Under the Skin (Ritual Crime Unit) (10 page)

He looked terrible, years older than the baby-faced twenty-something she’d left behind at the station just that morning. His face was grey and waxy, and behind the glasses his pale eyes were glazed. Even his hair looked limp, lacking its usual sculpted spikes. Christ, he looked worse than
Sally
, and she’d just had her throat slit.

“Jesus, kid, what did they do to you?” she said, stepping inside.

“I’m all right,” he said tonelessly, but she couldn’t quite believe it. Not looking like that; not with his face so slack and lacking any of its usual animation. She glanced around, wondering if they were under observation, but the empty unit had been stripped of any fittings that might provide concealment. For now, at least, the two of them were alone.

All the same, Tim moved to close the door, shutting them in together. Pierce shifted her grip on the keys to flick the penlight on instead, the narrow beam providing only just enough illumination to pick out Tim’s face.

In the dark, the echoing space abruptly seemed close and confining. A musty smell like something rotting battled it out with the stink of Tim’s deodorant. It wasn’t like him to take a bath in the stuff; he was clearly nervous about something.

Pierce shone the penlight on him. “Why bring me here?” she asked. “What’s so important that you couldn’t say it over the phone?” He didn’t say a word, just stepped closer. “Tim?” She couldn’t read his face, bleached even paler in the harshness of the torchlight. His eyes were blank.

A second later, he was swinging for her head.

No flicker of expression telegraphed the action; the first thing she knew about it was the fist that cracked her across the jaw. She reeled backwards, stunned not just by the impact, but by the source of the attack.

“Tim, what—?” There was no time to gasp the question as a gut punch smashed her breath away. “Jesus—” She barely blocked the next blow with her elbow as she flinched back.

She raised the penlight, trying to get a good look at his face. Completely blank, no sign of murderous rage, panic, or any hint of regret. He was relentless, coming after her in total silence.

It made no sense. Tim wouldn’t just
attack
like this, even if he thought she was a killer. He had police training, he was a sweet kid—she would have sworn there wasn’t a violent bone in his body.

The fist that flashed towards her head called her a liar. Pierce ducked away from him, retreating, moving further away from the door. It might have been smarter to try to get past him and make a break for her car, but she couldn’t leave without finding out why. Was Tim being pressured into this—bribed, threatened, blackmailed? She swallowed the urge to demand he explain himself again. She needed all her breath just to keep dodging.

It was hard to pinpoint Tim in the dark unit. All she heard were soft rustles and her own breathing. She flicked the penlight about, the beam lighting up damp-stained walls, support pillars, the murky shadows.

A faint sound. She spun, just in time to catch him with the beam as he lunged and wrapped his hands around her throat. “Shit!” The word became a wheeze as he dug in with his thumbs. When did Tim get so damn
strong
? Pierce slammed the heel of her hand into his stomach, but it felt like she’d hit a wall of pure muscle. He might look like a gawky kid, but he had reach and youth on her, and she didn’t have the strength to force him off.

“This isn’t you, Tim,” she squeezed out around the crushing pressure.

He gave a guttural laugh. “Oh, you have no
idea
, you stupid old bitch,” he said, and now there was nothing in his voice of the Tim she knew at all.

It made it easier to thread the keys between her fingers and slash at his face.

She couldn’t miss at this range, with his hands wrapped around her throat, but her strike cut even deeper than she’d aimed. The key’s serrated edge tore through his cheek, and he let her go as he reeled back, clutching his face and swearing. The penlight hanging from the keys swung wildly, picking out parts of the room in confusing splashes of light.

Pierce kicked at Tim, but missed him in the darkness, throwing herself off-balance. He shoved her and she went sprawling across the concrete floor, the handcuffs at her belt digging into her side.

Her cuffs. She fought to tug them out as she scrambled back to her feet, belatedly remembering police training. Tim kicked out at her midsection as she fumbled with them, almost knocking her right back to the floor. She wheezed, muscles protesting as she rose and staggered back. She was too old and tired to take much more of this.

She raised the penlight as Tim came towards her. A flap of skin was peeling down from his cheek where she’d slashed it, but in the weak torchlight she couldn’t see any blood. A pained rictus distorted his face as he stumbled after her, movements clumsy even though she could swear that she’d barely touched him.

Pierce shone the light straight into his eyes, reflecting off his glasses, and he raised his arm to shield them with a snarl. In the moment he was blinded, she punched out with the cuffs held looped around her fist like knuckle dusters. It jarred her hand, but Tim fell backwards, clutching his nose with a howl. Before he had any chance to recover from the blow, she lunged forward, snapping the silver cuff tightly around his left wrist.

“Right!” she barked, yanking on the cuffs and shining the light in his eyes. “Enough pissing around! What the
hell
is going on, Tim?”

But the face that she lit up wasn’t Tim Cable’s at all.

CHAPTER NINE

P
IERCE RECOILED IN
shock at the sight of her prisoner. Dead skin was peeling away from his face in ragged strips, as if he was about to slough it all off like a snakeskin. Her first thought was another suicide rune, her captive withering before her eyes.

But beneath the peeling outer layer of skin was a whole, unblemished face—a face that wasn’t Tim’s. A flatter nose, dark-stubbled cheeks, a blunter chin... It was as if Tim’s features were a latex mask, pulled on to cover a different face and now disintegrating.

Only it wasn’t latex. Not latex at all. Her stomach lurched, and she gagged in horror as she realised what she was seeing.

“
Tim
.” Tears sprang to her eyes, and she turned her head away, half-sure that she would vomit. “Oh, my God,
Tim
.”

Such a sweet kid, an overeager puppy of a constable who hardly seemed old enough to be part of the police force... and now the man who stood before her wore his decomposing remains like some sick parody of a Hallowe’en costume. The real Tim had been murdered, skinned, callously slaughtered just to provide a temporary disguise.

Monsters. Call it skinbinding, shapeshifting, magecraft; however you termed it, the fact remained that she was dealing with monsters.

The shapeshifter made the mistake of taking her grief-stricken shock as a chance to make a break for it. Pierce yanked on her end of the cuffs to pull him up short, not caring how much the metal dug into his skin.

“I wouldn’t,” she said hoarsely, finding determination despite the sobs catching in her throat. “Enchanted silver. They’ll take your hand off before you get out of them—and believe me, I’d be glad to see you try.”

“Bollocks,” the man said. His voice was nothing like Tim’s now, the cruel mimicry of the skin broken by the effect of the silver cuffs. “You’re police, you can’t do that kind of shit. I’ve got rights.”

“Yeah?” Pierce slammed him back against a pillar. “Bad news, kid. The RCU has a lot more discretion when it comes to magical threats... and in case you didn’t hear yet, your friend Maitland just put me on leave. Right now this is strictly personal.” She yanked his arms around the pillar and cuffed him there, with his face hugged against the concrete. At least now she could step away and not have to be so close to the evidence of the horror of Tim’s death.

“Maitland?” he said, struggling without success to turn his head to face her as she stood behind him. “Who the fuck’s that supposed to be?”

“You don’t know Maitland? How about Sebastian? That name ring any bells?”

He clammed up, smugly silent, and she was forced to circle round the pillar to see his expression. She shivered with revulsion at the sight of the decomposing skin mask clinging to his face. The features had degraded to the point where she could barely recognise them—a mercy, until she started thinking of the implications. The skin must have been made with extreme haste. Just when had Tim been replaced? Earlier today? Last night? Her gorge rose as she realised that she couldn’t even be sure if it was the real Tim she’d seen that morning.

She didn’t let her mind linger on it, forced her eyes to look past the peeling skin to the prisoner beneath. If she let herself think of it as part of Tim, she would just lose it.

Playing interrogator was always a type of acting, and right now Pierce needed to sink into the role like never before. She gave her prisoner a cold smile and then moved around the pillar and clasped her hands around the loops of the cuffs. “Oi, what are you doing?” he said, struggling against her grip.

Instead of answering, she gripped the metal tighter, and muttered a low stream of guttural words. The silver already felt warm beneath her touch.

“What the fuck was that?” he demanded as she stepped back. “Hey! What did you just do?”

Pierce didn’t answer, walking two slow circuits round the pillar as he squirmed. “Feeling warm yet?” she asked in a conversational tone.

“What did you just
do
, you bitch?” he repeated, metal scraping against concrete as he pulled against the cuffs.

She kept pacing in circles, forcing him to try to twist his neck to follow her. “Just a little enchantment we have on the cuffs for awkward prisoners,” she said. “Don’t worry, it’s harmless—as long as it’s stopped in time.” She smiled again. “Tell me if it starts to get too hot.”

He spat obscenities.

Pierce kept walking, watching as his struggles against the cuffs grew more frantic. “Of course, we don’t
really
understand how the spell works,” she said. “Magic’s funny like that. We know the cuffs will keep on getting hotter until someone deactivates them—but what if they don’t?” She gave a theatrical shrug. “No one’s ever toughed it out long enough to find out. It could be that the cuffs’ll melt, or maybe they’ll even get all the way up to cremation temperature... Hell, maybe the spell’s got a built-in limit and it’ll shut off before you lose your hands.” She grinned. “Ready to risk it?”

“Fuck off,” he said, but she could see the way that he was fidgeting. Those cuffs had to be pretty warm by now.

Well, naturally. They were silver, after all: guaranteed to cause a reaction with the enchantments on shapeshifting skins. And while a properly made pelt would insulate its wearer from the worst effects of silver burn, she’d seen what happened with the shoddier ones before. This one was disintegrating fast, and whatever protections it might have had to start with, they were failing now. The longer he wore those cuffs, the more the touch of the silver was going to burn.

There was no magical activation phrase to cause it, and it wasn’t likely to get much worse than a sunburn or a bite of too-hot pizza—but the power of suggestion was an amazing thing.

“Take your time,” Pierce said. “I’ve got all night. I’m sure that you can take a little pain. Of course, the nerve damage might be a bit tougher to deal with, but—”

“Look, just get these things off of me!”

She dropped the pleasant smile, deadly serious now. “Tell me who you’re working for. Tell me where to find the skinbinder who supplied you with that skin. And tell me why you killed Tim Cable!” Her voice broke a little on the last demand.

Her prisoner grinned nastily. “Oh, was that his name?”

She yanked on the handcuffs, pulling him against the pillar with a thump.

“Listen, you moronic little shit,” she said, leaning close. “You’re dependent on my goodwill not to die a painful death, and let me tell you now, my feelings of love and joy towards all God’s creations are not at their highest. You’d better
hope
you’ve got information worth deactivating those cuffs, because the price tag on that is going to keep rising higher with every moment you dick me around.”

He gave a sulky grimace, and Christ, she could have killed him then and there just for that look. Tim had
died
to give this little shit his chance to come after her, but it was clear that he was no fanatic ready to take his own life like the panther shifter—just a petty thug who pouted when things weren’t going his way.