Eterna and Omega (18 page)

Rose let the show persons deal with their equipment and baggage while she took charge of her carpetbag—she had been a bit too paranoid to stow anything and therefore had packed lightly. Not that she had much to pack, regardless; her wardrobe, while as fine as she could afford, was limited and practical. Once all was in tow, the team made their way to the designated safe house, a nondescript four-story granite building. It resembled any number of the municipal buildings in the area and had been owned by England since before the revolution, though that fact was not widely known.

The third floor had been prepared for them thanks to Lord Black's connections with the British embassy. Rose had been given a key to a plain wooden side door that opened into an empty vestibule; an interior stair lead directly to their floor, enabling them to keep their own activities to themselves.

The teams took to their rooms and went soundly, gladly to sleep, for in the morning, it was showtime.

 

CHAPTER

SIX

Spire hadn't had much time to muse on his team being gone, Rose being the only one he really thought about. Lord Black had kept him preoccupied trying to gain access and details regarding Tourney's gruesome prison death, and they both found themselves blocked at many turns.

He took Rose's last bit of information directly to Lord Black, having found her note, wishing she'd had the chance to give it to him in person.

“Beauregard Moriel's guards who were supposedly overseeing his hanging are two names that do not seem to exist,” Spire stated, folding his arms before the nobleman.

“They do not appear in any court or police employment records. And before you tell me this doesn't have to do with Omega—”

“You're going to investigate what you want to, whether I put my foot down or not,” Black retorted. “And the more I think about it, the more I think all of this stews in the same foul pot. Do you have any theories?”

“Was Moriel—animus for the Master's Society and Tourney's inspiration—really ever killed at all?”

“Who would have kept him alive?” Black asked quietly.

“The Crown?”

Lord Black sat at his desk with a sour look. After a long moment, he waved a hand. “Go. Talk to some guards. Newgate, Bedlam, Courts of Justice, wherever, I don't really care. Come tomorrow to meet me at Westminster all the earlier, below the clock tower. From there, we'll make our way to the queen's parade.”

“Yes, sir. And thank you.”

Spending the rest of the day on what finally felt worthwhile, the only new information Spire received through talking with guards from varying palaces and courts all around the Westminster area was a freshly maddening rumor that there had been a
second
gruesome death of an indeterminate prisoner. Entirely unconfirmed and unsubstantiated, there was no identity to latch on to other than Spire's supposition it had been another Society member killed to prevent confession.

The next day, Lord Black appeared undaunted as he wove through the clusters of coats and bustles, parasols and raucous children in boaters and bows, Spire keeping up as best he could. It seemed everyone in London had turned out to see the queen.

Farther down the green there was a dais with bunting and elevated parade seating.
For the important folk,
Spire thought. He never was the parade type, this sort of thing raised his hackles.

They reached the area of seats reserved for nobility across from the dais. They had quite a view, give or take a few ostrich plumes on ostentatious hats.

Making his way toward them through the crowd was a dashing young fellow in a fine black brocade frock coat with charcoal trim, black silk top hat atop a mane of black hair, and a blue waistcoat that took nothing away from his piercing ice-blue eyes.

“Why, there's our aura reader now, Jonathon Whitby, Lord Denbury,” Black shared with Spire. Spire's heart sank at the idea of adding another preposterous character to his paranormal charade of a department. He was saved from thinking up a pleasantry when a cheer went up from the crowd, indicating that the queen was approaching. All eyes went to the parade green.

Carried by the finest of white horses in an open gilt-trimmed, mahogany calash, its accordion roof back on this fine, brighter-than-usual London day, the queen, stately and dourly round-faced in her lavish black layers of eternal mourning accented by white lace, was seated alone. The queen's guards walked at either side of the tall, golden-rimmed wheels.

Spire's attention was captured by an intake of breath on the other side of Black. A wave of confusion and terror crossed Lord Denbury's face, like he'd seen a ghost. There was wild fear in his strikingly bright eyes.

Spire was just about to ask if he was feeling well, when Denbury turned to Black.

“Milord … this … city…” Denbury said, his voice slow and thick with dread. “There are so many auras … I know this must sound utterly mad, but you must believe me, this city has a grave problem. There are demons at work.”

“How can you know?” Lord Black asked. “By aura? What shade do you see?”

The young man's haunted face twisted further, a grotesque masque of horror. “Oh … oh no…” he wailed softly. “I can't let this stand. Not from
her
 … We're doomed. Doomed!” With shaking hands, he withdrew a small pistol from his breast pocket and aimed it at the queen.

Moving purely on instinct, Spire dove across Black to tackle the young man to the ground. Moving with alacrity, Black wrested the gun from Denbury's hand, pressing the safety and pocketing it. The crowd around them cried out at being jostled, but it seemed no one saw the gun.

Spire kept the nobleman pinned to the ground, but he gave no struggle. Black leaned down to exclaim angrily in his ear, “What the bloody hell do you think you're doing?”

“It's her … she has the aura of the demons,” Denbury said, looking up from the ground, tears streaming from his striking eyes, his pain and distress palpable. “Lord Black, I promise you, I don't know why or how, but our queen is dealing with the devil!”

Spire helped the young man back to his feet but did not release a grip on one wrist. Glancing about, he was grateful that the throng was mesmerized by a particularly ostentatious presentation of carriages. Only a few concerned female faces, pinched in disapproval, were looking their way. He scowled back at them, and they turned away in a collective huff.

Denbury began pleading, “I am not wrong. You
must
ascertain why Her Majesty is thusly tainted. It is a matter of English life or death, milord. If the Society yet lives … Heaven help us all.” He stared from Black to Spire, squinting at them. “The two of you remain clean and clear in your reads, neutral light. So whatever the queen has been involved with, it so far has not tainted you. But you'll become a target nonetheless for doing the queen's bidding. She's let something very dark near, perhaps into the palace itself. Root it out. Promise me.” Denbury reached up with his free hand to shake Black's shoulder. “Promise me you won't take this lightly.”

“I promise,” Black replied. “Truly.”

With a nod, Black indicated Spire should release the young lord's wrist.

The crowd shifted about them and, in a rustle of movement, a warm-toned woman with brown curls under a straw bonnet with ribbon and floral trims sidled up next to Spire. He paid no attention until she turned and light brown eyes stared right into his.

“You might want to tell me how much of your government is involved with something that drove an honorable man like Lord Denbury to such a length as attempted assassination,” the woman stated quietly in Spire's ear, to his shock.

He tried to keep his expression calm, sure that if she made a dangerous move he could stop her with the knife he kept strapped to a forearm band.

The woman seemed to know he was considering his options, for she added, “Before you make a rash move, gentlemen … Lord Denbury here might have trained a pistol on the queen, but I've two trained on you, inside these dainty little pockets of mine. And yes, I am a good shot.”

“Who are you?” Spire said quietly. That she was American was clear from her accent.

“Not all I seem,” she replied matter-of-factly. She wasn't coy, she was on a mission.

“Do you work for the American Eterna Commission?” Spire asked softly, trying to memorize the pattern of freckles dusted across her face so he could later describe them to a sketch artist.

“Did your Omega department just send spies to New York?” she countered.

“Why did the Eterna Commission steal the bodies of British scientists?”

“Why does Omega think America had anything to do with that?” she scoffed. “There was no American plot against your scientists. Why did your operative steal property from the Eterna site?”

Spire frowned. “
That
operative acts on his own accord.”

“I know you investigated Apex, but I've been looking deeper for names and holdings, speaking to those who are hired and discarded, used and manipulated, the possessed and puppets, the coworkers of the murdered, the chaff of your world,” she said with a venom that spoke of personal investment.

The woman and Spire stared at one another. Lord Black, evidently captivated by the whole exchange, didn't say a word. Lord Denbury was squinting at the lady.

“Her aura is pure, gentlemen,” the young noble said. “She doesn't work for the devil, that's for certain.” His eerily ice-blue eyes clouded with concern as he leaned toward the interloper. “I see pain in your aura, my lady, having to do with you not being all that you seem. But a good soul lies within, that's clear.”

The woman's expression softened for a moment at his kind tone, but she quickly recovered her steel.

“I'd find out what
her
aura portends,” she said, indicating the queen, who had taken her place in the reviewing stand. “Then, if you want to play nice with America and sort this all out, I've been instructed to say you should. You're going to need our help.”

The men had turned as one to look at their sovereign as the crowd cheered. When they turned back, the American was gone.

*   *   *

Effie Bixby enjoyed working on an international scope, though she was glad Senator Bishop had wired a handsome sum of money, because the information she had begun to discover—as if she were a grave robber with coffins yawning open before her—would generate some hearty telegrams. At nearly a dollar a word, given the exchange rate, these would be pricey communiqués.

Swift as they might be in these days of efficient steamers, she couldn't wait for the mail packets, not when so much of London, and perhaps New York, was like a powder keg in the basement of Parliament set to strike off a deadly explosion of horror.

From what Effie could see from poking about the hellish rabbit hole that was the Apex Corporation, it seemed their sole export and import was terror. They exploited the disenfranchised of London and New York—in addition to a few other industrial cities across America—to keep it all quiet.

Her gauge of Black, Spire, and the presence of Lord Denbury, whose case files she had read last year in New York, was comforting, at least. She didn't think they wanted the world that the Master's Society or Apex had in mind. She thought her team might even like them, and they hers.

The key would be in determining who did want a world turned inside out, if these men would fight the
good
fight, and if her country would do the same.

*   *   *

While Lord Black found it difficult securing an audience with the queen, he could not in good faith continue in her service without confronting her. So he pressed his estimable charm to the hilt and won a very grudging few moments in an anterior receiving room.

Scowling and angry, the diminutive regent swept into view.

“Make this quick, Lord Black. I've not had time to recover from my appearance,” she barked.

“Your Majesty, I have it on solid opinion that there is something very wrong. Not necessarily with you … but something around you is evil,” Lord Black said carefully. At times like this he was very grateful for his famous neutrality, which kept him well liked in all spaces and class settings.

“Oh?” Her anger shifted to wary curiosity. “Whose opinion might that be?”

“A few of my psychics,” he said, hedging his bets and protecting Denbury. “I believe there is something you have not told me, Your Majesty. I think it has something to do with that organization that Tourney ascribed to and with the execution of Beauregard Moriel, two years ago.”

The queen looked uncomfortable.

“Ah. Yes. Well.” The rustling of the queen's lavish black taffeta gown was suddenly loud in the strained silence as she attempted to find the right words. “I likely should have told you, the time line of that execution was … different to what everyone imagined. I did keep the man alive for a time.”

Lord Black stared at her. “For a time?” he asked, incredulous.

“Well, he's no longer alive
now
; he was found torn to bits,” she said, her petite frame shuddering, “just like Tourney.”

Black swallowed hard. “But before that … he'd been alive this whole time. Where?”

“A secret cell. I thought he could shed light on immortality. That was the point of the stay of execution. I had his entire ring wiped out. At least I thought.”

Lord Black curled his toes in his boots to keep from clenching his hands into fists. How long had the Society's operations continued due to that wretch's continued despicable presence upon this globe? It was all he could do to hold his tongue. There were things about him, his life, his heart, which the Master's Society would seek to destroy. As much as they threatened the world, they also threatened him. He strove to remember that his greatest strength was his unflappable calm, and so he sought it.