The sickly reddish glow was emanating from the massive crystals growing from the walls. "Holy shit. I've never seen lyrium get this big." Cadash was in awe, her face awash in a hellish red tinge.
Thom had his hands stuffed in his pockets. He didn't want to touch the stuff with his bare hands, not knowing what it could do, and he knew fingerprints could easily place him at the scene. He started walking past Anais, not watching where he was going. The captain tripped over something lying in his path. Throwing his hands out to catch himself, Thom realized with horror what he had tripped over. It was an arm, thrown haphazardly between the rows of crystals. Following it back to the source, Rainier found only a crystal growing from what looked like it used to be a human torso. "Shit!" He backed up, eyes wide. "It's from people."
"What?" Anais had wandered off, down the aisle.
And her phone rang at the worst possible moment.
"Shit–" Anais fumbled with her phone, flipping it open and whispering: "Callie, babe, hi. Yeah, im kind of busy right now."
Thom was backed against a wall as he swore out loud somewhere behind her. "No, no, I'm not with a guy right now. No, I didn't ditch you. It's work stuff."
There was the sound of a gun cocking behind them. "What the fuck are you doing here?"
Thom turned, the first thing he saw was the barrel of a revolver pointed right between his eyes. One held by the man of the hour himself. "Fuck."
"Wait, shit, don't shoot him! We're just looking for this party we're trying to get to." Anais lied, stepping down the aisle toward them, "please." She was still at least a few meters away.
Riley seemed to consider this, for just a moment lowering his gun and looking at the dwarf. Thom was still wide-eyed, his face ashen. Riley stared, lifting his gun back up, pointing it toward Anais. "I know you. You're that Carta bitch. I should fucking kill you right now for how much trouble you've caused us."
Rainier swung his fists into the man's ribs, putting all his weight into the blow. Riley was knocked to his knees, coughing and fighting for breath. Thom grabbed his arms and forced Riley down onto his stomach, pulling out a pair of handcuffs and cuffing him behind his back.
"Thom, c'mon. We should go. This place is giving me the creeps." Anais shivered, stepping toward him.
Rainier took a step past Riley, picking up the revolver carefully. "Look at this. It's been fixed up, upgraded."
Even the gun itself glinted a red gold in the gloom.
"Fucking bastard! Put that gun down. Certainty doesn't belong to you." Riley started to struggle, but to no avail, cracking his chin on the dirty concrete.
"Doesn't seem to belong to you anymore either." Anais took it in her hands, looking it over. The metal was warm to the touch, like flesh. She pocketed it when Thom wasn't looking.
"Keep an eye on him. I'm calling in backup." Rainier stepped away, pulling his phone out.
"We'll take care of it from here, Rainier. You should go before Stannard finds out you were at the scene of the crime without a warrant. It's bad enough everyone else saw you." Mornay spoke softly, sympathetic. "I'm already taking most of the blame here, man."
"Yeah, I know."
"The coroner'll be in to snap some pictures of the bodies you discovered. Shit's twisted." He touched Thom's shoulder. "I'd hate to be the one who found them."
"Yeah." Rainier wasn't listening as he walked out of the warehouse into the pouring rain. He turned up his collar against the cold, and slowly made his way back to the truck.
Anais was waiting for him inside.
"What did he mean by, 'how much trouble you've caused them'?" Thom glanced at her as he turned the ignition, the engine rolling over with a loud bang.
"Shit, I don't know. I've never met the guy before."
Rainier shook his head, pulling into the road and drawing away from the warehouse, where he hoped he would never have to return.
"Mornay followed the suspect here?" Stannard glanced between the aisles of crystals, the grisly display curling her lip in a snarl. Her fingers scraped along the red crystals, residue gathering on her fingertips. Meredith glanced around to see if anyone was looking, before she clenched her hand into a fist, the crystal making her palm tingle. She crouched to examine one of the corpses. This one was a young man with shoulder length hair and looked unshaven. He also appeared to be only slightly decayed, the crystal traveling like tears down his face in cracks where his flesh split to let the lyrium grow. "Check each body, see if they match up with any missing persons." Stannard stood up again, stepping away from the crystals that made her very blood sing with the shine of it.
Cullen was still standing in the doorway, a black umbrella in his hand, as he watched two uniformed officers wrestle Riley into a squad car. The man was familiar in a way he couldn't place. A foreign sense of worry welled up in his chest when he made eye contact with him, and that alone stopped Riley's struggling. He was limp in the cops' arms, eyes following Cullen through the back window as they pulled away. The look on his face was not unlike a threat. Or at least he felt like it must have been.
He was waiting for the Commissioner to return from within the warehouse. Something about the place hurt his head. He was sure Meredith could feel it too, the way he could see she was acting in the doorway was odd in some way. In a way he couldn't place, just like with Riley.
"Oh my god." Anais looked across the seats to Thom. "I don't think I've ever seen you this terrified in my life."
"I'm not terrified." He didn't look at her, focused on the road; the windshield wipers catching his eye. "There were bodies in there. With fucking crystals growing out of them."
"Surely you've seen corpses before. You're a cop." Cadash crossed her leg over her knee, noticing where her tights had a run in them and cursing under her breath.
He just shook his head, hands trembling on the steering wheel.
"Hey, why don't we stop at my flat?" She touched the wet shoulder of his coat, hands freezing cold. "You still look scared half to death."
"Okay." Rainier turned on the radio, to a country station that guttered in and out in the static from the rain. "We can go back to your place."