Grave Phantoms
Page 77

“If you touch her—” Bo started.
The muzzle of the gun dug into his scalp.
“I just want my vigor back,” Max said. “And if you want to speak with her again, you’ll keep us on course and do it with your mouth shut. Because—”
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.