The Eterna Files (12 page)

“Yes…” Her return to consciousness was full and sudden. Usually, during one of her episodes, her senses came back one by one; sound was often one of the last. “Oh, God … Did I seize?”

“No. You simply
faded,
” Bishop replied. “But who were you talking to? You had a whole conversation.”

“You didn't see the figures?” she asked.

“Figures? No, only you.” Bishop peered at her, reaching for her wrist to check her pulse. There was an odd, strained pause in this compromising position; neither Clara nor the senator moved. Clara resisted the impulse to reach up and embrace him, murmur his name, tell him everything, beg his help through her grief.…

Franklin had roused. His discomfited cough as he stared at Bishop folded so intimately over Clara sobered her. She sat up with the senator's help.

“Shall we share our respective hells of what came over us?” Franklin asked grimly, moving to pick up Clara's fallen notebook and pencil.

“Not here,” Bishop instructed, helping Clara to her feet and into the entrance hall.

At the stairs she paused. “We'd be too lucky if the files were
here.
”

“What do you mean, Clara?” Bishop asked.

“The Eterna files,” she said excitedly. “The team's notes, whatever is left of the research that drove them to this terrible point. That's what the spirits said, to find them…”

Charging up the stairs, she tore into one empty room after another, filled with the urge to do, solve, and fix—a manic insect, buzzing around. The gentlemen followed. But nothing was there, not even a cabinet, let alone a file.

“This place doesn't want us here any longer, Clara,” Bishop warned at the top of the first-floor landing. “We've overstayed our welcome.”

“Agreed,” she called down from the barren third floor. “I can feel a malevolence rising and I know better than to press my luck. My sight has shifted as well, and that's a first symptom.”

They left in haste, lest Clara be truly overcome once more.

CHAPTER

FIVE

Spire came to upon the ground, still under the hood.

He recalled the last few moments before he lost consciousness, outside Lord Black's club. Surely someone had seen and reported his abduction. He smelled grass, earth, and chemicals. Through the rough fabric of the hood, he heard murmurs—lots of them. Giggles. Even laughter …

An acrid taste lingered on his tongue. But as his senses fully awakened, he realized his hands were not bound, so he sat up and whipped off the hood to find himself in the center of a wide patch of grass.

In a tent.

With an audience.

He was surrounded by a semicircle of benches filled with servants; stable hands, scullery maids, laborers, cooks, and butlers, all pointing at Spire and laughing. Either this was a nightmare or there really was a hell; the blow had been fatal and he'd not been good enough in life to escape eternal punishment.

Confused and uneasy, Spire tried quickly to assess his circumstances. He was under a white-and-red-striped tent with a vast pole at the center. Through a gap in the fabric—an entryway—he could see, in the distance, the soot, smoke, and spires of London industry wafting into the air like a pit of dragons keeping close company.… The view was not unfamiliar; neither was the rolling heath he could see through the open tent door: Hampstead.

Though he did not utilize the vast tracts of forest or spacious clearings for sport or leisure as the upper classes did, he had pursued criminals onto the expanse and knew it well.

A few paces behind him, a thick red curtain covered a large wooden dais. Rising to his feet, he felt constrained. A hard plate pressed against his back and girdling bound his middle, some sort of device was hitched beneath his suit coat and waistcoat but above his undershirt. The crowd laughed again. A few apple cores were launched in his direction. Spire dodged as he patted his pockets and found he still had his key and wallet. As he began undoing the many buttons of his coat and vest to examine his rigging, which seemed to include thin belts and buckles running down his sides, the crowd made various suppositions about his activity.

For a horrible moment Spire thought this whole spectacle might be revenge by some of Tourney's contacts. He did not dare say a word until he understood what was happening; he shuddered to think what might be coming next.

The dais curtain was whipped aside to reveal a line of velvet-covered chairs upon the wooden platform, like one might expect for a royal party at a tournament of old. Lord Black, smiling in a self-satisfied manner, was seated at his ease at one end of the row.

Two empty chairs sat to Black's left, and then Knight, seated, splendidly happy in a lavish red gown and golden feathers that made her look a living accessory for the tent. Spire narrowed his gaze, feeling his face flush with fury, but before he could demand answers, a weighty tug at his back launched him into the air.

The crowd roared with laughter. Spire whipped his head around; the back of his skull grazed the thin rope—perhaps it was corded wire—that drew him up toward an elaborate pulley. Spire's dangling body swung above the dais. The crowd laughed again. More projectiles flew and an orange rind bounced off his skull.

Spire glared down at Black, and before he could say a word, the rope went slack, dropping him inelegantly onto a chair. He nearly went sprawling. More laughter. Spire righted himself, then leaned toward Black until his perspiring face hovered inches from Black's shaved, pampered cheek and the brocade collar of the Lord's fine frock coat.

“Explain,” he growled.

“Watch and learn, Spire,” Black said calmly. Spire returned to undoing his buttons so he could remove the harness, but Lord Black slapped his hand. “Ah, ah, Spire,” he said. “All part of the show.”

Spire's chastised hand clenched into a white-knuckled fist.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” boomed a vaguely familiar voice, “you are gathered here today for exhibition and examination and we aim to amaze!”

A narrow, sumptuous red carpet unfurled from behind their sightline, rolling across the grass and stopping before the great middle pole that kept the tent's foremost turret upright. A tall figure—taller than Spire remembered, perhaps due to his studded black leather boots—stepped onto the carpet. Mr. Blakely.

The foppish creature Spire had met in the museum was now commanding and sure of himself in tight-fitting breeches, a long black silk coat with enormous, red, satin-lined cuffs and tails; the latter flashed like the flick of a toreador's taunt as he strode down the carpet. Atop his head perched a tall, black satin top hat with a silver skull at its prow. A glimmering silver staff topped with a glass ball was crooked under his arm, the shaft held tightly in a black-gloved hand.

“What the bloody hell, Blakely—” Spire growled

“Hush, Spire, you'll ruin the illusion,” Lord Black said chidingly.

“The illusion that I'm
not
about to make a calculated strike to Mr. Blakely's jaw?” Spire tried to stand, only to be jerked back down immediately into his seat. The crowd roared with laughter. A swift study showed that the harness had been somehow, while his attention was elsewhere, attached to the base of the seat. He glared at every amused face.

“
Madames et messieurs
, good working folk of this glorious Hampstead Heath, for your appreciation, reunited for this brief command performance in hopes we may impress our patron, Lord Black: The
ciphers
!” Blakely crowed, driving the glass-topped staff into the earth so that it stood on its own. He waved dancing fingers over the glass knob—a jolt of fire burst forth and everyone applauded. Beside Spire, Lord Black clapped his hands with a degree of glee unbecoming a nobleman.

“My faux husband is a jack-of-all-trades,” Knight murmured proudly, “and master of many, including chemistry. Engineer of the sleeping hoods, which send you gently into unconsciousness with just the right amount of chloroform—”

“I wouldn't say gently,” Spire growled.

“And he is
very
good with fire,” Knight added in a coo. “Setting it and containing it. Let me be clear, I don't like fires. But there are times when fires must be set.”

Something about her tone made Spire have to hold back a shiver.

Into the open vista between the drawn tent curtains that framed London in the distance, stepped two persons all in black; hooded tunics above crisscrossing bands of leather that kept to the contours of their fit musculature. They wheeled in a tall wooden board covered in another red velvet curtain and positioned it squarely in the aisle.

An accordion began playing a forcefully dreary tune; a calliope organ joined in. The black-clad performers lifted their heads, revealing simple masks beneath their hoods. Spire recognized the faces as similar to those he'd seen in mosaics in the British Museum, depicting Greek drama. Blakely joined them and the three began dancing to the creepy waltz, switching partners every couple of steps with unwavering precision. Within moments, their waltzing transformed into acrobatics; the three formed a human pyramid, then tumbled into other formations that displayed strength and dexterity.

“My friends,” Blakely said evenly, breath apparently undisturbed by his exertions, “Welcome to the edge of the abyss where we, the ciphers, test our human limits.”

The accordion and calliope launched into a jauntier, more manic tune.

Blakely bowed low in front of Spire, who clenched his other fist. The one Black had slapped had yet to unclench.

“Sorry for the headache, gov',” Blakely said, affecting a cockney accent he dropped when he leaned in to whisper giddily in Spire's ear. “I wanted you and Lord Black to truly see what we could do! How could you trust us in the field without having seen our
show
?”

Blakely darted to the star at the end of the runner and his voice filled the tent. “Ladies and gentlemen, bear witness! Even gravity cannot best a cipher!” The black-clad figures were suddenly airborne. Spire had spotted the lines of the thin dark rope a mere moment before the pair took flight. The crowd oohed and ahhed while the ciphers unfurled their bodies overhead, performing impressive feats of dexterity.

Blakely wheeled out an empty tea cart. From his sleeve he withdrew a red silk rectangle, whipping its length out over the tray. When he lifted the silk again, three short swords lay upon the previously empty cart. Everyone applauded save for Spire, who had begun to wonder if Miss Everhart was somewhere amid this nonsense. If she was not, she was the only member of the company missing.

Blakely tossed two of the swords into the air, point first. The aerial performers caught the hilts of the weapons effortlessly as they wound around the center tent pole as if it were a maypole, bouncing lightly off it to unwind again.

One of the flyers pulled on a rope and two trapeze bars swung down within their lithe reach. They unhooked themselves from the weighted wires to hang from the trapezes and conduct a sword fight. They hung from their knees, or from one knee or one arm, occasionally swinging toward the tent pole to bounce off in a dizzying sequence of thrusts and parries.

“Your turn,” Blakely said, suddenly close to Spire's ear once again. He offered Spire the third sword just as the former police officer was hoisted out of his chair.

Spire grabbed the hilt and tried to thrust at Blakely's top hat but Blakely nimbly avoided the blade. A roar of laughter from the crowd was accompanied by a few healthy taunts.

A body came swiveling toward Spire upside down, blade out. Spire parried right, casting his opponent's sword aside and setting himself rotating on the wire. Humiliating, of course, but great fun for the crowd, who clearly thought him the clown of the operation.

As Spire turned, he found that behind him was another swinging body with outstretched blade. Spire had to duck to avoid the collision as the cipher swung past him to clash with his previous opponent. Spire bellowed in frustration, lashing out at one black-clad figure and then the other. A glancing blow to one fellow's shoulder, the tear of black fabric, then the inevitable spin that let him cut toward the other's head; that strike was parried.

“I've had quite enough now,” Spire called. As soon as he was on the ground he wanted to walk up to Lord Black and submit his resignation.

Blakely snapped his fingers and Spire plummeted, slowing just as he hovered back over his chair, again dropped inelegantly to the ground, stumbling and sliding on a bit of cabbage. The crowd jeered again at inelegance.

Leaping onto the dais with a wide, Cheshire Cat grin, Blakely stabbed at Spire's side and a lock clicked loose. The metal plate against his back slid down, thudding when it hit the chair.

Before Spire could undo the rest of his rigging, Blakely snapped his fingers and the curtain fell from the tall wooden board opposite the dais, revealing Rose Everhart. Bound to the board by hand and foot, she looked every bit as furious as Spire felt. “Oh, good God,” Spire muttered.

“When I said I'd help you, Blakely,” Rose snarled, “this was
not
what I was expecting.”

Four knives sprang into place around her head, twanging as their points were embedded in the wood, flung at lightning speed by one of the masked, black-clad creatures. Everhart screamed. Wild applause roared from the common folk, who threw not a single vegetable at this admittedly impressive display.

With a dance of his hands, Blakely threw a set of fireballs that roared in the air toward the crowd before dissipating. A swing of his still low-burning staff ignited a wire that wound up the tent pole in a sparking flame that changed colors as it rose. Wilder applause. Black made a cutting signal to Blakely, who immediately bellowed:

“Ladies and gentlemen, that will be all!”

There was a general shout of deep disappointment. “Where are the 'orses?” Bellowed an old man in stable-hand garb. “What kind of show in a tent doesn't have a 'orse stunt?”