Taine remembered the café woman’s warning. “La velue,” he said.
The butcher froze, his face suddenly pale.
His wife covered her mouth. “Mon Dieu,” she gasped through her fingers. “La velue.”
The butcher stepped forward and Taine prepared himself for the onslaught. Instead, Lompech took the child by the shoulders, burying the boy’s face in his chest and holding him fast. He glanced at the boy’s foot then nodded at Taine.
Taine didn’t wait. He dropped the cleaver, hard, severing the foot below the ankle.
The cleaved appendage flew off the block. It smacked the worn stone slabs. Hairy white maggots slithered out, crawling down the drain the butcher used to sluice the area after a kill. In seconds, all that remained of the foot was the shrivelled flap of skin.
Mercifully, the boy had fainted. Cradling the child’s head, Lompech’s wife ran her fingers over the boy’s hair, crooning quietly, while her husband staunched the bleeding stump with his butcher’s apron.
Taine had to give the man his due. The butcher hadn’t cared for the risk to himself. Hadn’t hesitated to place his mitt over the oozing stump. Taine supposed butchers were less squeamish than most. Or perhaps Lompech thought if anything still infected the boy, his meshed glove would protect him.
Taine switched on the gas and heated the cleaver over the flame.
When it was white-hot, Lompech raised his hands to reveal the boy’s grizzled stump. The wife held her breath. Taine laid the flattened blade against the wound, cauterising it, the scent of seared meat filling the air. Unconscious, the boy flinched. Taine stifled nausea as the stench filled his nostrils. They’d done what they could. Breathing heavily through his mouth, Taine slumped against a bench while the butcher wrapped the wound in muslin.
Out the front, the door rattled. “Taine!”
Jules.
“I’m in here.”
Five grim-faced gendarmes crowded the tiny back room, FAMAS F1 series assault rifles aimed at Taine.
“À terre! Mettez-vous à terre! On the ground!” the leader screeched.
Taine raised his arms.
The office was dark with polished wood-panel décor and two French flags arranged in a patriotic V. There were three men in the room: the butcher, the mayor Godefroi, and a third man dressed in black and blue combat gear, who was leaning casually against a wall, yet to introduce himself.
The mayor was nervous. Almost effeminate, Godefroi’s slight frame reminded Taine of his corporal Coolie – former corporal – although the resemblance stopped there. The man had none of Coolie’s calm, none of his finesse. Taine and Jules had been in his office less than five minutes, and already he’d knocked a stack of papers off the corner of the antique desk. Now he was pacing the room, and pulling at his tie. He still hadn’t said anything.
“Am I under arrest?” Taine asked.
Godefroi stepped over the fallen files and stopped in front of them. “Well, that depends…” the mayor said in heavily-accented English. The room was air conditioned, but sweat beaded on his brow.
“Look, I was just trying to save the kid’s life,” Taine replied, his hand tightening on the scrolled armrest of the tiny divan he shared with Jules.
“By amputating his foot? Benoit will be a cripple for all of his life.”
“He’s alive, isn’t he? Surely, that has to count for something!” Jules protested.
“You weren’t there, sir,” said Taine, keeping his voice even. “We’d just seen a woman die in the street, and then there was something growing in the boy’s foot. Maggots, but not maggots. Ask Lompech. He saw them.”
The mayor’s eyes darted to the other men in the room.
Jules leaned forward. “The woman, before she died, she mentioned something, she said: la velue?”
Lompech spoke sharply to Godefroi in French. The mayor replied and a heated conversation began.
Straightening, the third man raised his hand and the pair ceased their bickering.
“You are Sergeant McKenna of the New Zealand Defence Force, yes?”
“You know me?”
He waved his raised hand. “I looked you up. Made a few calls. I am Lieutenant Alan Alcouffe.”
“Lieutenant? So those were your guys pointing bullpup assault rifles at me earlier?”
Alcouffe shrugged. “Yes, we are armed. The gendarmerie départmentale is a division of the French military.”
“Why am I being held?” Taine asked. Arnold wasn’t going to like this. Out of sight and out of mind, the major had said.
“Because we need your help.”
Taine shook his head. “Sorry, I’m off duty.”
Alcouffe folded his arms across his chest. “Sergeant McKenna,” he began, while Godefroi translated for Lompech, “what we require won’t take long. A few days at most. You do not have to help us, but you should know that we have the right to detain any person suspected of terrorism for up to 96 hours...” His let his voice trail off.
“Terrorism!” Jules said. “But that’s crazy. We’re not terrorists.”
Taine took her hand. “I’m listening,” he said. The last thing they needed was be labelled as terrorists.
Alcouffe smiled. “The woman you saw die in the street today,” he continued, “the thing that killed her was not… human.”
Jules’ nostrils flared. “We’re well aware of that!”
“And what do you think it was, Dr Asher?” Alcouffe said. “In your professional opinion?”
Taine frowned. So Alcouffe had checked out Jules’ biology credentials, too.
“It was some sort of parasite,” Jules was saying. “Like a wasp larvae or a flatworm, although I’ve never seen this particular organism before. Its use of a… um… human substrate might have been accidental, though. Tetanus is like that – normally a soil bacteria, but if gets into the human body by accident, say via a rusty nail, it can be fatal.”
“Jules,” Taine said softly. “This wasn’t an accident. The parasite got in by injection. It was deliberate.”
“Then, what are they trying to imply? That you and I injected that poor woman with the parasite? The boy, too? But that doesn’t make any sense. Why would we have helped them if we wanted them dead? And more to the point, what possible reason could we have for wanting them dead?”
“We know it wasn’t you who killed her,” Godefroi said.
“Good! Then we should be free to go,” Jules said.
Alcouffe sighed. “Sergeant McKenna is correct when he says the killing was deliberate. But you are correct, too, Dr Asher, which is why we also need your help.”
Godefroi nudged Lompech. The butcher stepped forward, holding a stainless steel meat dish containing the remains of Benoit’s foot, including the tiny needle.
Alcouffe went on. “The woman was attacked by a peluda, a rare animal capable of shooting lethal quills. Village records show it’s not the first time the animal has appeared in the village. It came from the Huisine River—”
Jules dragged her gaze from the shrivelled flap of skin. “Hang on, hang on, back up a bit. Peluda. Is that what la velue means? You can’t be serious. Isn’t that like a Greek manticore?”
Alcouffe nodded. “Something like that,” he said slowly.
Tugging at the hem of his jacket, Godefroi took a deep breath. “The peluda is a dragon, Mademoiselle Asher. It has appeared before, the last time killing seventeen villagers, including two children. We can’t let it happen again.”
“But it’s a cryptid.”
Taine arched a brow. She was speaking English and still he didn’t understand.
“A cryptid is a myth,” Jules explained. “A creature whose existence is based on anecdotal evidence. Bigfoot. Chupacabra. The Loch Ness monster. There’s no hard evidence these creatures actually exist.” She turned to the others. “Surely, you can’t believe—”