by Jory Strong
"Get me a drink," he said, opening his eyes, uninterested in the pale white buttocks that moved away from him. Women like Lana were a dime a dozen, though she was the best looking of the ones who worked in this club.
She poured from a decanter on the bar and returned, her breasts bobbing as she walked. The Mexican had expressed an interest in her. Maybe they'd do a trade.
She set the glass of vodka on the desk, keeping her eyes cast downward and waiting for him to dismiss her. He'd once made a whore stand without moving for so long piss had run down her legs. And then he'd killed her for messing the floor.
A knock sounded, firm and secure, Oleg's.
"Go," he told Lana and she hurried toward the door.
He picked up the glass and took a sip. He would talk to the Mexican. Trade white flesh for color, though any of the females the Mexican's men brought across the border would be well-used by the time they arrived in Los Angeles.
Oleg felt relief when Lana opened the office door. Time spent with a whore always mellowed Vadim.
She slinked past like a beaten dog and he entered the room. Vadim said, "You have found the person who does not respect my property? You've delivered my message?"
"Nyet. But I have found someone who described him to me."
He would take great pleasure in driving the knife home when he caught up to Iosif Gruzinsky, but here, now, he needed Vadim to give the order, before the missing DVDs caused a problem.
"It was the same man who came looking for his woman and his daughters. I have gone to the rooming house. He has not returned since going to the bride business. I think he will become great trouble."
He stopped short of mentioning the authorities or how American news reporters might take up the cause of a father afraid for his little girls. Instead he forced himself to stand easy, arms loose at his sides, like a man who had no worries, who waited only for Vadim to think things through and give him his orders.
Vadim placed the glass in his hand on the desk, the ice clinking, cold like his expression. "You are right, Oleg. Let his death be the message."
* * * * *
Chapter 7
The man Mallory assumed was Iosif stood as she parked the Jeep in front of the small office space she and Dane rented. She got out of the Rubicon, closing the door behind Dane.
A faint breeze brought the scent of desperation and fear. Steps closer to Iosif and proximity added hopelessness and the smell of a recovering alcoholic.
"You are Mallory?" he asked, his attention on her, as if Dane were too terrifying to contemplate.
"Yes."
They entered the office, Dane claiming the couch in the rarely used reception area. She took a chair, turning it to more easily see Iosif in the other chair, the tied-shut grocery bags placed at his feet rather than on the coffee table.
Iosif's skin hung on his face, rough with the need of a shave. In the close-confines of the room the smell of his emotions mixed with that of sweat and public bathroom soap, becoming the scent of homelessness.
"Tell me about your missing daughters."
He reached into his pocket, retrieving photographs and placing them on the coffee table.
Mallory's pulse jumped and raced, rabbiting like hapless prey running ahead of baying Hounds. A tremor went through her, more subtle than the ones visible in Iosif's hands as they retreated to the knees of his pants.
She didn't believe in coincidences. Not like this, being asked to search for three blonde-haired, blue-eyed girls in less than twenty-four hours. Three girls who might have been Sorcha.
There were a lot of police stations in Los Angeles, and Nathan's precinct didn't include areas with a heavy Eastern European population. "How did you end up talking to Detective Davidson?"
"Someone at the rooming house where I stay told me the police station I should go to. Detective Davidson was the man who came out to talk to me."
"What's the name of the person who sent you there?"
"I do not know. I have spoken to him only twice." Worry invaded Iosif's scent.
"There's no problem. I'm wondering if I know this man. Describe him."
"He is ethnic Russian, not white. His skin is a little darker than yours, his hair the same black, but his eyes green, green in a way that startles."
The description gave her no clues as to the man's identity, or if he was a denizen of Hell. She attempted to shrug away the prickling uneasiness that the Reaper Lord would soon call an Earthly hunt.
Mallory touched the photograph of the woman with her two daughters, her gut tight at what she suspected the answer would be. "Is this a current picture?"
Iosif's shame was marked by the deepened stink of a body trying to rid itself of years of reliance on alcohol. "No. It was taken three years ago. Now Zinaida is eleven. Kseniya ten."
Sorcha's age. And close to it.
Dane's muscles rippled. His eyes glowed red, there and gone in a heartbeat, but long enough that Iosif's fear scent flooded the area.
She touched the second photograph. "Who's the man?"
"An American. He is supposed to be Kent Beck. Their mother, Viktoriya, came from Moscow to America, thinking to marry him. But he is not at the address she was given. It belongs to another family. They don't know him. This address for him is not real."
Certainty nuanced Iosif's voice. It laced his scent like a crisp fall breeze. "You're sure they didn't lie to you?"
He looked down at hands rubbing against the denim at his knees. Back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth until his face lifted, his eyes meeting hers. "I watched the house. I broke into it. I stole nothing, only went through their desks and drawers to make sure they did not know where my girls or their mother are. That there was nothing of this Kent Beck."
He leaned forward. "When I was certain they hadn't lied, I went to the match-making business, the one that arranges for American men to meet Russian women. Brides From Russia. That is the name of it. I showed the women who worked there the pictures. I told them the address was wrong."
"And they said?"
"They claimed to know nothing."
"You believed them?"
"Yes."
"You're sure Brides From Russia had something to do with bringing the girls and their mother here?"
"I broke into an apartment in Moscow. There were e-mails supposedly from this American, Kent Beck. There were pictures of other women, letters from other men."
His eyes sought the picture of his daughters and their mother. His guilt burned her nose with the black-rubber smell of smoldering tires.
"The office where they do the work to bring the women over, there is an alarm system. Last night I made it go off. A man came to investigate. Afterward I followed him to a strip club. When he left, he had a Russian woman by the arm. She looked frightened, as if she had no choice but to go with him. He took her to an apartment."
"And later you broke in?"
Iosif jerked. The fear stink returned full force.
"Yes." He lifted the plastic bags and set them on the table. "This apartment, it was not a place to live, but one to visit. There was a bed with a camera pointed at it. There was a chair in front of a TV with a DVD player."
Mallory leaned forward, battling memories of Hell, of the sexual predators who'd become prey for the Hounds, day after day after day in a ceaseless eternity of torment. Her throat vibrated, perfectly attuned to Dane's sub-vocal growls.
She spilled the DVDs from the closest bag onto the coffee table then added those in the second bag to the collection. About half of them were bought porn, some with English labels and titles, the others in Russian. The remainder were homemade, each of them identified by what she assumed were names written using a sharpie.
"You've looked at these?"
"No. The room I stay in has no player."
She separated the bought from the homemade. There were different company names associated with the produced porn, but the cover art and lettering style was similar. They'd all come from the same place. Hayden wou
ld be able to confirm it.
She stacked and set them aside, indicated the remaining disks with their Cyrillic script. "These are women's names?"
"Yes." He didn't reach for any of them, telling her none of the names matched those of his girls and their mother.
It was possible they had been given different names and forced to use them. But there was no advantage in watching these with Iosif, not when she could learn what she needed to know in a more efficient manner.
"There was nothing else in the apartment? No papers? No photographs? No computer?"
"No. It was a place only for sex."
A pad and pen were on the coffee table. She pushed them in front of Iosif. "While I make copies of the photographs, write down addresses. The strip club. The bride office. The apartment. And the place you're staying."
"You will look for my daughters and their mother?" The tears in his voice were visible in his eyes.
"Yes. But I'll need to keep the DVDs."
She took the photographs into her office, scanned them into the computer then printed out copies, taking one pair of them and leaving the other on the desk, next to the files of uncaught skips. Pressure built in her chest. She needed Dane's skills if she was going to find Iosif's family. She could chew up weeks on surveillance and never get close. And in that time…rape, exploitation, death, all were a possibility. A probability.
It sickened her, making her burn with a rage she couldn't afford to let control her. She wanted human law to prevail. She didn't want to be judge or jury or executioner. Take that path and killing became a natural act, a rote response requiring nothing more in the way of consideration than how and when and where.
Cold crawled down her spine at the fate awaiting her if she gave in to conditioning, to the Reaper Lord's will and the desire for blood that coursed through her veins.
Returning to the reception area, she said, "There's one last thing. Do you have anything belonging to your daughters or Viktoriya? Possessions they value, something that holds meaning for them?"
She could see the request puzzled him, could scent the mushroom smell of the emotion on him even as he slowly nodded. "I brought a stuffed animal belonging to Zina, a zebra I gave her after we visited the zoo, and an old doll belonging to Kseniya. Both were things they used to love, things I meant to return to them but…"
"What about Viktoriya? Do you have anything of hers?"
"Not belonging to her. But there is a watch she gave me, when times were good between us. It is broken…" He shrugged. "I have kept it all the same."
"I can give you a lift back to the rooming house and collect these things at the same time."
He stood. "I will bring them to you tomorrow. Is that okay? A friend, he is coming to pick me up. He has no phone, so I can't tell him I no longer need him."
She stood as well, his lie a whiff of carrion, but she let it go, thinking she'd been right and he slept on the streets or in shelters, at least some nights, and didn't want her to know it, didn't want her to change her mind about looking for his daughters and their mother when she found out he had no money.
The watch and stuffed animal and doll could wait. They were useful only in dealing with the dead.
"Tomorrow is fine. How about one o'clock?" By then Hayden might have a lead they could pursue.
"This is a good time for me. I will come here."
She bagged the sorted DVDs, keeping homemade and purchased separate, dropping the copied photos in with the homemade. "I'll have pictures to show you. It will help to have you look at them, to see if you recognize any of them from the apartment you broke into in Moscow. If you need a lift tomorrow, call the number on the card."
"I will be here. Nothing will keep me away."
Iosif's desperation added to the sharp gnawing in her stomach. She needed someone who could do what Dane would normally do, get them into the Brides From Russia office long enough to search without setting off the alarm. She couldn't do anything about that at the moment. But she could find Mikhail and take him with her to the Brass Ring.
Iosif sat on the stoop where he'd waited for Mallory. In a moment, he would leave, but for now he carried on the pretense of a friend coming to get him.
She opened the car door and the terrifying beast of a dog jumped into the Jeep. It turned to stare at him and moonlight caught on its eyes in a shimmer of unnatural red, bringing a fear he couldn't control, one that went deep, as though he'd been born with it. He was reminded of a fairy tale he'd heard as a child, of a black dog whose appearance was an ill omen that meant death for the one who saw it, or for one of their family members.
Cold swept over him and he shivered, but at the same time, the fear gave him a reason to believe Mallory would be able to find his daughters. He could imagine the dog racing through the night, death unleashed.
The Jeep's engine started and Mallory drove away. He waited until the car was long gone before standing and slowly returning to the bus stop, climbing in to the first one to arrive, uncaring of its destination.
He'd discovered this was where he felt safest, completely anonymous, invisible. No one looked too closely at anyone else. No one spoke.
The scenery outside held no meaning for him. The darkness hid what glitter there might be in daylight, though his time here had already tarnished his initial impressions.
This was America.
Land of dreams and happiness.
Land of terror and nightmare.
Tears came as his fears caught up to him, not for himself, but for Zinaida and Kseniya and Viktoriya. Better dead than—
No. He would not think that. Where there was life there was hope.
Wiping the tears from his eyes, he imagined Mallory holding the things he'd promised to bring her for the dog to smell. It was almost possible to believe such a dog could hunt even in a place of concrete and automobiles.
He would go back to the rooming house, in a little while. He wouldn't fail his daughters or their mother.
* * * * *
Los Angeles, homeless capital of the United States. There were so many places Mikhail could be, but years of hunting him gave Mallory a sense of where he was, or maybe that was just the pack bond, the thing she couldn't shake.
She drove to Skid Row rather than Elysian Park or any of the canyons where the homeless set up camp and terrified homeowners with the possibility of fire.
Dane refused to leave the Jeep until she'd activated the witch charm and hung it on the rearview mirror. It wouldn't last long.
The cost of the charm had been high because part of the spell entailed its sensing the dangers present and adjusting to them. In San Pedro, threat had probably been countered by a conviction that the Jeep was a bait car being watched by the LAPD. On Skid Row, it'd require more to keep Dane's Rubicon safe, and that would quickly drain the remaining protective magic.
The back of her neck tightened at the prospect of visiting a witch and paying to have the charm recharged. She needed to get lucky at the party on Mulholland. She needed the hit of income catching Jeffery Carlisle would bring.
But she needed to do this too. Her chest constricted as it had when she'd begun searching for Amanda Edson. The events of the day again formed a shrinking box she couldn't escape.
A sense of panic vibrated in her core. It grew stronger when she joined Sorcha's image to a lineup that included the runaway and Iosif's daughters.
Dane's eyes flared and stayed red as if his thoughts travelled the same path as hers, and then he bolted.
She took off after him, dodging trash and the homeless living among it.
Her sense of place faded with each pounding step.
Her reality meshed to another.
Longing swelled, to run on four feet, nose closer to the ground.
She might tell herself she'd give up a Hound's abilities to retain her humanity, but in unguarded moments, she wanted the form and fur she hadn't worn since her return from Hell.
Dane disappeared around a corner.
&n
bsp; She reached it.
He was gone.
Guided by traces of his scent, she pushed herself to run faster.
A throbbing in her arm obliterated the desire for a Hound's form. Her mind filled with images of Dane pulling Henderson off the fence
Bastian's words taunted her. Let him loose on the streets of L.A. and he'll be nothing but himself.
A block passed. And then another. And another.
Her fear escalated with the smell of fresh blood and the stink of a voided body. The heat of the day locked death's fragrance in and held it down like a pillow meant to suffocate.
She entered an alley and that scent was joined by the smell of brimstone.
A woman leaned against a wall, unperturbed by the corpse at her feet.
Relief came, that Dane hadn't given in to a Hound's nature. The homeless man wasn't his kill.
The man had been stabbed and slashed. Blood soaked his shirt. Defensive wounds marked his arms.
He wore tattered and dirty clothing, but his dog tags lay on the asphalt, the metal gleaming as if by polishing the tags, he'd kept something of his memories and pride intact.
Mallory couldn't tell if the woman had been human when alive, or if the form she now wore was merely camouflage.
She passed, pretending to see nothing except for the body.
The woman's laugh sounded like a rattlesnake's warning.
Not human then.
Mallory's stomach clenched. She kept going.
The woman laughed again. "Still denying your heritage, little puppy?"
Dane's barking gave Mallory an excuse to rush from the alley as if escaping Hell.
He'd found Mikhail curled in a cardboard box that was taped shut. An opening had been cut into it, transforming it into a doghouse.
Her heart ached. He could live with any one of them, but he chose this.
She crouched. Mikhail's inherent magic made the hair on the back of her neck and arms stand. Unlike her, he was born in Hell, his mother a Russian woman taken there, trapped there, a plaything without rights who would turn to bone and dust if she passed out of that realm and back into this one.