Grave Phantoms (Roaring Twenties #3)(80)

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.