Spirit Animals (Ritual Crime Unit Book 3) by E. E. Richardson Read Free Book Online

whether he was up to it.
    But it would have felt like unnecessary cruelty to question his accompanying her now, and besides, maybe she was just feeling guilty, seeing only how far he’d fallen and not how much he’d already recovered. He’d always been a steady, sensible sort of man, and who was she to question his opinion of what he could handle?
    All the same, as she drove, she was conscious of him shifting restlessly in the passenger seat beside her, constantly stretching his bad leg as if to ease a cramp. She’d seen him hold almost perfectly still for hours before when the job demanded it.
    But he didn’t have that job any more, and how could she argue with him seeing this through alongside her when it was thanks to her dragging him into this mess that he’d lost it?
    “You know this place they’re keeping him?” Leo asked her, after fifteen minutes of driving.
    Pierce nodded. “Secure facility off of the M62.” In theory a shapeshifter should be no more dangerous than any normal human being once they’d been stripped of their pelt. In practice, magic wasn’t so easily and neatly contained, and there were stories of shifters who’d spent too long in their pelts retaining some animal traits even without it. When it came to keeping them contained after arrest, it was best not to take chances.
    The Yorkshire Enhanced Offender Institution had high metal fences tipped with razor wire, and a guard on the gates who took the time to actually study Pierce’s warrant card when she showed it. She’d called ahead and made arrangements, pleading time-sensitive questions as an excuse for the short notice, but there was still some bureaucratic wrangling to be done and forms to be filled in before they were finally cleared to see the prisoner.
    “I doubt you’re going to get much out of this one,” the prison officer escorting them cautioned. “Gone feral. I’ve seen it before—scratching at the walls and howling, biting, losing the ability to use tools... Oh, the psych people try to work with them, of course, but there’s only so much you can do. Put one of those skin suits on and it starts messing with your brain. People weren’t meant to be other shapes.”
    “Mm,” Pierce said neutrally, and forbore from pointing out that it was her own field of expertise. In truth, she supposed, it was scarcely anyone’s area of expertise. Most of the literature on long-term aftereffects from shapeshifting came in the form of highly dubious historical accounts of men that had become ‘near beast in mind and manner,’ and some pre-war experiments where the poor sods had been studied under such inhumane conditions it was hard to know whether to blame the magic or the testing.
    “Has Tate spoken since he was brought here?” she asked. The shifter hadn’t said word one to her or anyone else who’d tried to question him when he was first arrested. Even the identification was no more than provisional: dental records taken when they’d dealt with the suicide rune concealed inside his mouth had come up with the name of Martin Tate, but they’d been completely unable to find any other up-to-date details on the man, and Tate himself hadn’t responded any better to that name than to anything else they called him.
    Maybe six weeks in custody would have given him time to start reconsidering his options—though judging by the prison officer’s sceptical grimace, she was thinking not.
    “Non-verbal since he came in,” he said. “Doesn’t appear to respond to commands, though you never know how much these guys are faking. But he’s in line with some of the worse cases of animal behaviour we’ve seen.” He sucked in a dubious breath and shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re expecting to get out of this, but the prisoner will have to stay secured. No phones or internet-capable devices inside the interview room; nothing sharp or that can otherwise be used as a weapon. You’ll be monitored on CCTV from outside the