Pure Blood_ A Nocturne City Novel - Caitlin Kittredge [78]
Irina, Sergei, and Yelena stopped their whispered conversation and favored me with amused glances. I realized I was still wrapped in fluffy bath towels, one white, one pink.
“We have come to visit you,” said Irina with a smirk.
I narrowed my eyes and let them flicker to gold. “How did you get in?”
“Door was open,” said Sergei brusquely. I hadn’t gotten a good look at him in the alley, but in the bright track lighting of my kitchen he was stout and scarred, like a pit fighter or a Russian mafia heavy.
“Irina wishes to speak with you,” said Yelena. She was as delicate as Sergei was ungainly, and my bag of Eastern European cliches might have pegged her as an ex-ballet dancer. I saw tattoos on her knuckles and the suggestion of a previous, much harder life in the harsh lines around her mouth. Okay, maybe not a ballet dancer.
“Ever hear of picking up the Hexed phone?” I asked Irina. She glared at me and slapped one fist against her palm. The effect was a little bit like a lingerie model auditioning for a tough-girl part in a movie.
“The time for polite talk has passed,” she informed me. I shifted into a combat stance, subtly of course. I may have been wearing a towel, but that didn’t mean I had to take her crap.
“Do explain.”
“You forced Dmitri to phase in part and expose himself to the infection. You have contaminated him further,” said Sergei. He took a breath and I thought that was probably the longest phrase he’d spoken in months.
“We made a mistake not dealing with you permanently the first time,” said Yelena. “But Dmitri has always been a faithful member of the pack and we granted his request.”
“That was a mistake,” Irina expounded helpfully.
Belly-dropping fear grabbed me, but I rolled my eyes and acted like they were keeping me from something interesting on television. “So what, it took three of you to deliver the message? Are your ESL skills really that bad?”
Luna, you did it now. Three pissed-off pack weres in your kitchen and you without even a thong to defend yourself.
I commanded myself to cut the sarcasm and think of a way out of this problem, but none presented itself. Irina stayed in my face while Sergei and Yelena moved to either side. I’ve watched enough nature shows to know they were circling, preparing to attack the lone prey.
Have I mentioned I really, really hate being the prey?
“You can’t just kill me,” I said lamely. “I’m a cop. We have real police in this country.”
Yelena barked a laugh. “Do you think the Redbacks are concerned with plain human police in any country, Insoli?”
She had a valid point there. I couldn’t fight. I couldn’t run. I couldn’t even dazzle the Redbacks with my nakedness and go for my gun, lying enticingly in the center of the kitchen table. I’d tangled with Dmitri. I knew how fast and unforgiving his brethren would be.
“Do you have anything to say?” asked Sergei, letting me know with a raised bushy eyebrow that I wasn’t really expected to speak, and in fact it would be better if I just shut up and left them to their dismembering.
If there’s one thing I have, it’s a survival instinct, which I think must be a Serpent Eye thing, because when I can’t see a way out I get the craziest ideas, like the one that sprang to mind right then.
“I’ll cure him.”
Irina stopped her slow pace back and forth and stared at me. “What?”
I swallowed and spoke in my License-and-Registration Voice. “I’ll cure Dmitri of the daemon blood. You just have to give me a little time.”
Yelena stopped circling, cocking her head. “Why are you so confident you will do this? We have not been able to. We are his pack. You are just a wolf snarling in the gutter for scraps.”
“No offense, lady,” I said, not having to fake the steel in my tone. Cracks about being Insoli always make me cranky. “But maybe that’s why nothing has worked. You’ve got your traditions and you can chant and shake sage sticks at him until the cows jump over the moon, but nothing human or were can cure daemon illness.”
Sergei regarded me, stroking his chin, and I