Eterna and Omega (5 page)

“The inability to get anywhere near what happened to the bastard or anyone associated with him,” the generally affable man grumbled. “You want the bad news or the worse news? Though I'm not sure which is which.”

“Worse,” Spire ground out, taking a long drink of brown ale.

“That Stevens chap, or those cleaning up the ring, burned his chemist shop to the ground, the one you interrogated him in. Looks like with him in it.”

Spire sighed. “Conclusively in it?”

“Hard to tell in a fire. But my men said there was nothing left to salvage. I sent Phyfe to have a keen eye present.”

“I don't suppose Stevens sent anything helpful to the postbox?”

“Not that I've received yet; the fire was just yesterday.”

“Tom Hamilton is a new alias of mine as of today,” Spire stated. “Everhart and I were down at the docks. Look into a company called Apex, shipping all kinds of foul materials, like the stuff of Tourney's cellar. We need to reopen what was done with Beauregard Moriel and the Master's Society—it is likely all related.”

“Oh, that lot? Sick bastards,” Grange grumbled. “We'll break open the files and look for parallels, and I'll set Phyfe to work on correlating with Apex.”

“Now, the bad news?” Spire prompted, lifting his glass of ale in preparation for a long draught.

“I've
nothing
on what happened to Tourney. I appreciate keeping journalists out, but not letting police
in
? It's bad enough, your being taken off the department, but then, this block … It's as if a member of the royal family was killed with all the hush about it. Is there anything you can do from your new position?”

Spire snorted a mordant laugh. “I can't help open closed doors when I've been banned from the building. It may not be a royal, but it must be tied to the highest powers for security to be so tight. None of the guards are talking?”

“One is in Bedlam after what happened,” Grange replied. “The other, found dead.”

Spire's resulting sigh sounded more like a growl. “I'll make Black tell me
something
.”

“We need to know how to protect the men on your interrogation list. Otherwise we've no incriminating evidence to plumb.”

“Our job is supposed to be fighting crime and arresting criminals, not keeping criminals safe. The world has become an inverted joke,” Spire spat before taking that long draught, slamming down an empty glass. “I'm sorry for all this.”

“You have prided yourself on doing your job,” Grange replied. “As have I. But we're now being told how to do it by those who do it worse or don't care. I've had it, Harold. Tell me you've a plan,” Grange begged. “And
resources.
We need men we can trust.” His expression shifted suddenly, something of softer concern. “Speaking of trust, how is Miss Everhart?”

Spire paused a moment. “Fine … why?”

“The fall, the incident at the carriage.” Grange downed the last of his pint. “She's an asset, that Everhart, credit to her sex, and I hate that she was a target. It was so strange, that whole business. I've had nightmares about it, to tell you the truth.”

Grange had always been a bit too sensitive for his own good. Though, Spire reminded himself, Grange was a good man who had never faced personal tragedy. It was kind of him to ask after Miss Everhart, and it made Spire wonder if he should have given her more thought and care himself. Maybe Grange had fallen for Everhart. Suddenly that notion made him even more uncomfortable. He felt the lines of his own scowl deepen.

“This impasse can't last,” Grange murmured finally.

“We'll find ways around it. We always do.” Spire rallied, but his voice sounded hollow to his own ears. He'd lost his innocence long ago, when he'd seen his mother's blood spilled onto the parlor floor, but he'd have liked to have kept the ability to inspire. The men drank another round, toasting to earlier days, simpler days, finer days, when the morality of the world didn't seem so precarious. When they had seen fewer dead bodies and unsolved crimes. When they believed they both were doing true good for the world and that the righteous outnumbered the wicked.

Spire had little sense anymore of what he was doing for whom, and toward what end. But before he engaged in another ritual—a long, brisk walk—the friends toasted last to rebuking limitation.

When he took to the streets like this, in a circuitous route, it was generally to purge himself of mental images of his mother's death. But since his discoveries of the ritualistic deaths in Tourney's cellars, images of those fresh horrors were superimposed upon the older ones. When his next allotment of funds arrived, he would invest in a hearty new pair of shoes. His sanity would need them.

By the time he reached the Omega offices, the exsanguinated corpses in his mind's eye had been replaced by more mundane sights: bustling, clattering London in all its vast splendor and squalor.

Their Millbank headquarters loomed before him, the onetime factory turned into spacious offices. It was a grand building but nondescript enough for Spire to feel confident in the covert nature within. He climbed the front stairs, and before he could insert his key into the hefty lock, the door was flung open with a distinct wrenching and then popping sound—but revealed no one.

Spire placed a hand on his breast pocket where a small pistol was a large comfort. The wide and empty foyer of brick and metal beams revealed no clue as to the door's automation.

However, there were sounds from the floors above that were distinct to his keen ears: metal on metal, small squeaks and pops. Was there some sort of mill or factory starting back up in this old industrial space? Slowly he stepped across the threshold onto the wide landing. The door closed behind him, accompanied by a little buzz. Spire whirled around and spotted an odd lever at the top of the thick door, with a wired contraption above that sported a clock and small roll of paper. An automatic door? Was that wise or necessary? He shuddered to think the man to whom he directly reported had so little care for security.

A moment after the door had swung closed behind him, there was a tapping noise and a tab of the paper rolled out. Spire reached out and viewed the protruding slip:

2pm entry—77kg

After this marking of time and weight, there was a small carbon imprint, a silhouette,
his
silhouette framed in the door, somehow. Likely that strange pop indicated an exposure that took in the door frame as if it were a crude light-sensitive imprint, just a silhouette, but enough for certain particulars, his hatless head, windblown hair, and the cut of his frock coat and trousers. Spire was conflicted—impressed and perturbed equally.

Spire followed the noise to the top floor. He opened the plain white door opposite Black's closed office door and, within, discovered that his circus had become a madhouse.

Guns lined the walls and a number of the members of Omega were examining them.

Across the room, Blakely, the short, nervous, excitable chemist and magician, was taking a rifle apart. That Blakely knew how to take a rifle apart and perhaps put it together again was a concept that awed and utterly terrified Spire, who deemed him too flighty for bullets.

The Wilsons, in their simple Cipher uniforms of black tunics, hoods, and leggings, were rappelling up and down the high-ceilinged wall in tandem; the wire attached to the harnesses they wore over their costumes was so fine as to be nearly invisible.

From various points horizontal to the floor, the smaller-framed of the two otherwise neutrally clad bodies, Adira Wilson, paused mid-rappel to throw an impressive sequence of small silver blades at a target on the far wall. The speed and precision were incredible, and Spire was reminded that the Wilsons were infamous as international spies—and as an epic cross-cultural love story—long before they'd turned sour to foreign affairs, feigned their deaths, and took on this odd, off-the-books employ thanks to Mr. Wilson's orphanage mate Mr. Blakely. Spire surmised the Wilsons had talents he might not even want to know, though he warmed to the idea of utilizing Mrs. Wilson as a bodyguard.

Even Miss Everhart held an odd contraption, an electrical device of some kind, judging by the thin thread of lightning sparking around the ball that was cupped in her hands. A Tesla coil, if Spire remembered correctly. Where her hair wasn't pinned in place, it was standing up around her head.

Miss Knight, their resident flamboyant clairvoyant, who was
very
fond of women, fondled a small pistol of a make Spire had never seen as if it were a piece of fine jewelry. Spire noted her utter, elegant assurance with the weapon, and he uncomfortably realized his own biases about femininity and the machinery of warfare and murder. So much of what Spire had thought true of the world was upended by Omega.

What Lord Black hoped to accomplish with all of these trappings was anyone's guess. Spire remembered Everhart saying Black fancied himself a spy, an espionage enthusiast who would take Spire's job if he could—oh, if only he would—

Was that a coffin in the corner? Spire thought with disdain. Yes—upright against the wall, a red curtain partially hiding it, stood a black casket with an ostentatious golden pyramid sporting an eye painted in the center, a Masonic symbol, of course, which made Spire roll his eyes at the theatrical mysticism heaped upon those ancient ranks.

No one noticed Spire for a good few minutes, making him newly skeptical of their abilities as spies and assassins. Where, also, was Black?

“Welcome to my war room!” Black declared, jumping out of the coffin as if on cue. Spire did not start, though his eye twitched a bit.

“Oh. I didn't scare you? That always scared everyone at parties,” Black pouted. “You see, I used to have all of this in my home. But I am a generous man, and you fine talents shall benefit!” he declared triumphantly. “Peephole in the eye.” Black grinned, tapping the golden pyramid. “That's how you surprise your prey…”

At the word “prey,” Spire's eye twitched again, remembering how he'd been the butt of a circus act for Black's delight. “But not you, Mr. Spire!” the lord cried. “Steeled, Spire. That's why you're the man for the job!”

Spire's knees itched to dart back out onto the streets for a calming walk again, seeing as though he'd paced miles only to be harangued.

“I'll be steeled in my offices should anyone wish to join me,” he replied.

Storming down the flights to his own office floor bright-lit by midday sun streaming through wide arched, curtained windows, his footsteps echoed through the otherwise silent space—until the rest of his team burst in behind him in a stream, chattering away.

Spire stalked to the circular central table. The others gathered around, and he started right in, eager to get something useful done. Lord Black brought up the rear of the group, and once the nobleman was within earshot, Spire launched into orders.

“In orchestrating the recovery of British bodies and arranging for you to question New York's Eterna Commission on the act, in addition to investigating the electrical oddity Lord Black added to the plate, I aim to remain in England while sending you operatives forth.”

Instantly there was a murmuring outcry from everyone except, predictably, Rose Everhart. The Blakelys seemed offended and the Wilsons seemed baffled.

“Who shall lead the group if you stay behind, Mr. Spire?” Mr. Wilson asked finally.

“I'm not going, Spire.” Lord Black waved a languid hand, leaning against a nearby table filled with various bottles from Blakely's alchemical arsenal. “So if you're not either, well…”

“I've no desire to abandon responsibility,” Spire stated. “I'm better suited
here.
” Here in London, Spire thought to himself, where ghastly murders await a prescribed list of victims and nothing of “immortality” is rational or more important. “The dead scientists are dead,” he added. “I personally would like to be sure a future crop remain protected.”

“Your Metropolitan men have been trustworthy,” Black countered. “Have a detail assigned.”

“They are overtaxed with the Tourney affair.” Spire leaned in Black's direction to remind the aristocrat. “Who is dead, you recall, by mysterious, gruesome circumstances
not
to be ignored.”

“Let's have a word about all this,” Black said, his war room delight having clearly sobered. Spire made for his door. “Not your office, mine,” Black countered and stalked off toward the threshold, gesturing for Spire to follow. “Mine has far better liquor.”

Spire turned to his team. “While none of you can announce a destination or purpose of your travel to anyone, do make sure no one goes looking for you and that all family and associates are summarily taken care of.”

The rest of the team looked on in curiosity but did not press, instead moseyed to their desks, and Miss Everhart immediately to the telegraph machine. Spire shut the department door behind him before ascending the reverberate iron stairs behind Black, who held the door for Spire and closed it behind him.

“Speak freely, Mr. Spire,” Black offered, gesturing for him to sit. Black moved to a sideboard to pour two helpings of what was likely bourbon worth Spire's whole salary. The nobleman slid the crystal snifter across the smooth, elaborately lacquered mahogany desk.

“I am torn between directives, and I do not wish my team to see hesitancy,” Spire stated.

“Omega is your only directive. I thought that had been entirely clear from day one, when you met with the queen.”

“The most gruesome sights and crimes of the age are not to be set aside,” Spire insisted. “Your leads in the Tourney investigation secured his arrest.” Spire leaned toward Black across his desk. “Why force me to stop now?”

“If you can prove Omega and Tourney have
direct
commonality,” Black replied, “I can convince the queen to allow you broader scope. As it stands, I am directed to keep you very focused.”