Spirit Animals (Ritual Crime Unit Book 3)

by E. E. Richardson

  Provided she kept track of where they were going. She’d assumed Tomb’s contact would meet them here, but instead the writer gestured her away from the pub and towards the park across the road, where a footpath led off under the shadow of overhanging trees. She let him take the lead, keeping a wary eye on their surroundings as she mentally inventoried the rest of her gear. Silver cuffs. Malodorant spray—not that it would do her much good unless they ran afoul of shapeshifters. The penlight on her keys.

  As the pub’s security light clicked off behind them, she was wishing that she’d brought a proper full-strength police torch instead. There were times when she missed her days in uniform, all the gear always ready to hand. In her role as DCI she was supposed to stand back and supervise from a distance, if not from a desk, but the understaffed RCU needed every officer they could get out in the field.

  Even if they were inching ever closer to the retirement age and limits of fitness requirements, and keenly aware just how fast a supposedly simple meeting with a source could go straight to shit.

  And the circumstances of this one didn’t exactly fill her with confidence. The hairs at the back of her neck prickled as she followed Tomb further away from the road and the lights, feeling hemmed in by the grassy slopes running alongside the path. She didn’t like that they were leaving the cars and whatever CCTV coverage there might have been around the pub; Pierce might be well outside the vampire cult’s victim profile, but that didn’t mean that she was safe if they decided she was a threat.

  In her pockets, her hands closed around the radio and the small canister of incapacitant spray. The smell, though it might fend off a shapeshifter or disperse a rioting crowd, wouldn’t do much to drive off a motivated human—but a blast of any aerosol spray in the face would send most people reeling away for a few vital seconds if need be.

  Tomb, at least, was currently keeping his distance, forging ahead at a pace that suggested he was either cold or pretty nervous himself.

  Or less confident than he’d led her to believe that his supposed contact would even show up. It probably wouldn’t be politic to charge him with wasting police time if this turned out to be a wild goose chase, but it made for a pleasant daydream nonetheless. Pierce was already exhausted, miserably cold, and increasingly pissed off as she followed the author through to a small open patch of ground amid the trees. In the dim light that filtered through from the next road she could just make out the shadowed shapes of children’s play equipment and benches.

  This had better be the meeting place with this alleged cultist, because she’d just about lost all patience for walking. “Right. Where is he?” she said.

  “He’ll be here,” Tomb said, placatingly. “He wanted to make sure you didn’t bring anyone else.”

  “He has a high opinion of himself,” Pierce said. Never mind devoting further police resources—they were lucky that she’d come at all. She’d yet to see any evidence that this rigmarole was worth her time.

  Tomb moved on towards the far side of the play area. There was a metal park bench there, just visible in the deeper shadow under the trees; Pierce squinted, trying to see if it was occupied, but her eyes weren’t up to it.

  Sod this. Wary of being surprised by a voice from the shadows again, she shook her keys out of her pocket and clicked the penlight on. Its feeble beam was scarcely better than the fading fringes of the streetlights, but it lit up a patch of grass before her feet. She followed Tomb, trying to decide how much time she was prepared to give this if their man didn’t show.

  “Jonathan,” Tomb said, in a hoarse, carrying whisper. “Jonathan, are you here? I brought the DCI here, as you asked.”

  No answer. Instinct chilled the back of Pierce’s neck, but Tomb kept moving, his footsteps and the rustle of his coat potentially masking any sounds amid the trees around them. “Jonathan?”

  As he approached the bench, Pierce had to keep pace with him, wanting to be ahead of a member of the public if there was trouble. It was too still, too quiet for there to be someone waiting for them unless it was with ill-intent. “Wait—” she started to say, but that was when the edge of the weak torchlight finally reached the feet of someone sitting on the bench and Tomb hurried the rest of the way forward before she could stop him.

  “Jonathan, we’re—” He strangled his own words with a startled sound, flinching back as the figure on the bench slumped sideways from his touch.

  “Get back!” Pierce barked, even before she’d moved close enough for the torchlight to show what she’d already guessed.

  The pallid, death-distorted face of a man who wasn’t going to be sharing his secrets any time soon.

  No artfully posed and cleaned-up ritual kill this time: a jagged gash had torn out most of the man’s throat, and blood soaked the front of his once-white shirt. The torchlight glinted off the blood-smeared shape of a silver bat pendant, twin to the one worn by the woman Pierce had chased in York. The baseball cap he must have been wearing to obscure his face had fallen askew at Tomb’s touch, perhaps resettled on his head by the killer.

  The unhappily familiar stink of death rolled over her as Pierce bent to take the pulse that she knew wouldn’t be there. Her fingers came away tacky with blood that wasn’t yet dry, and she instinctively wiped her hand on the bench before it occurred to her that she shouldn’t compromise the crime scene. She stepped back with a curse.

  “Don’t touch anything,” she told Tomb unnecessarily. He’d already backed well away, his eyes wide in the torchlight.

  “Is he—Oh, God.” He must have known the question was superfluous, and he reeled away from her to bend over and retch.

  It was too late to help Jonathan, if that was really his name, but even as part of her was cursing that she hadn’t insisted on greater precautions for their meeting, another part was cataloguing how he might help them. This wasn’t a staged body dump this time—the ex-cultist had been killed here. There might have been a struggle, might be evidence... and for the first time, they had a clear connection between killer and victim, a possible chain of associations to follow.

  Pierce drew her radio and called the incident in, retreating to a distance as she eyed up how best to secure the scene. Public park, that was going to be a bugger, but at least it was still the middle of the night...

  A flicker of motion at the corner of her eye yanked her gaze back towards the trees, and she opened her mouth to warn Tomb again to back off from the body.

  But it wasn’t Tomb. He was still well away to her left, stooped over and panting.

  “Killer’s still at the scene!” Pierce barked into her radio just before it was torn out of her hand, the dispatcher’s urgent voice bouncing away across the grass as a bony body slammed her to the ground with brutal force.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  RAKING FINGERNAILS SLASHED across Pierce’s face as she twisted her head away, trying to find the breath in her winded lungs to yell for Tomb to run. She hoped the dispatcher had heard enough to expedite backup—but however fast it arrived, it could still be too late.

  She fought to get free as her attacker grabbed her hair to slam her head against the ground. The body pinning her down seemed lightweight, almost skeletally frail, and yet she couldn’t force the bony wrists away from her. She rolled sideways, trying to wrench herself free, but the killer clung on and dragged her down, teeth snapping near her cheek.

  And this was the killer—Pierce didn’t doubt it. She could smell the rank decay of death and the metallic scent of blood, strong enough to make her gag. She drove her knee into what should have been a vulnerable stomach, but she might as well have kneed the ground for the response it got: not even a grunt. The clawing hands that grappled hers were sharp-nailed and deathly cold.

  Pierce realised she was still clutching the penlight, though the light had clicked off. She closed her fingers around the keys it was attached to, jabbing them blindly out towards her attacker’s face. That won her a slight flinch, and she tugged partway free, feeling the c
lawed nails rake down her hand as she pulled away. She smashed out with the keys again, but the killer was too fast, squirming sideways from the blow and biting down on Pierce’s forearm, hard.

  “Fuck!” Her layered winter clothes stopped the clamped teeth from sinking into her skin, but it still hurt like hell. She awkwardly tried to hit out with the keys, but they tangled in the wool of her attacker’s winter hat. She patted desperately at her pockets with her other hand for something, anything she could use...

  Her hand seized on the canister of malodorant spray, jammed awkwardly against her side. Pierce yanked it out, uncaring as it dragged a probably-important scrap of paper with it to fall out onto the grass; she shoved the spray can into her attacker’s face and set it off. As the stinking chemicals spewed out, the killer reeled away, releasing her arm with an angry hiss that barely even sounded human.

  Pierce scrambled up and backwards, already panting with exertion. Something crunched under her foot—fuck; radio, torch, a branch? As she looked down in the darkness somebody grabbed her arm, and she gasped and almost lashed out before she recognised Tomb.

  “Stay behind me,” she ordered, a futile instinct when the murderer had already melted back into the darkness around them. The sulphuric stink of the malodorant spray was spreading, and she coughed out a lungful, blinking frantically to clear her eyes as they threatened to water. The only light was the little that filtered through the trees from the streetlights beyond the park, and her heart beat fast as she scanned the deep surrounding shadows.

  Where was the killer?

  Now the frantic thrashing of the fight was over—in seconds, though it had felt much longer—Pierce realised that her radio was still babbling police chatter where it had fallen somewhere to her left. Grab for it, or would that be the distraction that proved her undoing? She didn’t know if the killer had already fled the scene, or this was just a lull before the next attack.

  They needed to get back onto the road, back to the limited protection of the street lighting where at least they’d see danger coming. “Come on.” Pierce tugged at Tomb’s arm, causing him to stagger off-balance; he was still half in shock from the rapid turn of events. “Stay by me,” she ordered.

  For what dubious protection she could offer. She rubbed at her forearm, wishing there was light to peel her sleeve back and see if the bite had broken the skin even through all the layers. There had been no fangs—but the strength and speed behind the bite, behind the whole attack, was more than any normal human being could have brought to bear. Pierce would have struggled to match a younger and fitter assailant, but she was hopelessly outclassed by one who was magically enhanced.

  She could only hope that amplified senses were part of the deal, because the spreading cloud of the chemical stink bomb was making even her eyes burn. The anti-shapeshifter spray was a strictly one-off deal: with that emptied, she was out of self-defence tricks.

  A half-heard noise made her whirl to face the trees. Was that a hunched figure creeping after them in the darkness, or just a trick of the wind and shadows? She dragged Tomb with her, hustling across the park towards that precious pool of orange light out on the road. If they could just make it back to the streets—

  Tomb’s arm was wrenched away from her grip as a blur of dark motion slammed into him from the side, smashing him to the ground several metres away. Pierce barely saw it happen, only heard his panicked cry as she staggered from the force of the impact.

  “Police!” she yelled reflexively. “Let him go!” She chased after the two of them, searching her pockets for a weapon or even a distraction tactic, and coming up empty. No choice but to wade in anyway—

  And then one of the two struggling shadows jerked upright, head snapping round—but not towards her. Towards the road. A moment later the killer was up and running across the park, and Pierce didn’t understand why until the distant wail of sirens finally reached her ears too. Still some way off, but obviously close enough for the killer to have decided the window for getting away had closed.

  She’d be fooling herself to pretend that she could give chase, and in any case, she had a member of the public to see to first. She ran to where Tomb lay gasping in the grass. “Mr Tomb?” She shook his shoulder. “Are you hurt?” He didn’t respond to her words, but was that injury, shock, or was he just winded? She switched names in the hope that something more familiar might snap him out of it. “Mr Brown? Christopher.”

  He was wheezing now as he struggled to sit up with her help, but her hasty pat-down found no obvious injuries, and she dared to hope it was just a panic attack. She glanced back in search of the killer, but the sprinting figure had already vanished into the darkness.

  And then the approaching sirens swept in with deafening volume and a blaze of flashing blue and headlights, bringing a stark artificial daylight to the park. Car doors slammed and voices shouted, and more bright lights approached them across the grass.

  “Police!” the uniformed officers shouted, and Pierce shouted it back, holding up her warrant card for the torches. “DCI Pierce, RCU. Murder suspect just took off over park, headed for...”—she had no idea, and could only point—“that direction. Didn’t get a good look, um... dark clothes, dark wool hat, lightweight build, not very tall. Probably still covered in the victim’s blood. May be carrying a knife, definitely has magical enhancements to boost strength and speed.”

  “It was the vampire,” Tomb gasped hoarsely beside her, finding his voice. “I saw... he had pale, dead pale skin, and the fangs...”

  Pierce didn’t think highly of the description, but arguing was only going to confuse the search efforts. “This is a suspect in the Valentine Vampire murders, caught red-handed with a new body,” she said, trying to impress both the urgency and the threat. “Approach with extreme caution, and don’t let him get away!”

  Her commanding tone sparked a flurry of motion, though she was more than half certain that it was already too late. There was nothing more Pierce could do to assist the chase right now, so she eased herself back down onto the grass with a gasp, panting for the breath she hadn’t had the time to take in the commotion. She waved down the PC who was hovering to see if she needed medical attention, and pointed him back towards the benches.

  “Body’s on a bench under those trees,” she said. “Make sure the scene’s secured.”

  They might not be able to catch the killer, but at least they’d have the evidence he’d left behind.

  BY THE TIME word came in from all units that their suspect had well and truly slipped the net, it was more of a bitter confirmation than a body blow. A loose dragnet of local bobbies with no advance warning stood little chance of catching up to a suspect who could move that fast, especially when the description was vague enough that just ditching a layer of clothes would see the killer free and clear. Pierce’s own efforts with the malodorant spray made it a waste of time trying to bring in tracking dogs.

  She let the ambulance crew examine her injuries, superficial though they were, and forensics do their best to take trace evidence. She doubted that it would amount to much: the bite wound hadn’t managed to break the skin through her clothes, and while they’d tried for a saliva sample from her jacket it was probably a lost cause; if anything had transferred to her during her brief efforts at grappling with the killer, it had probably been the murder victim’s blood.

  Nonetheless, she handed her outer clothes over to forensics, suffering a chilly wait in a set of overalls that were strictly supposed to be worn over clothes, not instead of them, especially on a winter night like this. She’d reluctantly called Dawson in to play the role of RCU oversight, partly because she was knackered, but mainly because any further involvement from her in the on-scene investigation would provide ammunition for future lawyers.

  He arrived at the scene with a five o’clock shadow edging into designer stubble and a rumpled, cigarette-scented suit that might have been fished out of the laundry, but at least he was sober and alert, which put him one up o
n her the way she was crashing.

  “I should have been involved,” he said when he found her lurking amid the police cars at the edge of the scene. “This is my case.” He seemed to conveniently forget that since she was his boss, his cases were her cases—and he’d lost any sort of claim over it as soon as they’d connected it to the Valentine Vampire killings.

  Pierce was too tired to pick a fight about it, and this was hardly the time or place anyway, with a swarm of local police and forensics bods in position to earwig. “Wouldn’t have made any difference,” she said instead, rubbing her neck. “Victim was dead before we got here, and the killer was magically enhanced—would have taken more than the two of us to detain him.” And she hadn’t expected it to be anything, hadn’t wanted to justify the overtime or calling her team out in the night without due cause... It was easy to pick the decisions apart in hindsight, harder to keep perspective on whether they’d made sense at the time.

  Dawson grunted in dissatisfaction, no doubt unconvinced by her verdict on how much difference he could have made single-handed, but at least he let the subject go. “I’ll deal with this from here,” he said. “No reason for you to stay.”

  He was right, and it might have been kindly meant, but she bridled even so. “Fine,” she said tersely. “Keep me updated.” Pretty empty words when it was the middle of the night and there wasn’t much that would justify waking her up.

  At least he’d done as she’d asked and stopped by the station to pick up her spare keys so Pierce could get back into her car after her other set had been taken in evidence. She was finally able to change into the spare clothes that had been sitting in the boot this whole time and make her weary way back home.