Disturbed Earth (Ritual Crime Unit Book 2)

by E. E. Richardson

  “That happen often?” Pierce asked her.

  “Well, we did have one young idiot almost burn his face off trying to raise some kind of fire spirit,” Doctor Moss said. “We were just lucky he did it down here in the lab where there are protections worked into the floor, or he could have set the whole campus ablaze. That was back in the ’eighties, though,” she added. “Can’t say our newer batches of students are any wiser, but the safety rules are certainly stricter.”

  “None of your former students spring to mind as a possible candidate for this demon-raising, then?” Pierce asked her.

  “Few of my former students spring to mind as great candidates for anything that required that much effort, frankly,” she said. “And the ones that were hardworking were also correspondingly sensible.” She shook her head. “I find it hard to believe that any of them could be involved in something as malevolent as this... but then again, it’s hard to imagine why anyone would be, isn’t it?”

  Pierce could think of any number of possible reasons, with simple callous self-interest right up there at the top of the list. It came to something, she supposed, when your job gave you a darker outlook on humanity than a lecturer in demonology.

  The lift reached the bottom level, opening onto a dim basement corridor with several adjoining doors. As the lift closed behind them and it began to rattle its way back up, Pierce thought she heard a thump somewhere above them, like one of the building’s heavy fire doors falling closed.

  “Anyone else in the building today?” she asked, instincts going on the alert.

  “One of my PhD students, possibly?” Doctor Moss said, raising her voice before Pierce could caution her not to. “Yasmin, is that you?”

  No response. Just silence, and then another not-quite sound: maybe the soft click of heels on tiles or coins in someone’s pocket, maybe just pipes down here in the basement making noises. Pierce drew a breath around the solid weight of tension in her chest and turned back towards Doctor Moss. “Right,” she said.

  And then the lights went out.

  “Shit!” She spun back, grabbing for the police torch that she wasn’t carrying. Double shit. Penlight—she fumbled for her keys and the feeble little keyfob torch that still beat groping in the dark. Even as she yanked them out, cursing the betraying jingle, there was the small flare of a cigarette lighter in the dark beside her.

  “Is that the fuse?” Moss said, looking up at the ceiling.

  “If it was, it didn’t blow by chance.” Pierce moved in front of her, protective in the face of a threat that could be coming from any direction. She glanced towards the lift: a risky choice of an escape route—and a useless one. The dull glow of the floor indicator had gone out. Fuck. “Where are the stairs?” she asked urgently.

  “This way.” Moss waved vaguely off to their left, taking a step in that direction.

  Pierce grabbed her wrist to halt her. “Stay by me.” She flicked the narrow beam of the penlight around the walls. Closed lift doors. Closed and card-locked lab room on the opposite side. No one along the corridor behind or ahead.

  She still didn’t relax.

  “All right,” she said slowly, taking a few steps ahead of Moss towards the stairs. “Let’s just get out of this basement and check the building’s clear.” She fumbled her phone out of her pocket. The bright glow of the screen was a relief, the lack of reception far less so. Police radio likely wouldn’t be much better down here in the concrete basement even if she hadn’t left it in the car. The same protections needed to keep rituals contained left the two of them cut off from any kind of help.

  Pierce paced along the corridor, Doctor Moss close behind; both of them had fallen silent, but she could hear the older woman’s breathing in the hush. Not too panicked yet, Pierce didn’t think, but if they had to run, could she do it?

  And down here, where the hell would they run to?

  She took another few steps, passing the door to the lab on the corner. The tiny red light on the card lock was still on, at least—maybe it was just the overhead lights and the lift that were out.

  That didn’t exactly make her feel much better. A targeted power outage boded even less well than a total blackout. Pierce flicked the tiny torch at the window in the lab door. Couldn’t see much beyond the reflected light, but it looked shadowy and empty.

  “This is where the ritual supplies are kept,” Doctor Moss said. “Should we—?”

  It wasn’t a sound so much as a moving shadow that made Pierce whirl about, throwing an arm in front of Moss’s chest to shove her back. A dark shape, bursting forward from the shadows on the corner; she hardly had the time to register it at all before the bulk of it slammed into her, animal-smelling and coarse-furred.

  “Shapeshifter!” Her attempted shout came out as a pained groan, still loud in the near silence of the basement. The shifter moved with barely a whisper of sound: was it the panther that had killed their informant? She couldn’t see, the faint beam of the penlight lost in the thing’s rough fur as she tried to shove it off of her.

  She might as well have been trying to shove a sofa full of people, for all her strength could move it; the thing was solid muscle, and her only saving grace was that it couldn’t snap or slash at her while it held her crushed to the wall. As it twisted around to rectify that, Pierce squirmed away, scrabbling to pull her silver cuffs out; she’d never get them on the thing, but the touch of the metal would hurt it and hopefully drive it back.

  “Run!” she yelled to Doctor Moss. She had to be the shifter’s main target. But instead, the lecturer let out a cry and thrust her cigarette lighter into the creature’s face. Transformed human or not, it couldn’t fight animal instinct to flinch away from flame. Pierce glimpsed snarling teeth and golden feline eyes in a dark face.

  “Run!” she shouted again as she scrambled towards Moss.

  But the lecturer was fumbling with the door behind her; Pierce heard the clunk as the card lock popped open. “In here!” Moss said.

  Her sense of tactics rebelled. “We’ll be trapped!” They might be able to barricade the thing out, but for how long? And without any prospect of help on the way...

  Moss ignored her, darting inside and holding the door open. The panther was regrouping, muscles bunching up to spring... “Shit!” Pierce dived for the doorway. She barely squeezed through the gap, half crushed by the door’s weight before it sealed with a click after she’d gone through.

  Sudden stillness. With the panther momentarily shut out, Pierce sagged and gasped for breath. Her heart was pounding. She turned the penlight on the window in the door, but it was set at human height, too high to show the beast prowling outside.

  She turned to Moss. “Is there another way out of the room?”

  The lecturer shook her head, looking pale but composed. “We should get the supplies while we’re shut in here,” she said, moving towards the store cupboard at the side.

  Pierce could applaud her aplomb, but it wasn’t going to help them much if the shifter broke through the door—or just plain opened it. The previous would-be assassin had managed to hack the locks, and this one had to have got into the building somehow. Their best chance of survival was if the shifter had to revert to human in order to operate the door. One brief window of vulnerability... She shone the torch around the lab, searching for a weapon.

  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.

  W
as 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

  IT 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 att
empts 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.