The Eterna Files Read online

  While Eterna may have been born out of assassination, it continued out of the need for dominance on a world stage. Eterna, in theory or practice, hadn’t managed to do anyone any good, but the legacy of a young girl’s impetuous suggestion of immortality lived on to frighten (or seduce) Queen Victoria.

  Spire began to find all of it fascinating. Absurd and stupid, to be sure, but magnetic all the same. He wondered if any of his team would see Eterna and the political theater in which they were engaged as he saw it: a grand, posturing, ridiculous dance.

  When Spire finished his review and reentered the main room, he found the team scattered about at various desks and tables, each with a cup of tea. Knight had laid out a tarot spread for Mrs. Wilson, who was in turn teaching her the names of the Major Arcana in Arabic.

  Spire seated himself at the circular table and in moments the others had gathered around him.

  “The Knights of Omega’s Roundtable,” Mr. Wilson stated as a palpable excitement rose among the team that Spire couldn’t help but notice, even if he was reluctant to embrace it.

  “So,” Spire began. “What we know of the Eterna Compound is that it was the brainchild of Clara Templeton, who was a friend of Mary Todd Lincoln, then the first lady, due to her”—Spire grimaced at the word—“clairvoyant tendencies. After her parents died of tuberculosis, Templeton became the ward of another spiritualist and fierce supporter of President Abraham Lincoln, Republican Senator Rupert Bishop. While Templeton was not a member of the Eterna team, Bishop appears to have spearheaded the early commission, which was formed shortly after Lincoln’s assassination.”

  Spire paused, resting his hands on the papers before him and waiting for Blakely to pull some magic trick, Knight to start speaking in tongues, or the Wilsons to cite some angle of espionage. But no. They simply listened, taking in the information with the focus and dedication he expected of his former colleagues on the Metropolitan Police. Spire doubted this illusion of an actual, working department would last, but he would enjoy it while he could. He continued, indulging in the dark humor he found in the information:

  “The American team consisted of a number of scientists—let’s say theorists, since not all seem to have scientific training. First was Malachi Goldberg, a rising star in botany—I didn’t know such a mundane field was capable of infamy, but the notes seem to think so. There was Barnard Smith, an American-born chemist with a penchant for putting anything and everything imaginable into test tubes and setting the contents on fire. Bartholomew Feizer, a doctor and evidently a British citizen. Let’s look into that,” he said to Miss Everhart, who was taking notes. She nodded.

  “Feizer was versed in matters of the brain, having been a devotee of the Frenchman, Jean-Martin Charcot.” Spire tried not to make a disdainful face while saying “Frenchman,” but couldn’t help it.

  “The team was joined in 1880 by Louis Dupris, a theorist from New Orleans, a believer in the Vodoun principles espoused by his mother. Evidently Dupris took the team to new, imaginative levels, allowing spiritual and scientific matters to mingle. He worked closely with Smith, and together the men seem to have begun believing in the existence of magic, purporting that all faiths and all sciences, at their zeniths, create what is tantamount to sorcery. They set about trying to prove this.”

  Spire drew a thin sheet of paper from the file. “Louis Dupris’s twin brother, Andre, who joined Louis in New York, provided England with information on his brother’s activities. Last word we have from Dupris is this telegraph memorandum from over a week ago, reporting that Malachi Goldberg was acting odd and paranoid, making the others nervous and suggesting they move locations. After that, Andre did not report as usual. Some disaster befell the Eterna team and all have died or vanished, save one survivor who may be Andre or Louis. Either way, the man is being tracked by our chief American operative, which gives new life to an otherwise dead end.

  “We must learn all we can about the site of the American experiments, what officials are involved in providing for and protecting the theorists and in the investigation of the apparent disaster. We must determine which of the Dupris brothers lives and learn all he knows,” Spire finished.

  “Given the New Orleanean background of Andre and Louis Dupris,” Rose chimed in, “it would behoove us to understand more about Louis’s Vodoun practices; qualities that may appear in his Eterna offerings. New Orleans is a quilt of culture, a lush city where multiple traditions intersect. Though, New Orleans having been under a particular pressure in the American ‘Reconstruction,’ I doubt their willingness to support the Union cause.” She reached for the file where it sat in front of Spire and drew it to her. Opening the folder, she quickly flipped through to sheets Spire recognized as being information on the Duprises. “Ah. I see now.”

  Spire raised the eyebrow he hoped would gain him illumination.

  “The twins’ grandmother was a slave,” Rose explained. “The laws enacted in southern parts of the United States since Reconstruction have not made freed black persons welcome, to say the least, though Creoles operate within their own distinct class. I do not know if the Dupris brothers were, as the Americans have called it, ‘passing’ as white in New York, or how much of their French heritage they parlayed to leverage status, but a Louisiana native working on a northern-based project spearheaded by a Republican administration makes sense to me now.”

  “I didn’t know I was gaining a cultural consultant in addition to an excellent clerk,” Spire said with a curt nod of approval.

  “Why Andre Dupris would spy for us, however,” Rose added, “remains a mystery.”

  “A mystery whose solution I know but cannot reveal,” Black said from the doorway. Everyone jumped—no one, not even Spire, had heard the metal stairs give away his approach. Holding a mess of newspapers under one arm, Black clearly delighted in their surprise. “Covert operations means taking care with your feet on iron steps!” he said with glee, reminding Spire that the nobleman sometimes seemed to think this all a game. Very well then, maybe he’d think of it in precisely the same terms.

  “Is there some scandal concerning Dupris, Lord Black?” Miss Knight asked, sounding hopeful.

  “That’s a private matter,” Black countered cagily. “We’ve a tail on him—or his twin—so information is forthcoming.” He crossed to the table. “I should tell you that on paper, this building is listed, when it appears at all, solely as a ‘records depository.’ Should you ever be asked, do not discuss it, send the questioner to me.”

  He placed the stack of newspapers on the table, saying, “I have arranged for the major dailies to be delivered here, as we oughtn’t be out of touch.” He squinted at a headline, then looked at Spire. “‘Resurrectionist ring’s arrests,” he declared. “Appears your men at the Metropolitan rounded up an orphanage director who supplied bodies to Tourney.”

  Spire snatched the paper and read the account, proud of Grange and Phyfe. He was disturbed, however, to read reports of suicide among other implicated men, according to their families. However no complete bodies of these dead had been recovered, marking a glaring loose end.

  “A resurrectionist ring profits off the uses of dead bodies and body parts,” Spire said, setting down the paper, which Everhart immediately took up. “Tourney’s network may be cannibalizing itself; good for business and no one can squeal. I should make sure Grange knows to—”

  “Ah, ah, Spire,” Lord Black stopped him, smiling. “Your focus is here.” His silk-clad arms gestured around the wide space, his ivory form backlit by soft, diffuse light.

  Spire wanted to punch something. With a deep breath he forced himself to remain calm, reassuring himself that Grange was brilliant, he’d do all the same things Spire would do. He could feel Everhart staring at him and his ruddy cheeks burned even hotter.

  “Speaking of missing bodies,” Spire said through clenched teeth, “that brings up the missing British scientists, Lord Black. How can we in good faith install new men when I’ve been given no way to
sniff out their predecessors’ trails?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Spire, I’d love to discuss those men with you, but there is no trail. One day they were in Greenwich, the next they were not. Nothing was altered or out of place. The men were simply gone.” Lord Black fell silent, looking steadily at Spire as if challenging him to pursue his enquiries further.

  Spire wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. Instead, he asked the team to report on security issues. Everhart, Blakely, and both Wilsons each handed over a sheet of paper. Black, frowning, plucked them out of Spire’s hand before he could do more than glance at them.

  “I thank the team for its suggestions. I will be sure they are attended to immediately,” Lord Black said. “Tomorrow I’ll bring you the scientists’ profiles for perusal. The telegraph wires have been installed and the machine will arrive shortly. Who knows, before too long we’ll even have electricity!” the aristocrat exclaimed, aglow. “The world is new, my friends, and you are at the forefront of the next great stage of human advancement!”

  Everyone appeared caught up in Black’s excitement, save Spire and Everhart, who looked worried. Spire took another long breath. It was near the end of the day. His time away from work was still his own, and he’d spend it on that which had always meant the most to him. In this case, more work.

  Lord Black swept off, muttering something about contraptions being installed upstairs. Spire heard himself saying vague things to his team regarding aims for the next day and week while his mind raced along other tracks. He hoped his words didn’t sound as vacant as they felt, but they seemed to suffice; everyone but Everhart went on their way with no further comment or concern.

  “May I walk you home, Miss Everhart?” he asked, trying to sound casual.

  “I thought you’d never ask,” she said eagerly. On the sidewalk, Everhart glanced up over her shoulder at the window at the center of the uppermost floor. She waved and smiled. Spire turned to see Lord Black leaning out of an open window pane, waving a silk handkerchief as if they were rolling away on a train. “Scratch that, not home, Parliament,” she whispered against the warm river breeze. Spire tried to look amenable toward the man. At this, his colleague nearly sputtered a laugh. “Mr. Spire, I’d not even try to force a smile. On you, it just comes out as an obvious grimace.”

  Spire raised a hand instead, a gesture that could be construed as cordial. “I just don’t know about that man.”

  She replied as they veered toward Parliament. “He’s a dear, truly. It isn’t his fault you’re off the Metropolitan beat. If it were purely up to him, I’m sure he’d let you do both jobs as long as they got done.”

  “And I would, I will—”

  “Pick your battles, Mr. Spire,” she said sharply. “I have to every day. If I should be found, I’d best be found in Westminster, as I am expected to check in. And I can do more things from that office than from my home. I just have to be very careful, sending queries tonight.”

  “Right now we need information as quickly as possible,” Spire declared, “and we can’t afford to have the whole of Tourney’s network be drawn and quartered, traces disappearing before we get anywhere. London makes it all too easy for things to vanish. I doubt any death that had been made to look like suicide actually was one.”

  “No one is that ‘noble’ en masse,” Everhart agreed.

  “They’re being hushed, which to me indicates perhaps a secondary ring is involved, with its own interests, which possibly indicates something on a far grander—more terrible—scale.”

  “How could anything be worse than Tourney’s cellar?” she said with a shudder.

  “If there were other such places, perhaps?” Spire mused in horror.

  “Psychopathic, ritualistic murder isn’t cholera, Mr. Spire,” she countered with a shake of her head. “It’s not contagious. I doubt half if more than a few of the men on that list had any idea what went on. The orphanage director, yes, obviously. But the man who installed the wiring in Tourney’s basement? The one whose arm was found by his wife? Likely not. People like Tourney, with resources, may well be protecting themselves, but the rest are most likely hired hands.”

  “I want to pinpoint them all,” Spire declared. “Tonight I must meet with Grange. I’ll drop by my old precinct—”

  “No, you won’t,” Everhart countered. “I’ll wire your old precinct from my office, let’s not risk your being seen there. Grange can meet you somewhere. Do you and he have a—”

  Spire’s chuckle stopped her. “Wire ‘S.G. to Heorot,’ if you please. He’ll know.”

  His colleague appeared bemused. “I assume there’s a story behind that.”

  Spire shrugged. “What would you expect of boyhood friends but that we fought over who pretended to be Beowulf and who Hrothgar? Grange had a Great Dane named Bill that made an excellent Grendel.” Everhart laughed. Spire grinned. “Heorot, of course, in later years, became whatever our favored pub happened to be at the time.”

  “Clearly,” she replied with a smile, “warriors and kings need their mead halls.”

  “Thank you, Gazelle,” he added. “What’s the story behind that?”

  Everhart looked into the breeze a moment, wisps of brown hair flying free from beneath her sensible hat. “As a girl I was painfully shy; wasn’t one for playing with others. So I pretended to be an animal. Imagine being able to run like the wind,” she said wistfully, before offering a little salute. “Until the morrow, Mr. Spire. Go on and fight Grendel however you can.”

  * * *

  Stuart Grange was the most welcome sight in the world when Spire entered their favorite haunt, not far from the old precinct, northwest from Parliament’s Gothic eaves and the Millbank bricks that ruled Spire’s new life.

  A bright, freckled redhead, Grange looked an eternal boy despite his thirty years, and was as kind and dependable as when Spire had met him in school. With all the tragedy Spire had endured, a man who remained ambivalent about God, he couldn’t help but give something up there thanks for such a good friend.

  The jacket of his uniform was hanging from a peg above the booth, his shirtsleeves were rolled up, and he already had a pint in hand. A second pint was resting on the table, waiting for Spire. It was an old habit—first to arrive bought the first round.

  “What happened to you?” Grange exclaimed, standing to clap Spire on the back. “We thought you were kidnapped until we received a note from the palace saying you’d been promoted.”

  “Kidnapped, really,” Spire muttered.

  Grange chortled. “Don’t tell me it’s desk work.”

  “Not exactly.” Spire looked around. Everyone was focused on beer, not secrets. “I can’t say much other than I’d rather be back with you and the lads.”

  Grange shook his head. “And right at the critical juncture with Tourney, to lose you—”

  “You haven’t,” Spire countered as they sat. He drank deeply, then proceeded to explain his plan to remain involved, without indicting Everhart directly. Though Grange knew and respected what she’d done as Gazelle, her further involvement was not his to offer.

  Grange spoke of his warrants and arraignments, slowed by the spate of “suicides” that Grange found just as dubious as Spire. Knowing that time was against him, he scheduled twice the arrests originally planned. “Though the web, I think, is still wider,” he stated.

  “I know it is,” Spire replied, telling Grange about stashing the list of names to probe.

  “I’ll look into it. And watch our old box for news and directives.” Grange grinned. “Just like old times, going over big heads to get the job done.”

  Spire leaned forward and whispered, “Be more careful than ever, this big head wears the crown.”

  Grange saluted, and the dear friends were on their way once more, unto the breach, living their boyhood pledge, trying their best to keep the monsters at bay.

  * * *

  The important goings-on inside the vast, white stone Gothic grandeur of the Royal Courts of Justice
were all but a ghost, the parading pomp of the day vanished into midnight quietude at the toll of somber bells. The peace was entrusted to external posts—night watchmen at the fore and the corners of the palatial holdings. Deep in the complex’s interior, down an abandoned stone alcove, one guard kept watch over the tiny, dank, cold gray stone cell bound and fortified by more chains and locks than might have been deemed necessary for one small man’s solitary imprisonment.

  This was no ordinary prisoner. That he was, in this singular circumstance, the Majesty, Mr. Moriel deemed a credit to his importance.

  “O’Rourke,” Moriel murmured, “come into the light of this tallow flame.”

  “Your Majesty?” asked the fleshy, gruff guard. His large body was mostly in shadow but a faint glow from the candle stuck into an iron lantern glanced off deep scars across his broad Irish face.

  Moriel deemed the creature who guarded him as unintelligent, an oaf born of the sewers he had once patrolled. Appealing to the man’s base nature and promising to provide exactly what the guard wanted—which was to control parts of the city underground—Moriel found the man easily won. The powers of thrall that he had learned from his summoned colleagues had certainly helped tip O’Rourke’s allegiance.

  Closing the distance between them, the man’s barrel chest brushed the bars; then he bent for closer audience with the diminutive prisoner; Moriel reached up, through the bars, and caressed O’Rourke’s scarred face. The guard closed his eyes as if deeply pleasured.

  “I feel vulnerable,” Moriel whispered.

  “How can I help ease you, milord?” the guard asked, restricting his usual booming voice to match the Majesty’s volume.

  “I need to clean my slates. How many prison guards stand with us?”

  “In the city? Perhaps twenty, scattered in various places. Since your lot has all kinds of folk in ‘house arrests’ and not in cells at all, the possibility for turning more is always available to you,” the man said.