Daemon’s Mark

by Caitlin Kittredge

  Mikel led us down the corridor to a set of steel doors. “Through there,” he said. “You know what will happen if you misbehave.”

  I looked to Masha. “What’s he insinuating?”

  She sighed heavily as we were buzzed into a small steel hallway with doors at either end. The drains in the floor and the sprinklers overhead spoke to the chamber’s old purpose. I shivered. What exactly did we need to be decontaminated from?

  “Just sit still and let the doctor examine you,” Masha said. “Otherwise, Mr. Belikov gets furious.” She touched a scar on her eyebrow. “I tried to fight back. Once.”

  I thought of what Grigorii must have done to herand winced, my stomach rebelling with a boil of nausea.

  The door at the other end of the chamber opened with a clang, and we stepped into a white space, white tiles and white floors, white lights beating down, sterilizing all of the color from the air.

  A small dark-haired man with a full gray moustache stood behind a steel table. White lab coat, subdued blue shirt and tie, blue nitrile gloves. “Masha,” he said. “And a new girl, how nice.” He inclined his bald head at Mikel. “She is a genetic match?”

  Mikel shrugged. “That’s for you to find out. Belikov just wants her here.”

  “And you are?” I said to the doctor. Masha went behind a surgical screen and started to undress.

  “I am Dr. Emil Gorshkov,” he said. “I work with Grigorii. What is your name?”

  Mikel frowned. “Less talk, more testing.”

  Gorshkov raised a hand. “Please. This is my laboratory space. What is your name, girl?”

  “Joanne.” I didn’t want this ever-smiling, bald, cold-eyed doctor to know my real name for reasons I couldn’t quite bring clear even in my own head.

  “Joanne. Common.” He sniffed, his moustache twitching. “Please, undress and put on a gown.”

  Okay, Luna. Easy. Nothing to be gained by freaking out on the guy and causing a scene. I needed to figure out what was going on here and how the hell I was going to get Masha and me clear without Grigorii killing Dmitri.

  “What kind of doctor are you?” I said, stepping behind the screen when Masha exited. White gowns hung in a row, the old kind that wrapped around your waist like in a black-and-white movie set in a mental asylum.

  “That’s really not your concern,” Dr. Gorshkov said. “On the table, Masha. There’s a good girl.”

  I peered around the screen, taking my sweet time getting undressed. Gorshkov turned his back to me, and he rolled an instrument tray over to Masha. “How are you feeling, my dear?”

  My dear? He could be anyone’s family doctor, checking perfunctorily on his patient as he swabbed her arm with alcohol and grabbed a syringe. Everything was old in this place, like the set of a horror movie. Dawn of the Former Soviet Werewolf Dead. All we needed was a shopping mall.

  “I’m tired all the time,” Masha said. “And I threw up this morning, before you brought that weirdo woman into my cell. I don’t like her.”

  I curled my lip. Either she was trying to throw Belikov and the doctor off the scent, or she was a real brat, even in captivity.

  “Gene therapy isn’t a walk in the park, Masha,” said the doctor. “You are becoming something so much stronger than what you are now. All of my patients were strong, and were rewarded. You must bear these ills with a good attitude or you won’t reap the rewards they did.”

  “It’s taking so long,” Masha complained. “I feel sick all the time.”

  “Masha,” the doctor sighed. “You are my special child, yes?”

  “Yes,” she muttered, slouching.

  Gorshkov withdrew the syringe and capped it, handing Masha a bandage. “Then trust me when I say that I will tell you everything you need to know about the process and that feeling sick is normal.” He patted her cheek.

  “You are a healthy girl. You’ll get through it.”

  I stepped from behind the curtain. “So I’m guessing this isn’t a spa day.”

  Dr. Gorshkov frowned at me. “Mr. Belikov put you in my care, so I’ll thank you to stop with that mouthy manner you have. Sit on the table.”

  “Did someone say gene therapy?” I said, turning over the possible permutations of what that could mean in my head. None of them made me jump for joy. “What are you doing to us? What changes?”

  “Sit. ” The doctor’s eyes darkened, and he took up a new syringe, pointing it at the exam table.

  “All right, all right,” I said, sitting down. The cold metal made my legs break into goose bumps. “Stab away, Bones,” I said. “Hey, can I get you to say ‘He’s dead, Jim’? The accent would make that.”

  The doctor glared at me as he grabbed my arm, thumped the skin to bring up a vein and jabbed the syringe in. I let out a small yelp. The large-bore needle hurt like a bitch.

  “You talk a great deal and don’t say anything,” he muttered. “Save your breath and keep quiet. Mr. Belikov likes girls who are obedient.”

  “I could give a flying fuck what Mr. Belikov likes,” I muttered. Gorshkov jerked the needle out and didn’t offer me a bandage. I grabbed a piece of cotton off the surgical tray and pressed it over the wound. While I was at it, I palmed the small pair of surgical scissors lying next to the gauze pads. Never hurts to be prepared. You can improvise a lot of things with scissors.

  The doctor walked my blood over to a centrifuge and set up a vial, spinning it. “We’ll type your DNA, and we’ll see what you’re suitable for.” He gestured me to the padded hospital bed, where Masha was sitting and staring at her knees. “You wait over there. No talking. Talking disturbs my concentration.”

  I went and slumped next to Masha. The gown was too small for me, and it itched in all the nooks and crannies.

  “Well, he’s a bundle of fun.”

  “I’m not supposed to talk in the exam room,” Masha whispered. “Mr. Belikov gets angry.”

  I reached over to the bed stand and grabbed a prescription pad and a pen. What is G doing? I scribbled.

  Masha looked at me, at Gorshkov, who was watching the centrifuge spin with the gentle, dopey eyes of a toddler staring at Barney. She grabbed the pad and scribbled back. Is my dad really @ Stop 13?

  I nodded.

  Giving me injections I don’t know what of I’m sick all the time.

  Gorshkov moved my blood from the centrifuge to a set of test tubes with a pipette, the same process I’d seen at the police academy when we learned about DNA typing and matching.

  What is G looking for? I asked Masha.

  She bit her lip and wrote. A perfect match.

  “File cabinets,” she said, her voice barely there at all. “Hundreds of them. There are all of these files, medical files. I saw them once when Belikov took me away to…” She went quiet, crimson climbing into her cheeks.

  I put my hand over hers and gave it a squeeze. Gorshkov’s head snapped up, like he could smell insurgency.

  “No touching! You will sit quietly and behave yourselves.”

  The next person who told me to behave myself was going to get a foot straight into the ass. “Stick with me,” I whispered to Masha. “I won’t let them do anything else to you.”

  She chewed her lip. “Promise?”

  I nodded. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

  Masha gave me a smile that was almost grateful before she dropped her eyes again.

  “No match,” Gorshkov announced, his voice sharp with disappointment. “You are useless, Joanne. Mikel, return both of them to holding.”

  I stood up. “I’m not the girl of your dreams, Doc? Color me crushed.”

  “Go!” he snapped at me, pointing to the way out through the decontamination chamber. My jaw tightened. I could confront the smug little worm, or I could stick with Masha. I exhaled, forcing myself to stay docile, and followed her out, listening to the door clang shut behind us like a tomb.

  CHAPTER 22

  When the outside door rolled back, Grigorii was waiting for us. “Oh, look,” I s
aid. “It’s Prince Charming, the pimp. Be still my heart.”

  “Mikel, take Masha back to her room,” Grigorii said. “Luna and I have an exciting development to discuss.” He took me by the arm, like your boyfriend would, gentle and firm.

  “Be careful,” I said. “You’re going to sweep me right off of my feet.”

  “That’s the idea,” said Grigorii. He led me away from Masha, until we were in a hospital ward, beds and musty curtains hanging like discarded shrouds.

  “Alone at last,” Grigorii said, sitting down on one of the beds, the sheets still crisp even though his weight raised a cloud of dust. I sneezed.

  “Is this your idea of a romantic getaway?”

  “Emil says that you’re not a genetic match for my endeavor here,” he said. “Which leaves me with a problem, because now I have no way to make a profit from you.”

  “Yeah, about your endeavor,” I said. “What exactly are a geneticist and a gangster up to in this musty old place? Is it aliens? Please say aliens.”

  Grigorii reached out and tugged at the strings of my hospital gown. “If you’d let me finish, I would say that I’m not sure I want to profit from you.”

  I tried to tamp down the reflexive twitch at his touch. He noticed it, and dropped his hand. “Why? Do I disgust you?”

  “You’ve got a screw loose,” I said. “And you’re the bottom scrapings of the magick gene pool. Sorry if I’m not moistening my panties at the thought of getting next to you.”

  “It’s this, or I execute your friend and leave you as an experimental subject for Gorshkov. He’s not only a bioengineer, you know. He has … other hobbies. We met when he was my customer in Moscow, before I moved to more tolerant climes.”

  All of my instincts shouted for me to fight, because that’s my training—you take control of a situation and if the other person won’t give control, you fight for it, make a fuss, cause a scene until you’re out of danger. But I’d tried with Grigorii, and he’d almost stopped my heart with a few hundred magick volts. The were paced at the edges of my mind and I let it creep in.

  I was only going to get one chance here.

  “Can I talk while we do this?” I asked, putting one knee up on the bed and exposing a generous length of thigh. Grigorii’s smirk curled to life.

  “Go right ahead, my dear. Although I must ask you to please refrain from attacking me again. I’m not into that sort of kink.”

  “What sort are you into?” I purred. Grigorii’s mouth pulled down. I pasted a dopey smile on my face in return. Easy, Wilder. Don’t lay it on too thick.

  “I don’t believe in discussing my laundry list of perversions before the actual perversion begins,” he said, running his fingers up my leg, grazing against the junction of my thigh.

  “So,” I said, tugging at the collar of my hospital gown, exposing the top curve of my breasts, “let me see if I’m getting all of this. This is a bioengineering lab. Gorshkov is doing gene therapy on Masha and on more before her. Masha is a were. So I’m thinking that you’re doing some evil little experiment to manipulate Masha’s were DNA.”

  I stood back from Grigorii and undid the ties on my gown, letting it pool around my ankles. “How right am I?”

  He gave me an admiring nod. “The Soviet regime left behind many interesting projects that someone with vision could use to their benefit. My family has political ties, and a certain ambitious program came to my attention. I hired Gorshkov to implement it.” Taking my hand, he drew me close enough to feel his body heat and reached out his free hand for my waist. “Now enough talk. Come to me, Luna,” he purred, his tongue flicking out to caress his pale lips.

  “You know,” I said, running my hand down his jaw in return. His skin felt like wax, stiff and dead. “This is a very perverse way to make me earn my freedom.”

  “We’ll see how you perform,” Grigorii said. “And then I’ll decide what gets done with you. To you.” He guided my hand to his fly. “Get on your knees and take me with your mouth.”

  I gave him a wink and sank into a crouch. Grigorii’s ego was really something—he honestly thought he was completely safe letting a pissy were female at the most sensitive part of his anatomy after I’d already fought him off once.

  Idiot.

  “Good woman.” Grigorii stroked my hair. “They all come in with fire in their eyes, that entitled Western spark in their gaze, and they all break sooner or later and realize that submission is what’s best.”

  I pulled my gown closer with my foot, dropped my hand to feel for the scissors in my sleeve.

  “Submission is the only road to survival for people in your situation, my dear,” Grigorii continued. “Don’t you think I’m right?” He tugged at my scalp. “Tell me you think I’m right.”

  I looked up at his eyes and drew my lips back to show my fangs. “You know what I think?” I gripped the scissors, the cool metal slipping in the sweat of my palms. “I think you talk too gods-damned much.”

  Grigorii’s face twisted. “I’ll teach you to speak to me that way, whore…”

  He stopped, just froze, letting out a small strangled sound as I buried the scissors in his groin with all of my strength, blood flowing fast, staining the wool of his obscenely expensive suit.

  There were no screams, no words, just an expression of pure shock in Grigorii’s eyes. I stood up, careful to keep myself away from the blood.

  “Good news and bad news, Grigorii,” I said, pulling the gown back on. “Good news is, I missed all your major arteries, so you probably won’t bleed to death.” Itugged the gown’s strings tight, up to my throat. I couldn’t stand being naked under his paralyzed, accusing gaze for another second. “Bad news is that unlike your buddy Rasputin, I doubt you’ll bounce back from this.”

  Grigorii let out a hiss, a rasping screech of pain, his hands trying to stanch the bleeding, but it was too late. I saw his pupils dilate, black with shock, and his already white skin go cadaver-colored.

  I could put a compress on the wound, stop the bleeding long enough for Grigorii to stumble downstairs to Dr. Gorshkov. I could elevate his feet, cover him in a heavy blanket to stave off shock and roll him there myself on one of these beds.

  “Please…” Grigorii managed. He was on the floor now, a slow dark crimson pool spreading from his wound. I could get him up in a fireman’s carry, because he was a small guy and I was strong, and run him back to the lab.

  “Please…”

  I didn’t do any of the things I could have, except turn my back and walk out of the hospital ward, my bare feet not making a sound on the linoleum.

  And I didn’t feel anything when I did.

  Once I’d cleared the ward I broke into a run. I had to make a break for it before the doctor figured out what was going on and burned the place to the ground to cover his tracks.

  Masha. She was my first priority. Retracing my steps to the holding cells, I came upon the switchboard operator, who stared at me gape-jawed.

  I slammed his forehead once into the controls for the cell doors, hard, and he slid out of his chair and curled on the floor with a soft moan. I hit the switch for cell sixteen and jogged down the corridor.

  “Masha.” I jerked my thumb over my shoulder. “We gotta go.”

  “Yeah,” she mumbled. “There might be a problem there.”

  “No time for teenage angst, sweetie,” I said. “Up and run, now. This is a one-time special offer.”

  “It’s not that,” she said. “I’m not feeling so good after that injection…” She tried to stand and her stance was drunken, her knees buckling after a few seconds.

  “Crap,” I hissed under my breath and came into the cell, grabbing her by one arm and hauling her against me.

  “You hold on to me and don’t let go, no matter what. Understand?”

  “I feel sick,” she said, her head lolling against me. “I’m seeing everything double…”

  “Hey!” I said, grabbing her chin. “I know you’re stronger than this, Masha. Your f
ather told me what hell you can give. Now suck it up and walk with me or we’re both going to die in here. You want that?”

  “No…” she moaned.

  “Didn’t think so. March.” We made an odd creature, half-stumbling and half-running down the hall.

  It wasn’t difficult to find the way back to the door I’d come in, but getting out would be another matter.

  We were in sight of the security cage when my grand plan shattered like an ice sculpture in July. A burst of automatic gunfire pocked the wall over my head with divots. Masha slid to the floor with a scream and I followed her, covering her body with mine.

  “It’s not that easy,” said Mikel, walking over to us, his Kalashnikov hanging loosely from his crooked arm.

  “Haven’t you learned by now?”

  “You should be less worried about me and more worried about your boss,” I said. “He wasn’t looking so good when I left him.”

  Mikel frowned, turning over the possibilities. I was patient. If brains were computers, he’d still be running Windows 98. “Grigorii is a witch,” he said finally. “This is just a bluff.”

  “Steel isn’t great for magick-users, and witches can bleed out,” I said, my eyes on the rifle. “Just like their hench-thugs.”

  Mikel glared. “What does that mean?”

  I lashed out with my foot and knocked the rifle from his grasp, grabbing it as it slid to the floor. “It means that I meant what I said,” I told him. Mikel threw up his hands, but I drove the butt of the Kalashnikov into his face and heard bone snap. I took the clip out of the rifle and dropped it, my heart thudding with the thrill of neardeath.

  “I told you,” I said to Mikel.

  He leaped at me again, with surprising fortitude for a plain human who’d just had his face smashed in. Not bright, but sure as hell persistent.

  I fell as he grabbed my ankle, and gave a cry as a sharp sting drove through my calf. Mikel had a knife and he was raising it to slash me again.

  “Luna!” Masha’s small hands grabbed me and pulled me backward, into a small, dark box that smelled like rat poison.