends in the Kiev police,” said Dmitri, “but the Belikovs have more. Legends in Kiev, old witch blood, with ties back to the Romanovs themselves. Pull with regular criminal circles, and magickal ones. It’s too risky. If they find out Masha is my daughter, that she’s connected to the Redbacks, they’ll kill her to save themselves the trouble.”

  “Okay,” I said. “In the morning, we go back.”

  Dmitri frowned. “The morning? Masha is in trouble right now.”

  “I’m exhausted,” I said. “I’m running on fumes. I’ve gotten maybe eight hours of sleep in the last seven days. If I don’t get some sleep soon I’m going to nod off and pull a Tyler Durden, and no one wants that.” I reached out, mostly out of pity, and laid my hand over his. “If they haven’t killed her yet, they aren’t going to do it anytime soon. Their girls are worth more alive.”

  I wasn’t entirely sure the profits stopped rolling in when the girls were dead, having seen the way Grigorii operated, but I didn’t say it out loud.

  “I guess you got a point,” Dmitri muttered. “Come on. We’ll head back to the pack house and you can get some rest.” We walked out to the curb, where Kirov was patiently dozing at the wheel of the car, and I got into the front this time. I was through with being shoved to the back, shuttled from one place to another.

  “Margarita will be relieved,” said Dmitri. “We were at wit’s end. Masha is a good girl, even if she went off the path a bit.”

  His voice and face went soft when he talked about the girl, a softness that I’d only seen a few times when we’d been together. Never at the end. Even as wasted as Dmitri looked now, he managed to appear a father.

  The stab of jealous heat that went through my gut was purely an animal reaction, or so I told myself. Not like I could compete with flesh-and-blood relations, even if I wanted to. And I didn’t want to.

  I kept telling myself that until I was in a lumpy bed on the top floor of the pack house, so tired that sleep wouldn’t come. I wasn’t jealous of Masha, I wasn’t jealous of the family that Dmitri had hidden from me. He and I were over, and just because I hadn’t rated the truth when we were going out didn’t mean I had the right to get all uppity now.

  I kept telling myself that, but it didn’t do much good.

  Someone pounded on my door the next morning and then proceeded to come in without waiting for an answer.

  “I have brought you breakfast,” Margarita said, slamming a plate with a hard-boiled egg and some toast down on my nightstand.

  “Wow,” I said, running a hand over my face. “Service with a smile.”

  “I also need to talk,” she said. “Alone. Without Dmitri hearing.”

  “Is this the part where you tell me to stay clear of your man?” I got out of bed, finding the jeans I’d been wearing the day before and rooting in the chest of drawers for a fresh shirt. They were all men’s sizes, but I was past caring. I found a ratty Slayer band shirt from sometime in the eighties and slipped it on. Margarita studied my body with narrowed eyes, not even trying to hide it.

  “Kickboxing,” I said. “But don’t worry—from what I’ve seen of his choice of women, you’re way more Dmitri’s usual type.” He’d come back from Kiev with a mate last time, forced on him by the pack, or so he said. Now I wondered. “Irina—I dunno if you two hang out or anything—but she was like you. Bright hair, big stripper tits, that sweet farm-girl face that he likes so very much.”

  Margarita inhaled sharply, her nostrils flaring out. “I have given you no reason to speak to me like this. I have every reason to be angry with you.”

  “Oh?” I said, rolling the egg between my palms to get the shell off.

  “You endangered the father of my child. Your actions could take him from us,” she said. “You are reckless and dangerous by every account. I need to know that Dmitri will be safe with you, when you go to find Masha.”

  “Dmitri is a big boy,” I said. The toast looked a little musty, but I dug into it, anyway. I was still hungry enough to clean out my favorite restaurant in Nocturne City, the Devere Diner, and go back for seconds.

  “He is also blinded by what he feels is his fault, his wrongdoing,” said Margarita. “He will charge in and he will not care if it costs him his life. You must be the one to have balance and to have a care for him.”

  I raised an eyebrow. Maybe Margarita wasn’t as simple as those big eyes and big breasts let on. Most were women in packs I’d encountered were some nightmare version of Stepford—submissive, with no thoughts in their heads aside from what they could do to please their man. Since the alternative was a beating or a humiliation bite often enough, I didn’t exactly blame them.

  “Well?” Margarita said, standing. “Will you bring Masha and her father home safely?”

  “I’ll do what I can,” I said. “But I have to tell you—Dmitri isn’t exactly the most stable guy I’ve ever met, even without the daemon bite. Now … he’s pretty much off the reservation.”

  “And that is your cross to bear,” said Margarita, touching the Orthodox one at her neck. “As it should be.” She walked out and slammed the door.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Nice talking with you, too.”

  I brushed my hair and pulled it into a low bun—if we were going back to the hotel, it wasn’t a question of if things would get rough but when, and hair flying around for someone to grab onto like a slot-machine lever isn’t a real smart move.

  Downstairs, I found Kirov sitting on a sagging velvet sofa, reading a newspaper. He smiled at me when he smelled me. “Good morning, Luna. Did you rest well?”

  “Well enough,” I said. “Kirov, I need to ask you a favor.”

  “Of course,” he said.

  “I need some firepower,” I said. “A gun for the human contingent of these gangsters.” And for Grigorii and Ekaterina, too, just because they deserved to have someone shoot them. More than once.

  “I’ll see what I can do.” Kirov levered himself off the sofa and folded his paper over his squat stomach. “Do you have a preference for the firearm?”

  “Something that makes holes in the people I point it at,” I said. “Hollow-point ammunition if you’ve got it.”

  “You’ll find that the Redbacks have a little of everything.” Kirov grinned. “Dmitri asked that y
ou find him when you woke. He’s out back, smoking.”

  I found Dmitri standing in the alley, staring up at the sun balefully. “Sixteen days,” he said when I stepped out the door. “That’s how long she’s been gone, this morning.”

  “We’re getting her back,” I said. “I promise.”

  “You’re good at making promises,” Dmitri sighed. “Like how you were going to cure me from the daemon infection and stick with me forever. That one was my favorite.”

  “You can blow me if you think we’re going to start that game all over again,” I snapped. “Seriously, Dmitri, do you ever think before you open your mouth?”

  “Do you think before you make promises?” he returned. We were just like the Hamas and the Mossad, going back and forth, equally pissed off and never ready to back down.

  “I think plenty,” I said. “I think how lucky I am to have gotten rid of you and your alpha-male issues every damn day.”

  That shut him up. And I immediately felt like the world’s biggest bitch for saying it out loud. “Wow,” I said.

  “I’m thinking an ‘I’m sorry’ isn’t gonna cut it here, but…”

  “Don’t say anything else,” Dmitri told me. “You did the kindest thing. Now I remember why we never worked in the first place. You and your gods-damned comments.”

  “I am sticking with you to help you find an innocent little girl who has no business being caught up in this,” I hissed. “Not because I feel some obligation for how I treated you. For the record, buster, my comments were the least of our problems.”

  “Yeah,” Dmitri said. “You tell yourself that, if it helps.”

  “It does,” I said.

  “Denial is definitely your color,” Dmitri said.

  “Fuck you. Right up the rear shaft.”

  Kirov came outside then and saved me from having to slap Dmitri hard and repeatedly across the face. How dare he take the high road with me, after what he’d put me through? It wasn’t my fault he’d gotten the daemon bite and it wasn’t my fault he couldn’t be cured. The only chance of that had sunk to the bottom of Siren Bay in order to save Nocturne City from being obliterated by Seamus O’Halloran, and if he expected me to be sorry for that, he could Hex himself.

  “Here you are,” Kirov said, looking between us. I took the gun out of his grasp, a Walther, the little James Bond gun, powerful and compact.

  “Thanks,” I told Kirov. To Dmitri, I said, “Come on, Grumpy. Let’s go get your daughter.”

  CHAPTER 18

  We went into the hotel the same way we’d gone out—through the service door. This time, though, I wasn’t halfstarved and disoriented. I was alert, armed, and angry.

  “We need to find the office where they keep their business records,” I said.

  “You really expect a place like this to have records?” Dmitri muttered. “Optimistic, I think.”

  “Trust me,” I said, easing down the hallway, every sense open for anyone who’d object to our presence. “Pimps are even more compulsive about their money than witches are about their spell books. Pimps and witches— forget it. They’ll have records of every cent that’s ever come in and out. Coded, of course, but it’ll be there.”

  “And we break the code how?”

  “I’m thinking we hold Grigorii Belikov’s head in a toilet until he gives it up. Work for you?”

  “Sure does,” Dmitri said.

  The service elevator was a dank metal box, and my heart thudded as it levered us to the top floor. “There’s one more thing,” I said. “Once we get the information we need, we have to let these girls out of here.”

  Dmitri snorted. “Now who’s the white knight?”

  “I mean it,” I said. “If we don’t help these women, my involvement ends here. I’m going to the airport and getting on the first plane back to LAX.”

  “Fine, fine,” Dmitri muttered. “Just stay focused. I don’t want them to know we’re here until it’s absolutely necessary.”

  The doors rolled back and we came face to face with Peter.

  “Too late for that,” I said. I yanked the Walther out of my belt and held it in his weasel face. “Surprised, comrade?”

  Peter’s eyes darted toward the girls’ suites and I pulled the hammer down. “Don’t run. Don’t yell. Be a good little gangster and maybe I won’t shoot both your kneecaps off purely for what you put me and those other four girls through. Maybe. ”

  Usually, when I was with Dmitri, I relied on him to be the heavy. He enjoyed it, and it meant I took less damage over the course of whatever stupid adventure we had gotten ourselves involved in. I’m not such a feminist that I can’t let a guy do the heavy lifting.

  But not this time. Peter had fucked with me and he was about to learn exactly how bad of an idea it was. “Turn around,” I said. “Hands behind your head.”

  Peter did as he was told, to his credit, with only a sigh of regret. “Any cameras between here and Grigorii’s office?” I said. He grunted, shaking his head no.

  “Then march, motherfucker. Double time.” Peter shuffled ahead of me and Dmitri brought up the rear, his face reading surprise. I ignored him. He’d never seen me get really good and pissed off before, but he was about to.

  I can be a real bitch when someone hurts me where I live. Screw with me or my family and all bets are off. I may act like a cop, I may act like a were. You pay your money and you take your chances.

  “What will you do?” Peter said. “No way you get out of here again.”

  “Not the plan,” I said. “And incidentally…” I drove my foot into the back of his knee hard enough to pop tendons. “Did I say you could talk?”

  Peter fell through a door into an office that had once belonged to the manger of the complex—the old paintings and certificates were still on the walls. He rolled, moaning, clutching at the joint. I aimed the pistol between his eyes. “Dmitri, give him the phone.”

  Dmitri did as he was told, and I held the receiver next to Peter’s ear. “Call Grigorii and tell him to come up to the office pronto. You say anything else and I’ll blow your brains all over this ugly carpet. Any questions?”

  Tears ran down Peter’s face, but he punched in a number and spoke into the phone. I looked to Dmitri, who nodded that the thug wasn’t talking out of turn. A gun in the face is powerful motivation for a human.

  Now I just had to figure out what would work on Grigorii.

  Peter cut off the connection. “He said he’ll be right up. What are you going to do to me?”

  I shrugged. “That’s up to the father of a girl you kidnapped and sold.” I stepped back, sticking the Walther into my waistband. Dmitri stepped in and leaned over Peter, his fangs growing and his features rippling toward were. Redbacks could phase with or without the moon, and I hoped that we weren’t about to be treated to an allyou-can-chew mobster buffet. Blood is hard to clean out of clothing.

  Peter started sniffling and shivering, pure panic overtaking him. I heard footsteps outside, smelled that cool non-smell of ice in winter. “Dmitri,” I said, positioning myself in the line of sight for anyone coming through the door.

  “Damn,” Dmitri said. “I was so hoping we’d get some alone time, asshole. This will have to do.” He hit Peter in the face and knocked him out. “Sweet dreams.”

  Dmitri put himself behind the door, and we waited, for a few mile-long heartbeats. Grigorii was speaking to someone, and I recognized the high voice.

  “This is your fault, you know,” Ekaterina snapped. “If you hadn’t been so enamored of that werewolf trash, she never would have played your emotions like a cheap violin and we wouldn’t be wasting time looking for her now.”

  “I know what I’m doing,” Grigorii snarled. “I’ll find her. Now go back downstairs and mind the till. Peter needs me for something. Probably can’t figure out how to check his email again.”

  Ekaterina’s footsteps retreated, and Grigorii twisted the doorknob and stepped in.

  His reaction to seeing me alive and well
wasn’t at all what I expected. He smiled, a slow one that grew from the corners of his lips. “Joanne. You came back to me.”

  I pointed the Walther, gesturing him into his desk chair. “I just couldn’t stay away.”

  Grigorii slid into his leather chair and cocked his head toward the door. “You can tell your unwashed friend that he doesn’t need to hide.”

  Dmitri shut the door with a bang. “Where is she?”

  “Please,” I said. “I’ll handle this, all right?” I pointed the Walther back at Grigorii. “We’re looking for a girl. Masha Sandovsky. One of your thugs kidnapped her from outside of her school.”

  Grigorii spread his hands. “This name means nothing to me.”

  “Think fast,” I said. “I’m not in the mood to be patient. Or kind.”

  “I think your information is perhaps faulty, Joanne,” said Grigorii. “Maybe your unpleasant friend has led you astray.”

  Faster than I could react, Dmitri had closed the distance between them and grabbed Grigorii by the back of the neck. “This is my daughter, you son of a bitch, so you have five seconds to tell me where she is before I rip your throat out.”

  Grigorii swallowed and turned to look at me. “Talk some sense into him, Joanne, before someone gets hurt.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’m not my werewolf’s keeper.”

  Grigorii sighed and rotated his gaze back to Dmitri. “Let me go and I will provide you with the information I have.”

  Dmitri bared his teeth. “I think I’d rather beat it out of you, Belikov.”

  Grigorii rolled his eyes. “Have it your way.”

  Dmitri went backward, hit the wall hard enough to dent it and slid down, his eyelids fluttering. “Just a little shock,” said Grigorii. “Not much more than what you got in your cage. Elemental magick can be disorienting, though. Let’s give him a moment.” He ran a hand through his hair. “What do you think of our fair city, Joanne?”

  “Hex you,” I said. “What did you do to Dmitri?”

  “Shocked me,” Dmitri said, getting to his feet. “Our boy here is a gods-damned living stun gun, isn’t that right, Belikov?”