Spirit Animals (Ritual Crime Unit Book 3)

by E. E. Richardson

  Pierce wished that she could do it herself, just let go and block it all out until the same fate came for her. The adrenaline burst had spent itself, and now it took all she had just to give the door of her cage another perfunctory shake that barely raised a rattle. The near-hypnotic humming of Violet’s chant seemed to drill right through her head, sapping her energy, as Pierce watched her raise the bloody blade yet again in the cold candlelight...

  And then bright light and shouting chaos exploded into the world. Pierce flinched back into her cell as a swarm of uniformed figures burst through the wooden door, shining torch beams everywhere and barking aggressive orders. “Police! Get down on the ground! Drop your weapon and down on the ground!” The invasion of shouting voices and moving lights was enough to leave her dazed, after an eternity shut in the dark with only Tomb’s agony and the echoes of her own hoarse yells for company.

  Violet suffered no such paralysis, springing up to take off for the other door with a speed the armed police aiming at her couldn’t match. She tore the metal door open one-handed with such force that the top hinge ripped right out of the brickwork and the door fell inward at a drunken angle. She ran out into the lashing storm beyond—and into the arms of the second Firearms team stationed outside the door. Pierce heard their chorus of shouted warnings, but Violet must have decided to fight rather than back down, because the next thing she heard was a thunderous volley of gunfire.

  It went on long enough that Pierce was sure Violet had somehow evaded them after all... but when the guns finally fell silent, so did everything else apart from the sounds of the storm. A moment later the words crackled through from multiple police radios around her. “Suspect is down.”

  “Stay cautious,” another brusque voice cut in. “She may be able to take more damage than a normal human being.”

  Sounded like Dawson. Pierce blinked, dazed. She wasn’t sure he should even be out of the hospital yet. Just how long had she been in here?

  Not important right now. She called out to the officers who’d run to the aid of the injured Tomb. “Get him in an ambulance! He’s lost a lot of blood.” They could probably see how much just by looking in the ritual bowl. “And somebody unlock this bloody cage.” The effort of speaking even those few words did her in, and she sagged against the wall.

  One of the uniformed police came to release her, giving the shadows a wary scan before he let her out. Pierce didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the simple twist of the metal catch: such a simple little thing, but she’d been utterly powerless to do it from inside.

  She’d been pretty bloody useless all round, it seemed.

  “DCI Pierce?” the man asked, and she gave an exhausted nod, not sure that she had much voice left to share. “Do you need medical attention?”

  Pierce shook her head without bothering to inventory herself and decide if it was true. Didn’t look like he much believed her anyway, as she stumbled out of her prison on dizzy sea legs, feeling like one of those lab animals that staggered round in circles after being released from their cages. Normally she’d have snapped when the man beside her reached out to steady her, but right now she wasn’t sure how far she’d get without the support.

  A crowd of people were already hurrying to cut Tomb free from the ropes and get him prepped for transport. “How’s he doing?” Pierce asked the room in general.

  The woman crouching to take Tomb’s pulse shook her head grimly. “He’s lost a lot of blood,” she said, clearly not wanting to commit to more than that. “Come on, let’s move!” she ordered her team. As they hustled to lift and move him, Pierce caught a glimpse of his face, as pale and lifeless as a wax dummy. Even the small expanse of his chest still visible above the blanket was criss-crossed with still-bleeding cuts.

  He might survive the blood loss, but what about the trauma, the aftereffects of whatever method Violet had used to knock him unconscious? This was nothing he was going to walk away from without scars, internal and external. Just from having witnessed it, Pierce was sure she’d have some new nightmares to add to the regular mix. God, she’d been doing this job for far too long.

  She stood in a vague daze after Tomb had been moved out, aware she should probably be giving orders or at least doing something, but unable to sort her tumbling thoughts into anything resembling order. The candles around the bloodstained slab had now dimmed back to the warm hue of natural candlelight. Should probably put those out... no, wait, photograph them first... Her gaze kept being pulled back to the offering bowl that held Tomb’s blood.

  “Claire?” It was a voice she hadn’t expected, and it took several moments of blank staring before she connected the bearded face before her with the less lined, less grey-haired version in her memory.

  “Phil?” she said, moderately bewildered to see her former coworker standing there in a uniform vest. It only added to the sense of having come adrift. “What are you doing here?”

  He waved vaguely at a group of overall-wearing figures that she didn’t recognise poking around the remnants of the ritual. “Your man Dawson called in backup from Oxford branch,” he explained. “Your people are on the way down, but our team was closer when the balloon went up.”

  Pierce was still confused how Dawson had even been here to do that, but then everything was a bit disjointed right now. She struggled to focus. “Where is Dawson?” she asked.

  “Outside, supervising what’s happening with the killer’s body,” Phil said. “He’s insisting Firearms stick around and the pathologist’s not happy—shaping up to be a pissing match, from the look of things.”

  “He has a gift,” Pierce said dryly. She found herself gazing at the offering bowl again, and shook herself. Right. Better go and deal with Dawson’s latest diplomatic entanglement, then.

  “You okay?” Phil asked her as she belatedly turned to move towards the door.

  “I’ll live,” she said.

  More than could be said for most of the people who’d tangled with Violet and her gang of vampire cultists. At least they’d put a stop to her killing spree—but bringing the suspect in dead always felt like just another shade of failure. That wasn’t justice, not really; it was just an end to the affair.

  She headed out of the dark barn, almost surprised to find it was still pissing it down outside even though she’d been hearing the sounds of the storm the whole time; it was still, in fact, barely into the afternoon, early enough for her grab a late lunch without it blending into the evening meal. Not that she ever wanted to eat again, for all that some of her light-headed nausea had to be from hungry exhaustion.

  A hasty forensic tent had been rigged over Violet’s body, not quite fast enough to stop the blood from running in the rain. As mortal as anyone else up against a hail of bullets, it seemed, however much of an edge her magical enhancements might have given her.

  If Pierce had been in charge of the bust instead of Dawson, she might have insisted on Tasers rather than firearms—but who was to say that would have been right? Maybe they could have brought the suspect in alive that way, or maybe Violet would have shaken off the effects and fled the scene to kill again. The hell of making judgement calls in the field was that you could never know for certain that you’d made the best call; only recognise when you’d fucked up.

  At least this time they could be certain that they’d had the right woman.

  She spotted Dawson lurking outside the crime scene tape, stealing a soggy cigarette. Either he’d won his head-butting contest with the other police units, or he’d retreated from the field; the latter wasn’t usually his style, but he was looking distinctly peaky to her eyes.

  “Should you be smoking that?” Pierce nodded towards the cigarette as she ducked under the tape to join him, her muscles protesting. “Or here, for that matter?” He’d still been in hospital the last time she’d seen him.

  “You complaining?” he asked.

  It did seem fairly churlish to object. “How’d you get here so fast?” she asked instead. “I didn’t
think the local police realised anything was wrong.” That moment when her supposed backup had knocked and then gone away again would probably have a starring role in a few nightmares as well.

  “They didn’t, till I got here. I was already following you down. This is my case,” he reminded her.

  Her eyes followed the figures in forensic overalls. “Yeah, well, you might have to fight Oxford for it.” Coming in to make the bust like this after the northern branch had no results for years, they were going to look like the heroes of the hour, and their DI was just the type to try to make hay from it.

  Pierce had no energy for a PR battle. Or anything else, for that matter. “Right,” she said with a heavy sigh. “If you’ve got everything under control here, I’m going home.”

  If Dawson wanted to rake through the ashes of this case for some glory, he could have it. All she could see was that it had dragged on for far too long and seen too many people hurt or worse before it ended.

  But at least now it was finally over.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  PIERCE DOZED A little in the car on her way back up north, giving her just enough energy to feel guilty at the thought of skiving off for the afternoon. She wasn’t sure she wanted to sit at home with nothing to do but dwell on her time in the barn in any case; burying herself in routine paperwork was usually a good way to blot out the dark thoughts that followed ugly scenes, and two big cases closed in as many days had left her with plenty to tackle.

  All in all, a productive week’s work, she supposed, but not one she could feel all that proud of. Too many fuckups, deaths and injuries that might somehow have been avoided if she’d only handled things better. If she’d insisted that Tomb give her the address and stay behind, if she’d gone in with a police team from the start... if they’d managed to arrest Violet at the café, or after Jonathan’s murder; if she’d insisted Jonathan come to the police station to meet with them, or brought a bigger escort...

  Hell, why stop there? Might as well go back to 2008, when she’d failed to do the due diligence and find the Valentine Vampire’s new hunting grounds down in Oxford, or 2001, when she might have done more to challenge her old DI’s hasty conclusions. With the murder investigation stretching back almost as far as her own history with the force, she was spoilt for choice when it came to self-recriminations.

  But at least one of their more notorious cold cases had finally been laid to rest.

  “So you’re certain that this woman... ‘Violet’... was the one behind all of these murders, going back to the 1980s?” Snow asked when she dropped by his office to make her report in person.

  “All the evidence points that way,” she said. Complete certainty was a luxury they seldom got in their line of work. “She appears to be the same woman who was spotted at the original bust fourteen years ago, and given her other magical enhancements, the lack of visible aging was probably part of the effect of the blood ritual.” Unfortunately, once that little detail got out to the press they’d be probably looking at a wave of attempted copycat rituals by other would-be seekers after eternal youth. The vast majority wouldn’t have access to legitimate occult texts, but they could still do all kinds of harm in the process.

  Snow grimaced and straightened the papers on his desk. “So we have no way of telling exactly how old this woman really was?” he said.

  Pierce shook her head. “They’ll autopsy, but there’s no saying what the results will show.” Violet might prove to have the internal organs of a woman decades older, or they might reflect her outward-seeming youth; it was always difficult to guess with magic. “Not sure we’re going to be able to get any better identification, either,” she admitted. Not with the uncertainty over dates and the fact that Violet must have been keeping under the radar since back when it was easier to do so.

  Snow sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “And Christopher Tomb?” he asked.

  It felt like an accusation even with his neutral inflection. Pierce tried not to flinch. “Still in critical condition. His wife’s been notified.” And she was guiltily relieved not to have to take that particular job; it was bad enough to have a mental image of the woman thanks to their brief encounter earlier that day.

  “He should never have been there in the first place,” Snow said.

  “I know, sir,” she said tiredly. No point making excuses, and it would have left a bad taste to shove any of the blame onto Tomb. He might have been being deliberately obstructive in an effort to get invited along, but she still should have known better than to let him accompany her into a potentially dangerous situation. And nobody deserved to suffer what he’d gone through in that barn.

  Perhaps she looked and sounded ragged enough for her boss to take pity, or else he just saw no mileage in repeating a lecture he’d given once already this week. “Well, what’s done is done,” he said rather grudgingly, pressing his lips together. “At least the killer’s off the streets, and the press are off our backs—though frankly, I would have preferred it if RCU Oxford hadn’t put out a press conference about the joint operation without consulting with us first.”

  “You’ll have to take that up with DI Dawson, sir,” she said, not particularly repentant at dropping him in it. “I was indisposed at the time.”

  “Yes.” Snow eyed her battered, dishevelled appearance. “I suggest that you go home, Pierce—and take at least a couple of days off. Your team claim enough overtime as it is without half of you being at work when you should be on medical leave.”

  “Yes, sir.” Pierce didn’t think she had the energy to argue, which probably proved his point.

  She headed back up to the RCU offices, where Gemma was the only one around. “Anything come in that I should know about?” she asked as she collected her bag and coat.

  “Nothing major, guv,” she said, shaking her head; Pierce suspected she’d have said the same regardless.

  She stood for a moment, blank with tiredness, certain she must be forgetting things, important or trivial. “Everything squared away on the spirit charms case?” she asked.

  “So far,” Gemma said with a nod. “Oh, Cliff did want a word before you go, though,” she added. “Something to do with the charms we seized, he said.”

  “Right-o. See you later.”

  She headed down the corridor to poke her head in on Cliff. “Issues with the evidence on the charms case?”

  “Possibly.” Cliff was alone in his lab today, but he looked around nervously as she entered the room, and waited for her to come all the way inside and shut the door before he continued. “I wondered if you might humour me by taking a look at the animal spirit charms we seized.”

  Pierce blinked blearily as Cliff spread the collection of wooden charms before her. “What am I looking for?”

  “I wouldn’t want to prejudice you,” he said, pursing his lips. There was a grimness to his tone that stopped her pleading exhaustion, and she studied the things more closely. To her inexpert eye the wooden medallions they’d seized at Miller’s arrest looked pretty much the same as the one Cliff had already examined; in fact, she was fairly sure it was included in the mix—she recognised the running hare design.

  Or maybe that wasn’t the only reason it stood out from its fellows. Now that her eye had been drawn to it, she couldn’t help but feel there was something subtly different about the way that the runes were formed, like the mismatched handwriting of a forged signature. “This one’s different,” she said, pointing it out to Cliff. “I’d say it was made by someone else.”

  “Yes,” he said. “And though I’m afraid I can offer you no concrete proof of this, I don’t think it’s the same charm you originally gave me.”

  Her gaze snapped up to meet his. “You think it’s been replaced with a fake since you’ve had it in the lab?”

  He grimaced. “As I say, I can’t offer any definitive proof, but it feels different to me—slightly lighter, perhaps, a little rougher around the edges. I doubt I’d have noticed if you hadn’t brought me
all these others to compare... and if I didn’t have good reason to be paranoid.”

  If Cliff was right, then whoever had made the substitution had to have had repeated access to the lab to examine and photograph the medallion and then replace it with a convincing fake. Meaning Maitland’s people’s theft of the shapeshifting pelt hadn’t been a one-time thing—he had someone positioned here at the RCU full time, monitoring their activities and keeping an eye out for any artefacts her team encountered. Who knew how many other items they’d seized had gone missing from storage without their knowing?

  And that wasn’t the worst part. Someone among her small group of coworkers had to be aiding these people. Snow? Dawson? One of her two constables? They were all new to the unit—any one of them could be a plant.

  And they weren’t the only possibilities. What about Deepan, the sergeant she’d trusted with her life for years? The research team, some of whom she’d known for even longer? She didn’t want to believe that any of them could be persuaded to turn mole, or that they could have been replaced by impostors without her spotting it.

  But what if she was wrong?

  “Keep this to yourself,” she told Cliff. “From now on, we can’t trust anybody.”

  He nodded soberly. “So what do we do now?” he asked.

  Pierce let out her breath in a heavy sigh. “I wish I bloody knew,” she said.

  Everything seemed hopeless lately.

  HER MOOD WAS grim as she drove home, mind alternating between the implications of Cliff’s news and even darker thoughts of the scene back in the warehouse. Despite feeling utterly worn down by the day’s events, she couldn’t settle, keeping herself occupied in hopes her mind would stay that way too.

  Item one, do something about her broken phone. It wasn’t the first to come a cropper in the line of duty, especially in recent years—she couldn’t help but miss the bloody great brick of a phone she’d had back in the old days, a pain to lug about but not nearly so fragile. At least she still had all the numbers written down on paper; no doubt the two children she called constables would be hopelessly at sea if ever they lost track of their precious gadgets.