Page 7 of Unbroken (Rath & Rune #4)

The next morning, rather than ride to work with Irene and the others, Sebastian made his way to the Widdershins Public Library.

His heart was heavy and his eyes ached with weariness as he climbed the steps, passing by the squid-like statues guarding the entrance. He’d spent the night tossing and turning, falling asleep and then waking from dreams he couldn’t remember.

Bonnie looked as though she hadn’t slept well either. Curse Jeremy for so callously throwing away his wife and children. At the time, Sebastian had regretted hurting him, but now he was beginning to think Jeremy had deserved everything he got and more.

His heart twinged from a different pain as he entered the library to see an unfamiliar face sitting behind the desk. The librarian who’d held the post had been killed by the maniac who found the Book of Bone. Yet another tragedy to blame on the accursed Books.

The reading room with the newspapers was clearly marked. It didn’t take Sebastian long to find an article about the death of Penelope’s friend.

AUTOIST KILLED BY TRAIN

Widdershins, MA - Mr. David Siewert of Siewert Leather Company was en route to a meeting in Salem, MA, when his automobile was struck by a Whyborne Railroad train on an unprotected crossing.

Mr. Siewert is believed to have died instantly upon impact.

According to the train’s engineer, Mr. L.P.

Marsh, the automobile had come to a stop on the tracks and failed to move at the sound of the whistle.

Mr. Marsh set the brakes as soon as he spotted the vehicle, but the distance was too short in which to stop the train.

Mechanical trouble, with the addition of heavy fog, is blamed for the accident.

The death notice gave little more information:

SIEWERT, David J., beloved husband of Julia Siewert (née Lambert). June 23. Funeral services at his late residence on High St. Relatives and friends are kindly asked to attend.

Sebastian sat back, absently rubbing the scars on his left forearm. Had Siewert’s auto broken down at exactly the wrong moment…or had he been forced to park there and wait for his doom, as Penelope Tubbs had been compelled to set herself alight?

There was no way to know, given the destruction no doubt wrought on the auto during the collision. Mechanical failure couldn’t be ruled out. His death might have nothing to do with the Book of Blood.

Or it might.

Damn it—if only there was some way to tell for certain. Given that Sebastian’s scars had reacted to the traces of magic still on Penelope, would they do the same near Siewert’s body, if they could find his grave? Or was he being foolish, wanting confirmation of what he knew in his gut to be true?

Someone had hated Penelope enough to want her to suffer, first the loss of control over her own body, then the horrific fire. The same person might have hated Siewert just as much.

It was almost certainly someone who moved in the same social circles. Someone who knew both well enough to despise them.

If they couldn’t get the list of people attending the memorial dinner from Tubbs, Siewert’s widow might be able to give them the same information. It was certainly worth talking to her, at least.

He flipped through the next day’s paper, just in case there was some more pertinent information, until he saw a headline that stopped him cold.

GRAVE VANDALIZED

Resting place of Mr. David Siewert disturbed by miscreants

Widdershins, MA - Unknown vandals defaced the headstone of Mr. David Siewert mere hours after burial.

Mr. Siewert died from an accidental collision with a train and was buried yesterday morning.

This morning, police were notified that someone painted a crude scene on the stone, accompanied by spatters of what appeared to be blood.

Police say the vandalism was the product of a tasteless prank, and vow to prosecute should the perpetrator be found.

That…was not good, to put it mildly. What the crude scene comprised, he couldn’t imagine, but the presence of blood on the gravestone of a man possibly killed by the Book of Blood…

Had the grave itself been disturbed? Or was it even possible to tell given its freshness, at least without digging down to see if the coffin was still intact?

Troubled, he put the newspapers back on their bamboo holders, wished the librarian at the desk a good day, and made for the museum. He was still deep in rumination when he reached his office and opened the door, to find Irene beaming at him with excitement.

“Look at this,” she said, shoving an architectural drawing at him. “I believe I’ve found where Dromgoole hid the final Book.”

* * *

Ves stared at the decaying ruin before them, a mixture of hope and wariness interlacing in his chest. The buildings on the street had once been comfortable homes, but time had passed the area by.

Though the lights from the amusement park on the pier could be seen across a narrow inlet, this small neighborhood stood in darkness and silence.

Waves lapped the nearby beach, and some storm had carried sand and sea wrack into the streets before retreating once again.

“What a dreary place,” Irene observed, leaning back against her auto.

Its cooling motor ticked softly in the warm evening air.

They’d thought it best to wait until dark to approach the building she’d identified as the spirit trap for the Book of Blood.

Though given the deserted atmosphere of this end of the street, they probably could have broken in during the middle of the day and not been noticed.

Noct emerged from the backseat and slithered up a lamp post still fitted for gas, though it probably hadn’t been lit in decades. “Secluded, at least.”

Sebastian put his hands on his hips, eyeing the structure. “So no one will hear our cries for help when it collapses on top of us.”

“I’ll go first.” Ves ventured up the front steps, which groaned beneath him. “If I fall through the floor, I’m the least likely to be permanently injured.”

According to Irene, Dromgoole designed the home in 1853, when the neighborhood was both new and popular.

The door bore only traces of dark green paint, the sidelights so grimed with dirt it was impossible to see inside.

He pushed the door open, the bottom edge dragging across the hardwood floor with a pained shriek.

A thin layer of sand covered the foyer and piled in the corners, hinting as to why the neighborhood had been abandoned.

Though not as abandoned as it seemed, given the clear disturbance in the sand, as if someone had dragged something back and forth through it.

“Someone’s been here,” he said. “Sebastian, can you sense the Book?”

Sebastian’s flashlight clicked on. Ves still sometimes forgot that not everyone could see in the dark. “No,” Sebastian said. “Damn it—are we too late again?”

“Only one way to find out. Stay behind me.”

The foyer let onto a hall. The close air stank of mold and salt, and flood-warped floorboards creaked warningly under Ves’s feet.

Someone had stripped the rotting wallpaper from the plaster, flung it on the floor, and proceeded to cover the walls in scribbled drawings.

“What the hell?” Sebastian murmured. His light played over scenes scrawled in what looked like charcoal: tentacles, decaying flowers, what might have been a distorted tree. Mouths without faces howled, laughed, or maybe cried from every direction.

Irene made a face. “Well, this is disturbing.”

“Look here.” Noct pointed a tentacle at one of the pictures. It showed an automobile parked across train tracks, the man inside still holding the steering wheel as a train bore down on him.

“Well, that isn’t good,” Irene remarked. “Over here—is this Penelope Tubbs?”

A second image showed a woman holding a candle to her dress, her body wreathed in flames. “I don’t see who else it could be,” Sebastian said. “The newspaper article I read said something was drawn on Siewert’s headstone.”

“So not just an act of vandalism.” Irene frowned. “So whoever has the Book has definitely been here.”

“My question is: where are they now?” Noct said grimly.

Ves strained his senses, but heard no whisper of breath, no shift of weight. If anyone else was here, they weren’t close by. “Irene, where was the Book’s resting place?”

“In a hollow column beside the stairs leading down to the basement.”

“I doubt it’s still here.” Sebastian looked down at his forearm. “I don’t feel anything at the moment.”

“Let’s keep looking before we give up,” Noct said. “Where are the stairs to the basement?”

Irene pointed toward the rear of the house. “Through a door in the back of the pantry.”

The kitchen was in as poor a shape as the rest of the house, if not worse.

A gaping hole revealed where the heavy cook stove had fallen through the weakened floor; the sound of lapping water echoed up through the void.

Sagging cabinets held cobwebs and mice. Whoever had drawn on the walls must have been eating their meals somewhere else.

“Be careful,” Ves warned. “Step only where I’ve stepped.”

Noct swung onto Ves’s shoulders as they approached what seemed to be the pantry door. Sebastian’s flashlight beam reflected dully off old glass jars, filled with the gods alone knew what. Jam, perhaps, or other preserved things, reduced now to black slime.

Sebastian let out a soft hiss. “I feel something! It must be the Book.”

Thank the trees. The murderer must have left it here, believing it to be a secure hiding spot.

The basement door was inconveniently small, forcing Noct from Ves’s back and onto the ground.

It opened onto a set of wooden stairs with no rail.

Rather than lead straight down, the staircase wrapped tightly around a brick column.

The resting place of the Book. It must be.

“Is it in there? Can you tell?” Ves asked.

Sebastian’s lips parted…then he frowned. “I’m…not sure? Something is down here, but…”

“Don’t worry—I’ll find it,” Ves said. “The rest of you stay up here—I don’t trust these stairs.”

Sebastian didn’t look happy about Ves going alone, but he nodded. “Be careful, angel.”

The wooden steps moaned under his weight, but held for the moment. The basement below was flooded, five feet or more of saltwater lapping against the stone walls. Where was it coming in? There must be some crack or hole hidden beneath the surface.

The staircase made its first tight turn. Beyond, clumps of brick and mortar lay discarded where someone had torn through the wall.

The Book couldn’t be gone. Sebastian was sensing it. And yet, there was nothing within its former hiding place but a simple, flat shelf, empty except for dust.

Had someone removed it, then flung it away into the water? That didn’t seem likely, but it would explain why Sebastian hadn’t been sure if it was still concealed.

“The Book has been removed,” he called up. “But I’m going to look—”

Something splashed in the water below.

* * *

Sebastian stared at his sleeve, as if he could see his scars through coat and shirt. The Book wasn’t where Dromgoole and Ladysmith had left it…but he still felt a tugging, as though the cotton thread was yet laced through his arm.

The scars reacted to the Books…and to things touched by their magic, like Penelope. Or maybe the person who’d been using them?

“Ves, get back up here,” he said urgently.

Ves stared at the lapping water. “I heard something.”

Sebastian’s mouth went dry. He directed his flashlight beam at the flood below, as did Irene.

Nothing. No…wait. A v-shape of disturbed water crossed into the beam as something swam below the surface.

“Ves—come back up, now!” he shouted.

A gray, slimy hand shot up out of the water and seized Ves’s ankle.

Caught by surprise, Ves slipped on the steps, hip slamming hard enough into the aging wood to crack it. The entire staircase juddered and groaned a protest.

From the water rose what had once been a man. Mud encrusted his formerly fine suit, as though he’d been lying in the silt at the very bottom of the flooded basement. His body was misshapen, bending sharply to the left, something badly broken inside.

Judging from his gray skin and sunken eyes, he had been dead for days.

“No!” Sebastian made a slashing motion with his hand, and the scars on his arm pulled hard. A bloodless wound opened across the dead man’s face—but he didn’t so much as react.

Ves’s tentacles shot out, wrapping around the decaying corpse.

Skin sloughed off beneath his grasp, and a horrible stench filled the air.

The dead man again didn’t react, straining his arms forward as though he meant to seize Ves.

His mouth fell open, wider and wider, until the water-logged flesh ripped at the corners of his lips.

Something shot out of his throat.

A strange tube, like the proboscis of a mosquito, launched from between the corpse’s teeth. The questing end latched onto Ves’s chest, and he let out a startled cry of pain.

Sebastian bolted down the stairs toward Ves. Irene cried a warning, but it was drowned out by the pounding of his heart. His powers from the Books of Breath and Flesh would do him no good against an opponent who neither breathed nor bled. But it still needed its bones.

He narrowed his eyes, trying to concentrate. Yes, there—the femur, bright in his mind’s eye—

Before he could shatter its leg, the corpse reeled back, retracting its proboscis.

It clawed at its mouth, as though it had swallowed acid.

The decay around its gaping maw accelerated before Sebastian’s eyes, teeth coming loose and face caving inward.

It flailed, trying to get away from Ves now, but he kept a tight hold on it.

Noct swung past Sebastian, adding his tentacles to the mix. Within moments, the two brothers had torn the corpse to pieces, its arms, head, and legs dropping into the putrid water, followed swiftly by its torso.

“Ves!” Sebastian reached for him, but the stairs groaned a warning.

Ves held up a hand. “Everyone up! Onto the street.”

Thankfully, the stairs held long enough for them to get back up. They rapidly retreated the way they’d come, until they stood again in the fresh night air. Even the pervasive smell of fish on the wind was preferable to the stench released from the corpse in the water.

“What the hell was that thing?” Irene asked. “And what happened when it attacked you?”

Ves quickly unbuttoned vest and shirt, both of which displayed a small, round hole that seemed to have been punched through the cloth with an awl.

A matching pink spot on his skin finished healing even as they watched.

“It bit me. It felt like…like it was trying to suck the blood out of me, like a mosquito.”

A chill went through Sebastian. “Or a vampire.”