Daemon’s Mark

by Caitlin Kittredge

  There were hundreds of spreadsheets on the hard drive, all coded with initials and strings of numbers that meant nothing to me.

  “This is absolutely no help,” I said. “Look at this.”

  Dmitri frowned over my shoulder. “Code.”

  “Well, we knew that was coming,” I said. “These notes in the column must be where they took the girls, or who bought them, or some sort of relevant information. You don’t just leave gibberish.”

  The notations were one or two words, nothing overtly threatening.

  Bad weather.

  Underground.

  Charm school.

  “And the numbers?” Dmitri said.

  I blew out a puff of frustration. “I’m a cop, not a mathematician, Dmitri.” I scanned the columns. “Three numbers in one, two in the other,” I said. “Locations and girls, I’m guessing, but I can’t crack this. I’m not a cryptographer, either.”

  Kirov pointed at the two-number notation. “Latitude and longitude,” he said. “Simple. A way to find a location that anyone knows. All you need for an address is a GPS.”

  “Perfect,” Dmitri said. “Now we just need to crack the names and we’ll find Masha.”

  “But it wouldn’t be names,” I murmured, thinking of Lola and her insistence that she not know me. “We gave them fake ones, and they never bothered to learn our real ones. How do you keep track of a bunch of women with no names?”

  I pressed my finger against the screen. 1-23-140. Not a birth date. Not a state ID number. No one cared when the girls were born or who they were before. They only cared that they looked good enough to make a buck …

  “N-1,” I said. Dmitri cocked an eyebrow.

  “Meaning what?”

  “When I get my hair touched up at the salon, N-1 is the color my stylist uses,” I said. “One is black hair color in salon speak. And twenty-three, that could be her age, and one-forty—weight.” Hair, age, and weight. All that would matter to a man like Grigorii Belikov. All that would matter to his customers.

  “Masha has red hair,” Dmitri said. “She’s fourteen and she weighs, oh, I don’t know, one-twenty at the most. Look for that.”

  I searched for 2-14-120.

  One entry popped up in my search box. Kirov pointed to the location. “That’s Kazakhstan.”

  Dmitri gave a snarl. “Why the fuck take her there?”

  I thought the more important question was what were they doing to Masha Sandovsky once she got there. Her notation was unlike any of the other girls. Unlike the innocuous notes, this one was frightening.

  Cold storage.

  My admittedly disturbing train of thought was interrupted by a screech of tires outside and a moment later, the thud of footsteps in the fire stairs. “Someone’s here,” Kirov said.

  Dmitri snarled and started for the door. “Bastard sons of flea-bitten bitches—I’ll make them tell me what they did with Masha.”

  “Wait!” I snapped. “You getting killed isn’t going to help this situation.”

  I slapped the laptop closed and shoved it into my bag along with its power cord. “Kirov, is there another way out of here?”

  “Fire stairs,” he said. “But they seem to have already covered that…”

  A pounding started on the door, and then two bullets blew out the lock.

  “Window,” I said, slinging my bag over my shoulder. I pushed up the ancient sash and swung my leg over the decorative balcony. There were no handholds on the pockmarked brick face of the hotel.

  Kirov gave a yell as the first gangster burst into the room and tackled the man, fighting for his gun. “Dmi tri, ” I yelled. “Come on!”

  “Go,” Kirov shouted, having liberated the gun. He got off a few shots, causing the remaining pair of thugs to duck for cover.

  This was going to suck. I aimed for the long black sedan that the gangsters had driven up in and let go of the railing, falling three stories down, clutching the laptop bag to my chest.

  I landed on my back and crushed the roof of the sedan, setting off a car alarm with a shriek. Dmitri followed suit, landing on the hood.

  If anyone in the street thought it was odd that two people had just dropped from a balcony and trashed a car, they didn’t let on. For all I knew, this sort of thing happened every day here.

  “We need to keep low,” Dmitri said, offering me his hand. I took it and pulled myself upright with a groan. Nothing was broken, but I didn’t exactly feel like sunshine and roses after that hit.

  Dmitri stuck out his arm to hail a cab and gave the driver directions. “Where to?” I asked when he sat back, panting, his face beaded with sweat.

  “The train station,” he said. “We’re going to get Masha.”

  CHAPTER 20

  The train rolled out of the city with a low rumbling, like the sound of a dragon deep in a cave. I slumped against my seat. We’d avoided the Belikovs, but for how long?

  Dmitri looked up and down the aisle before settling into the seat next to me. “Long ride. Might as well get comfortable.”

  I rubbed my temples. “No offense, Dmitri, but you don’t exactly give off the comfort vibe.”

  “You’ve been acting strange ever since we left the room,” Dmitri said. “What are you not telling me?”

  The train picked up speed as we left Kiev behind and headed east, and I leaned my forehead against the window. “Just forget it, all right?”

  You are wrong, Insoli. So very, very wrong.

  “Fine,” Dmitri said. “You never let me in. Just build up that shell a little more. It seems to be doing wonders for your personality.”

  I flipped him off and went back to staring out the window. I didn’t mean to fall asleep, but the low brown countryside passing by lulled me into it. My head rolled over onto Dmitri’s shoulder, warm and solid, and I let my eyes drift close, breathing in a scent that came back to me in my half-conscious state as a comfort, familiar and real.

  The scent of seaweed and bay water, tangy and invasive. Cold wet skin under my cheek, wet hair draped across my neck.

  “Alone at last,” Lily said. She sat in Dmitri’s seat, staring ahead, water dribbling from her hair, her chin, the tips of her fingers. Blood trailed from her chest cavity, the smell of it rotting the air around her. Death coated my tongue, and I forced myself to swallow it down.

  I had never seen a real ghost. I never believed in ghosts in the same way I believed in daemons and magick. But this wasn’t like the dream in my bathtub, and not like my time in the cell.

  “It’s not a dream at all,” I said out loud.

  “Correct,” Lily said. Her voice was faint, and I had to strain to hear it.

  I sucked in a breath and asked the question that they always ask in those ghost movies: “Why me, Lily?”

  “I want you to stay alive, for starters,” she said. She turned her head slowly and stared at me with her wet, cloudy eyes. “You can’t help me if you’re dead. No one can help anyone when they’re among the dead.”

  “You didn’t answer my question. Why me?” I said.

  “Because you were the only one who saw me,” she said. “You’re the only one who can see. I’m fading, Lieutenant Wilder. Are you going to let me go?”

  “I…” I started shivering. I was damp now, as if I were standing in a mist at midnight. “I don’t know what you mean, Lily. I can’t do anything.”

  Like a skip in an eight-millimeter film, Lily’s hand lashed out and grabbed my arm. “You better do something,” she snarled, lips pulling back, blue with rigor mortis. “Because I’m not leaving.”

  The train swayed, and I jerked awake, slamming my head on the window. “Ow! Fuck.”

  Dmitri touched the back of my hand. “You all right?” His touch burned my skin, and I hissed and jerked away.

  “Luna?” he said, his voice sliding into alarm.

  I pushed back my sleeve and looked at my wrist. A small blue handprint was seared into my skin, radiating cold. Dmitri pulled back. “Hex me. What is that thi
ng?”

  “It’s complicated,” I sighed. Dmitri shifted in his seat to look me in the eye.

  “I’ve got time.”

  “Dmitri, really…”

  “Look, Luna, you may not be able to deal with my daemon bite, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be there for you. Tell me what’s going on.”

  I glared. “First of all, has anyone ever told you that you have a really shitty and abrasive way of trying to be helpful?”

  Dmitri growled under his breath. “I’m sorry, all right? Go on.”

  “It’s a girl,” I said. “A girl that was murdered back in Nocturne City. She’s the reason I got into this whole thing with the Belikovs in the first place. I was trying to figure out who killed her.” I bit my lip and looked at my feet. The rest sounded too insane to say out loud.

  “I’m listening,” Dmitri said. He put his hand back over mine, and I didn’t pull away. “I’m not going to think you’re crazy, Luna.”

  “I’ve been having dreams,” I said. “About her. Horrible, real, screaming dreams in full color and surround sound. And they’re getting worse.”

  “Hmm,” Dmitri said.

  “That’s it? ‘Hmm’? How helpful.”

  “Hey, listen.” He rubbed his thumb in a circle over the back of my hand. “There are plenty of spirits inthe old country. My grandmother, gods rest her, had the sight. She could talk to the departed just as easily as I’m talking to you.”

  “Did any of them ever sear handprints into her flesh?”

  Dmitri frowned. “Well, no. That’s new.”

  I sighed and rubbed my free hand over my face. “What’s wrong with me, Dmitri?”

  “Can’t say,” he said. “But we’ll fix it. Look, you’re exhausted. You’re under pressure. Maybe your stress is causing some latent talent to surface. Ghost whispering under pressure, or some crap.”

  I shut my eyes. “Don’t even joke about that. Do you know what a nightmare that would be?” The dead reaching for me with their curled-up hands, looking at me from rotted, empty sockets, begging me with maggot-ridden mouths to be their voice, their justice, their vengeance.

  “Just a theory,” said Dmitri. “I’m going to go get some supper from the dining car. You want anything?”

  “Something with caffeine,” I said. “I’m not falling asleep again if I can help it. Possibly not ever.”

  Dmitri leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. “You got it.”

  I blinked at him as he got up and ambled down the car, going through the folding glass door with a brief surge of wind and the sound of train wheels.

  What the hell did Dmitri think he was playing at? His casual kisses and touches were somehow going to win me over, make me forget Will and my life back in Nocturne?

  I sighed and pulled Grigorii’s laptop out of my bag. Right now, I was just glad of the company, glad that I wasn’t alone like I’d been during that horrible week with the Belikovs.

  The search of the laptop didn’t prove any more fruitful than before, except now, with the train’s Wi-Fi and a latitude-longitude widget, I was able to tell where Grigorii had shipped each girl he’d sold. Moscow. Belarus. Bangkok. Pyongyang. The list wasn’t encouraging.

  I looked at the notation next to Masha’s name again. It wasn’t a common one—in fact, she looked like one of only two girls sold to the same sort of thing.

  Cold storage. What could that possibly imply? I looked at the rest of the list. Criminal codes aren’t usually overly complex, because your subordinates have to be able to understand them, and employees of organized crime bosses aren’t usually honor students.

  I looked at the next notation, for a girl named Olivia. Wolf pack. “Wolf pack,” I murmured. Wolf packs ran together, slept together.

  Hunted together.

  Dmitri jostled my elbow as he slid back into his seat. “Ham sandwiches looked okay,” he said. “All they had was off-brand soda and some energy drink that translates into ‘Ultra Wakeup Juice.’ Hope that’s all right.”

  I popped the top of the soda and gulped down a swallow before I spun the laptop to face Dmitri. “What does wolf pack mean to you?”

  “Nothing,” Dmitri said. “Just like last time.”

  “Wolf packs are pack hunters,” I said. “Look at this location they sent her to. It’s just a latitude and longitude. You don’t give that unless you’re in the middle of nowhere.”

  I showed him the widget, pulling up a map of the southern corner of Ukraine with the coordinates the Belikovs’ records had given me. “Where is that?” I asked Dmitri.

  He whistled. “That’s the Wolves Land.”

  “Which is…?” I said, raising my eyebrow.

  “It’s contaminated land from the Chernobyl fallout,” he said. “It’s been closed down since 1986—whole towns, all abandoned and empty. It’s eerie out there. Olya and I took a ride through, once.”

  “You and your sister willingly exposed yourself to radiation?” I said. “That explains so much.”

  “It’s not dangerous if you don’t stay,” he said. “You’re saying that wolf pack means…”

  “They hunt the girls,” I said. “For sport.”

  “But not my Masha,” said Dmitri.

  “Yeah, fortunately,” I said. “But we still don’t know what cold storage means.”

  The train slowed, and Dmitri tensed. “We’re at the border. We’ll find out soon enough.”

  Two hours later, the train left us in a village too small to have a name that I could see, standing on a dusty rail platform under sun that made sweat trickle down my spine like thin fingers on my skin. A rusted sign peppered with buckshot told us the population and the number of the rail stop, left over from the Soviets. Stop 13.

  “This doesn’t look like a hotbed of mob activity,” I told Dmitri, surveying the low brick buildings and the few sharp-faced citizens milling on the train platform.

  “We’ll ask around,” he said. “There must be something here, or the Belikovs wouldn’t have sold her, right?” He looked to me, and I sighed.

  “Give me Masha’s picture,” I said. “I’ll show it around. There’s a chance whoever bought her let her be seen.”

  “I hate the way you say that,” Dmitri said. “Bought her.”

  “We’ll get her back,” I said, even though it was beginning to sound hollow even to me.

  “Gypsy cab,” Dmitri said, pointing at a broken-down ’55 Pontiac sitting by the tracks, dusty as everything else at Stop 13. Dmitri went over and spoke to the driver, gesturing back and forth. I took the time to look around and get my bearings.

  Stop 13 reminded me of the poor pockets of the Southwest I’d driven through on a road trip with an old boyfriend who was a roadie for a crappy country-rock band. We did an Arizona and New Mexico tour one summer, hours in a Dodge van under the boiling pale blue sky. Every so often we’d pass a ghost town, trailers and shacks, maybe a diner or a filling station abandoned to time and the elements, skeletal specters of another era.

  Here, the only difference was the few people still living. A rusted-out Ford pickup pulled by a pair of donkeys ambled slowly down the main street in front of the tracks. A cat sunned herself on the steps of the ticket booth and hissed when she caught my scent, puffing her tail and skittering under the platform.

  “Luna,” Dmitri called. He and the gypsy cab’s driver had reached an accord. “He says he’ll take us to the local motel,” said Dmitri. “The family who owns it might know something about Masha.”

  “What’s here?” I asked the cab driver. “Besides nothing, I mean.”

  “Farmers,” he said, his accent thick. “A tire factory.”

  “How quaint,” I muttered. “I wonder if I can find a spot to shop for authentic handicrafts.”

  The driver knew more English than his accent let on, and he gave a snort, glaring at me in the rearview mirror. We rode the rest of the way to the motel in silence.

  More respectable than I expected, the motel was a long low bunker-style abode
with a sign bolted to the side and light-up neon letters in the window of the first unit that I assumed meant vacancy.

  I shouldered the laptop and my backpack and stepped into the office, triggering a bell. A moment later a woman in a headscarf and a cardigan came rushing from the back room, a huge grin on her face.

  “Yes?” she said, clapping her hands together. I just stared—she looked like she was out of an old comedy sketch. Her face was a network of burst veins, her nose was knobby, and the whole image was of someone’s kindly grandmother welcoming you to the mother country.

  “I…” I composed myself and returned her smile. “I need a room.”

  “Yes?” she said. Perfect. She was the kindly grandmother who doesn’t understand a damn thing you say.

  “Dmitri!” I hollered.

  He came in, doing the same double-take I did when he laid eyes on the motel owner. He told her we needed a room, with his best charming smile.

  “Two beds,” I hastened to add. Dmitri paid in cash and exchanged more chatter with the woman in Russian.

  “She says there’s nothing here except the tire factory,” he said. “Nowhere disreputable.”

  “Disreputable?”

  “Hey, that’s how she put it,” he said. “Come on, she gave us the quiet room, away from the road.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Thank the gods we’ll be away from the constant din of passing donkey trucks.”

  “Hey, this place is a lot like where Olya and I grew up,” Dmitri said as he unlocked our room. “Don’t knock it.”

  “I can see why you got out,” I said.

  “We didn’t have a choice,” he said. “My father was killed in a factory accident and my mother sent us to live with the pack elders in Kiev. After that, you know the whole sordid story.”

  I flicked on the lights and sighed when I saw a single queen bed made up with a spread in a shade of bilious green that I’m fairly sure the FDA had outlawed as a fire hazard in America.

  “Dammit, two beds,” I said. “What’s wrong with that old woman?”