High Moor 2: Moonstruck (19 page)

13th December 2008
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Olivia’s House, Bear Park. 09.42.

Phil raced through the traffic, the siren on his commandeered squad car howling. He’d left the headquarters the instant he’d heard that Olivia had been attacked in her home. The first responders would only be arriving at the scene now, and Phil dreaded what they might find. He just prayed that Olivia was alright. Despite her smart, sarcastic mouth, Olivia was one of the most sincere, intelligent and compassionate people that he’d ever met. If anything had happened to her, then he honestly didn’t know how he would react.

The road outside her house was cordoned off, with two uniformed officers turning the complaining motorists away. The ambulance hadn’t even arrived yet. The only ones in attendance so far were the armed response vehicle and a traffic car. Phil parked on the pavement, just outside the cordon and, ignoring the two traffic officers, marched straight toward the house.

One of the traffic constables stepped into his path. “I’m sorry, sir, but Sergeant Grey and his team have only just gone inside. They need to sweep the property before anyone else goes in.”

Phil’s face reddened and the vein in his temple began to pulse. “Officer, if you don’t get out of my fucking way then I won’t be held responsible for my actions. I hear there’s a post coming up in the Wildlife Liaison Office.”

Phil didn’t wait for a response and pushed past the traffic officer. As he approached the front door, Paul Patterson, one of Rick’s men, stumbled out of the front door and vomited. He looked up at Phil with wide, staring, tear−filled eyes. “No, Phil. Don’t go in there. You don’t want to see…to see THAT.” Paul’s complexion turned from white to a light shade of green, and he doubled over once more. Phil’s heart sank as he stepped past Paul, into the hallway.

The downstairs appeared normal, with no obvious sign of a disturbance. The living room was littered with empty beer cans and pizza boxes, and Olivia’s coat hung over one of the stools in the kitchen. The floorboards upstairs creaked so Phil ascended the staircase, to find Rick Grey and Mark Briggs standing in the corridor. Rick had his arms and forehead pressed against the wall, and both men wept openly, and neither of them so much as looked up when he got to the top of the stairs. “Rick? Mark? What happened? Where’s Olivia?”

Rick didn’t look up, but motioned towards an open door with one arm. “The…the bedroom. She’s in the bedroom.”

Phil’s stomach flip−flopped as a wave of grief and exhaustion washed over him. The reaction of Rick’s team had confirmed the worst. He knew that Olivia had been murdered, and that she’d not died a clean death. He didn’t want to see the body. He didn’t want his memory of the pretty, funny young woman to be tainted by the manner of her death. Phil didn’t want to see, but he knew that he had to. He had to see what had happened to his friend with his own eyes. Have it burned onto his soul like a brand so that he would never relax in his pursuit of her killer. He stepped past Rick, trying hard to conceal his shaking legs that suddenly lacked the strength to walk. His heart pounded in his chest and he paused just outside of the room for a moment, to steel his resolve. He took a deep breath, held it, then stepped through the doorway into a slaughterhouse.

The room was covered in blood. Entrails hung from the lampshade, dripping sticky globules of crimson onto the gore−soaked bed. Propped up on the pillow, were the severed heads of Olivia and Matt, facing each other as if for one last kiss. The worst horror, however, lay alongside the grotesque tableau. What remained of Olivia’s corpse lay slumped against the bedside cabinet. Her slender neck was reduced to a tattered mess of ragged flesh and shattered bones, while her stomach gaped open, its precious cargo torn out. It was then that he noticed a tiny, severed hand on the floor beside the corpse and Phil could take no more. He stumbled from the room and bent over, with his hands flat against his legs as he tried to contain the surge of emotions that flooded through him. The abject horror of the scene in that bedroom, the overwhelming grief at the loss of a close friend and a small, cold, kernel of rage deep within his chest.

Rick managed to compose himself sufficiently to put a hand on Phil’s shoulder and guide him away from the door. Phil shook him off. “No. Not yet. I need to see it one more time. I never want to forget a single detail of what’s in that room.”

“Phil, when you find the fucker, I want in. The sick fuck that did this isn’t going to spend the rest of their lives in a prison cell. Do you understand me?”

Phil moved back into the doorway and looked at the charnel house one more time, letting the details sear themselves onto his mind. Grief crushed his heart, sending sharp flares of anguish through his chest with every laboured beat. Despite the scene before him, it still hadn’t sunk in that Olivia was dead. He forced himself to focus on her severed head, mouth and eyes fixed open in a soundless scream. Was she still alive when her child was ripped from her? Yes, Phil thought that she almost certainly had been. She hadn’t just been murdered. She’d been made to suffer in the most appalling manner first. The coal of rage flared brighter. He turned away from the room and looked Rick straight in the eye. “Get in fucking line.”

***

13th December 2008
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Nauchnnyy proyezd, Moscow. 13.03.

“Have you lost your fucking mind?”

Michael’s hand gripped the telephone so hard that the plastic groaned under the strain.

Connie’s indignant voice crackled over the speaker. “What do ye mean? Ah did what ye asked. Ah took care of one copper and got the names of the others. Ah’ll take care of them next.”

Michael tried to steady his breathing, in an attempt to calm himself down. It didn’t work. “What I told you to do, was take care of them quickly and quietly. How the fuck does tearing a family apart in their own home, and worse, letting them get a call off to the police, constitute quietly? Do you realise that your name and fucking photograph are plastered all over the internet?”

Connie’s tone lost some of its arrogance as the amount of trouble she was in began to register. “Well, what would ye have had me do?”

“For Christ’s sake, Connie. You should have made it look like an accident. You’ve been working on field teams long enough to know that. We leave no fucking trace, not go on a public killing spree in the middle of a crisis.” He paused as he considered his next words. “I want you out of the country. Tonight.”

The voice on the other end of the phone acquired a whiney edge. “But, the job’s not done yet, and there’s still that fucker Wilkinson.”

“Are you not hearing me? The job’s over as far as I’m concerned. The whole point of taking out those police was to prevent exactly this from happening. They’re putting as much effort into finding you as they are Simpson. Maybe even more.”

“How am ah supposed to get out of the country? They’ll be checking all the ports.”

“You know how, Connie. You’ll have to do a tunnel−run.”

Connie was silent for a moment before responding. “Please, ye can’t be serious. The last time anyone tried that they got cut in half by a freight train.”

“Do I sound like I’m fucking joking? I’m pulling a team out of Germany to meet you on the other side. They’ll escort you back to Moscow.”

“But what about Wilkinson? We’ve been after him for years. We can’t just let him get away again, especially now he’s turned.”

“He’s not your problem, Connie. Let me be very clear about this. You will leave the UK tonight. If you do not do this, then I’ll have to consider you as having gone rogue, and will take the necessary steps to prevent you causing more harm. Do you fucking understand me?”

“Yes, Michael. Ah understand.”

“Good, now get moving. The sound of your voice is getting on my fucking nerves. Gregorz, are you there? What the hell happened with the Simpson hit?”

“We tracked Simpson, but as we moved in, Marie attacked us. It seems she found the tactical kit in Connie’s car and made some modifications to the ammunition. By the time we recovered, she’d made it out of the woods, into a public place. It seemed prudent to back off and await a better opportunity.”

Michael shook his head, not wanting to believe what he was hearing. “Marie? I…I can’t believe that she’d do something like that.”

“Well, not only did she come looking for Simpson, but she reduced the amount of powder in each cartridge to slow the rounds down. Daniel is still cutting pieces of silver out of himself. She came prepared to take us on, Michael. She knew exactly what she was doing.”

“Do you know where they are now?”

“Fortunately, Connie’s mobile telephone is still in the car. Daniel was able to track it. They are still moving, heading north. Assuming the battery on the phone lasts, we should be able to find where they go to ground. “

“That’s something at least. Find out where they are heading, and keep an eye on them, but from a distance. Don’t engage until I give the order.”

“Michael, I think it would be a mistake to wait. Marie is resourceful and well trained. It’s sheer luck that we were able to track her at all. If she realises that they’ve been found, she’ll simply disappear again. Once we find them, we should move immediately.”

“No. When you find them, you keep them under observation until I arrive.”

“You are coming here? Michael, are you sure that…”

“I don’t believe that I asked for your opinion, Gregorz. Now, what about Troy and Gabriela’s bodies? Did Oskar at least manage to do what he was supposed to?”

“Yes, he simply walked into the hospital and amended the paperwork to show the bodies as being for disposal. They were incinerated first thing this morning.”

“Good. At least something went right. Report back to me when you find where my sister is hiding out. I’ll be there with another team in a few days.”

Michael didn’t wait for Gregorz to respond and terminated the call. He leaned back in the leather office chair and massaged his temples. “Marie, you stupid fucking cow. What have you done?”

He had no idea how to put this right. Marie had gone too far, and there was nothing he could do to save her. The law was clear. The penalty for harbouring a moonstruck is death. There really wasn’t any choice. Even if he ordered her spared, the Council would remove him as alpha, condemn him to the same fate and then send the death squads after Marie anyway. He groaned. He’d forgotten about the Council. He’d promised a report once he heard from the teams in England. He reached over to the phone and dialled Steffan’s number.

“Michael, have you news?”

“Yes, bring the car around to the front. It’s time for me to talk to the Council.”

***

The ZiL limousine wove its way through the slow moving traffic, out of the city. The roads in Moscow were hell at the best of times, but the near−blizzard conditions that had set in a few days before made the going even slower than usual. The limo’s wipers struggled to clear the windscreen, and a pile of dirty ice had begun to accumulate at the bottom of the windscreen. Michael didn’t know whether to be grateful for the delay, or to curse it for dragging out the unpleasant task before him.

The Council had been formed hundreds of years ago, after an insane alpha wolf declared war on humanity and slaughtered entire villages before the rest of the pack decided enough was enough. They were elected from pack members and advised the alpha on crucial matters. They also held the power to remove an alpha from his position, should the need arise. In Michael’s opinion, they were nothing more than a bunch of squabbling old fools, but at the same time, he would have to watch his tongue and proceed carefully. More than one of them had objected to his appointment, believing that only the moonborn, children born to werewolf parents, should be eligible for alpha. They had nothing but disdain for turned werewolves like himself. Every single one of them was a scheming, devious bastard with their own agendas. Every one of them was also a pitiless killer. Fools they may be, but they were, nevertheless, very dangerous fools.

He looked out of the window, while Steffan drove in silence. The towering concrete blocks of flats were barely visible through the blizzard, but he felt their presence looming through the white blanket. Hundreds of people, crammed into tiny, damp apartments with little in the way of heat or sound insulation. They reminded him of the old prefabricated estate in High Moor, where he’d sometimes played as a child. The stairwells and elevators had stunk of stale urine, and once he’d spent two hours trapped in a lift with David and John before the fire brigade rescued them.

He shook his head to force the memory from his mind. David was long dead, and John soon would be. There was nothing he could do about that. He had to focus on somehow saving his sister, without condemning himself in the process.

The ZiL turned into an industrial estate in the southern part of the city. Most of the units appeared to be empty, with only the occasional warm glow of artificial light from office windows breaking up the bleak landscape. The limo passed the isolated signs of life and proceeded deeper into the industrial park until it arrived at an empty factory unit. Steffan pulled up outside, getting out of the car to pull open the chain−link gate so he could drive the big vehicle inside. In the car he turned to face Michael and put a hand on his shoulder. Michael nodded and patted his friend’s hand before opening the door and stepping out into the driving snow.

The frigid air made him gasp, so he brought his wolf up to the surface, relishing the warm glow as his body temperature began to rise. The strong wind made it difficult to pick out individual scents, but as far as he could tell, there were only five people in the building. Even with the Council members away on field duty, like Oskar, there should have been more than five of them present. Unless the Council members within wanted to keep the details of what was about to happen hidden from their peers. The thought didn’t do much to settle his nerves. He strode to a rusted, metal door, pulled it open and stepped inside.

The office had long since been emptied. Sections of carpet tile had been removed, along with virtually everything else. Even the wooden interior doors had been stolen. Such was life in Moscow these days. He left the office and proceeded down the corridor, enjoying the click of his shoes on the concrete. The others would hear him coming long before he reached the boardroom. It would show them that he was not intimidated by their summons. And if things were to go bad, then he always had the Beretta in his pocket to back him up.