It was dark by the time Marcus got back to us, and we’d all settled down in the Crediton house whilst we waited for his call to my phone. As with my previous Handler, John, Marcus preferred to live in Exeter. He’d even taken over John’s house. As a result, I tried not to visit him there too often. Too many memories.
I’d never really given a thought to my Handler’s private lives. There’d always been an unspoken rule of ask no questions and hear no lies. We were, after all, intelligence slash law enforcement operatives fighting a secret war against Magical lawbreakers and creatures determined to eat everyone. Or have sex with them whilst eating them. That memory was one which constantly came back to haunt me.
However, finding out that John’s house wasn’t actually John’s house, but was really owned by the Handlers Division was a bit of a shock and resulted in me getting off my arse and doing some research. Yeah, I know, me hitting the books.
For as long as the Guild of Esteemed Agents of the Mark has been around, there has been a Guild of Esteemed Guardians of the Agents of the Mark. Handlers as they’re now known. I think that’s as the result of modern intelligence parlance. We’re Agents, they’re our Handlers.
I digress. The Guardians were created to act as liaisons between us and the Mundanes. Smooth the way should anything unfortunate occur and help make sure that we didn’t make too much of a mess on the way. On a darker note, at one time they were also tasked with killing us should we go rogue.
Digging further on that fact, I’d even found out that they had their own teams of Handlers dedicated to carrying out the task. I couldn’t find anything recent, but that didn’t mean they weren’t still active. Usually though they used other Agents to carry out the Mark, making us police ourselves. Ingenious really, as doing so hammered home that the Merlins would never tolerate anyone going rogue; including their own Handlers, which was why I’d been forced to carry out a Mark on John, my previous Handler.
I’d always known that they came from the Salesian Order of St Bosco who was the patron saint of illusionists, and therefore of the Magical community. He had been a priest of the Vatican who was also a very powerful - magic-wise, not influence - member of the Magical community. His once-wealthy family had been forced to live in abject poverty due to some transgression lost to history, and it was only through performing tricks to Mundanes as a young boy that he was able to make a few pennies. His formative years therefore had a great influence on his approach to life and, having been shunned by the magical community, he used the family he found in the Catholic Church to do good, and to help similarly poor members of both Magical and Mundane communities alike. With that in mind, he created the Salesians of Don Bosco, a charity dedicated to helping poor children during the Industrial Revolution.
The Mundane children became handlers for the Magical members, giving the Vatican a cadre of highly dedicated and driven Mundanes and Magic Users. Now, there were nearly 20,000 members across the world. They were not solely dedicated to combatting poverty, however. Their other side, that which the Vatican can never admit it - publicly at least - is dedicated to combatting Daemons and to prevent too large an imbalance between the Magical and Mundane worlds.
All Merlin Handlers wore a medallion of Saint Bosco as a mark of respect. Most of them were also committed Catholics, raised by the Salesians. It was the only way the Magical community could guarantee they would have handlers who they could completely trust. Spells could have been used, but there was a risk that those Spells could be corrupted.
The reason that they were inducted into the Guild at such an early age was because the minimum length of service was 30 years. They were assigned Agents using Divination, and then given lodgings which were owned by the Guild. A bit like Vicarages really.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
Aside from the heart-breaking knowledge that the Handlers were living their lives in isolation, there was another equally upsetting fact. At the end of their service, they could either sign up again if they were young enough or retire. At which point, all their memories would be erased, and new ones implanted. Everything they had ever achieved would be completely wiped. Everything that made them the people they were would be gone. It was abhorrent, and I wished I could find a way to save Marcus from such a fate.
Not that he was likely to get to retirement age. Just like Agents, Handlers tended to have shortened lifespans. It was, I had decided, a very shitty state of affairs. At least I had my Magic to help keep me alive. Handlers had their wits, Magical equipment which had been loaned to them like Icons, and Wards, and the skills passed on to them by their own Guild. It wasn’t fair in my opinion.
‘Jane?’ Marcus sounded pissed off.
‘Yes?’ I asked, wincing slightly.
‘Did you hear a bloody word I said?’ he snapped.
‘Um. No? Sorry, bad memories threw me for a second. Go ahead, I’m all ears.’
‘Fine,’ he huffed, ‘our latest victim was back to his old tricks. Seems he was offering hosting and secure email services to … Albert Dunn.’
‘Hang on, I’ll just put you on speakerphone,’ I said as Dawn and Ragnhild patted my knee and mouthed questions at me. ‘Okay, go ahead. Dawn and Ragnhild are just dying to hear what you told me.’
‘Albert Dunn and our latest victim, Shayne Henstreet, were doing business together. We have some White Hat hackers who managed to crack Shayne’s computer and everything else he had on it.’
‘Find anything good?’
‘Quite frankly, I feel like I need a good shower. Some of the names of other people he was working for have raised red flags across the bloody planet. He only set up their servers and communications, but still. The little shit deserved what he got.’
I was taken aback by that. Dawn and I were still getting to know Marcus, and my initial impression had been he was – at heart – the type that believed in the process of law. I hadn’t heard such vehemence from him before either.
‘We’re talking about very bad people?’ asked Dawn.
‘The worst. Perverts of the darkest kind. Sex traffickers.’
Silence descended, he didn’t need to say anything further.
‘Soooo,’ I said, more to break the tension than because I actually had anything to add, ‘red flags everywhere and more Mundane law enforcement agencies than you can shake a stick at?’
‘In a nutshell yes.’
‘Dunn,’ said Ragnhild leaning in towards the phone, ‘any record of such a thing?’
‘No, but that doesn’t prove anything aside from the fact he’s never been caught before. These bastards are some of the most intelligent and information security-aware criminals out there,’ said Marcus. ‘And they probably went Mundane to keep off our radar. We don’t tend to monitor Mundane criminality as much as we should.’
‘Next steps boss?’ I asked. I was stumped. My mind raced at what we were going to find during this investigation. Murders were bad enough, but the sort of crimes we were now facing were plain evil. And whilst I don’t have much time for religion, I do believe in evil. Most people are good, with the capability to do stupid or bad things. Some people are bad, with the capacity to do some good. But others, they’re born rotten to the core. Nothing they do is good, because it’s always done to further their aims or hide their true nature. And we were going to have to track them down and put a stop to it.
‘Nothing we can do for now. Wouldn’t be good for our cover story as zoologists if we were seen to be investigating the dark web and perverts.’
‘At least one thing’s clear,’ said Ragnhild. Dawn and I both looked at her expectantly as she paused.
‘Yes?’ came Marcus’ somewhat exasperated voice from the phone some few seconds later.
‘This isn’t a coincidence. I just thought that my cold case and your current case was similar. Now I know they are. They’re linked, and right now all that I can think of is that our killer is some sort of vigilante. A victim, or a relative of a victim, and they’ve tracked the network to here as well.’
‘Makes sense,’ agreed Marcus. ‘I’ll need you to send me all of the names of the victims on your case.’
‘On it,’ said Ragnhild, pulling out her own phone and leaving the room.
‘Now all we have to do is find out the name of our killer,’ said Dawn.