Grave Phantoms

by Jenn Bennett

  A muffled scream sounded from somewhere on the deck below. Astrid! Bo’s pulse doubled. He pushed out of the chair without thinking, only to be pistol-whipped on the back of his head. Lights blurred in his vision as pain lanceted through his skull. He fell against the dash and was hauled back into the seat.

  “Try it again, and I’ll pilot the yacht myself,” Hammett warned.

  “Please do,” Bo said, touching the back of his head and wincing. The pain was almost unbearable. But further shouting from below sharpened his will.

  Max cursed under his breath and flicked an uneasy glance out the windows. “Make sure he keeps his hands on the wheel and drops anchor at the coordinates,” he told Hammett. “I’m going to check on them. If I’m not back when we get to our destination, bring him down. Shoot him in the leg if he doesn’t obey,” he added with a wry smile as he exited the pilothouse.

  Bo felt the gun pull away from his head. Hammett took up Max’s place near the map while keeping the weapon pointed at Bo, and smiled at him beneath his heavy mustache. “You heard the man. Stay on course.”

  He’d heard, but didn’t much care. All he was thinking about right now was that Hammett was holding Bo’s own gun against him. This made him furious. It also made him wonder where Hammett’s two flintlock-wielding thugs were. Down in the main cabin? Or had they left them behind on shore? How many guns were on board?

  “You don’t look young like the others,” Bo said, mentally measuring the distance between them. “So I assume you aren’t one of them. Been working with them for long?”

  “What’s that? Oh sure. Twenty-one years now. Nance came to Cornwall and tracked me down. Eight generations back, he had a son before he went on the voyage and met the Sibyl.” Hammett smiled to himself. “Imagine finding out your ancestor is still alive. I didn’t believe him at first, but he showed me the family tree.”

  “I suppose the fact that he didn’t age was convincing,” Bo said.

  “Not at first. The time difference to travel between the planes takes a year, you know.” Travel between planes? He supposed the man was referring to the yearlong stretch of time during which the yacht had disappeared. “And when they come back in their new bodies, they’re confused. So the first time he switched bodies, I didn’t believe it was really him. Of course, that body had been female. You try looking into a strange woman’s eyes and believing the man you spoke to a year ago is beneath the skin.”

  Bo stared at Max while the engine hummed. “They . . . switch bodies.”

  “Every decade. Well, all but the Sibyl, of course.”

  Astrid’s vision. She’d said the priestess in red was old. Mrs. Cushing was young. Was she the only one who was actually extending her life? The rest of them were . . . what? Hopping from body to body? That would mean . . .

  Not a sacrificial ritual, but an exchange.

  The people in the burlap sacks weren’t being killed. They were the Pieces of Eight members. He thought of what Little Mike had told him outside Mrs. Cushing’s house—about Kit Manson, the heroin addict. The Pieces of Eight club had offered him wealth beyond his wildest dreams. Had they told him the catch?

  Max had taken Kit Manson’s body.

  “Heaven,” Bo said. “That’s where they pick out new bodies.”

  “I’d give anything to choose my own body,” Hammett said. “The Sibyl’s six are the only ones who can do that, but hopefully tonight will change things a little for me. When Nance gets his vigor back, the Sibyl is going to give me a little taste of the runoff.”

  “Runoff?”

  “A little shot of the blond girl’s youth. And maybe a shot of yours. If you do exactly what you’re told, you might even live through it.”

  Fear knotted Bo’s stomach. Not for himself, but for Astrid. He eyed the radio headset. One second. That’s all he needed. He waited for Mad Hammett to look away.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  “Take your hands off me, or I promise you’ll regret it.”

  Astrid took in labored breaths as two of the survivors restrained her arms while standing in front of the piano in the yacht’s main cabin. Her previous captors, a thin woman and a dark-haired man, now had a scratched eye and bruised balls. That left one strange man who wouldn’t stop laughing . . . and Mrs. Cushing. Max was somewhere; she’d heard him earlier but hadn’t seen his rotting face since the yacht began moving.

  “Miss Magnusson,” the laughing man said. He wore his dark hair a bit longer than fashionable, hadn’t shaved, and spoke in a foreign accent. He also seemed to rank higher than the rest of them; he hadn’t left Mrs. Cushing’s side. “Sibyl,” he’d called her several times. Astrid wasn’t sure if that was the woman’s given name or an honorific. “If you do not settle down,” he said, “I will put you back inside the sack.”

  Her skin chilled at the thought of being thrust back into breathless darkness, unable to move or think. She’d nearly lost her mind inside that sack. She wasn’t sure if she’d survive it a second time.

  A door banged shut.

  “It is well?” the laughing man said to the person circling out of sight behind her back.

  “We should be there any minute.” Max. His voice sent a fresh wave of rage coursing through her limbs. “What in hell is going on down here?”

  “Your girl will not behave,” Mrs. Cushing said. Her blond hair, which was pulled tightly into a crown of braids, gleamed under the cabin lighting as she removed her crimson coat and laid it atop the bar. “Fleury was suggesting we bag her up again.”

  Fleury. Astrid looked at the laughing man as the Wicked Wenches’ tale of pirates flashed inside her head. Jean Fleury. She’d found a dark oil painting of him inside a book in Winter’s study—one before he was supposedly hanged for piracy in 1527. The man in that painting had looked nothing like the one standing before her now.

  “Tie her arms to her sides and bag her up to the waist,” the man she’d kneed in the balls said from his curled up position on the floor. “I will break her.”

  “You can have her after we’re done,” Mrs. Cushing said. “Nance will need to be physically connected to her during the ritual. Your seed will only muddle the energy.”

  Max coughed. “Can you even get it up, Bechard? It looks like she got you in the stones pretty good.”

  “Won’t stop me from swiving you,” the man said with venom.

  “Enough!” Mrs. Cushing barked and pointed a finger at Max. “You losing your turquoise is the reason we’re all here right now. She’s your responsibility. Restrain her. We haven’t survived together over the last four hundred years only to be disbanded over one small girl.”

  Max said something under his breath and limped over to Astrid. His chest rattled with every breath; sweat gleamed on his skin. The open sores and peeling flesh that covered one side of his face smelled putrid.

  “I don’t think I’ve hated anyone so much as you,” he said a few inches from her face. “I am going to hurt you so badly, you’ll beg for death.”

  She fought the shudder that fanned through her bones. “Where’s Bo?”

  “He’ll be joining us soon enough. We need blood to open up the passage, and unfortunately, the Sibyl says it can’t be yours or my vigor might slip out. But after I have it back . . . you will bleed.”

  “What passage?” Astrid said. “If you hurt Bo—”

  “I will do more than hurt him, Goldilocks.” Max pulled a knife out and held it in front of her face. She recognized the ivory handle; it was the one he’d held to her throat in the elevator. “I will cut him open so wide, his entrails will spill onto the floor.”

  His free hand moved toward her neck to hold her in place. She saw the blue of his ring, twisted loosely around to face his palm—as if it were too big for his hand—and tried to jerk away, but the men who were holding her tightened their grip. The moment the ring touched her neck, the same terrible electric
ity she’d last felt in Gris-Gris’s restroom suddenly shot through her nerves.

  The cabin fell away.

  The vision began.

  This time, she didn’t see the ritual. Didn’t see the body sacks in the water, either. She saw another ritual. Another time . . . another boat.

  She was inside the wooden hold of an old ship. The dark belly was filled with crates and penned animals, along with the reek of urine, shit, and death. Armored conquistadors lay slaughtered, their bodies stacked against the walls. The ship rocked severely, groaning as wind lashed the ship and thunder rolled. Sputtering lanterns swayed from rafters. And in the middle of the ship’s hold, the old priestess in the red robe stood inside a chain of blue symbols. Spread around her, lying on the floor, fanned out in imitation of spokes on a wheel, were five long-haired men and one woman.

  All naked.

  All covered in blue paint and blood.

  All clutching turquoise idols to their chests.

  And each of those idols generated a fine white line of light that pierced the dark air of the ship’s hold and connected to a carved pendant of turquoise that hung around the priestess’s neck.

  The vision sputtered. Astrid saw the ritual overlapping with the current yacht. It blurred and rotated, and she thought she might be sick.

  “Do you hear me? What’s wrong with her? Help me, Sibyl!”

  Astrid was sagging in the grip of the two survivors who restrained her. Max slapped her—struck her across the face. His ring made contact with her cheek and the room disappeared again.

  Now she was on another ship, in a Victorian-looking parlor. Ornate lamps, chairs, and china had been stacked against the wall in a heap, along with a rolled-up rug. Portholes framed flashes of a roiling ocean when lightning streaked across a night sky. The red-robed priestess stood in the center of a blue circle, guiding a ritual that looked identical to the one Astrid had seen on the Plumed Serpent. Six young people with the priestess inside the circle, six old people wearing iron boots lined the outside. Only, Astrid recognized none except the priestess. They were all different people.

  Where was Max? Fleury?

  “Move!” a feminine voice commanded as Astrid’s world spun. “It’s your vigor, man. Your touch is interacting with it . . . doing something strange to her. If she dies, you die. And if you die, this entire coven goes with you.”

  “Aye,” another voice answered sullenly. “Stand or fall together.”

  “I told you the drug fiend was a poor vessel,” a third voice said. The laughing man—Fleury. “He was too intoxicated to even hold on to the turquoise. That’s what got us in this mess in the first place. If he hadn’t dropped it—”

  “How many times do we have to talk about this?”

  “Feel that? The yacht’s stopped. Are we at the passage? I can’t tell. Do you detect the Beyond, Sibyl?”

  “I think so . . . Go upstairs and check, Nance. We need to be sure.”

  “What if she dies before I get back? I want my vigor! Go ahead and do the siphoning ritual now. Hammett will bring down the Chinese man after the anchor’s dropped.”

  “Just move and let me see her,” Mrs. Cushing said. “Pull her up and let me see what’s happening to her.”

  Astrid was hauled to her feet and saw the crowd around her, silhouetted in her vision like cast shadows behind a flame. It’s the turquoise, she tried to tell the dark shape that looked like Mrs. Cushing, but Astrid’s mouth wasn’t opening. Not Max’s touch, but the turquoise around his finger. How did they not understand that it was contact with his idol that started all this? Astrid’s knees gave out and she sagged in her captor’s arms.

  “Hold her still,” Mrs. Cushing said as she leaned over Astrid’s lolling head.

  Astrid saw the silhouette of the woman’s hand moving slowly toward her. Mrs. Cushing tried to pry open Astrid’s eyelids, and when she peered closer, a bright blue shape escaped her shadowy breast.

  On a chain hung the turquoise pendant Astrid had seen in the vision. It was big as a silver dollar. Big as the gold doubloon that had adorned Max’s idol.

  The turquoise pendant swung toward Astrid and struck her chin.

  Once again, blackness transported her out of the yacht. It was night again—and humid—but she wasn’t on a ship. This time, it was a large, round raft—a giant wooden tea saucer with a canopy of woven dried grass. It floated in the middle of a great lake surrounded by mountains and step temples. A circle of candles flickered violently around the edge of the raft, wax melting into the wood, and as the wind blew drops of warm rain beneath the canopy, the candles’ flames threatened to extinguish.

  Twelve Aztec men and the old priestess stood on the raft in the same way as before: six on the inside of the circle, six on the outside. No burlap sacks and iron boots, though. This time they kneeled inside giant woven baskets weighted down by rocks. Each of the kneeling men held a turquoise idol.

  Thunder rolled. The men in the baskets handed the turquoise idols to the six in the center of the circle. The priestess called out an invocation. White light flared around her. It surged from the pendant of turquoise hanging around her neck and grew tendrils that extended like tentacles toward the six in the middle. The light pierced each one of them and kept going, until each tendril pierced the men in the baskets.

  The men in the baskets gasped, shuddered, and fell limp.

  The raft shook as if it were being hammered by an earthquake while the tendrils of light retracted into the middle six; they gasped, shuddered, and struggled to stand—all of them clinging to the turquoise idols. And on the priestess’s command, they all left the circle to stand by the baskets.

  The priestess . . .

  Light from the tendrils poured into her open mouth. As if she were drinking it. Eating it. Consuming the vigor that Max had spoken about? Or consuming the souls of the men who now lay unmoving in the baskets? Whatever she was doing, it changed her dramatically. Her skin tightened. Cheeks plumped. Hair curled and turned blond . . . until she was no longer old. Until she was Mrs. Cushing.

  The light sparked. She lit up like a bonfire, hair whipping around her head, and rose several inches into the air. Beneath her feet, a pool of blue light opened. It swirled and undulated, and Astrid couldn’t tell if it was water or clouds or something else entirely, but it was the same color as the idols. And the six who were holding those idols? They pushed and heaved and shoved the baskets overboard. One by one, they fell into the lake and sank.

  But there was no time to dwell on that monstrous act, because several things happened in quick succession. Mrs. Cushing exploded in a ball of white light—so bright, Astrid couldn’t see her floating anymore. Where was she? Gone? Before Astrid could figure that out, lightning struck the raft, and everything was sucked inside the pool.

  The six men.

  The idols.

  And the raft itself.

  It all just . . . disappeared.

  The survivors on the raft didn’t change, Astrid thought. The ritual only restored youth to the priestess. The old bodies were drowned, but they weren’t sacrificed. They were . . . discarded.

  The six old men had swapped bodies with the young men.

  Time unwound. The vision changed, and Astrid’s perspective shifted. She now stood on the shore of the lake as rain pelted the surface. Nearby, Mrs. Cushing stood, a loose white skirt and red feathers around her waist, watching the lake intently. The turquoise pendant hung between her breasts.

  A few yards away, lightning struck the water. The raft reappeared—its canopy, candles . . . and the six men with the idols. Cushing made a triumphant noise and spoke in a language Astrid had never heard. She began stripping off her skirt, continuing to intone indecipherable words, until movement in the nearby brush caught her attention.

  A conquistador in armor knelt in the brush, a crossbow propped on one shoulder. He released a bol
t that shot through the air and pierced Cushing’s stomach with a fleshy ripping sound.

  Cushing barely faltered. She grabbed the bolt and yanked it out of her body, tossing it aside with a dark smile. The wound began healing, even as the blood dripped down her leg. She shouted something at the man and began marching toward him as he reloaded the crossbow.

  She can’t be killed, Astrid thought in horror.

  Perhaps the conquistador realized this, too, because before Cushing made it to him, he shot another bolt in a different direction. It sailed across the water and struck one of the men on the raft in the chest.

  Mrs. Cushing screamed. The man fell off the raft into the water. She dove into the lake and swam madly toward the raft as the conquistador loaded a third bolt in his crossbow. But as she was swimming, the man who’d been shot bobbed to the surface, unmoving. White light shot out of his chest . . . and out of the chests of the remaining five men on the raft.

  A few moments later, all six bodies shriveled up, cracked into pieces, and blew away. And in the moonlight reflecting off the lake, Astrid spied Cushing’s hair change from gold to silver.

  “Is she dying?” a voice said from a distance as the vision scattered and disintegrated. “What’s the matter with her?”

  “I don’t know,” Cushing answered.

  “The six are weak,” Astrid mumbled. That’s why Cushing recruited the pirates—because she had to find new men. That’s how she stayed young. Immortal.

  “Did she say something?” Fleury asked.

  “Her mouth moved,” someone else confirmed.

  “I don’t give a damn, just do something!” Max shouted. “She’s got my vigor. I feel my soul drying up. Do the ritual. Now!”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Bo slowed the yacht as they approached the map coordinates. Mad Hammett had only stopped talking long enough to scratch his ass, but he’d slowly relaxed his stance as the yacht cut through the water. Unfortunately, he hadn’t relaxed enough, and had kept the gun trained on Bo the entire time. But now he perked up and straightened.