The slim figure was silent in the shadow thrown by the door to our makeshift cell, and Charlie swallowed. It was the first time I’d seen her actually display some emotion. “Speak English?” she asked loudly. “Lots of money. All for you. Me, go home.”
Stepping forward, the figure smiled at Charlie. “I speak English,” she said in a cultured accent, Russian with a touch of Brit from whomever had taught her the Queen’s language. “I speak, I would wager, better English than you do.”
Charlie blinked. “You’re a woman,” she said flatly, as if that was the most shocking thing about this entire situation.
“You’re so very observant,” said the figure. She was barely a woman—tiny and willowy with flowing dark hair and hard green eyes, she looked more like a teenager. The only thing that made her seem like something other than a figment of my fevered imagination was the twin scars bisecting her right cheek from her mouth to her ear and to the corner of her eye, as if someone had stroked two fingers of hot iron against her perfect Snow White skin.
“My name is Ekaterina. As of this moment, I am your mother, your priest, your warden and, if you displease me, your disciplinarian. Do exactly as you are told and we’ll get on famously. Disobey me and you will find out very quickly how bad my temper can be.” She snapped her fingers at Mikel. “Get those four. Leave the one with the tattoos. She’s good for the sport only with all of that ugly ink.”
Mikel jerked his rifle at us. “Up, you four. Blonde, brunette, skinny, loudmouth. The ugly one stays.”
Esperanza’s eyes filled with panic. “Don’t leave me here. Don’t you fucking leave me alone.”
“It’s going to be fine,” I tried to reassure her. “I’m not going to forget about you. Just stay calm.”
Red lunged for me and grabbed my wrist. “Don’t you fucking leave me!”
I had an unwelcome memory of Lily Dubois, her waterlogged dead hand clamped around my skin. “Esperanza,” I said quietly. “You have to try not to panic. I’m getting us out of here. I promise. ”
Peter grabbed our wrists and tried to jerk us apart. I snarled at him, baring my fangs. He backhanded me, the sting putting the taste of blood on my tongue, and then grunted something at Mikel in Ukrainian. Mikel stepped in and jabbed the butt of his Kalashnikov into Esperanza’s forehead. She let out a yelp and fell backward, clutching her head and going still.
Peter grabbed me by the back of the neck and threw me out of the cell and into the opposite wall of the hallway. I rebounded and came for him, determined to break his nose, his ribs, tear out his throat and hurt him for everything he’d put me through. I didn’t care if I ended up shot. The were clamped down on my vision and I could see in shades of silver, monster-vision at its finest.
“Enough!” Ekaterina stuck her arm in between us, shoving me back with surprising strength. “Do that again,” she murmured in my ear, “and it’s the sport for you as well. Don’t think you’ll be spared because you’re pretty. I can make short work of that angelic face.”
Aside from the fact that she was the first person in history to refer to me as angelic in any capacity, Mikel was now pointing the rifle directly at me, and my human sense of self-preservation kicked in.
My vision cleared, and I was back to being freezing, filthy and starving, with more invested in staying upright than in clawing the smirk off of Mikel’s face.
“Better,” Ekaterina said with a curt nod. “I can see that I’m going to have to watch you. What’s your name?”
She took my chin between her fingers, and even though I had a good four inches on her, I felt the undeniable spark of magick between us. I can always tell when a witch is in my personal space by that crawling sensation up and down my spine.
Ekaterina felt cold, like I’d rubbed up against a frozen statue. I jerked my chin away from her grasp. “Luna. Luna Wilder.” I wish I’d said something like Remember my name or It’ll be the last one you ever hear or something equally Bronson-esque, but I was so exhausted that I just plodded after Anna, Deedee and Charlie.
We got into a car this time, a Cadillac, shiny and new as if it had just rolled off a lot. “The fall of communism’s been good to you, I see,” I said.
Mikel gave me a shove and I fell into the back seat, landing on Charlie. She shoved at me, managing to fold my five-foot-ten-inch frame into the space between her bony knees and the front seat. “Get off. Idon’t want your sweat on me.”
“You don’t smell like a rose, either,” I said as the car started to roll. I could see the tops of buildings out the window, telephone wires, chimneys. Everything was washed out, browns and grays of forgotten industry and ever-present poverty. A few fat sparrows clung to the wires as the Cadillac rolled past. Mikel and Peter fought over the radio, and Ekaterina sat between them, facing back, regarding us all with her cool emerald-chip eyes.
“You will be washed and dressed,” she said. “You will be fed, and tonight you will be put to work. This is the easiest job you can be given, and it can be lost very easily if you fight, cause trouble or don’t bring in enough money for my liking. Understood?”
Anna nodded, her knees pulled up to her chest as usual. Deedee was watching out the tinted windows, though what we could see was just a parade of urban decay punctuated by the occasional sign in Cyrillic. I wished that I’d made Dmitri teach me Ukrainian. My chance of getting away would be so much better …
The car rolled to a stop at the rear of a building that proclaimed apartment in both English and Cyrillic. Same drill—pull, push, brandish Kalashnikov and march forward. Up a dank set of fire stairs, down a hallway that smelled overwhelmingly of perfume, under bulbs dressed up with small red shades.
The building had been, at one point, luxurious. The wallpaper was a rich rose brocade that was tearing off in strips, and what was left of the carpet was expensive Persian wool. The doors still bore their script numbers, along with penthouse suite names in Ukrainian.
Ekaterina pointed at rooms as we passed, snapping orders. First Charlie, then Anna, then finally Deedee was shoved through a door, which was promptly locked again from a ring on Peter’s belt. I filed it in my memory for when I escaped. When, not if. Even in the hell of the shipping container, that had never changed. I just needed an opening, the smallest slip, and I was going to run, find a phone or the U.S. embassy, bring all the weight of the law down on these people.
The last door was a double set, the presidential suite, probably. The thought made me giggle, and I clapped a hand over my mouth. Ekaterina shook her head. “In. No more of your sass.”
She must have learned English from a kindly old schoolteacher in some small British village. She talked like she was about eighty years old and was about to offer me a crumpet. That just made me giggle more, and Mikel rolled his eyes and put his foot into the back of my knee, sending me stumbling through the doors.
The lock clicked behind me and I stopped laughing when I saw the room. I’ve seen my share of brothels, but this one was beyond what I’d ever imagined.
The bed was round, hot-pink bedding in a leopard pattern, and there was a large mirror bolted into the crumbling plaster ceiling above. The rest of the furniture was cheap, in a style I’d classify as Vintage Las Vegas Pimp, plenty of satin and animal prints. There was a small platform for dancing and an armoire full of skimpy outfits that a stripper at Tit for Tat would be embarrassed to prance around in.
“Crazy?”
I started as a voice spoke up from the corner, in the chair by the window. The window looked out over the courtyard, but it was heavily barred and padlocked from the inside. There went my bright idea to tie the tacky bedsheets together and rappel down the face of the hotel, Bond-style. I stilled as I took in the vista. It wasn’t just one apartment building. There were five, arrayed on a wagon wheel, all of them with barred windows, all with armed guards patrolling the rooftops.
Women, like small bright tropical birds, looked back at me from their cages, down into the empty courtyard, the dry, crumbling
fountain and the heavy black iron gates with electrical wires attached to the top. A guard with a German shepherd on a leash walked along the quad. This wasn’t just a brothel, this was a compound.
“You,” the woman sitting in the chair said, taking a drag on a black cigarette that smelled like the morning breath of Satan. “I said, are you insane?” She enunciated each word like I might be stupid as well as mental.
“No,” I said. “But I was locked in a shipping container for a week. It’ll do wonders for your stress level.” I slumped down on the bed. Never mind getting out the window … I’d be lucky to get two steps once I was on the ground. I can’t heal from bullet holes.
“I wouldn’t,” the woman said. “I had a customer about half an hour ago and they haven’t changed the sheets.”
I bolted up like I had springs in my legs. “Hex me.”
She snorted and took another drag. “Fuck, these things are disgusting. All that they smoke here. Real cigarettes are worth their weight in gold. I have to beg the high rollers for a drag.” She got up and appraised me. “You look rode hard and put up wet, lady.”
“Shipping container,” I reminded her. “And there was the whole thing of me getting kidnapped, before my little cruise.”
“Yeah, well. Welcome to the club.” She stuck out a hand armed with cheap acrylic tips in a purple that made me think of gangrene. “I’m Lola.”
“Like the Kinks?” I just couldn’t stop myself. My mental filter, what little I’d had in the first place, was completely gone.
She frowned at me, smoke coming out her nose. “What?”
“You know’ Well, I’m not dumb/but I can’t under stand/how she looked like a woman/but talked like a man/oh, my Lola. ”
Her eyes, done in the same shade of shadow as her tips, narrowed. “You trying to say something, Princess Vanilla? Because I’ll tell you—you could win first place in a drag show with the shape you’re in.”
“I’m just exhausted,” I said. “I apologize. I’m Luna Wilder.”
“Don’t tell me your real name,” Lola said. “I don’t want to know, and you don’t want the johns to know, so come up with something fake. Fast.” Lola’s accent was pure New York, all flat vowels and clipped syllables, and she puffed on her cigarette like she was attempting to create her own little smog cloud.
“Johns?” I said. Of course I knew what was waiting for me here, in the Ukraine, but it still seemed unreal. Maybe if I just willed myself hard enough I’d wake up somewhere that wasn’t an annex of hell …
“Customers? Clients? Daddies?” Lola said. “You’re a whore now, sweetie pie, and you better cozy up to the idea before you end up like my last roommate.”
“I’m not a whore,” I said, raising my chin. “I’m a cop. I was kidnapped. And you’re not a whore, either. What were you back in the States?”
Lola shook her head. “Oh, no. None of that matters here. You keep your head down and you live. You fight, and you die. They drag you out of here and take you to sport, like they did Charity.”
“Okay, what’s ‘the sport’?” I said. “Ekaterina talked about it, and one of the girls I was in the container with got left for it. Please, just give me the rundown on what’s going on around here and I swear I won’t make trouble for you.”
Lola sighed, stubbing her cigarette out into a cup of tea that already had several dead soldiers floating in it.
“You’re gonna make trouble one way or the other, lady. I see it in your eyes. Were?”
“Insoli,” I said. “What are you?”
“I’m a seer,” said Lola. “A piss-poor one, too, or I would have figured out that guy in the Village who wanted to buy me a coffee was a rat-bastard Russian gangster kidnapper. You think I’d be smarter, right? I watched the Dateline specials, both of ’em, and that Lifetime Television movie. Jesus.”
I took a seat on the least offensive of the chairs, a zebra stripe, and sighed. Something soft, that didn’t grind my bones and muscles, felt close to heaven.
“Up,” Lola said. “That chair is for customers. They see you in it and it’s an ass-beating. Besides, it’ll be dark soon and business will pick up. We need you dressed and changed by then or Madame Scarface will send both of our asses down to the ring.”
She strode over to the armoire and started jerking things off of hangers. “What are you, a six? Maybe an eight with your legs?”
“Six,” I said. “I’m not wearing any of that.”
“Unless you want to be in a bloody heap on the basement floor, you’re going to put it on and you’re going to shake what your mother gave you,” said Lola.
“Okay,” I said, taking a red stretch vinyl dress out of her hands. “I’ll clean up and put this on if you explain to me what you mean by that statement.”
“Bathroom is in there,” said Lola, pointing through a beaded curtain. The plumbing must have been state of the art when Khrushchev was in power, but now it was rusted and filthy beyond belief. Still, spinning the tap produced a trickle of orange water from the showerhead and I stripped off my filthy clothes, shoving them into the overflowing trash can.
“How long have you been here?” I asked Lola, who leaned against the doorjamb, lighting another cigarette. I didn’t even care that she was looking—the temptation of hot water was too much to take.
“A year,” she said. “Maybe more. No family, you know. No one misses me. My boss probably figures I quit, my so-called friends got one less person to pass the roach to, and no one else gives a flying fuck.”
“And what goes on in the basement?” The water left me feeling only marginally clean, but I dried myself off with an itchy towel and slid into the dress, which was too tight and smelled like stale tobacco.
“The basement? That’s where you go if you’re no good at this,” Lola said, exhaling.
“What, does Mrs. Bates live down there?” I combed back the tangles in my hair and twisted it up in a knot.
“Makeup under the sink,” Lola said helpfully. “The basement is where the ring is, and it’s where they take the girls who fight the johns or make trouble, or are just too used up.” She rolled her cigarette between her fingers.
“Fucking, fighting and gambling under one roof. It’s a regular one-stop vice shop in here.”
The mirror over the sink was cloudy and cracked, like someone had put their fist into it. It was easy to see why they might have. I turned to Lola instead. “What happens to the girls who go into the arena?”
“They fight or they die,” said Lola. “It’s all the same to the customers, and Ekaterina and her brother make more money if the fight is to the death.”
“Brother?” I said, going to the window. The street I could see beyond the front gate was quiet, a few cars puttering by, no people who could help me, even if they were inclined. Even if they could ever hear me scream.
“Yeah, he’s a real piece of work,” said Lola. “You think Ekaterina is bad, you ain’t seen nothing yet. He’s gotten rid of girls before for wearing the wrong shade of lipstick.”
I went over to the door and rattled the handle. Locked, of course. “He sounds charming,” I said, scanning the corners of the room. Sure enough, a pinhole camera resided in the crown molding opposite the bed. I’d run into an operation in Nocturne City selling footage of their girls on the Web. It looked like scumbags thought the same no matter what country you were in.
“He’s dangerous,” Lola said seriously, taking her old seat by the window. “You steer clear of him, if you know what’s good for you. Don’t rock the boat.”
“That’s sort of why I’m here,” I said. “Who’s the boss of this operation? The brother?”
Lola snorted. “What are you, a cop?”
“Yeah,” I said. “And look where it got me.”
“You want to live long enough to tell Dateline your story,” Lola said, “you don’t go asking about who runs this charming little compound of sin. Hell, you keep it up and I’ll shank you.”
I started to say that
I usually had a hard time in that area, but the lock turned and the door banged open. Ekaterina and Mikel stood there. Ekaterina gave me a cursory examination. “You managed to look human. Congratulations. You have one hour to eat your supper and then you’ll be expected in the parlor.” She crossed her arms. “Has Lola explained to you how we do things here?”
“I look pretty and wait for sleazebags to come screw me?” I said. “Then you take the money and I get locked back up in this tacky nightmare?”
Ekaterina jerked her head at Mikel and he walked over and slapped me. I can’t say it was entirely unexpected. My cheek started to bleed again and my headache intensified by an order of ten. I just smiled at Mikel. “Bad idea, buddy. You’re going to get exactly what you deserve, and I’m going to be the one to give it to you.”
“You got a big mouth, yeah?” he said, grabbing his crotch with his free hand. “Why don’t you put it to some real use?”
Ekaterina snapped something at him and he backed off, going out of the room, returning with a tray. Ekaterina was definitely the boss, at least of the thugs. You never know what information will come in handy when you’re a hostage.
Mikel slammed the tray down on our table. Two plates of smelly instant macaroni, two sets of plastic utensils so flimsy that I doubted I could even stab myself in the jugular with the broken end, if I were so inclined. “Eat,” Ekaterina said. “You’ll get used to the way things work here. You’re a commodity, and you’ll be healthy or you’ll be sent to the sport. It’s not complicated.”
The door shut, and I looked at Lola, my eyebrow cocked. “She really gets into that whole Mrs. Goldfinger thing, doesn’t she?”
“It’s bullshit,” said Lola. “They get you hooked on something if they can. It makes you easier to control.”
I sniffed the food suspiciously, detecting a tang underneath the general stink of preservatives and fake cheese.
“There’s something in this.”
“A little ground-up Valium,” said Lola, grabbing a fork and a plate. “Keeps you docile.”
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