Disturbed Earth (Ritual Crime Unit Book 2) (29 page)

There wasn’t much to find. The lab was designed for ritual work, kept clear of any moving parts and dangerous distractions. The floor was bare concrete, set with a great protective circle in the form of a thin inlaid ring of metal that ran around the whole room. There were individual lab benches inside the ring, bolted to the floor and surrounded by their own smaller etched circles. There were no chairs or lab stools, and no other furniture besides the cupboards in the corners. Safety posters warned to
MAKE SURE CIRCLES REMAIN UNOBSTRUCTED AT ALL TIMES
.

The heavy fire door muffled any sound from outside. Was that a rustle? Pierce shone the light back on the door. Nothing but shadows.

Was the panther still outside, or had it gone?

She moved across the lab to Doctor Moss. “Do you have ritual knives in here? Silver?” Taking a knife to a tooth and claw fight with a creature much stronger and faster was about as wise as wielding one against a tank, but a lucky stab or slice could still break through the pelt and ruin the enchantment. She could hold her own against an ordinary man weighed down by a heavy animal pelt.

Moss shook her head. “PhD students have their own personal blades. We’ve got silver powder—”

“I’ll take it.” Probably wouldn’t be enough to break the enchantment, but maybe it would burn for long enough to act as a distraction. She still had her malodorant spray to confound the thing’s nose, but it wouldn’t help them much if they were penned up in this room and the shifter was sufficiently determined.

A heavy clunk from the door. Pierce spun round, and saw that the light on the card lock had just turned from red to green. “Shit! It’s coming in!” She flapped her hand urgently at Moss. “Silver powder, now!” She raised the penlight to aim at the door as it opened.

The weak beam was barely enough to cross the length of the room to the door; by its diffuse light, all she could see was the figure’s outline. Human, walking upright, but distorted into monstrous by the pelt strapped to his back—and then distorting more as bones bent and muscles shifted in ways no body should move naturally. A fluid transition from man into beast, bright feline eyes emerging from the shadows as the shifter dropped onto all fours.

And bunched up, ready to spring.

“Silver!” Pierce demanded desperately. A canister was thrust into her hand, and she fumbled to yank the lid off, forced to take the torch beam off the panther for a second. She flicked it back again and the big cat was running at her, half the distance crossed in an instant. Pierce raised her hand to hurl the silver powder, praying it would make the creature flinch and cower back—

But then Doctor Moss grabbed her by the wrist. “Not yet!” she said urgently, yanking her arm back and causing Pierce to shake silver powder over her own shirt. There was no time left to react as the shifter crouched to leap; it snarled and surged forward...

And collided hard with the empty space in front of them, as if it had hit a transparent wall. It rebounded off of nothing and crumpled to the ground with a painful sounding thwack of flesh on concrete.

Not animal flesh, either: as Pierce trained the torch on their fallen assailant, she saw that she was now looking at a shaven-headed, tattooed man with the panther pelt strapped to his back like an outsized fur wrap.

He looked as if he was unconscious, but she didn’t trust that enough to try to remove the pelt. Instead she tugged his arms together and locked his wrists into her silver cuffs: at least he couldn’t transform with those on. Then she checked his pulse. Alive, but there was no sign of him stirring. She retreated to a wary distance and glanced at Doctor Moss. “What just happened?”

Moss had a hand pressed to her chest, breathing raggedly despite her earlier seeming calm. “The circle,” she said. Pierce shone her torch down, and saw that the invisible wall that had stopped the shifter was none other than the boundary of the circle in the lab floor.

“It’s... comprehensively warded,” Moss explained. “Poured iron on the surface. Runes. Copper pipes under the floor filled with running water. Everything the architects could think of to prevent an active enchantment escaping from the circle.” She closed her eyes and breathed out shakily. “Of course, it’s only been tested on intangibles before, so I couldn’t be
sure
it would stop a shapeshifter...”

“But probably better odds than silver powder,” Pierce said, looking down at the canister of the stuff. If she’d thrown it, more than likely she’d have scattered some across the boundary of the circle itself, breaking the line and rendering it useless. “Big gamble,” she said, pushing her hair back.

Moss smiled at her tightly. “Yes. Let’s just hope we haven’t blown all our luck on the warm-up act.”

“Shit.” Abruptly Pierce remembered that the shifter was far from the biggest problem on their slate today. In fact, he was only the distraction. She checked her watch. “We’ve got to get somebody here to take him into custody.” There was no time to question him; he’d need a medical check, and she didn’t know how long he might take to regain consciousness. She doubted he’d cooperate when he did.

“All right, get what you need from here, quickly,” she told Moss. “I’m going to head for the stairs and see if I can get a signal on my phone. If he looks like he’s starting to wake up, get out of the room and yell.” She didn’t like leaving Moss alone with the shifter, even with him cuffed and apparently neutralised, but time was growing more pressing with every passing moment.

She jogged to the foot of the staircase, drawing her phone and dialling Freeman’s number as soon as she’d climbed enough steps to start getting a signal. Forget the druids and their land sale issues—protecting Doctor Moss was a higher priority now.

The call connected—but only to a recorded voice telling her that the mobile phone she’d dialled was switched off. She frowned, the heartbeat that had begun to slow quickening again. She’d told Freeman not to be out of contact. Did she have the right number? This was the first time that she’d tried to use it.

No time to waste on double-checking now; she needed police backup ASAP. With a grimace, Pierce called into the station, hoping they could spare her some semi-experienced uniforms who could see their prisoner back to a reinforced cell at RCU headquarters.

Might just be a phone problem with Freeman—but still, with the way things had been going so far today, a prickle of unease crept down her spine.

Things were already bad. But they could always get worse.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I
T TOOK LONGER
than Pierce liked for the uniforms to arrive, listen to her instructions for securing the crime scene, and then escort the still-unconscious prisoner off for a medical examination to determine whether he was fit to be sent on to the cells. At least Doctor Moss had the time to gather the materials she would need to prevent the summoning, though forensics raised a stink about them taking anything away from the basement lab.

“Emergency,” Pierce said curtly. “Lives in danger take priority over integrity of the crime scene.”

The officious little man who’d tried to stop her curled his lip dubiously as he eyed the stack of papers and ritual materials that Moss had gathered. “Good luck selling that one to a jury,” he said, shaking his head.

“I’ll consider it good luck if we get this one in front of a jury at all.” The last shapeshifter that they’d taken into custody had touched off a suicide rune on the roof of his mouth and died a messy death; with a chance to examine this one while he was still unconscious, they might be able to prevent a repeat, but after what had happened with the skinbinder during his prisoner transfer, Pierce wasn’t sure even that would be enough to keep the man alive.

Assuming that the skinbinder was dead. Other people could make panther pelts, of course—it didn’t require the same unique gift as working with human skins. And even if this pelt should prove to be one of Sebastian’s, he could have made it sometime before his supposed death. Pierce hadn’t had the chance to inventory the pelts seized in their raid on his illegal skin shop; the Counter Terror Action Team had taken over her crime scene and laid claim to everything.

This panther pelt might well have wandered out of their possession, or been in the hands of Sebastian’s allies. If she could tie this summoning to one or both of those groups, she would have reason to reopen the skinbinder case, and start digging into what had really happened back in October.

Of course, that could well all be moot, if they couldn’t find a way to stop the demon summoning tonight. She turned to Moss as they left the building. “I’m going to take you back to the station with me,” she said. “Whoever’s behind this is clearly concerned that you might be some risk to their completing the ritual, and there may be further attempts on your life.”

Moss nodded, pale-faced but collected as she got into the car. Pierce had seen for herself she had pretty strong nerves for an academic—perhaps not a surprise, given her chosen specialty—but she’d been through a lot in the past week, and if her prediction was true they were going to have to ask more from her before the day was out. No one else had the expertise required to stop the ritual.

Pierce had never liked having all her eggs in one basket. It made her nervous.

She tried to contact Freeman on the radio when they got back the car. No response. Another phone call got the same ‘mobile switched off’ message.

“Something wrong?” Doctor Moss asked her, as she grimly started the engine.

“Possibly.” Freeman could potentially have ignored her instructions, deciding it was necessary to go incommunicado to avoid being spotted as police—but even that would mean she’d found something more than the simple land use dispute that they’d been expecting. Not good news.

Pierce had to make a conscious effort to keep to the speed limit as she drove back to the RCU. The adrenaline rush of the shapeshifter’s attack hadn’t really drained away, only transmuted into edgy, twitchy nervousness. Every flicker of movement at the corner of her vision drew her eye, alert for an assault that could come from any direction.

Even when they arrived back at the station, she didn’t relax. As she pulled into the car park, her eyes fell on the druids’ Volkswagen bus, apparently just on the verge of departing as a few of the group’s members packed bags and placards inside.

“Wait here,” she said to Moss. She got out of the car and jogged over to join the group of druids. “Who’s in charge here?” she asked.

With Greywolf gone, the question seemed to spark general confusion, but eventually a woman in her forties with John Lennon glasses and waist-length ash blonde hair stepped down from the bus with a slight sneer.

“Right, who are you?” Pierce asked her.

“Cynthia,” she said, somewhat sullenly. Might not be her real name, and it wasn’t a very useful one, but it wasn’t her identity Pierce cared about.

“I sent one of my police officers off with your Archdruid this morning. She hasn’t come back, and she’s not answering calls. Where is she?” she demanded.

Cynthia shrugged. “Maybe she’s got her phone turned off,” she said. “It’s not my job to keep track of your coppers.”

“Well, it’s my job to make sure nothing happens to them while they’re under my command, and the fact is she was last seen following your leader to this sacred site of yours. How do I get in contact with Mr Greywolf?”

“
Archdruid
Greywolf,” the woman corrected her, eyes narrowed in a scowl, but she pulled out a mobile phone from her robes and scrolled through the contacts. “We’re not doing anything wrong,” she said petulantly, as she put it to her ear.

“Then I’m sure this little misunderstanding will be cleared up very quickly,” Pierce said. Returning the public’s rudeness was never a good idea, but sometimes you could be just as sharp with pointedly applied politeness.

She tried not to betray the air of confidence and control by visibly jiggling on the spot. She could feel the tension gathering with every moment: call it gut instinct, some subconscious awareness of a magical build-up, or just plain pessimism, but she sensed disaster on the verge of breaking like a thunderstorm.

Cynthia lowered the phone after a moment, for the first time showing a hint of concern rather than just obstructive indifference. “Phone’s switched off.” She turned to the other half-dozen druids from the bus, clustered around the door to listen in. “Who went with the Archdruid this morning?”