by Helen Harper
Devereau winced. Even from this distance it looked as if the runaway had twisted his ankle badly. He waited another beat – and then he leapt after his prey.
Morty cried out but he was only wasting energy. Devereau’s paws thundered across the uneven ground, his four-footed gait giving him greater speed and stability. In seconds he’d reached him. That was too fast – he wanted to play a little with his food.
Morty tried to scramble to his feet as Devereau circled him. Every time he tried to push forward and get away, Devereau lunged at him, his jaws snapping. Once. Twice. Three times. When biting at air grew dull, he allowed his canines to scrape Morty’s skin. It wasn’t even enough to draw blood but it still caused the frightened wee shite to screech, ‘No! No! Please!’
There was something oddly pleasing about the tremor in his voice. Fear was quite an aphrodisiac, Devereau decided. He growled in satisfaction and nipped him again. This time he was rewarded with a howl.
‘I’m sorry, alright? I’m sorry! I was only doing what I was told to! I shouldn’t have gone to your house. I shouldn’t have tried to shoot you or that kid. I won’t do it again.’ Morty fell forward onto his hands and knees, his fingers digging into the wet dirt. The salty scent of tears filled the air around him. ‘Please. I can help you. I’ll tell you everything I know. I told you about the tracker in the kid’s body but I can tell you a whole lot more. I know it all. I know everything! I’ll talk. I’ll talk. I’ll talk!’ His words ran together, his breath ragged and his tone a high-pitched whine.
Devereau narrowed his eyes and then, with considerable effort, transformed himself again. ‘I thought you’d never offer,’ he said. He folded his arms across his bare chest, ignoring the fact that he was now stark bollock naked. ‘So talk.’
Chapter Nineteen
They returned to the car. Devereau pulled on the pair of trousers and fresh shirt that Dr Yara had packed and left in the boot for him while the pathetic excuse for a gunman waited miserably. Devereau was rather hoping he’d attempt to run off again. He’d never quite appreciated the joy of the chase before now. Sadly, Morty simply perched on the car bonnet until Devereau was ready. Oh well. You couldn’t have everything.
‘Begin.’
Morty wrapped his arms round himself like a small child. It was an odd look for such a muscle-bound adult. ‘I’ve been working for a company called Matelot for about twelve months. They’re the ones who sent me to your place. I only got the job because my old sergeant put in a good word for me. At first I thought it was going to be a normal security gig.’ He dropped his head. ‘I was wrong.’
‘Aw, diddums,’ Devereau said. ‘Didn’t you get a job description first?’
‘It’s not my fucking fault! I needed the money!’
‘I bet they pay you pretty well. It would have to be good money to be prepared to put bullets in the skull of a twelve-year-old girl.’
Morty’s bottom lip jutted out. ‘If she’d done what she was told, she’d have been fine. It’s her fault things ended up this way.’
Unbelievable. Devereau had heard some outlandish examples of victim blaming in his time, but this took the damned biscuit. But he couldn’t afford to lose his temper and smack the guy in the head again, so he folded his arms and ignored the stabbing pain between his shoulder blades. ‘Let’s stick to the subject, shall we?’ he said grimly. ‘Continue.’
Morty swallowed. ‘Don’t pretend like you’re some kind of saint. I know who you are. I know what you’ve done.’
There was nothing in Devereau’s past that compared to this bastard’s deeds but he managed not to rise to the bait. ‘I’m not the one in danger of getting my flesh ripped to pieces. Keep talking.’
There was an audible sigh. ‘Fine. At first I was just helping with the regular shipments, nothing out of the ordinary. Containers came in, usually filled with shite like cheap T-shirts and cuddly toys, and I made sure the contents got to the right places for the right prices.’
Fair enough – except there weren’t any mass-produced teddy bears anywhere in the world that needed armed guards to protect them. ‘Drugs?’ Devereau asked.
‘Yeah. MDMA, heroin, that kind of thing. If Matelot had continued along those lines everything would have been fine, but they decided they wanted to diversify and make more money.’
‘Sure,’ Devereau said sarcastically. ‘Because throwing addictive shite out onto the streets is a real community service kind of thing.’
He received a baleful glance. ‘Do you want to hear this or not?’
‘Go on, then. Tell me about Matelot. Who’s in charge?’
Morty shrugged. ‘I have no clue.’
With deliberately casual movements, Devereau unfolded his arms. He reached forward, grabbed the man’s ear and twisted it hard.
‘Ow! Fuck off! If I tell you, he’ll kill me!’
‘If you don’t tell me, I’ll eat you. It’s quite the conundrum,’ Devereau said easily. ‘If I were you, I’d focus on the more immediate threat. Who’s your boss? Who runs Matelot?’
Morty was pale and shaking. Devereau reached for his ear again and he flailed backwards. His words came out in a rush. ‘Alright! Alright! It’s a man called Dominic Phillips. He runs Matelot.’
‘Dominic Phillips?’ The man nodded. ‘Dom, for short? About six feet tall? Dark hair?’ Enjoys wearing masks and prancing around on a stage?
The response was surly. ‘That’s him.’
‘What’s he like?’
‘He’s a sadist. Thinks very highly of himself. Went to some posh school with a special tie that he still wears when he wants to show off. He knows a lot of people in high places and seems to think that makes him better than everyone else.’
‘You don’t like him.’
‘I don’t like rich boys who think they’re better than I am.’
‘But,’ Devereau murmured, ‘you don’t mind working for them.’
‘I told you, I needed the fucking money.’ Morty sighed dramatically as if he were nothing more than a poor innocent who’d been pulled, protesting, into a life of crime. ‘Besides, things weren’t that bad until Germany. Dom was born with a silver spoon in his mouth but he’s still a smart guy with a lot of power. There are advantages to working for someone like that. Until Germany, I was enjoying it but that was when the shit really hit the fan.’
Devereau eyed him. ‘What happened in Germany?’
‘We were in Berlin about eight months ago. There was some kind of big deal going down. I was there with a few others. We were supposed to keep our mouths shut and just look menacing. I was packing heat, of course, but we weren’t expecting much to happen.’
Packing heat? This idiot seemed to think he was an American gangster in a film with more car chases than sensible dialogue. Devereau had encountered plenty of halfwits like this before; even so, his faith in humanity sank every time he met another one.
‘Anyway, Dom wasn’t happy with the product. He weighed it and said he was being short changed – he pulled that sort of crap all the time. More often than not it worked and the other guys would toss in an extra bag to show they could be trusted. This time, instead of backing down, they attacked.’ Morty shook his head. ‘I’d never seen anything like it. There were only three of them but they moved faster than lightning. I got off a few shots. If those guys had been normal they’d have been dead on the floor, and we’d have had the drugs and the money. Instead, we barely made it out of there alive.’
‘Let me guess,’ Devereau said, ‘they were supes.’
‘Two of them were. The other guy must have been human. He stood and watched them almost annihilate us. I don’t know what happened after that except that there were a lot of mysterious meetings. Three weeks later we were told that we were going to start dealing in a different product.’
Devereau gave him a sickened look. ‘People, you mean.’
‘Monsters,’ Morty corrected. ‘Not people.’
Devereau shook his head in disgust. So Dominic Phill
ips had realised that Matelot, whether they had guns with them or not, couldn’t match up against supernatural creatures. The only way to compete was to match the strength of their competitors. He probably couldn’t get hold of any supes who would willingly work for him so he went a different route – one that was far, far worse.
‘We found out where the Germans were hiding and took them on.’ There was a nauseating pride in Morty’s voice. ‘We were on them long before they knew what was happening, and we had orders to incapacitate rather than kill them. In the end there were only four of them – two humans, one vamp, one werewolf. Once Dom had established what they were, the humans were killed and the supes were taken. I don’t know where to, but six weeks later we suddenly had some vampires and werewolves of our own. And when other people saw how much power we had, they wanted it for themselves. It turns out dealing in power is a lot more lucrative than dealing in dope.’ He grimaced slightly. ‘There’s a bit of a catch, though. It’s not always easy finding people who are willing to be turned into monsters.’
‘So,’ Devereau said, his voice dangerously quiet, ‘you started to force people.’
‘Not me.’ Morty held up his hands. ‘That wasn’t my job. I wouldn’t do that!’
‘Yeah. You’re a real saint.’
‘I don’t know where Dom got the people from, alright? Not from this country. You don’t shit where you eat, do you? Besides, we knew that if the supes here cottoned on to what we were doing, there’d be trouble.’ He pulled a face. ‘Nobody wanted to go up against Lord Horvath and the wolf clans.’
‘You’re a despicable excuse for a human being,’ Devereau said. He lowered his face to the man’s, his features twisted into a snarl. ‘So instead of shipping illegal drugs, Matelot started bringing in illegal supes. You are trafficking people.’
‘We’re probably doing them a favour! They’ve got better lives now than they had before!’
Devereau’s hands clenched into fists. He doubted that very much.
‘They get sold to rich pricks who use them for protection or intimidation or whatever weird shit they happen to be into at the time.’ Morty’s desperate attempts to justify what Matelot were up to were disgusting. ‘It’s not a bad gig.’
Devereau thought about the glazed look in the eyes of the vamp and wolf he’d seen at the auction. ‘Except the people you’re talking about are controlled through drugs, manipulation and threats to their families. Am I right?’
‘I wouldn’t know about any of that!’
Devereau hissed quietly. ‘And the girl? What about her? How did she get involved?’
Morty’s gaze dropped. ‘Her father worked with Matelot. What happened was his own fault. Word was he was skimming off the top and thought nobody would notice. Dom found out and decided to make sure that nobody tried anything like that again.’
Something hardened inside Devereau. ‘I bet I can guess. Dominic Phillips nabbed his daughter and forced her to become a wolf.’
‘Yeah. He thought he could kill two birds with one stone. Turn someone that young and have more control over them in the future. He could make that kid his own creature and get his revenge on her father at the same time. Except it went wrong.’
No wonder Martina had refused to say a word about who she was or what had happened to her: she thought she would be putting her father in danger. Devereau had a feeling he knew what had happened but he asked anyway. ‘How? How did it go wrong?’
‘The kid’s father wasn’t happy and he started to cause more problems. And the kid wasn’t as compliant as Dom thought she would be, so he decided to give her a bit of a nudge. Prove to her that there would be consequences if she didn’t do what they wanted. He had her dad roughed up while she was forced to watch. Dom said he’d kill him if she ever revealed who or what she was. He made it clear that she had to do everything they told her to, then he smacked her around a bit too so the orders really sank in.’
Morty looked at Devereau and finally registered the ice-cold fury reflecting back at him. ‘But I didn’t hurt her! It was Dom, not me. None of this is my fault!’
‘Yeah,’ Devereau said sarcastically. Images of all the different ways he could kill this bastard and get away with it flashed through his mind. ‘You’re truly a blameless innocent.’ He shook his head in disgust. ‘So I assume this little show took place at Goodman’s Alley. That’s why there were three different types of spilled blood but only two bodies. The girl was supposed to be under control but instead she flipped, transformed and killed two men. The rest of the blood belonged to her father.’ Devereau paused. ‘Is he still alive?’
‘When his kid went nuts, he managed to escape. So did Dom, me and a couple of others.’
Martina’s dad ran away from his daughter instead of trying to help her. Devereau’s opinion of him wasn’t improving – but that was nothing compared to what he thought of Dominic Phillips. ‘So you don’t know where he is now?’
Morty’s eyes shifted. ‘Dom has him.’
Pain jabbed between Devereau’s shoulders. No doubt the sadistic bastard was holding Martina’s father as leverage against her. No matter where Martina was, Dom could use her father to stop her from talking. He breathed in deeply. Manipulating a child in this manner was beyond the fucking pale.
But something didn’t quite add up.
‘Why Goodman’s Alley?’ Devereau asked. He knew Dom had a perfectly serviceable warehouse where anything untoward would go unnoticed. Goodman’s Alley was in a heavily populated area of the city; it didn’t make sense to go to a place where they could be both seen and heard. ‘Why go to that house?’
‘The secretary.’
Devereau stared. ‘You mean David Bernard’s secretary.’ He thought about the information he’d gleaned from Supe Squad. ‘Is her name Marsha Kennard?’
Morty looked at him suspiciously. ‘You’re very well informed. David Bernard did a bunch of legal stuff for Matelot. He wanted to get involved with some of the more unsavoury shite but he was worried about his secretary. She didn’t approve of Matelot and started to complain. She said that she’d contact the police if he didn’t drop Matelot as a client. Dom took the kid to her house on Goodman’s Alley to force her to toe the line and make her do as she was told. Either Dom was going to kill her father, or the kid was going to kill the secretary.’
Nausea rose up from Devereau’s gullet. He swallowed back the bitter bile. ‘Is she dead? Is Marsha Kennard dead?’
‘Nah.’ The man shrugged. ‘She escaped when the kid freaked. I don’t know where she went. Nobody does.’
So that’s who the macabre, bloodied message had been for at Bernard’s office building. The secretary had run away from Goodman’s Alley and was now in hiding, while Matelot were deep into damage limitation and desperate to keep their activities secret. The only way they could do that was by tracking down and eliminating everyone involved. The dead security guard and the devastation at Marsha Kennard’s office was a result of Dominic Phillips’ attempts to intimidate her.
Devereau shook his head. The lengths to which some bastards would go in order to make money were horrifying. He might be no angel but he had nothing on these fuckers.
All the pieces were starting to slide together. Dominic Phillips, and by extension Matelot, had turned Martina into a werewolf because they thought they could use her as some kind of weapon. When Martina lost control of her wolf, however, they realised that she was more of a liability than an asset. Dom, despite his masks and posh ties and extensive contacts, must have been shitting himself. If the clans and the vamps found out what his company was up to, all bets were off. That was why he’d ordered his men to locate Martina via her tracker and kill her.
Now all Devereau had to do to restore peace to the world was to get hold of Marsha Kennard and rescue Martina’s dad. Once that happened Matelot, whoever the fuck they thought they were, were finished. And Dominic Phillips wouldn’t last another night. ‘Where is he?’ he growled. ‘Where can I find Phillips?’
/>
‘There’s a warehouse down by the river. He usually hangs out there.’ Morty’s eyes dropped. ‘You’re turning furry again.’ He sounded scared.
Devereau slowly raised his hand and inspected the claws emerging from beneath his fingernails then he leaned across and raked one across the man’s cheek. ‘Where else? Where does Dominic Phillips live?’
‘I … I don’t know! I only know the main warehouse! I can give you directions. It’s not that far. I don’t know any other places!’
Devereau watched him through slitted eyes. Morty was too frightened to be doing anything other than telling the truth. Shame.
‘You’re not going to win against them, you know,’ Morty continued shakily. ‘You might think Matelot is a two-bit organisation that’s got bigger ambition than capability, and you might think they’re already on the ropes. Hell,’ he shrugged, ‘if you’re lucky, you might bring down the company. But you’re never going to beat Dom. I might not like the guy much but he’s a lot stronger and a lot smarter than anyone else. He’s got contingency plans upon contingency plans, and he’s more ruthless than you can imagine.’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ Devereau said. Whatever. It might be a cliché but the bigger they were, the fucking harder they fell. And he was going to enjoy making Dominic Phillips – and anyone else who worked for his bastard company – fall from the greatest height possible.
‘For example,’ the man continued, ‘every building under Matelot’s control here and in Europe is prepped for infiltration. If there’s a whisper that any place might be compromised, they’re rigged to go boom. The kind of person who thinks of that sort of detail is the kind of bloke who’s thought of everything.’
Devereau’s head whipped towards him. ‘What did you say?’
Despite his continuing terror, there was a faint mocking curl to Morty’s mouth. ‘Dominic Phillips thinks of everything. Everything. And he has balls of steel. He’d probably take out all of Soho, Lisson Grove and every vamp and wolf there if he thought he could get away with it.’ He laughed. ‘And the rest of the country would probably cheer him on.’