Spirit Animals (Ritual Crime Unit Book 3)

by E. E. Richardson

  And even being stuck in a car with a complete prat at least offered some illusion of accomplishing something, making some kind of progress. Being back at the office doing the paperwork while others pursued potential leads would only have driven her potty.

  Having tuned Tomb out some time ago in sheer self-defence, Pierce was caught off-guard when he finally offered something relevant. “I think we need to come off at the next exit,” he said, sitting up in his seat as they passed a Little Chef. “This looks familiar—in fact, yes, I think I’m starting to sense the aura now...”

  Pierce let that pass, busy pulling in front of a lorry with rather less warning than she would have liked in the light rain. She raised a hand in an apology at the foghorn blast from the driver, guiltily glad she wasn’t driving a marked car.

  She only got a brief glimpse of the road sign, a list of village names she didn’t know. Tomb seemed to be fairly confident, though, directing her left at the end of the slip road to pass back under the dual carriageway. The road they’d pulled off onto was much narrower, hedged in by steep slopes covered in spindly saplings and bushes, and they’d left most of the traffic behind on the main road.

  The road surface along here was cracked and potholed, and Pierce had to slow down further and nudge the windscreen wipers up a notch as the rain began to ramp up in earnest. The slope of the land gradually evened out, but the hedgerows only drew in closer to the road, joined now by high firs that closed off even more of the surrounding view. The few turnoffs they passed were mostly unmarked gravel tracks leading away through the fields.

  They’d driven past several that all looked much the same when Tomb said abruptly, “This is it.”

  Above the ragged hedgerows Pierce could just make out the mossy corrugated roofs of farm buildings. The site was closer to the road and coming up faster than she’d anticipated; she’d hoped for the chance to approach more stealthily and poke around, but it didn’t look like there was anywhere she could park without being spotted from miles away.

  Nothing for it but the front door approach. Pierce drove between the open gates to park up on the gravel beside the two buildings. There was no sign of any other vehicles, and she couldn’t help but be aware of how long a shot this was. Even if this was the place that Jonathan had brought Tomb before, there was no guarantee the cult had used it in the last seven years, or that Violet would have chosen to come here now. Hell, for all she knew Tomb could have made the incident up entirely and just brought her to the first likely looking abandoned barn in the region rather than admit it.

  If so, he was committed to putting on a performance regardless. “This is the barn that Jonathan showed me,” he said. “He told me this was where the disciples brought him when he was first recruited. They drank the blood of farm animals together and promised him eternal life if he would swear himself over to the service of their leader.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said neutrally. She supposed it sounded plausible enough: a few less murderous blood rituals to gauge new recruits’ responses, see how many lines they could be persuaded to cross after they’d seen a few demonstrations of supposed vampiric powers and been promised they could have them for themselves—though from what had happened to the two cultists that they’d arrested, she doubted Violet was the sharing type. “All right. Stay in the car, and keep your phone ready. If anyone but me approaches, lock the door and call the police.”

  The place seemed to be completely abandoned, but she was taking no chances.

  Pierce opened the door and stepped out into the driving rain, half wishing that she’d brought some backup with her, half glad she hadn’t been able to bring a full team to what looked to be yet another dead end. She’d probably used most of the year’s budget for joint operations in this week alone.

  And they still didn’t have the Valentine Vampire in their custody to show for it.

  The rain was hammering off the metal roofs of the buildings, splashing back from the puddles gathering in the ruts of the gravel drive and plastering her hair to her head. The lee of the main barn to her right would have provided a little shelter, but she moved away from it at first, towards the smaller shed ahead of her. It stood open to the weather, seemingly unoccupied but too dark to be sure. This time she’d come prepared with a proper full-sized torch; as she clicked it on, she drew her phone with her other hand to give Deepan the details of her location.

  “Doesn’t look like this place has been used in a while,” she told him, shining the torch around the inside of the shed. It seemed empty, but there were a few big old rusty metal drums that had once held who-knew-what. She rounded them to peer into the rear corners: nothing but some old sacks and impressive spider’s webs. “But still, see what you can dig up about the ownership, now and over the last thirty years. I don’t know what the road is, but there’s a sign here says the place is called Manor Farm.”

  “Will do,” he said.

  “Any progress on forensics?” she asked, hunching against the rain as she moved back out towards the much bigger main barn. It looked like a once-larger entrance had been bricked in, a small metal door set in the middle of the mismatched brickwork. She tugged at the handle, but was unsurprised to find it locked. A quick glance back at Tomb to make sure he was staying put in the car as ordered, then she moved around the side of the building.

  “Nothing from yesterday’s scene,” Deepan told her. She had to press the phone right to her ear to hear him over the sound of the rain on the roof, the corrugated metal sheets rattling uneasily in the wind as if debating whether to choose today to rip free. “But they managed to ID the second victim as a university student called Alex Wagner. I sent DC Freeman to speak with the parents, but I doubt that they’re going to know much. He was living in halls.”

  “Younger than our previous victims?” she asked as she picked her way through the waterlogged mud.

  “Nineteen,” Deepan confirmed. “Youngest before that was twenty-one.”

  Hmm. Hard to say if that was significant or sheer chance, though it might be another point in favour of the hypothesis that Violet had been getting wary, changing up patterns and preying on easier meat. Whatever good it did them to know that this late in the game.

  She reached another door around the side of the barn, this one seemingly original to the building. She doubted the rotten old wood could stand up to a tap from an Enforcer ram, but a search warrant could be tricky to arrange just on Tomb’s claims. It was looking like he’d dragged her out here in person on a massive waste of time.

  All the same, she gave the cast iron ring pull a tug. The door shifted in its frame, but didn’t open. She gave it a second, harder yank, on the theory that if it just happened to come open in her hand it would surely be her duty to check inside and secure the scene. Sadly, whatever bolt or latch held it closed was made of sterner stuff than the wood, and though it gave a strained creak it didn’t seem as if was likely to give. She sighed and let it go. “Looks like I’m not going to be able to—” She broke off as a dull banging noise reached her ears. “Was that at your end?”

  “Was what?” Deepan asked. Rather than answer, she took the phone away from her ear so she could listen. More muffled thumps, like something—someone—knocking on a distant door, or kicking at something solid.

  It sounded as if it was coming from inside the barn.

  Pierce stepped back to check that Tomb hadn’t left the parked car, but couldn’t see into the passenger seat from this angle. It couldn’t be him making that noise; she’d most likely have seen him get out.

  She thumped on the barn door herself, raising her voice. “Hello? Is anyone inside? This is the police.” If Violet was here, she’d probably heard the car approaching anyway, and besides—Violet would have no reason to be banging and kicking.

  A flurry of more urgent thumps. Her pulse quickened, and she raised the phone back to her ear. “We could have a live victim here,” she told Deepan. Or it could be a trapped animal, or a particularly deceptive breeze... Sh
e shouted through the door again. “If you’re able to speak, please respond. This is the police!”

  Was that a muffled cry from within? She couldn’t hear anything clearly over the clatter of the rain against the metal roof. She hammered on the door once more, and was rewarded by more distant thumping.

  Shit. It could be someone trapped inside, perhaps gagged and restrained or in too much of a bad way to call out. If Violet was now working alone, she might have left her victim temporarily unguarded while she retrieved supplies for the ritual. Or she might be in there even now, unable to interrupt the magic in full flow to deal with police interlopers.

  Either way, Pierce had a duty. She was out here without backup, hadn’t even checked in with the local police since Tomb had been so purposefully vague about where they were going, but there could be a life in danger, and there was no time to wait for assistance to get here.

  “I’m going in,” she told Deepan. “Figure out whose jurisdiction I’m in and get me some backup out here—and make sure you warn them what we could be dealing with.” RCU assistance would be better, but the rest of her team were a good ninety minutes’ drive away, and RCU Oxford weren’t much closer.

  “On it, guv,” Deepan said, sparing her the arguments and questions. Good lad. Pierce ended the call and tucked the phone away so she’d have both her hands free to tackle the door.

  However she was going to do that. No convenient windows to smash here: the only points of entry were the doors. The metal one round the front was an obvious no-go, but she was fairly sure she could shift this wooden one with a bit of applied force.

  Unfortunately, she’d left the battering ram in her other coat, not to mention the sturdy young officer to do the swinging for her. She cast around for anything else she could use to break through. No conveniently dumped tools or bricks, no rocks any bigger than pebbles; the fenceposts that ran nearby were metal, and looked harder to break than the door. There were a few saplings behind the fence, but it didn’t look like their skinny branches would be up to damaging much.

  On the other hand, a thin twig might actually be more useful. Grimacing, Pierce dug through the mulch of dead leaves at the foot of the trees until she came up with one that seemed suitable, thin but not too whippy.

  There was no visible lock on the wooden door, so it must be secured from inside—hopefully with a simple bolt rather than a padlock. She tugged again on the iron ring, pulling the door outwards as far as the loose hinges would allow, and fed the twig into the narrow crack that she’d created in a bid to locate the bolt on the other side. When it seemed to get wedged halfway up she thought her luck might be out, but as she jiggled the twig back and forth a bit she realised the door was held shut not by a bolt, but by a simple hook latch.

  The latch was stiff enough that it still took some effort to work it loose without snapping the twig, but at last she heard it scrape free from the catch and the door bounced forward a fraction. She tugged it further open, wincing at the screech of the rusty hinges. She’d just have to hope that neither Violet nor any surviving cultists were here right now, because she wasn’t convinced she could make an arrest with handcuffs and intimidation alone.

  The inside of the barn was dark, lit only by the thin cracks of light that made it in around the ill-fitting roof. The high-ceilinged space was too big for her torch to highlight more than a small patch of it at once, and stacks of wooden crates and indistinct tarpaulin-covered shapes created a maze of threatening shadows around her. Off to her right was a rickety wooden ladder Pierce assumed led to a hayloft; below it ran a line of animal pens with rusty metal gates, like old barred cells.

  She entered the barn at a wary pace, heart pounding as she flicked the torch about to peer into the shadows. The drumming of the rain and the rattle of the roof created a murmur of background noise that could have hidden any number of sounds all around her. More than once she jerked around to face a flicker of motion, breath catching, only to realise it was just the darting shadows cast by her own torch.

  The dull knocking came again, somewhere over to the right, and Pierce swallowed, licking her lips nervously. There could be a victim in here, but she still hesitated to call out again.

  She made her way in the direction of the sound at a nervous crouch, edging round each obstacle and checking every corner. Something soft gave under her foot, and she jumped away, her heart pounding, before she registered that it was just a fold of tarpaulin. She kicked it out of her way, and the tarp slithered down to reveal the low stone slab it had been draped over. The stone rose about six inches above the floor, etched with grooves that all funnelled down towards a wider channel at one end. There were heavy metal rings at the corners that looked like they were meant to anchor ropes.

  Pierce had a bad feeling that it wasn’t intended for anything involving livestock.

  The best thing she could do with the grisly discovery was keep well away from it until forensics arrived. Pierce skirted around the stone block. She could call Deepan to confirm that this was definitely the right place, but backup was already coming, and she didn’t want to risk the distraction.

  That banging sound again. It was coming from one of the animal pens at the far side of the barn. She swallowed and crept closer. An irregular dull knocking—just something come loose, tapping against the brick wall in the wind, or was there somebody there?

  “Hello?” Pierce said tentatively. Her own tremulous tone annoyed her, and she squared her shoulders to speak more firmly. “Is somebody there? Identify yourself. This is the police.”

  She thought she might have heard a choked breath, almost like a sob—but if so, it wasn’t followed by any louder cry, only more of that soft tapping against the brickwork. She inched forward, cautiously shining her torch through the metal grill that closed off the pen. The inside was heaped haphazardly with straw, and at the back there was a hump of fabric that might or might not have been a human form under a blanket. “Hello?” she said again. The blanket didn’t stir.

  The tapping had stopped.

  Pierce opened the gate onto the pen—another simple latch, though the metal had stiffened enough to make it difficult—and tugged it open, flakes of rust cascading to the ground. She moved to stoop over the shape in the blanket, drawing her phone from her pocket to call for an ambulance if it was needed, and reached out to give the huddled lump a cautious shake.

  The blanket collapsed under her touch, revealing only more heaped straw. There was a creak from the hayloft above, and she started to look up—

  Not fast enough to avoid the shadowy form that leapt down to meet her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  PIERCE HIT THE hay-strewn floor of the barn with a startled oof, the breath smashed from her lungs by the body that slammed into her from above. The torch gave an ominous crunch in her hand, and the barn was plunged back into darkness. The phone was still cradled safely against her chest, but before she could think to dial, her arm was wrenched viciously back and clawing fingers ripped it from her grip. She heard the impact as it shattered against the barn’s rear wall.

  Then the weight was gone from her back, and the pen door slammed shut with a rattling crash.

  Like jail cells, she’d thought when she’d first seen the things. Oh, fuck. She’d been lured into a more literal trap this time—and the fact that she wasn’t dead yet was probably only a sign of nastier plans in store.

  Pierce climbed heavily to her feet, repeatedly clicking the torch in her hand but getting nothing in response. Definitely broken. She shuffled forward through the straw, groping blindly ahead until she met the metal gate that now barred the exit from her cage. She shoved at it, but was grimly unsurprised to find no give; unlike the warped old barn door she’d broken in through, this one rested securely up against the edge of the frame, and the grill was too narrow to fit her hand through. She had to wonder now if these ‘animal pens’ had actually been original to the barn at all, or fitted by the cult with this exact purpose in mind.

&nb
sp; She was in big trouble.

  Still, admitting that wouldn’t get her anywhere. “Hey,” Pierce shouted, rattling the cage again, a demand for attention. “You think this is going to get you anywhere? In a couple of minutes this place is going to be flooded with police.” She wished. Deepan would do his best, but with only her report of suspicious noises to go on, she’d be lucky to have a pair of local bobbies show up when they’d dealt with their other business.

  Not the sort of thoughts she wanted to be projecting right now. Act confident. “There’ll be Firearms Officers called in—you’re fast, but you’re not going to outrun a bullet,” she said. “It’s in your best interest to surrender peacefully to the police before they get here. Nobody wants this to end in bloodshed.”

  Except of course, Violet probably did—and the prospect of peaceful surrender wasn’t much of a carrot to dangle for someone who was looking at life in a high-security facility, assuming she could even survive breaking off the cycle of killings that sustained her. All the reply that Pierce got was the scrape of the barn’s outer door, Violet’s outline briefly silhouetted in the doorway before she pulled it closed again behind her.

  It would be nice to think that meant she’d decided to just leave Pierce here and run while there was time, but more than likely she knew the talk of backup was overinflated, and was just heading out to Pierce’s car to move it out of s—

  Fuck! Tomb. She’d left him waiting for her in the car, and hadn’t even warned him of the cult leader’s true identity. What if she tricked him into getting out of the car? And even if he didn’t, locking the doors wasn’t much of a defence; Violet could smash her way in without raising a sweat. Would he have the time—and the presence of mind—to call 999 before she got to him?