Daemon’s Mark

by Caitlin Kittredge

  “I was afraid you’d say that,” I muttered.

  “What context were these … barbarisms being conducted in?” Kronen said, turning to the pictures.

  “A Russian mobster was trying to make his own army of enforcers,” I said. “It’s surprisingly easy to do with top-secret Soviet research just lying around and kidnapped werewolf tourists as test subjects.”

  “Barbaric,” Kronen said again. “That is the only word I have for this material.”

  “Thanks, Doc,” I said. Just something else to add to the evidence against the Belikovs, if they ever surfaced again. Not that I was holding out a lot of hope on that front.

  “I’m very glad to see that you’re all right,” Kronen said.

  “You and me both, Bart,” I said. Kronen’s phone buzzed, and he held up a finger.

  “Excuse me for a moment.” He listened, and then held out the extension. “Luna, it’s for you.”

  “Yeah?” I said. “This is Luna Wilder.”

  “Luna, it’s Will.” He sounded out of breath, tense and staccato.

  “What’s wrong? Did something happen?”

  “You need to get back here now,” he said.

  “Will…” I started.

  “Now, ” he said. “Run.”

  I hung up and looked at Kronen. “I have to go, Bart. I’m sorry…”

  “Go.” Kronen waved me off. “May I keep these to read?”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said, already halfway out the door. Itook the elevator back to street level and covered the five blocks between the morgue and the federal building at a run. My ribs spasmed, but I didn’t care.

  “What happened?” I demanded when I burst into the tech-services room. Pike and Jensen looked at me, looked at each other.

  “We found something embedded in these spreadsheets,” Pike said. “Look, we should really wait for Agent Fagin…”

  “He’s here,” Will said, coming in. “Tell Luna what you found.”

  “Okay,” said Pike. “On the surface, this just looks like a bunch of normal data, but the file sizes are huge. So we ran a decryption program, and we got hundreds and hundreds of emails, financial documents, bank account numbers, the works, all hidden as secondary pages in these spreadsheet files.”

  “Meaning what?” I said.

  “The financial transactions go back and forth between Nocturne City and the Belikovs,” said Will. “Someone here was backing them, in the trafficking ring and in something else, something to do with bioterrorism.”

  “Not quite,” I said. “More like designer assassins to do whatever dirty work you could think of.”

  “Really?” Will scratched his chin. “I … heard of some crazy shit in Russia during the sixties, but … wow. They actually made one of those old programs viable?”

  “Unfortunately,” I said.

  “And we found this email,” said Jensen. “When we connected to the server. It was sent from a Web service about twenty hours ago.”

  “As near as our translator can tell,” Will said, reading from a notepad, “it says something along the lines of:

  ‘Project compromised. Family ties must be eliminated. Put him on the road.’ Along with latitude and longitude that lead here, to Nocturne City.”

  “Oh, gods,” I said. “There must be a third one.”

  “Third what?” Will asked.

  “Would you believe a genetically altered were programmed to be a mob hitman?”

  Will rubbed his forehead. “With you, sweetheart, I’ve learned that anything is possible.”

  “The Belikovs are cleaning house,” I said. “I got away, and they’re trying to eliminate their backers in the U.S. to keep us from prosecuting them.”

  Will pointed a finger at Pike. “Find out who’s the signatory on the account the payouts originated from,” he said.

  “Someone named Felix Natchez is the account’s owner,” said Pike after a moment.

  “We may already be too late,” Will said. “The assassin’s been on the road for almost a day. This Natchez have any priors?”

  “He wouldn’t,” I said softly, feeling like I had just stepped into an express elevator, headed straight down.

  “He’s a cop.”

  A crooked cop. A cop who had known Lily Dubois…”Nathaniel Dubois,” I said. Will frowned at me.

  “Are you sure?”

  “He’s in bed with Natchez,” I said. “It was Nate Dubois who tried to throw me off his daughter’s murder investigation in the first place, with his were thugs. He wanted pack justice, not police work.”

  “If you’re wrong, someone else is going to get murdered,” Jensen said.

  “A lying, sex-trafficking scumbag,” I said. “And anyway, I’m not wrong.”

  “Call the SCS task force on the local PD for backup,” Will said to Jensen. “I’m heading to the Dubois residence.”

  “Me, too,” I said. Will started to object, but I held up my hand. “I’m not letting you go up there alone. If this creature is anything like the one I met in Kazakhstan, your, uh, condition is not going to be a huge benefit. You might be alive, but you’ll be in ribbons.”

  “You sure you’re up to it?” Will said, his brow furrowing. Jensen and Pike looked between us, no doubt wondering what condition Agent Fagin suffered from.

  “I’m sure,” I said. “I have to be up to it. I’m the only one who has a chance of stopping him.”

  “All right,” Will said, pulling his holdout pistol from his ankle holster. “Then take this. Can’t have you running in there unarmed.”

  I gave him a small smile. “My hero.”

  “I try my best,” Will said, running for the elevator. Icaught up with him at the door.

  I prayed that we weren’t too late.

  And I wondered where on earth I’d find the time to have a wedding.

  The Duboises lived just outside of the fashionable part of Cedar Hill, on the back slope that wasn’t really Cedar Hill but the part of Garden Hill that wasn’t wall-to-wall crackheads, in a refurbished, rambling Craftsman that was still far beyond what I could afford.

  Will pulled the Mustang to a crooked stop at the curb and jumped out, eyeing the house. “Doesn’t look like a hotbed of mob activity from here.”

  I pulled my borrowed gun from the waist of my jeans and held it at my side. “I think that’s the point.”

  Will and I mounted the wide porch steps, lined with planter boxes displaying the first flowers of spring, bright reds and pinks, fleshy colors. Bloody colors.

  “Mr. Dubois?” Will called, tapping on the door. I was in the second position, my shoulder against the frame, the gun tight in my fist, ready to spring into action should Dubois be waiting on the other side of the door with a shotgun.

  There was no answer, and I reached my fist across the fire zone to knock. “Nathaniel, it’s Luna Wilder. Can you open the door?”

  This time, my ears caught something, far away in another part of the house. A shattering of glass, a faint, strangled scream.

  “Will,” I said tightly. “He’s already here.”

  Will stepped back, switching positions with me, and pulled his radio off his belt. “Nocturne dispatch, be advised we’ve detected a disturbance at the Dubois residence and are making entry.”

  The dispatcher’s voice crackled. “Ten-four, Agent Fagin. SCS backup en route. ETA five minutes.”

  “We don’t have five minutes,” I said, feeling the sick creep of helplessness in my gut again. I’d been at the mercy of Grigorii Belikov for the past several weeks. No more.

  Will gestured to the front door. “Be my guest, doll.”

  I took a firm stance and planted my right foot against the Duboises’ deadbolt. The doorframe splintered and it swung inward, hitting the wall with a crack like a rifle shot. That’s the bitch about a hard entry—italways lets the bad guys know you’re coming.

  The sounds were much louder now, snarls and cries, crashes as a body was tossed from place to place. I touched Will’s shoulder.
“Upstairs.”

  “Let me lead,” he said. “Just in case they get cute and shoot me.”

  Will was never macho or alpha about these things—he just stated facts. If he ran into gunfire, he’d get back up. If he was taken down by an enraged genetically modified were, he’d get back up.

  I hoped. “I’m right behind you,” I said, and Will flicked me a smile.

  “That’s what I like to hear.” Raising his voice from Will to Will Fagin, ATF, he called down the hall, “Federal agent! Whoever’s up here, show yourself!”

  The hallway had sloped ceilings, like so many of the old houses in Nocturne City, and there were three doors—one on each side and one dead ahead.

  The one in front of us was where all the snarling was coming from.

  “Help me!” a woman’s voice screamed. “I’m in the master bedroom!”

  “That’s Petra,” I said, and Will sprinted ahead, hitting the bedroom door with his shoulder.

  We both pulled up short at the scene in the bedroom. Nathaniel Dubois lay facedown, a pool of blood big enough to fill a lake still spreading from under his throat. Dark blood. Arterial blood. The spray was all over the white linens on the king-sized bed, the wall above it and his wife, who cowered in the corner holding a Colt .45 Army pistol on a hunched, dirty, snarling customer that I took to be Belikov’s hitwere.

  I didn’t need to check Nathaniel’s pulse to know that he had shuffled loose the mortal coil, so I carefully stepped over his body and drew a bead on the creature.

  “Get the fuck away from her.”

  The were turned on me, flat nostrils flaring. His face was deformed, half in and half out of the phase, hirsute in all the wrong places, his eyes pupiless and gold. He looked like Lon Chaney in The Wolf Man, as viewed through the filter of a royally bad acid trip.

  “Mine,” he snarled, and lashed out at Petra, who screeched and struck at him with the gun.

  “Hold still!” Will shouted, tightening his firing stance. “Back away from her!”

  “He killed Nate,” Petra sobbed. “Nate tried to protect me and that bastard just tore his throat out…”

  “Petra, it’s going to be okay,” I said. “I promise you.”

  The assassin snarled, spittle hanging from his lower lip, and he turned and gave me the smile that I imagine Death gives to you just before your number is up. It was a chilling, animal expression, a grimace of challenge.

  “Will…” I said, and that was all I got out before the creature went for Petra’s throat.

  His lunge knocked her pistol upward and it went off with the big boom that Colts give, raining plaster and asbestos insulation down on Petra and her attacker. She let out a scream, thrashing beneath him, kicking and scratching like only someone staring their own grisly murder in the face can do.

  “I don’t have a shot!” Will snapped. “I’ll hit her.”

  “Same here,” I said, jamming his pistol into my waistband. Will rotated his gaze a fraction toward me.

  “Luna, don’t do it.”

  Really, all of it happened inside five seconds. The creature reared back to tear out Petra’s throat, I dropped my firing stance and launched myself at him, catching him high in the chest like a football tackle, tearing him off Petra with my weight, sending the both of us backward.

  The big picture window over the Duboises’ front porch came up too fast and we fell through it. I felt glass tug at my skin, and the creature and I hit the porch roof with a bone-shaking thud.

  He was on top of me, howling, snapping, and I jammed both feet into his gut and heaved with all of my strength. The creature went over my head, scrabbling for purchase, and fell from the roof with a yelp.

  I rolled over in time to see him pick himself up from the Duboises’ lawn and take off running.

  “Hex it,” I muttered, looking at the twelve-foot drop. “Well, you’ve had worse,” I said, before I launched myself after him. If he got away, the only evidence of Grigorii Belikov’s bioengineering program went with him. So not happening on my watch.

  Tires squealed and I saw a flash of green metal and chrome before the creature went airborne and crashed down in the street, one leg twisted at an improbable angle.

  He struggled up almost immediately, the bone knitting and twisting under the skin before my eyes, like his body was alive, possessed of its own primitive need to hunt and kill.

  The driver of the car that hit him jumped out, sweaty, his baby blue tie askew. “Don’t you move, asshole!” the driver shouted ineffectually, leveling a Glock.

  “Bryson!” I shouted, recognizing my stocky detective and his green Taurus.

  “Wilder? ” he cried. “Shit. What the fuck is going on here?”

  The creature was up now, and he rotated toward Bryson like an alcoholic hones in on an open bar.

  “David! ” I screamed, drawing my own gun. “Get down!”

  Bryson ducked behind his car door as the thing started for him at a dead run, and I raised my pistol.

  The were grabbed the car door, yanking it half off its hinges, one hand reaching for Bryson through the shattered window and leaving a long line of claw marks in David’s blocky forearm.

  I squeezed the trigger. One-two-three, pop-pop-pop. No hesitation, no wavering, three shots into the center mass, just like they teach you at the academy. I’m not too modest to say that I dropped the creature like a sack of cement.

  He fell in the street, boneless, the exit wounds in his back echoes of the flowers on the Duboises’ porch.

  Bryson shakily pulled himself upright. “Jesus Christ in a motorboat, Wilder,” he said. “Jesus Christ. ”

  “I know,” I said. “I know, but he’s dead now. We’ll get your arm looked at.”

  “No, not that, ” Bryson said. “Who the fuck is going to pay for my gods-damned car? ”

  “David…” I said, and then shook my head. “Put in a reimbursement request to the department. You did total it in the line of duty.”

  Will came out of the house leading Petra, who was wrapped in his suit jacket. She was sobbing, clinging to Will like he was the life preserver and she was Kate Winslet in Titanic.

  “David, secure the scene,” I said. “I need to take care of this.”

  “You got it, Wilder,” he said, moving to get his camera from the Taurus. “And hey, Wilder?”

  I turned back to him. “Yeah, David?”

  “It’s good to have you back,” he said.

  “Luna,” Will said, “I think we should call a bus for Mrs. Dubois here. She’s in a bad way.”

  “Go ahead,” I said. “I’ll sit with her.”

  Will lowered Petra to the front steps and stepped away, using his radio to call for an ambulance.

  “This is unreal,” Petra said. “First … first my Lily and now my husband.”

  I bit my lip, wondering if now was the time to tell her that Nate had been the financial backer of a homicidal, magick-using mob boss who sold girls like Amway.

  She started to sob again. Probably not the time. “Things are going to be all right,” I said. “We’re going to catch the people responsible.”

  “What I wouldn’t give for five minutes alone with Nikolai Rostov,” she snarled. “He’s the one who started this poison, who lured my little girl to that awful place, and I’m sure he ratted out my husband.”

  A finger of cold whispered its way across my neck, raising all of the hairs. “How did you know about Nikolai Rostov?” I said.

  She sniffed. “You must have told me.”

  “No,” I said slowly. “I never told anyone except Will and Natalie Lane about going to see Rostov, because I was afraid the FBI would Hex up my case.” I faced her. “But you knew.”

  Petra’s eyes darted from me to Will to Bryson, to the two cars that had pulled up behind his and disgorged Batista and Lane. I sighed, rubbing my forehead. The start of a migraine was growling behind my skull. “Nate wasn’t the one in charge. It was you.”

  Petra’s nostrils flared. “You h
ave no proof of that.”

  “Your financials are proof,” I said. “I’m sure when we check the bogus account you made Felix Natchez open, your name will be a signatory, and not your husband’s. The Russians needed someone to keep the were packs of Nocturne in line while they raped their daughters, and they needed someone with money. You were in bed with Rostov here, and Belikov overseas.” Gods, I hoped not literally.

  “This is a very outlandish and amusing story,” Petra said coldly. “But I’ve just lost my husband, so I’m going to go to Agent Fagin and hope he can at least sit with me in silence until my ambulance comes.”

  I flicked my hand out and grabbed her by the wrist. “Sit down,” I said, low. “Don’t make me tell you again.”

  “Why would I kill my own daughter, Lieutenant?” She let out a frantic, braying laugh. “That’s utterly ridiculous!”

  I lifted one shoulder. “I’m guessing Lily got her fake ID from Ivan Salazko, and when he knew her by sight, she tweaked to what her mommy dearest was involved in. She threatened you, like a good rebellious teen will do, and you had her killed and tried to pin it on her hophead boyfriend.”

  Petra’s face was pale now, a ring of white around her nostrils, and her breath was coming rapidly. I squeezed harder on her wrist, and she let out a small sound. “Funny thing about the Russian mob,” I said. “They don’t just kill the snitch. They take care of whole families—parents, grandparents, and especially kids. You must know why.”

  Petra finally dropped her eyes from mine. “So the children won’t grow up and begin a vendetta against their parents’ killers.”

  “Right in one,” I said. “But you didn’t have the stomach to tear out your own daughter’s heart, so you had Rostov and Anton, your favorite test subject, do the hands-on work. Am I getting it so far?”

  Petra shook her head. “You’re just telling stories and I’m listening, Lieutenant.”

  “I’m guessing this isn’t something you fell into,” I said. “It takes a long time to develop this kind of stone-cold willingness to kill. What’s your maiden name, Petra?”

  “Ivanovich,” she said numbly. “I guess you’ll find that out, anyway.” A smile curled around her lips, and her eyes went hard, like beads. There was an utter lack of feeling to the expression, and I knew that she felt nothing about her daughter, or her husband—she’d survived, and that was all that mattered. Animal. Uncomplicated.