Possession

By Kit Walker

Burgling a quarantined ship should have been easy money. It wasn't. Now Danny and Eli, Saintstown's pettiest thieves, have a traumatized former captive on their hands and the city's most powerful fixer breathing down their neck. And that's just the start of their problems.

NOTE: This story features content that some readers may find disturbing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kit Walker
• Release date: Mar 12, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215257210

Kit Walker

Kit Walker is a genderqueer writer of horror, crime fiction, and dark sci-fi/fantasy. Born and raised in Canada, they’ve recently been shipped overseas to Newcastle upon Tyne in England.

Book preview

I

In the dark of night, a small rowboat bobbed across the bay toward the merchant ship Dominion .

Found adrift that morning, the Dominion had been quarantined by Saintstown’s port authority and towed to a safe anchor point far from the city’s docks. To a certain element among the citizenry, this was just barely a deterrent. To others, it was practically an invitation.

The rowboat came to a stop alongside the ship, and two figures clambered up the side of the hull. First on deck was Eli, a reedy man barely out of his teenage years with the air of a nervous rabbit. He leapt over the banister with ease, pausing only to light the lantern he’d brought with him.

The sudden burst of flame illuminated a body, lying prone not more than a yard away.

Eli yelped and sprang backward into the banister. The lantern swung in his hand, its light dancing erratically across the deck.

It was littered with the dead.

Eli’s partner, Danny, hauled herself up to join him. About a year younger than Eli and not nearly as tall, she more than made up the difference in stocky muscle. Danny was often described as scrappy, although not usually within earshot.

Quickly determining there was no immediate threat, Danny knelt next to one of the bodies: a lanky man with a few gold teeth, equipped with a blackjack and a small collection of lewd photographs. Judging by the blood in his hair and the irregular curve of his skull, he’d suffered a lethal blow to the head.

I know him, she said. He’s one of Massey’s runners.

Bill Massey ran the most infamous boarding house in Sinner’s Acre. His runners would climb aboard any ship that passed through the strait and attempt to lure its crew ashore, either by persuasion or force. Sailors that accompanied the runners back to the boarding house often found themselves drunk, drugged, and pressed into service aboard another ship within short order, while Massey collected his finder’s fee.

Eli swept the light across the deck, more deliberately this time. A few of the other bodies looked to be runners as well; the rest were sailors. All bore injuries that suggested a prolonged and vicious fight.

This was a bad idea, he said.

"This was your idea. Danny knelt next to the dead runner. Did you bring pliers?"

With pockets full of gold teeth, they picked their way across the deck to the captain’s quarters. According to the ship’s manifest, most of the Dominion’s cargo amounted to provisions and raw materials—valuable, but hard to transport and impractical to fence. But there was also an entry for personal effects, belonging to an N. Sinclair.

"Must be something good in there," Danny said.

Eli ripped the page from the manifest and tucked it into his pocket.

---

Among the boxes and sacks that filled the cargo hold sat a large crate, labeled Property of N. Sinclair. Two bodies lay on the floor nearby: one with its eyes gouged out, still clutching a knife buried in the other’s chest.

The crate was too big to carry. They’d have to open it here.

Eli gingerly stepped over the bodies and knelt before the crate. Its front panel was hinged at the bottom and secured at the top with a padlock; Eli’s picks made quick work of the lock, and the