Bookburners: Season One Volume One

by Max Gladstone

  The first mate reached into his pocket and came out holding the wooden grip of a small but viciously curved knife. As he swung it through the air toward Father Menchú’s throat, the light caught it and the blade shimmered, wickedly sharp.

  Sal grabbed Father Menchú by the arm and dragged him away from the first mate, as the Captain reached out at the same moment and attempted to knock his officer’s arm aside. Their elbows caught, and with a snarl, the first mate tightened the arc of his swing, bringing his arm back around to try and stab the Captain.

  And then, suddenly, Grace was in the middle of the fray.

  Sal wasn’t even sure how the other woman had gotten across the room. One moment she was holding up a wall with her shoulder and the next she was standing between the Captain and the first mate.

  Correction: Grace had hurled herself bodily right at the first mate’s descending right arm, pinning it between his body and hers, while she wrapped her legs around his waist and used every ounce of her mass like a cannonball. And while Grace’s mass wasn’t all that much, it was enough to throw off the first mate’s center of gravity.

  That’s a hell of a move, Sal thought, if you aren’t worried about breaking your fall on the way down.

  Sure enough, when the first mate toppled, Grace fell right along with him, tumbling over his head, and Sal could have sworn that she could hear the crack of two skulls against the floor. But either Sal misheard, or Grace simply didn’t care. An instant later, Grace was back on her feet with her heel planted against the fallen first mate’s windpipe.

  “Do you need him able to speak for questioning?” she asked Father Menchú. Then added, “Decide quickly. The fall will only stun him for a couple of seconds.”

  “Please,” Menchú said.

  The Captain gaped. “What are you talking about? You can’t just—”

  The first mate lunged up, and Grace calmly kicked him in the temple. He fell back to the floor, barely conscious. Sal pulled out her handcuffs—which she did still carry, thank you very much—and was about to ask Grace if she wanted her to step in when the man wrenched himself to one side. He still had the knife, and his hand was already in motion.

  This time, the blade struck home.

  Before even Grace had time to react, the first mate buried the knife in his own heart. The wet thunk of impact was followed by a fountain of steaming arterial spray, hot and coppery in the air. Sal moved to cover the wound, apply pressure, do something, but Liam stopped her. Grace was already blocking the Captain.

  “Don’t touch the body,” Liam said. “Until we know what was in him, we don’t know about possible contamination.”

  Sal fell back, remembering Perry, and the thing that was not-quite-Perry, and the way he had turned his former roommates into puppets.

  “He’s not a body,” the Captain objected. “His name is Paul. I’ve worked with him for ten years—”

  The Captain abruptly stopped talking. The body, or Paul, or whatever it had been, caved in around the stab wound in its chest. Flesh and bones collapsed, melting into a rancid black ooze that smoked against the yacht’s immaculate taupe carpet.

  As Sal watched, the rib cage gave way with a wet squelch and a fresh gush of steam. The Captain was right about one thing. It wasn’t a body.

  Not anymore.

  3.

  “We should get out of here,” Grace said.

  “Out of this room? Or off the boat?” Sal wasn’t really expecting an answer, but Grace supplied one.

  “The room, now. The boat, eventually.”

  “What about that?” Menchú indicated the expanding puddle of black goo.

  Liam knelt by the body, poking at it with a silver-plated pen he’d found somewhere. “It’s an exothermic reaction. That’s where all the steam is coming from. But it doesn’t look corrosive. What the owner is going to do about the carpet is another problem entirely—”

  Behind Sal, the door opened. “Hey Skip, are you in here . . . ?” The voice, and its pleasant Australian accent, cut off abruptly. A young woman wearing a uniform polo shirt stood in the doorway. Sal supposed she should have expected her to show up sooner or later.

  The woman, however, was clearly not expecting to see a group of strangers in the lounge. Then she spotted the remains of the first mate and let out a terrified, wordless scream.

  Even as Sal helped maneuver the woman back out of the room, she felt just a little bit jealous.

  She could have used a good scream too.

  The door to the lounge had barely slammed shut behind them before Grace was bracing the woman—who couldn’t have been older than twenty-five—against a wall.

  “What did you do with the book?”

  “The book?”

  “The one you bought last night,” Father Menchú clarified, “from the little shop in Rome.”

  “I . . . What?” She looked helplessly to Captain Childress for guidance.

  “It’s okay, Katie,” he said. “Just tell them.”

  “What happened to Paul?”

  “The book,” Grace said.

  “I put it in Mr. Norse’s safe.”

  “Take us there. Now.”

  • • •

  Skip said it was okay, so Katie led the strangers through the owner’s suite and into the closet where his personal safe was secured. She hoped like hell the book was still where she had left it. She hated to think what these people would do if they thought she had lied to them.

  They wouldn’t even let her open the safe herself. Just demanded the combination, and Katie decided not to argue. Not after what they’d done to Paul.

  While the strangers were distracted with the safe, Captain Childress stepped up behind her, speaking low in her ear. “Whatever they want, Katie, just give it to them. Keep them busy. If I see a chance, I’m going for the radio.”

  Katie nodded and wondered if his first call would be to the police or to Mr. Norse. Katie had heard the rumors about the Fair Weather before she signed on, but the promotion to chief stew and purser was too good to pass up. So what if the owner was interested in rare books? She’d met plenty of rich people with much stranger hobbies. And the weirder rumors, the whispers of strange and evil things, were too wild to be credible. Besides, the crew had seemed nice, the lack of charters meant lower tips but also lower aggravation, and ultimately, in the sixteen months she’d been aboard, she hadn’t regretted her decision once.

  Until she picked up that damn book.

  The big guy with the tattoos finally finished checking the safe for . . . whatever he was checking it for. Was he smudging the room with sage? Anyway, he finally got the safe open, and then the one dressed like a priest used what looked like an old pillowcase to pick up the book.

  He frowned and looked at her. “Did you open it?” he asked.

  Katie shook her head.

  “It’s okay if you did,” he pressed, “we just need to know.”

  “I didn’t,” Katie said. “It was creepy.”

  “If it was so creepy, why did you argue with the bookseller when he didn’t want to sell it?” asked the blonde woman who hadn’t slammed Katie up against a wall.

  “Because Mr. Norse had arranged to buy it.”

  “Do you know why he wanted it?”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t ask?”

  “I’m the head steward. If the owner wants something, I get it for him. I don’t ask why he wants it, and even if he had told me, I wouldn’t tell you.”

  “So he did tell you,” said the Asian woman, who had slammed her up against the wall.

  Katie gave her a withering glare, but did not answer.

  “Guys, bigger problem here?” said the big tattooed guy. “If she didn’t open it, what happened to the first mate? I’m going to guess that he didn’t generally go around trying to stab people, not to mention the whole melting into black goo routine.”

  “Maybe he opened it. Or touched it, or was susceptible for some reason. I don’t think that’s really our
number one problem right now,” said the blonde.

  “We have a bigger problem than a dead first mate turning to goo on the carpet?”

  “Yes,” the woman said. “Normally, once we’ve bagged the book, it’s problem solved, right?”

  “In general.”

  “Then why is the view out the window still blurred?”

  Katie turned. The closet was too small to accommodate more than one person at a time, so most of the group was gathered in Mr. Norse’s stateroom, which had a set of glass doors that led out onto a private balcony.

  The view looked fine. Katie was about to let it go when she remembered the Captain’s request for a distraction. Well, she’d see what she could do.

  “Blurred? Are you all high or something?”

  “Ignore her,” said the Asian woman.

  “No. I won’t.” Katie pointed emphatically at the blonde. “She said the view was blurry, and it’s clearly not. I’ve been cooperating, but if you’re all just a bunch of junkies . . .”

  She could see them exchanging looks as she continued to rant. Well, that was fine. As long as they weren’t looking at Skip, they could roll their eyes about her all they wanted.

  Katie yelped and jumped as she felt something cold at the back of her neck. A chain. The blonde had dropped a half-tarnished silver crucifix over her head. They are all high, she thought. Even the priest.

  Then she looked outside again, and for some reason, she couldn’t make her eyes focus. She had time to think: What have they done to me? And: Is Skip seeing this? Then her stomach flipped, and she fainted.

  • • •

  “Generally,” Father Menchú said to Sal, not upset, but still chiding, “we try to be a little more gentle when introducing civilians to the reality of the non-mundane.”

  Sal winced as she heard another round of retching from the bathroom. “Sorry.” Then she went back to her original question. “But if we’ve bagged the book, why is everything outside still in blur-o-vision?”

  “Could be something else on the boat,” Menchú suggested. “If this Mr. Norse is a collector, he could have all kinds of artifacts aboard.”

  “Great,” said Grace.

  Liam, still examining the book through the shroud, shook his head. “Or, the more likely explanation: the binding has been damaged.”

  “Binding, like a spell?” asked Sal.

  Menchú shot her a look. “What do you know about binding spells?”

  “My brother played a lot of Dungeons & Dragons when we were kids. Still does. Did. Dammit.”

  “Actually,” said Liam, “I meant, literally, the binding.” He pointed to where the back cover had separated from the spine along two-thirds of its length, barely connected to the rest of the book at all. “Even when the book isn’t open, it still isn’t closed.”

  “I really wish that didn’t almost make sense,” said Sal.

  Grace swore. “You mean that thing has been . . . leaking?”

  “The shroud should still contain it,” said Menchú, thoughtful.

  “That’s great for keeping it from getting worse,” said Liam, “but it doesn’t look like it’s helping it get any better.”

  Grace frowned. “Wasn’t there a case in China like this?”

  “Back in the twenties?” Menchú asked.

  “No, later,” Grace said. “I read about it. A book got damaged, then started oozing something that spread like a contagion.”

  “What happened?” Liam asked.

  “It became the Asian Flu Pandemic of 1957. Estimated worldwide death toll between one and four million before a team finally found the book.”

  “How did they stop it?”

  “Buried the book, the monastery where it was housed, and everyone inside it under a landslide.”

  In the pause that followed, the door to the small bathroom opened, revealing a very wan ship’s steward who had finally managed to regain her feet.

  Grace frowned. “Wasn’t the Captain in there with you?”

  Katie shook her head.

  “Then where the hell is he?”

  • • •

  Childress had to hand it to Katie, that fainting spell had been a stroke of genius. If they lived through this, he was going to make sure she got a raise.

  Once he had slipped away, his first stop had been the bridge and the ship’s radio, but someone had sabotaged every comm system on the ship. No internet, no sat phone, nothing. He wasted more time than he should have, checking over the ship’s systems, trying to find out what had been done to them. But when he noticed his old magnetic compass spinning crazily on its bearings, he gave up hope that this was something he could remedy with a quick fix.

  If he was going to get help, he needed to get off the boat. He felt a twinge of regret, leaving Katie behind, but his best chance to help her was to get the owner on the horn. It wasn’t like they were in the middle of the Atlantic. The marina office was just at the end of the dock. She’ll be fine, he told himself, and made for the aft deck.

  • • •

  Thanks to her longer stride, Sal was able to catch Grace, even with the other woman’s head start.

  “Do we have a plan?”

  “Find the Captain. Keep him on the boat.”

  “That’s an objective. Not a plan.”

  “That’s a big word for a dumb cop.”

  “Hey,” said Sal, “I read too, you know.”

  At that, Grace cracked a smile. It only lasted a fraction of a second, but Sal was sure it had been there. And then, just as quickly, it was gone. “We’re probably too late anyway. Unless the captain’s an idiot, he’ll have gotten as far from this boat as possible.”

  “And he’s not an idiot.”

  “No.” Grace scowled, as though this were a personal insult.

  They were coming up on the doors to the aft deck now. Frosted glass. Sal’s stomach clenched. If the captain was out there, the glass meant he’d be able to see the movement of their approach against the static background of the hallway, but they were effectively blind.

  Grace must have had a similar thought. She paused and indicated for Sal to fall in behind her. “I’ll take the door. If one of us is going to get shot, better it isn’t you.”

  And before Sal could open her mouth to ask what the hell that was supposed to mean, Grace popped the door and barreled through onto the deck. Sal—never one to leave her partner without backup—charged through right behind her.

  The Captain wasn’t waiting for them in ambush.

  But he was waiting for them. Hanging in midair. Stuck like a gnat on a drying snot bubble to the blurry field surrounding the yacht.

  • • •

  They were all on the deck now, staring up at the Captain. Against Sal’s better judgment, “all” included Katie. She had expected another bout of vomiting and unconsciousness when the woman saw what had happened to her boss, but all she did was quietly breathe, “Oh, Skip,” and fall silent.

  The sun was setting, sky glowing pink behind the trapped man. But the sight of Katie seemed to rouse him back to coherence.

  “Sorry, Katie.”

  “For what?”

  “I was going to leave you here.”

  “You would have sent help. You take care of us.”

  Whether it was the sun or some effect of the field he was trapped in, the Captain’s lips were dry, and they split when he tried to smile at her. “Not well enough.”

  A drop of blood oozed up from his lip and fell to the deck below. Sal stepped forward to draw Katie back from him, then froze.

  The drop on the ground wasn’t red. It was black.

  Sal half expected the deck to begin smoking, it seemed only appropriate if people were going to suddenly start bleeding black ooze, but just like when the first officer had killed himself, the drop didn’t seem to be reacting with the wooden surface. Except . . . Sal blinked.

  It was just one drop of blood, but it was . . .

  “It’s spreading.”

  Grace
stopped in the middle of whatever she had been saying to Liam and turned to Sal. “It’s what?”

  “Spreading.”

  In a few seconds, the single drop had grown in size from the diameter of a dime to a half-dollar, and Sal was running out of currency large enough for comparison.

  “Was it doing that when the first mate . . . ?” Liam asked.

  “I assumed he was just bleeding out.”

  “Shit.”

  A quick check confirmed that what had once been the floor of the boat’s forward lounge was now a lake of black ooze. At least it didn’t seem to be throwing off heat anymore, now that the body was completely gone. Although, as silver linings went, that was a pretty thin one.

  “What’s below this?” Father Menchú asked.

  “Crew quarters, then the hull.”

  Father Menchú took this in with more calm than Sal was currently feeling—what with being trapped on a boat slowly filling with demonic black ooze—but she supposed part of his job was to keep a calm face on things. Either that, or he had a good plan for getting them out of this mess. She really hoped it was the latter.

  Menchú let Katie lead the way to the deck below, but stopped her from entering the room directly below the lounge. Carefully, he opened the door.

  What had once been a crew cabin was now filled with oily tendrils dripping down from the ceiling vents like tar from a sieve.

  “Was anyone in there?” he asked.

  Katie shook her head.

  “Where’s the rest of the crew?”

  “For the trip to Miami, we just have two more. But they aren’t aboard. Sarah went into the city to meet one of her chef friends and get some fresh groceries while we were in port. Luc was picking up supplies.”

  “When are you expecting them back?”

  “Sarah will come back sometime this evening, late—she made it clear we were on our own for dinner. Luc will be back later than that probably, or tomorrow morning if he meets someone.”

  Father Menchú let out a long breath. “Were they on the boat last night?”

  Katie nodded. “Sure. Like I said, we live here. . . . Are they going to . . . What happened to Paul and Skip, is it . . . Is it going to happen to them? To me?”