Spirit Animals (Ritual Crime Unit Book 3) (34 page)

Another faint noise from outside—just the wind, or could it be a car door slamming?

Pierce realised she’d stopped her own thumping and hammering to listen, and started again quickly, fearful the sudden lack of noise might draw Violet’s attention where nothing else she’d tried had done the same. She found a renewed volume from her parched, ragged throat as she began to yell again.

“Hey! You think you’re going to get away with this? The police are going to be coming in armed!” she shouted. “You may have strength and speed on your side, but there’s only one of you. Let him go before he bleeds to death! Let me out of this cage!”

She yelled out every useful bit of tactical information that she could, not knowing for sure that there was even anyone out there, or that they could hear anything she said—but gripped by a near-paralysing sense of hope. Maybe the local patrol hadn’t been fooled, maybe Deepan had raised the alarm over her failure to check-in, maybe someone had seen Violet attack Tomb and hide the car...

If this turned out to be a false alarm, then it might just be it: the moment she gave in to the howling panic that lay beneath the thin veneer of anger.

Please
, Pierce thought, almost prayed—but only inside her head, just in case Violet was listening after all.
Somebody be out there
...

“Let him go!” she shouted out loud. “He can’t afford to lose much more blood!” She wanted to yell out the full details of their positions, but she couldn’t think of any way to get the facts across that wouldn’t alert Violet to what she was doing. “Put the knife down!” she cried instead. “Step away from the altar!”

Maybe she was just shouting to the wind.

Her voice was cracking, losing strength from all her futile yelling, but she did her best to keep on making noise, as much to provide cover for anyone outside as in hopes of getting their attention. Tomb’s screams had died down now to a pained gasping, and she didn’t know how much longer he had.

She pressed up close against the barred door of her makeshift cage as she slammed and rattled it, trying to see the wooden door she’d come in through. If the police were coming in, that would be their point of entry. The way the altar was positioned left Violet facing that end of the barn, but Pierce had no effective method of drawing her attention away, and no way to warn whoever might be coming in.

If
anyone was coming in...

With every second, the initial rush of hope was seeping away. Maybe it
had
been just the wind, her imagination clutching at straws to distract her from the horror. In the brief lull in her shouting, she heard Tomb let out a stomach-churning whimper, lacking the strength now to scream as he’d done in the beginning, but still stubbornly, horribly failing to sink into the mercy of unconsciousness.

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

P
IERCE 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.