Microsoft Word - daemonsmark.html by Tracey Howard

Author:Tracey Howard
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 14

By the time a sour-faced girl with artificial hair woven into her own with a comical mismatch effect banged on

the door and told us with gestures to get downstairs, I had had plenty of time to come up with and discard fifty

escape plans in my head.

A straight run for my life was out—between the bars, the cameras and that son of a bitch Mikel and his ilk, I’d

be dead before I’d gotten ten steps out of the room. I had to get the layout of the place, find a phone, find the

weak spots.

All before I got jumped by some kink fan who wanted to get his jollies off with a woman of the hirsute

persuasion. No pressure, Luna.

Lola nudged my shoulder. “Come on, fish. They dock you if you’re late, and you have to service the employees

to work it off.”

The thought of Mikel or Peter anywhere near me turned my stomach. I hustled after Lola, tottering on the

platform sandals I’d put on. Girls descended the stairs in pairs and threes, never any alone. Their eyes, to a

woman, were the doped, haunted eyes of long-term sex slaves, all hope long ago drained out like so much dirty

water.

The parlor was the same sort of elegance I’d come to expect from Ekaterina’s operation, red satin and black

carpet with a deep shag pocked with cigarette burns. Heavy curtains blocked out the windows and low lighting

gave the whole room the aura of a cheap porn set.

The girls milled, a few of them lighting cigarettes, a few more discreetly popping pills from pillboxes or their

bras and washing them down with vodka or cloudy water from a tap behind the wet bar in the corner.

Lola positioned herself against the bar, hip cocked, face carefully arranged to look bored. I sat myself on the

edge of an armchair, grateful to be off the too-small shoes, which had already raised blisters.

While I sat, I went over the facts I’d garnered about the sex trafficking operation, like they were beads on a

rosary that would somehow deliver me back to the light. Ekaterina was a boss, that much was clear, and I knew

from briefings on the Russian mob that a female boss was unheard of. Then again, so was a brothel full to the

brim with non-human prostitutes with a blood-sport arena in the basement.

Rostov and his men were enforcers who scouted women in Nocturne, and plenty of other cities had the same

setup, if Lola was any indication. They transported the women to countries with few laws, where no one would

question a bunch of Americans and Canadians and Brits locked up in a defunct hotel and sold as sex slaves.

When I thought about it, it was really a perfect operation. I wondered how long it had been going on.

Laughter and shouting filtered from the lobby, and two men in cheap suits stumbled into the parlor, big sloppy

grins on their faces. Ekaterina was behind them, wearing the obsequious posture of a helpful employee. She

gestured at me, at Anna, who was trying to fade into the wallpaper, and at Charlie and Deedee.

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