Eterna and Omega (31 page)

“Ah, one of yours, then, I see,” Harold Spire said, approaching Clara and nodding at Effie. “This crafty young woman has a penchant for tracking me. First, when Lord Black and I attended the queen's parade, where she witnessed a rather unfortunate near assassination. I don't like such embarrassments to go by without making friends out of them,” he stated. He leaned in. “I'm glad you found Everhart's passages earlier. I couldn't bear you skulking around outside any longer.” Effie returned Spire's partial half smile.

“Effie Bixby, Mr. Spire,” Clara introduced before turning to Spire. “Sir, your presence here today has been exemplary, and I hold you and Lord Black in high regard for trying to control this government, allowing ours to help and advise yours. A brave, bold step.”

“I don't really have much choice,” Spire stated, addressing both women. “None of this is as I, a mere policeman and detective, would have planned, believed, or hoped. But I appreciate friends above foes.”

“I would like to consider you a friend indeed,” Clara said, “and I hope our offices will continue to coordinate in a manner as effective as this.”

“Whether it is effective is yet to be proved, but yes,” Spire conceded.

At that moment, Spire's Metropolitan colleague Captain Grange, approached him.

“Sir, which of the MPs would you like taken in for questioning and possible arrest?”

Spire made a few subtle gestures around the stately room toward any he had deemed suspect during the proceedings. “And, while you're at it, Grange, ask Mrs. Northe-Stewart if she agrees. She's got … good instincts.”

Clara smiled. The king of skeptics couldn't call it clairvoyance, but Clara didn't care. “Instinct” was a fine word for it if ability itself was respected and valued.

The kind-faced redhead named Grange nodded and approached Lord Black, who was consulting with Evelyn, likely advising him on the same suspects. Within the next few moments, with mere nods from Lord Black, policemen quietly led out several representatives. The redhead returned, bobbing his head to his superior. “Thank you, my friend. Now make sure there's an increased presence around Westminster as a whole,” Spire instructed.

“Grange, my good man,” Lord Black added, “can you be the one to give an account to local papers? The Society will want to think their plan a success, but don't terrify the populace. Nothing sensational, but give a tale colorful enough to be pleasing to those wanting such news, and nothing of the antidote or our future distribution of Wards.”

“Of course, sir, as the senator suggested, it shall be done.” And the man was off with determination.

Effie handed several sheets of paper to Spire, at which point their company was joined by Miss Everhart. “These are the businesses' moving materials and properties from Master's Society to Apex locations, which your MPs and police forces will have to watch and Ward,” Effie stated. “Now, if you'll excuse me, I must go get some rest, I've not slept in days.”

“Noted, Miss Bixby, please do so, and thank you, this is exactly what I've wanted to get hold of,” Spire stated with a bow of his head. Effie nodded, reached out to squeeze Clara's hand, and vanished into the vaulted Gothic arched shadows of an exit corridor.

Spire turned to address Clara and Rose together. “I am … uncomfortable with a … Warding process; I don't understand it. But I have seen what the toxin does, and I do believe in this antidote. I hope you can prove the Ward to me similarly, though I'm not sure I want to see another ‘test' to do so.”

“The next days will undoubtedly give us a chance, Mr. Spire,” Clara stated. He set his jaw grimly in response.

Clara felt comfortable in the Omega team as a balanced initiative. Every team needed a skeptic, and Spire did his department no disservice in this.

Eventually, the teams filed out onto the green and into a waiting carriage belonging to Black, who insisted on hosting the group at his home. There was a second fine carriage beside Black's, Lord Denbury having arrived to rendezvous with them, the young man pacing in the courtyard, awaiting them. Evelyn volunteered to fill the lord in on the parliamentary proceedings, and the caravan proceeded en route to Knightsbridge, leaving Clara, Bishop, Spire, Rose, and Black to the larger cab.

It was only once the carriages hurtled
past
Lord Black's residence that they realized there was a problem. They tried to unlatch the cab doors, but they were jammed shut from the outside. There was no other explanation than that they were all being abducted.

“Sweet
Lord,
not again,” Clara murmured under her breath.

“Lord Black,” Spire asked, staring at every seam of the carriage construction, “did you notice anything different about your footmen today?”

“I confess, my friend, I didn't look up at them. I didn't notice,” Black said mordantly. “That's the horror of how the Society seems to work its way into things, through those whom our positions of privilege have trained us not to see.…”

Spire noticed that one of the windows was slightly ajar but before he could attempt to widen the gap, a black-gloved hand appeared and dropped a tiny open bottle into the cab. Smoke was issuing from it, and the air in the confined space quickly filled with noxious fumes. Coughing and gagging, the members of the Eterna Commission and the Omega department faded into unconsciousness. When they came to, sore and ill, they were in Greenwich.

The carriages stopped abruptly. The doors were thrown open and the passengers roughly yanked out and deposited onto the stone walkway of a grand estate.

“Of course,” Black said bitterly, looking at the vast Gothic edifice looming before them. He explained to the others, “Welcome to Rosecrest, the Denbury estate. I assume it has fallen again into the dread hands of the Master's Society.”

The group was herded up the walk by the burly, possessed guards. A separate envoy of two scarred men in besmeared workmen's clothes, their eyes sparkling dark and vacant with the tell of the possessed, dragged Lord Denbury and Evelyn up the walk, insult to injury, this disrespect on the young lord's own rightful property. He was fighting them tooth and nail, his fury entirely palpable, but with a third possessed body called up to help contain him, he was overcome.

Of Andre, Knight, Mrs. Wilson, and Blakely there was no sign. Clara hoped this meant they remained free, pursuing their Warding work at the Omega offices. Perhaps, she prayed, Louis would be called to her side to offer insight and then to warn and alert the others. However, as the spirit world was unreliable and operated on its own time, she could not count on this.

As she approached the manor, Clara's heart gave a sharp thump. She knew this place, had seen it in visions, of fire and chalices, shadows and earthquakes, broken justice and iterations of lives.… Her jaw sagged and she spun toward Rose, only to find Rose already staring at her, her face expressing equal shock. The visions or dreams must have been shared between them.

*   *   *

Was this it?
Rose wondered. Would they, prophetically, betray one another right here in this very place? In trying so dearly to avoid it, would they fall catastrophically right into the very traps they wished not to? Rose was confident that Clara did not mean her any more harm than she did in converse. But what good would that be if they were compelled by forces beyond the average human will?

The house was fairly dark, save for an odd, disembodied glow that cast a deep bloodred light over the building's rough-hewn red sandstone exterior. One garish swath of moonlight illuminated the peaks of the estate's turrets.

The unnatural, ungodly stage, where unimaginable horrors would undoubtedly unfold, caused a pit of dread to yawn open in Rose's stomach. She glanced at Harold Spire. He was white as any ghost he did not believe in.

The British and the Americans were callously “escorted” down the hall by black-eyed, possessed footmen and ushered into a long, grand dining room.

A table was set for them. A last supper entirely spoiled, with more than a few insects having quite a time of the feast of turned turkey, spoiled jellies, fruits, and moldy puddings. This seemed representative of the Society's inversions of faith and power. Rose couldn't be sure when it had been left there, or if it was for them or for some other poor unfortunates, but it was disgusting nonetheless, and a sign Rosecrest had been in darker hands for longer than they knew.

A network of metal tubes crept up the walls and across the ceiling, culminating in what looked like vast metal showerheads. There was a sulfuric scent upon the air, under the smell of rotting food.

To Rose, their fate seemed very clear.

They would be gassed, collectively, a group execution. A death much like their teams' scientists, a horrid irony these dark forces seemed so fond of.

*   *   *

The guards shoved each person into a tall, velvet-backed seat and bound them to their chairs.

“Do have some supper before midnight,” one of the guards said with a chuckle, his voice disembodied, low and animalistic in its growling, wet affect.

Clara stared at the moldering cutlet that had one bite out of it from the last poor individual placed here before their sacrifice. A small insect crawled out from under the meat before miring itself in stale gravy. The dining knives were very dull. Not much use even if she could shift her chair to grab one.

Looking around, Clara watched her colleagues take stock of the room, looking for weapons and vulnerabilities. They would have to be crafty and clever in order to outwit those who had traded their souls for the darkest of powers.

A great deal could be done, but nothing that would be faster than a bullet, and each of the guards appeared to be armed. Where was Brinkman when they needed him?

The man of the hour himself soon joined them, and the fury on Evelyn and Denbury's faces meant this was, again, quite personal. Surely this was the man who was meant to have been executed.

Beauregard Moriel was short and balding, with beady eyes, fleshy fingers, and pale, pasty skin. He strode about the room, a caricature of regal comportment in a sash and grand vestments of arcane lineage.

Clara was sickened and fascinated. Her instincts were whirring at top speed, trying to hit upon a Spiritualist linchpin that could put a wrench in the grim proceeding's gears.

“Ah, my foils and foes,” he began grandly. “It's been amusing having you poke about my enterprises. I thrive on opposition and conflict, but you're now getting in my way and I can't have that, not when the restoration is about to begin. I don't know what you managed to do inside Parliament today—I'm sure you tried to undermine me—but any loss I would have suffered I will now gain. Having you here further powers my engines at Vieuxhelles. By your very blood, life energy, and bones.

“In retrospect,” Moriel continued, “all of you
titled
folk have caused me far too much
effort.
Years ago I should have sailed my ship entirely on the dead backs of steerage. Cargo, really. The world breaks down into first class and cargo, don't you think, Lord Black?” he asked in a conspiratorial tone,

“I could hardly disagree more, you mad wretch,” Black fumed.

Moriel sighed. “Mad,” he said with a snort. “How could a madman amass all that I have?”

“Now
that
I do want to know,” Lord Black grumbled. “How you infiltrated two countries.”

“You take so much for granted, you know,” Moriel said, as if he were talking to a child. “Do you ever pause to think about the companies that provide you with basic services and goods? Really? About
where
they are,
what
they do,
how
they conduct business? You don't. That's how I've gained ground. I have, before your blind eyes and from under your upturned noses, created an industrial web, and now you and New York are mere flies to harvest.”

“You can't have the loyalty you think you do,” Spire spat, wresting against his bindings.

Moriel clucked his tongue and began a lap around the table. “It's amazing what opiates to the people can accomplish. Chemicals have been critical to overtaking dull minds of ordinary folk. Where that has failed, rending the soul from the body efficiently creates my dear drones. I have, as you know, many methods by which I craft compliance. Why, if I had time, I'd have you all painted on my wall of souls!”

Moriel whipped back a curtain Clara had not noticed before in the room's dimness. The wall thus revealed was hung with at least thirty oval portraits, each about half a foot wide. These were not mere images; Clara could feel that they were souls, banished into the frames. Their life force was undeniable to her heightened sensitivities. Undoubtedly, the Society's dark magic had given the victims' bodies over to those coal-black shadows.

This assault by the darkest arts pressed in on Clara, testing her limits. She felt the first trickle of symptoms of her condition, far off still but enough to be worrying, an itch between the connective tissues of her muscles and a slight shift of her vision. Pressing her eyes closed, Clara took a deep breath through her nose, catching a whiff of rotting food, which turned her stomach but grounded her firmly in her body. She mustered her will: She would not seize.
She would not seize.

As if she had been touched, she opened her eyes to find Rose staring at her. The comforting, anchoring presence that had helped her weather City Hall Park again bolstered her here. Her muscles unclenched, and she allowed her soul sister to share in the burden with a knowing, appreciative look.

“It's a shame I won't be able to have you in portraiture for my coronation ceremony,” Moriel stated. “But your bodies will do better service as sources for good parts with which to make up reanimated corpses. I want at least twenty for my procession to Parliament's doors. You'll tie nicely to the wires.” He whirled to face Evelyn, adding, “The gifted ones
especially
do.”