"Luna," Dmitri called. He and the gypsy cab's driver had reached an accord. "He says he'll take us to the local motel," said Dmitri. "The family who owns it might know something about Masha."

"What's here?" I asked the cab driver. "Besides nothing, I mean."

"Farmers," he said, his accent thick. "A tire factory."

"How quaint," I muttered. "I wonder if I can find a spot to shop for authentic handicrafts."

The driver knew more English than his accent let on, and he gave a snort, glaring at me in the rearview mirror. We rode the rest of the way to the motel in silence.

More respectable than I expected, the motel was a long low bunker-style abode with a sign bolted to the side and light-up neon letters in the window of the first unit that I assumed meant vacancy.

I shouldered the laptop and my backpack and stepped into the office, triggering a bell. A moment later a woman in a headscarf and a cardigan came rushing from the back room, a huge grin on her face.

"Yes?" she said, clapping her hands together. I just stared-she looked like she was out of an old comedy sketch. Her face was a network of burst veins, her nose was knobby, and the whole image was of someone's kindly grandmother welcoming you to the mother country.

"I..." I composed myself and returned her smile. "I need a room."

"Yes?" she said. Perfect. She was the kindly grandmother who doesn't understand a damn thing you say.

"Dmitri!" I hollered.

He came in, doing the same double-take I did when he laid eyes on the motel owner. He told her we needed a room, with his best charming smile.

"Two beds," I hastened to add. Dmitri paid in cash and exchanged more chatter with the woman in Russian.

"She says there's nothing here except the tire factory," he said. "Nowhere disreputable."

"Disreputable?"

"Hey, that's how she put it," he said. "Come on, she gave us the quiet room, away from the road."

"Yeah," I said. "Thank the gods we'll be away from the constant din of passing donkey trucks."

"Hey, this place is a lot like where Olya and I grew up," Dmitri said as he unlocked our room. "Don't knock it."

"I can see why you got out," I said.

"We didn't have a choice," he said. "My father was killed in a factory accident and my mother sent us to live with the pack elders in Kiev. After that, you know the whole sordid story."

I flicked on the lights and sighed when I saw a single queen bed made up with a spread in a shade of bilious green that I'm fairly sure the FDA had outlawed as a fire hazard in America.

"Dammit, two two beds," I said. "What's wrong with that old woman?" beds," I said. "What's wrong with that old woman?"

"I don't know." Dmitri shrugged. "Guess she's a little hard of hearing."

I slung my bags onto the bed and flopped down. "If this is your cockeyed way of seducing me..."

"Sweetheart, if I wanted you, you wouldn't be fighting me," Dmitri said.

I sat up straight, folding my arms. "Oh, is that right, sweetheart? sweetheart? " "

Dmitri smirked. "That is correct."

"You're an asshole," I said. Dmitri smirked again, setting down his bag and moving toward me.

"Yeah, sweetheart, but I'm your kind of asshole." He pinned my legs against the mattress, leaned forward and inhaled my scent, his breath tickling my ear and behind my neck, something he'd loved to do before.

"Dmitri..." I warned. "That's far enough."

"Come on, Luna," he said. "That human can't give you what you want. I can."

"Dmitri, this isn't you," I said. I couldn't see his eyes, but the sibilant echoes in his tone were familiar. "Stop it now, before I have to hurt you."

"I want you to hurt me," he hissed. "Like you hurt me before, because then I can hurt you. I can hold you down and make you scream how sorry you are, over and over again."

The click of the Walther's hammer was the only sound in the small, stuffy motel room. I pressed it into Dmitri's temple, hard enough to leave a mark like a kiss.

"I know how much fun you're having," I said. "But I'm telling you now that you either leave Dmitri out of this game until we find his daughter or I'm going to blow holes all through your shiny new toy."

"You turn me on when you threaten me," Dmitri murmured. "Do you remember how we met? You pointing a gun at me. Begging with that body of yours to be taken down a peg or two."

"I mean it," I said. "I'm not so sentimental that I wouldn't kill a man who's basically dead already just to shut up your incessant yapping, Asmodeus."

I was was that sentimental, but Asmodeus didn't know that about me. He hadn't exactly seen my soft side. that sentimental, but Asmodeus didn't know that about me. He hadn't exactly seen my soft side.

After an interminable moment, Dmitri released me. I shoved him away and stormed out the door before he came back to himself and I had to explain what had happened, again.

Shoving the Walther into my waistband, I stomped across the parking lot toward the back of the hotel. Asmodeus had a lot of nerve screwing with me this way. I wasn't some plaything on a string that could be jerked back and forth at will.

I was around the corner, out of sight, and I dropped down on the curb, putting my head in my hands.

Biggest mistake of your life, Wilder. How could I have thought that helping Dmitri was the right thing to do? The sensible sensible thing? I could be home with Will now, safe, warm, and not trapped in a motel in Kazakhstan with my possessed ex. thing? I could be home with Will now, safe, warm, and not trapped in a motel in Kazakhstan with my possessed ex.

Crying caught my attention, from beyond the cluster of trash cans. I stood up, moving toward the sound. "Hello?"

The crying stopped abruptly, and I heard breath and a heartbeat. "Everyone okay back here?" I said, dropping my hand to my gun.

I peered over the cans and saw a pudgy girl with her knees pulled up to her chin, tears running down her reddened face. "What's up?" I asked. "You don't look too happy."

She couldn't have been more than sixteen or seventeen, hair dyed shocking purple at the tips and grown out to mousy blonde roots. I saw pink indentations where piercings had sat on her lips and nose, but no jewelry. Her dress was thin cotton and she was sporting a heavy cardigan, like the woman in the front office.

"I know you can understand me," I said. "I heard you stop crying as soon as I said something."

"I can't talk to you," she hissed. "If I talk, the missus will get me into trouble."

Her accent was thick-Scottish, I thought-and she flinched away when I crouched down beside her. "What's your name? Mine's Luna," I offered, when she didn't say anything.

"Gillian," she finally mumbled. "But the missus just calls me girl girl or some insult in languages I don't understand." or some insult in languages I don't understand."

"Where are you from, Gillian?"

"Why are you asking me all of these bloody questions?" She checked a battered watch, bright purple that matched her hair. A child's watch, something you'd buy at the mall to try to look cool.

"Because I'm looking for another girl, the daughter of a ... a friend, who also came here. If you help me, I'll make sure you get back home."

"Glasgow," she said in answer. "I met a bloke and..."

"You woke up in Kiev?" I guessed. The story was getting downright common.

"Stupid," she muttered.

"No," I said, reaching out again and putting a hand on her shoulder. "You were just trusting, like we all were. Tell me about the missus."

"She's a regular fright, isn't she?" Gillian asked. "Practically runs the village, collects money from the shopkeepers, tells the pickpockets when they can rob the tourists-not that we get many that speak English in this place. Arse-end of the world, this is."

So much for the kindly old grandmother. I should know better-kindly old grandmothers are always wolves. "Have you seen another girl?" I said. "About fourteen, red hair, speaks Ukrainian?"

"Haven't," Gillian said. "I'm just an odd hearth witch-my mother taught me the circle and a bit of casting, but that's all. But apparently over here I'm worth something." She snorted. "Figures. First time in my life I'm worth a damn and I get sold to some crusty old horror to be a servant girl. Like a bloody fairy tale."

I sighed. "Is there anyplace in town that you know of-a brothel, or a tavern, anywhere they'd need a young girl for something less than savory?"

Gillian lifted her shoulder. "Only weird thing in this place is the old laboratory complex."

Laboratory? Oh, this was going to be seven kinds of not good. "What kind of lab?"

"Dunno," Gillian said. "It's some old Soviet heap that they put up when they had control in these parts. Biohazard symbols all over the gate, padlocked and dark-spooky fucking place. I don't go near it." She gave a shiver.

"Okay," I said. Cold storage Cold storage. That could be anything, but a lab experiment was as likely as any other outlandish possibility I could come up with. "Thank you, Gillian."

"Oi," she said. "What about all of your grand promises of a rescue?"

"You're going to come with me," I said, reaching out. "You'll stay with my friend until I find Masha, and then we'll all be leaving here together."

"They took my passport in Kiev," said Gillian. "Can't leave the bloody country, can I?"

"Why don't you let me worry about that?" I said. She let me help her up and we speed-walked back to the motel room, where I unlocked the door. Dmitri jumped out of the chair where he'd been waiting, panic on his face.

"Luna, I..."

I held up a hand. "Save it. This is Gillian. She's another one of the Belikovs' pieces of merchandise. She's going to be staying with you."

"With me?" Dmitri folded his arms. "What about Masha?"

"Dmitri," I said, gesturing Gillian to sit on the bed. "After what just happened, do you really think you're fit to be out walking around? Stay here, look after Gillian and I'll be back with Masha soon."

I grabbed my bag and left again before he could object. I was sick of him calling the shots, sick of being pushed around by Asmodeus, sick of Eastern Europe and the whole sordid mess.

I was tired. Too tired to keep marching. I just wanted to turn around and go home. But Masha was still missing, and she was still my responsibility because I'd said I'd help her.

Making promises to victims was something I thought I'd gotten better at, and yet here I was, walking deeper into the nightmare because I was the only one who would go in after her.

CHAPTER 21.

The walk to the lab was long and hot, and my tank top was soaked through with sweat by the time I crested the hill outside of the village and looked down into the valley.

The complex wasn't much to look at-three buildings connected by walkways, the entire thing enclosed with barbed-wire fences and warning signs in Russian, bearing the old symbol of the USSR.

It was, as Gillian had said, padlocked and spooky. I shaded my eyes and looked at the road leading in and out. The earth was cracked and dry from lack of rain, and fresh tire tracks were pressed into the roadbed.

Maybe not so abandoned after all. I stopped to take a swig from the water bottle I'd bought at Stop 13 and started down the track. Sometimes the direct approach is best. I dumped a little more of the water down the front of my tank and into my hair to simulate sweat-drenched agony, and walked to the gate.

"Hello?" I called, rattling the mesh. "Hello, is anyone here?"

A long wait passed me by, and I began to think I was wrong, that Masha had been delivered somewhere else and I was a crazy person shouting at an empty lab complex.

Then a buzzer sounded, and the gate rolled back. I stepped inside and started as it shut behind me with a clang.

"Walk to the nearest building," a disembodied voice screeched from a PA speaker. "The yellow door. Push it open and step inside. Do not deviate from my instructions."

"I'm a little lost..." I said, keeping up my innocent tourist act. "Can you help me?"

"Walk," the voice ordered sharply. "The yellow door."

So they had eyes on me. I walked, taking in my surroundings as I did in case I had to make an escape later. The buildings were rubbed clean of insignia by wind and rain and everything had that hunkered-down weathered look of old, abandoned places. It was a simple foursquare complex connected by walkways above my head with a central yard made of concrete.

The yellow door led me into a dark room, a desk, achair and a security grate all I caught before it slammed shut behind me and left me in total darkness, the kind even my eyes couldn't penetrate.

"Hello?" I said again, not needing to fake the tense tone in my voice. "Are you still there?"

There was a buzz and a parade of fluorescent bulbs flickered on, illuminating the holding cage I was in as well as a long gray hallway beyond, accented with pea-green linoleum. Soviet aesthetic at its finest.

"Okay," I said. "I'm no longer amused by this. Either show yourself or I'm leaving."

"You can't leave."

The voice wasn't disembodied, and without the distortion of the PA it was very, very familiar.

Grigorii Belikov stepped from the shadows at the far end of the hallway and paced toward me, his suit navy blue with a lighter pinstripe today, his smirk growing. He had a bandage over his nose, but I gained some small satisfaction from the purple bruise on his face.

"Oh," I said. "Watch me." I turned around and made for the door, which declined to yield under my weight. I gave it a kick, full power, and barely managed to dent it.

"This was once a lab that engineered biological weapons," said Grigorii. "Those doors are meant to keep you in if there is an outbreak." He extended his hand. "Tell me where my records are and I'll let you go, Joanne."