Eterna and Omega (7 page)

Spire noticed with great discomfort that there was no read upon the paper ticker above the door that had been installed to track the time, weight, and silhouette of any visitor. The black paper read as if no one had been there at all.

Everyone was dumbstruck for a moment. The rest of the team had filed in silently behind Miss Everhart, and they were all looking at her expectantly.

After a long moment, a baffled Lord Black broke the silence. “Actually, I don't know any Marlowes at all. Aside from, you know, the playwright. And the Blacks don't owe them any favors … What in the
world
…” He stared at Miss Everhart, who had grown more pale than when the day began.

“Don't look at me,” Everhart replied uneasily. “I haven't a clue. But she said Templeton. Clara? She must be referring to Clara Templeton of New York's commission.”

“Well, find out what she meant. We may need you in New York after all, Miss Everhart,” Black stated.

Spire and Everhart sighed in unison.

Miss Knight was staring at the door with wide-eyed fascination. “I could not, for the life of me, get a read on that woman. And I'm fairly good with reading women if I do say so myself,” she said, with a bit of entendre. “She reads almost as if she's a ghost, but far too corporeal. It isn't that she doesn't exist … but as if she exists too much … Whatever she is, she's not normal.”

“Add her to our growing list of abnormal,” Spire said through clenched teeth. “If you haven't noticed, Lord Black, your contraption there to register entrances and visitors is already broken. It recorded nothing, just then, and we all saw and heard that woman, so this wasn't a case for your secret ghostly department, but do something about the door.”

“Go on,” Black said to everyone else, shooing them away. “You leave at the crack of dawn. Carriages will be sent for each of you, be ready. Miss Everhart, I'll be sure there's a nurse sent to watch over your ill cousin until you are safely returned.”

“Thank you, milord,” Rose said, trying not to show her disappointment with this change.

“I'll be sure everyone's ticket envelopes have the address of the British safe house you'll be using in downtown Manhattan.”

Black turned to Spire. “After the upcoming parade, perhaps we might corner Her Majesty at the palace and request audience.” He spoke pointedly and earnestly. “To address your valid concerns. What do you say?”

Spire nodded. “Thank you, sir, for the effort.”

*   *   *

“Is tonight the night, O'Rourke?” His Majesty, Beauregard Moriel, asked softly.

“It is, Majesty,” the tall, scarred guard replied in a rumbling Irish lilt.

“Is my double chosen?”

“Yes, Your Majesty. The night watchman we've selected is roughly your proportions.”

The dank, dark cell in the Royal Courts of Justice that no one knew existed held one small man, balding and beady-eyed, a person generally thought to be long dead by royal decree. He was wearing a fine deep burgundy suit that he'd had smuggled in to mark the auspicious occasion of his secret release.

“The man will likely scream quite like a pig, so we will have to account for that,” Moriel stated.

“It is taken care of, Majesty,” the guard assured him. “Chemicals were administered to the guards, so our path will be clear, and operatives are stationed near the exit for additional security. We're exiting via a rear alley and heading straight to Vieuxhelles, which has been prepared for you—all the wires, all the machinery. All tertiary operations can now continue from the estate, as Apex has shipped the appropriate products for each of the three ventures.”

“O'Rourke, I am so pleased with you,” Moriel cooed, reaching through the iron bars to clasp the man's wide palms. “Now. Are you ready to see how I summon my assistants?”

“Yes, Majesty,” the guard replied earnestly, then continued warily, “provided the Summoned know I am your ally and don't think me the double. Can you promise me that?”

“Of course they won't mistake the wrong man,” Moriel said. “My Summoned engage only upon my command, as it's my blood spilled that calls them. Blood is such a precious thing, and the Summoned love nothing more than wasting that which is precious. As my blood is
most
precious of all, they regard my sacrifice highly. The Summoned are diligent and loyal to me, considering the sustenance I've given them in the past and will give again as our world order nears.”

Moriel turned to the wall, where he'd etched a distinct rectangular groove by diligent application of the end of a spoon through the months of his imprisonment.

“O'Rourke, my dear, do you happen to have a sharp knife?” Moriel asked nonchalantly. “I've a dull implement that will do, but I'd prefer not to be in quite so much pain when activating the corridor.”

“Of course, Your Majesty,” the man said, handing the blade between the bars.

Without a wince or a moment's hesitation, Moriel slashed his forearm. Blood burbled from the wound. A breath hissed between O'Rourke's teeth, but the Majesty remained unmoved. Drawing forth the Summoned was commonplace, as revealed by his forearm, which was scarred with cuts in varying lengths and stages of healing.

“The Summoned walk the dark path, O'Rourke. Some might call them demons, others use other words depending on their own traditions. As I believe in no God but Myself, all I know is that the Summoned are terribly useful and will be critical in reordering the world back into the old ways.”

He used a finger to fill the rectangle he had carved into the wall with his blood. He caressed the top line, whispering to the stone, bidding the shadows and the darkest of matters to come forth, in tones a familiar paramour might use to call into a locked chamber where a sweetheart lay sleeping. This was not a courtship of rite and ritual but already an established marriage.

The wall rippled slightly as if it were liquid.

Two black silhouettes, forms of human spark and living energy in abject reverse, slipped from the spiritual halls of human choice and capacity. Moriel did not understand the exact properties of where the forces he summoned lived, if that's what their existence could be called, but it seemed they stepped out from between the world's moments, leaching from the corridors of time, where the soul in all its possibility moved between hope and misery. By the demons' influence in these corridors between life and death, black despair was bid to step into this imperfect world from the ranges of all that might be summoned, kind or malevolent. The vacuous forms turned to Moriel, as if listening.

“A man will take my place, here,” Moriel murmured, “and, my dear friends, I need you to do the same to him as was done to our poor, devoted Mr. Tourney. Nothing left. Limb from limb. He's meant to be me, as I'm sure you realize. So be as thorough as you did in taking Tourney for your cause and turn these dank gray walls red. I love red. You'll have to come do up my estate once I'm finally home again! As always, thank you for your service, my devoted compatriots!”

Moriel turned to see O'Rourke shudder as he looked into the blackness that was those forms. O'Rourke, seeing that his reaction had been noted, made move to apologize, but Moriel held up a bloodstained hand.

“It
is
a particular absence, one that chills the soul if gazed upon too long,” he said gently. “Even I have my limits. Now, my darling boy, set me free!”

O'Rourke took the key and began unwinding the chains that sealed the door of the makeshift cell. As he worked, he kept glancing at the figures; each time he did, the chains clattered a bit too loudly and the key rattled too tellingly in the lock. Finally, the gate swung open.

“After you, my friend.” Moriel gestured the large man ahead, but O'Rourke bowed his head and retreated a step, gesturing in turn.

“Oh, no, no, after you, Your Majesty,” he said, bowing lower without taking his eyes off the hovering ink-black forms. “Your kingdom awaits.”

After a slightly awkward pause, Moriel emerged from the cell. He paused on the threshold to look over his shoulder and give a little wave to the duet of coalesced malevolent mass within his erstwhile prison. Straightening his small frame, he strode confidently down the dark, dank hall, head held high, past two other guards. One was unconscious; the other looked dazed—evidence of the chemicals O'Rourke had mentioned.

The Majesty smiled, then stepped slightly to the side as a pair of men—one his own height and build, one much larger—passed through the corridor, heading for the cell Moriel had so recently abandoned. The smaller man was only half conscious, stumbling along and struggling in the other's grip. The taller guard bobbed his head to his master, and Moriel's smile grew when he saw the dark eyes of the possessed staring at him.

Not all the Summoned would take on a bodily possession to do their work, but many did, and it ensured greater service than shorter-term supplications and persuasions.

Moriel turned to watch the double enter the cell. As the door closed behind the pair, the Majesty heard a dim protest—apparently the man was rousing to his fate—then sounds of a struggle, punctuated by expletives.

The former captive began to walk away, listening with anticipation to what was happening behind him.

There came the most ungodly scream that ever man had rent.

The sound of crunching bones and the entirety of a body's fluids exploding outward, painting three cell walls and splashing through the bars to coat the corridor beyond.

O'Rourke clearly tried to hide a wave of panic and nausea, but Moriel noticed.

“Ah, the beautiful perfume of human fear,” he said, breathing deep.

The guard and his protected charge stopped, just before opening the exterior gate. He glanced behind him, as if to make sure no Summoned silhouette had followed.

“Before we go any farther, it's been quite an experience with you, sir, and … but … I'd like some assurance, Mr. Moriel,” O'Rourke stated. “Your Majesty,” he added with deference. “… that all I have done, directed, and managed, which has been, please recall, a great deal, will be rewarded.”

“Would I had money on my person, I would pay you handsomely,” Moriel said with a sibilant sweetness.

“The pocket watch is quite nice,” O'Rourke said. He placed another key to the next lock in the iron pad of the external gate but did not turn it, just stared at him.

Moriel assumed this man was desperate, for something, someone, some greed; men like him usually were and could easily be bought. Moriel's jaw tightened only slightly as he handed over the gold implement he'd had ferreted in along with his robes of release.

“I'm sorry if it has sentimental value, sir,” the guard fumbled. “It's just…”

“Ah, no, no,” Moriel reassured. “We all have needs. I took this from a paramour I left once … her kiss still tastes sweet upon my tongue, coppery, as I'd left her with a small stiletto blade slipped through corset bones to remember me by.”

O'Rourke withheld another shudder as he escorted the Majesty to the waiting carriage beyond.

Majesty Moriel took a deep breath and stared up at what was unmistakably a glorious night sky, smoke of London's various industries and home fires wafting up into the atmosphere.

“England,” he murmured in a quiet reverie. “America. Beyond. It's time for your tables to turn. Everyone has their time and season. I think that's biblical.”

“It is, Majesty.”

“I was musing. I wasn't asking, O'Rourke.”

“I'm sorry, Majesty.”

“You should be, interrupting a regent in reverie. Goodness.”

“It won't happen again, sir.”

“Good. The Society will need you. Unfortunately, I've been running low on deputies—they're dropping like proverbial flies—so you'll be promoted. On with you, come to Vieuxhelles tomorrow midnight for the next indoctrinations.”

“Yes, Your Majesty…” O'Rourke vanished quickly.

*   *   *

Rose was in one of her dream states. These strange, hazy incidents had begun after an attempt to recover a sample of the Eterna Compound. She had been knocked unconscious and for some days had felt drained of life. Since then, she had several times found herself gripped by visions.

Today she woke to see a woman sitting at the foot of her bed—the same Lizzie Marlowe who had visited the Omega division offices. Her light red hair was in a braid down her shoulder, and her searing gaze was fixed on Rose, who bolted upright. The interloper wore no hat or gloves, but clasped about the waist of her burgundy riding habit was a belt hung with strange instruments.

“The timetable,” she said. “I sped up your timetable. Well,
I
didn't accelerate, I stay constant. The timetable itself sped, I am merely reacting to save my hide and yours.”

Rose stared in silence.

“I was attempting to let the power of suggestion, and potent dreams, do the trick,” the woman—Miss Marlowe—explained. “It usually does wonders. But I can't risk it.”

“Who
are
you?”

The woman did not reply directly but gestured toward Rose's wrist. “I am sorry for the physical effects. I was going for more of a ‘prophetic dream' result, but you and Clara both have such
wild
imaginations.”

Rose gaped. “You mean you were the ‘vampire'?”

The woman made a face. “
You
jumped to that conclusion. She shook her fair head with a laugh. “This silly, histrionic age. At least you have expanded your consciousness, and there are things you deem possible now that you hadn't previously. The world needs such minds now.” She glanced at Rose's carpetbags against the wall. “You
are
going to New York, yes?”

“Not another word until you tell me who you are, whom you work for, and what all this is about,” Rose declared, folding her arms.