Spirit Animals (Ritual Crime Unit Book 3) (2 page)

Gemma made a small sound of dismay as she followed Pierce inside. “All dead?” she asked, taking in the situation at a glance.

“It would appear so.” Not from natural causes, either—not so soon after the reports from the neighbours. The animals must have been put down
en masse
, apparently too much of an inconvenience to cart away from the scene when the going got hot. Pierce walked along the line of cages, more to take inventory than to look for signs of life. The dead animals were a bizarrely eclectic mix: a badger, a barn owl, what might have been a lynx, even a snake. Some semi-exotic, some mundane, but none of them particularly large.

“Well, whatever they were doing in here, they weren’t making shapeshifting pelts,” she said. An enchanted pelt would allow its wearer to take on an animal form, but only one of roughly comparable size. The country’s few authorised skin shops typically worked with the bodies of big dogs, deer and horses; the less legal kind, exotic predators smuggled in from abroad.

“Recognise this, guv?” Gemma asked, nodding towards the far end of the barn. There was what appeared to be a ritual altar set up, an eight-sided stone slab raised above a fire pit ringed with carved stones. A cross-shaped iron frame stood above the arrangement, a heavy butcher’s hook hanging down from the centre. Two concentric rings were drawn around the whole lot in the dirt, the straw that strewed the rest of the barn fastidiously swept away from the circle.

“That’s a new one on me,” Pierce said, pulling on a pair of evidence gloves as she approached it cautiously. “But I know the setup for a blood ritual when I see one.”

The caged animals were clearly intended as sacrifices, probably fed and watered just enough to keep them barely alive until they were needed for the ritual. But the mismatched assortment puzzled her; sacrificing animals of such different sizes and natures would bring widely variable results. Had the ritual-workers been experimenting, trying to find the perfect animals for their purposes? That was even more dangerous than if they were following exact instructions from a ritual text.

Because this setup looked all too carefully assembled to be just clueless amateurs buggering about. Pierce bent down as she approached, trying to get a look at the rune-carved stones around the fire pit.

And felt something shift under her foot beneath the straw. A subtle shivery tingle passed over her skin, like the barely perceptible drag of a spider’s web. She froze.

“Constable Freeman?” she said stiffly.

“Guv?” Gemma said warily.

“Would you mind clearing away the straw around whatever I’m standing on,
carefully
, and telling me if I’ve just set off a trigger rune?”

After thirty years on the job, Pierce recognised that shivery sensation all too well. She’d just crossed a magical barrier.

She held her position, half-crouched, as Gemma hunkered down beside her. Her muscles were already threatening to cramp. She didn’t dare even look down to watch Gemma’s progress as she brushed the straw and dirt away from around Pierce’s shoe. If she’d just primed some kind of magical trigger, any wrong move could potentially set it off.

After an eternity in which Pierce’s muscles screamed protests and a minor itch at the back of her head swelled into a maddening urge to scratch all over, Gemma finally sat back on her heels and frowned. “Right. Okay, then,” she said, though it sounded anything but. She drew her phone to take a photograph of whatever she’d uncovered, and brought it up so Pierce could see the screen without having to move.

It didn’t look good.

The object her foot was resting on appeared to be a small stone slab, dug in to lie more or less level with the dirt floor of the barn and then covered over with straw. The surface was painted with symbols that her shoe now partly obscured. Underneath the slab ran a steel wire, no doubt connecting a ring of more such trigger stones around the altar.

“Well, bollocks,” Pierce said, with feeling. She took a deep breath, fighting a sudden wave of vertigo that made her feel as if she was somehow in danger of falling off a slab of stone less than an inch thick. “Right, then, constable,” she said, doing her best to keep her voice even. “What does your PRMC training tell you about that?”

Pierce had been doing the job since long before the force had offered anything as arcane as a certification in ritual magic; she was dubious of its usefulness when it came to assessing whether job applicants could actually hack RCU work in the field, but it did at least come with a more up-to-date grounding in magical theory than the patchwork knowledge Pierce had picked up over the years.

Gemma chewed her lip as she considered what could be made out of the design. “Right,” she said eventually. “So far as I can tell, it’s a variation on a standard tripwire trigger. I don’t know what kind of enchantment it’s tied to—can’t really see that bit—but it’ll go off if you disturb the position of the stones.”

“Figured that much,” Pierce said tightly. “How much can I move without setting it off?” Her back was already threatening to spasm.

“I don’t
think
it will go off just as long as you keep your foot on the stone,” Gemma said.

“Oh, well, that’s all right, then.” But she did ease her other knee down to the floor, to relieve some of the trembling tension. “I will need to pee at some stage, constable,” she pointed out. Probably quite soon, given she was currently resting on a magical landmine.

“I think you could probably safely substitute your touch for someone else’s without setting anything off,” Gemma said, musing aloud.

“That means somebody else volunteering to step in here and take my place,” Pierce said. And she’d better not be thinking of doing it herself. “No deal.”

“What about using one of the animals?” Gemma suggested, turning to look at the row of cages. “I doubt the enchantment’s sophisticated enough to tell the difference between a living being and a dead one—these magical triggers are complicated enough to create without adding a load of unnecessary extra conditions.”

That sounded like some pretty ropy theorising to her—but when it came to magic, ropy theorising was frequently all they had. Pierce gave a curt nod. “Fine. Bring me the corpse of Basil Brush, then.” At least she wouldn’t have to worry about putting another living creature in the firing range, police constables included.

She waited, sweat trickling down her back, as Gemma moved off toward the row of cages. Despite assurances, Pierce didn’t want to tempt fate by twisting round too much to look, so she had to track her progress by listening to the creaks and rattles of the cages.

Gemma eventually returned bearing the blanket-bundled form of the dead lynx, but Pierce stopped her with a raised hand before she could get too close. “Right, that’s far enough,” she said. “Put it down on the ground beside me.”

“Guv, it’s probably better if I’m the one who—”

“That’s an order, constable,” she said.

Gemma looked briefly mutinous, but she clearly wasn’t certain enough of her ground with Pierce to argue it. She stooped to lay the lynx on the ground, the big cat’s tufted head flopping back lifelessly with jaws slightly agape. The air of death and excrement in the barn was so pervasive that being up close made no difference to the smell. “Right. Now sod off,” Pierce ordered. “No sense you being in the area of effect if this doesn’t work.” She flapped her free hand as Gemma reluctantly retreated a few paces. “Further than that, constable. Out of the barn, down the field, and keep moving. Someone’s going to need to write the superintendent a report if this thing brings the barn down.”

She waited until Gemma had obediently left before turning her attention to the task at hand. Replace her foot with the lynx’s paw. Right. Easier said than done: that thing looked heavy, and she couldn’t really twist around to pick it up with both hands without shifting her foot on the stone more than she liked. She was going to have to drag it towards her, and hope like hell she didn’t disturb the hidden wire buried under the dirt while she was doing it. Pierce grimaced as she reached out to tug on the corner of the muck-encrusted blanket with her left hand, remembering only then that it was her weak shoulder.

And the lynx was a dead weight. It refused to move at all in response to her first careful pull, and she yanked harder with a frustrated huff. The blanket dragged clumped straw and dirt along in its wake, and she cringed at the thought of the steel wire running just under the surface.

At least now the big cat was close enough she could grab it instead of the blanket—and, small mercy, she’d managed to put on some evidence gloves before all this began. She hauled the unfortunate animal towards her by one of its mangy front limbs. Long legs and big furry paws: unquestionably a wild creature, not a domestic cat. Where had the ritual-workers sourced it from? Could be a lead.

If she made it out of this barn alive to pursue it. Right now her only concern was whether one of those big paws would be heavy enough to keep the stone weighed down. She draped it over the end of her shoe and slowly inched her foot back out from underneath. So far, no boom. But as soon as she let go of the slack paw it started to slip away, and she made a frantic grab for it, heart racing.

It wasn’t going to stay in place on its own. Steeling herself, Pierce pinned the paw with her right hand and shifted her grip to the matted scruff of the lynx’s neck. With another great heave, she managed to lift the thing bodily off the ground and lay the heavy head down on top of the paw to keep it weighed down on the stone. When she very carefully peeled her fingers away, the head lolled sideways, dark lips parting, but it stayed where she’d put it.

Pierce closed her eyes and took a long, shuddering breath, wishing she believed in the power of prayer, or could at least think of a more inspiring final thought than
please don’t fuck this up
. Nothing came to mind. But delaying was only going to make it harder. She eased her foot out from under the weight of the lynx’s head and off the stone.

No reaction.

Pierce resisted the urge to let out a great gusty sigh of relief; she wasn’t home yet. Still moving very, very slowly, she set her knee down on the straw-covered ground and shuffled backwards away from the stone. There was a tense moment as she pulled her trouser leg out from under the beast’s body, but though it shifted slightly, it stayed where she’d arranged it.

She pushed herself up from her kneeling position, feeling a twinge from her unhappy back but managing to make it upright without staggering. Still wary of disturbing the precarious arrangement, she took a soft step backwards. Another. Keeping her eyes fixed on the dead lynx, she edged all the way back through the barn to the open doorway.

Where she found Gemma lurking anxiously just outside.

“Constable Freeman, I can’t help noticing you have not sodded off to the requested distance,” she said.

“Sorry, guv,” she said, not sounding terribly repentant. “The substitution worked, then?”

Pierce picked her way out past the remains of the fallen door. “Well, I haven’t—” A chunk of rotten wood shifted under her feet, and she cursed and grabbed at the doorframe.

From further in the barn, there was the almost inaudible sound of something shifting. Pierce lunged forward, shoving Gemma away from the doorway just as a wall of flame exploded out from the altar.

CHAPTER TWO

B
Y THE TIME
the fire brigade had arrived, there wasn’t much of the crime scene left to be preserved. Though the stone walls were still standing, the roof had collapsed at the altar end, and the straw had carried the flames to the animal cages, adding the stench of burning flesh and fur to the haze of smoke. A thorough dousing from the fire hoses helped to ensure that any evidence that hadn’t burned would still be ruined.

They were still awaiting permission to re-enter the building when Pierce’s phone rang. Seeing her sergeant’s name on the screen, she wandered away from the scene to answer it. “Deepan. What’s up?”

“Might need you for a consult on this case, guv,” he said. “Are you free to come out to the scene?”

“As a bird, unfortunately—my evidence just went up in flames.” She grimaced at the still-smouldering barn. “Is this the ritual murder?” she asked. “I thought you were out there with Dawson.”

DI Dawson, her ostensible new second-in-command, was becoming a bit of a thorn in her side; he’d been brought in to run the RCU while she was out on medical leave with a shoulder injury, and she suspected both he and her superiors had expected her to politely shuffle off into early retirement instead of coming back to take the reins. Somebody up there was apparently still hoping that she’d take the hint, since they’d yet to divest her of Dawson despite the fact her team was too small to need a second senior officer. He tended to behave as if he was still in charge, and certainly wasn’t inclined to call her in for a second opinion on one of his cases