Under the Skin (Ritual Crime Unit) by E. E. Richardson Page A

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