The Eterna Files Page 23

  Clara’s heart surged; she’d root for a liar over their captors any day. The door slammed, closely followed by the sound of glass breaking and more running. It was unclear who had bested whom.

  Silence fell. The house was completely quiet, eerily so.

  “Did they just leave us here?” Franklin seethed.

  “Yes. It would seem they did,” Bishop replied.

  “Not that I’m not glad to be alive, but why didn’t they kill us once they got the information they needed?” Evelyn asked.

  “Because they don’t want international relations to go entirely to hell, though I’ll be sure this goes straight to the president,” Bishop said, shaking his head. “They’ll want to track us. To see who goes where. Someone has to get to Allen!”

  “The moment we’re free, I’ll wire his clerk and go myself, Senator,” Franklin stated.

  Franklin turned to Clara with renewed determination visible in his voice. “I’ve a knife in my boot,” he said. “Miss Templeton, you’re nimble … can you—”

  “I can try,” she said, lifting her chair with her as she stood. To her surprise, the sconces fluttered back to dim life, providing just enough light for her to avoid running into the table or any of her friends, though she repeatedly stumbled over her torn skirts. The chair shifted uncomfortably on her back as she advanced with small steps. The rope chafed at her wrists until it finally broke the skin—she felt the ache increase to a sharper pain at that point.

  Nearing Franklin, she turned her back to him, then shifted carefully to her knees and leaned to the side. The chair legs rasped against the floor as she groped awkwardly behind herself. She felt a warm trickle of blood over her palms as her hands fumbled at the top of his boot.

  Clara nearly dropped the knife as, fingertips slick with blood, she slid the blade from the slit in the leather. Evelyn clucked her tongue sadly. “Oh, Rupert, she’s bleeding! Darling, that was my favorite of your dresses,” she added sadly.

  There was a thud as the knife slipped from her bloody hand. “Damn,” Clara cursed, shifting to pick up the knife from the floor, knowing more blood was soiling that favorite gown. At last she was able to offer the knife to Franklin. He plucked it from her hands and was wonderfully efficient with it. His own binding was undone in mere moments, then moved swiftly to release them all.

  “Go to Allen now,” Bishop instructed. “Lose anyone who tails you. Use any Washington privilege you must to get there quickly. Put the Bixbys on alert.” Franklin bobbed his head but did not move, staring at Clara. She realized that he was waiting to be sure that she was all right, so she nodded and tried to offer a smile. The attempt assuaged him and with one empathetic glance, he was off like a shot.

  Bishop came over to Clara, his cravat undone. He picked up the knife Franklin had left on the table, sliced the fine silk in half, and without a moment’s hesitation bound up each of Clara’s wrists in the expensive gray fabric. She found herself rendered breathless by the ministrations of her guardian.

  He offered Clara a fleeting touch upon her cheek before moving to examine Evelyn’s wrists, but the medium seemed to have fared the best of them and pronounced herself well.

  The front door burst open and several uniformed police officers appeared in the doorway, limned by the light of the exterior gas lamp.

  “You’re under arrest.…” one of them said meekly.

  “No, not these,” countered another firmly—a man of higher rank, perhaps. “These were the abducted ones.” This resulted in confused milling about on the front stoop.

  “Let me straighten them out,” Evelyn growled, charging past the men and disappearing from view. Clara could hear her sharply demand to speak with the highest ranking man on the premises.

  “These are the ones I called you to save,” insisted a familiar voice. A figure in a long coat appeared at the threshold.

  “Mr. Green?” Clara exclaimed at the sight of the journalist, his presence only making her horrid night worse. “What are you doing here?”

  “The opera,” he replied.

  Vaguely Clara remembered Lavinia mentioning the journalist’s invitation, earlier that day. “I declined,” Clara said coldly.

  “No, Miss Kent told me to just wait outside,” Green replied, sounding hurt.

  Clara sighed. “She was being cruel to you.”

  “Yes, I gathered that after the first couple of hours,” Green said, nodding. “But I noticed your light was on. So I kept waiting, as I assumed late hours were kept for a good reason. When you came out, I was standing in the shadows and I saw what was happening, so I went to alert the authorities.” His eyes widened as Bishop moved into the light. “Oh, Senator, you were brought here, too? Hello, sir. Quite the story, this is!”

  “One you will not be telling, you downright creepy young man, else I’ll shut you and your whole paper down,” Bishop said. He stepped toward Green, positively towering over him. “While I appreciate your bringing the police, if you value your life, do not follow my ward—my treasure—ever again, lest you have a whole Congressional caucus breathing down your neck. Despite how charming I seem, I can get very nasty if need be.”

  Clara and Green blushed at the same time. Clara assumed Green was discomfited, but she … treasure. Their little adventure on the train had brought back old words of affection, as beautiful and painful as ever.

  “Is that understood?” Bishop asked.

  “Yes, sir, understood. I was trying to be fastidious and patient. Not creepy,” Green said awkwardly. “If any of you want to give an altered testimony to the paper, anonymously, you know we’d take anything—”

  “Leave,” Clara demanded. Visibly crestfallen the newspaperman exited. Watching through a front window, Clara saw him dart after one of the police officers, notebook in hand.

  Bishop exited the house as well, Clara assumed to control both any press or police reports and for a moment she was alone in their parlor prison.

  She inched back into the darkest shadows the room offered. Whose home it was—and how foreign operatives gained access—would have to be investigated.

  “Louis, if you’re still here…” she murmured, tears flowing freely once more, “I loved you, too. I am so sorry we never got a proper good-bye.…”

  She paused, but the room was too warm. There was no ghost.

  He was gone. Truly gone.

  His loss was a knife, sharper the second time.

  Some part of her had known Andre wasn’t Louis. But that didn’t help now that reality truly sunk in and she had no reserves. That she had not allowed herself to properly cry for Louis was a disservice at this breaking point as she dropped to her knees, exhausted and wracked by sorrow and the aftermath of fear.

  She placed her bound, bloodied wrists to her face and sobbed.

  A few moments later she felt strong, familiar hands on her. The next thing she knew, she was cradled in Bishop’s arms. He carried her out of the house through a rear exit, then sat with her, on a bench on the veranda, holding her patiently as she wept, her head on his shoulder.

  “I wish you’d told me about him,” Bishop said quietly, with some hesitation.

  “I’m sorry,” she choked through tears.

  There was a long silence before Bishop spoke again. “Let us thank the Lord we’re alive. And let us beg the Lord for further strength to bear all that must be borne.”

  He kissed her forehead and, easing her out of his hold, set her next to him. Clara slumped against him, spent.

  Evelyn charged around the corner of the building, an officer trailing her. Her voice was sharp as she spoke to him over her shoulder. “If you and your colleagues cannot accept that I was kidnapped and forced to hold a séance then I have nothing further to say, but leave me be.” The scolded officer sighed and slunk off in the other direction.

  She stormed toward Clara and Bishop, her noble face contorted in consternation. “I do wish the New York Police Department would start employing mediums. I’d get taken so much more serious
ly.”

  “You were amazing tonight, Evelyn,” Bishop said gently. “I’ve never been more proud. No other woman could have been so brave, resilient, and strong … you and Clara are a credit to your sex.”

  “Fantastic, then go back to Washington and get us the vote,” Evelyn growled.

  “I’ll continue to do everything in my power,” he replied. “It shouldn’t be as hard as it is.”

  “Welcome to my world, dear,” Evelyn said with a sigh. “Listen.” Her voice dropped as she took a seat beside them. “I picked up an undercurrent, a whisper, during our little session.”

  Bishop and Clara stared at her. She continued, “Forty-nine, thirty-three, forty-four, thirty-three,” she said, frowning slightly. “And something about a necktie? The numbers could be the combination to something. The tie, I’ve no clue. Ring a bell?”

  Bishop shrugged.

  Clara said nothing, but dread enervated her once more. How in the world had Louis Dupris, her dear, dead lover, cracked the combination to her personal safe?

  * * *

  “Gabriel Brinkman”—that wasn’t his real name, of course, even his old friend Edward Wardwick, Lord Black, didn’t know that particular truth— approached the infamous address on Tenth Street in the middle of the night. It was, he saw, a rather charming, civilized part of town, the street lit by fine gas lanterns, an idyllic place unaware of the morbid fate of those who had labored there. His jaw still hurt from where that spritely woman had elbowed him.

  A younger, happier him would have had to find time to court her.

  But he was not a young buck anymore and he was not happy. In fact, the man known as Brinkman was a haunted shell, and the soul within that husk was withering away, tortured every day by hell itself.

  His contacts were already taking care of Allen, he couldn’t be bothered to tag along on that particular adventure. His present preoccupation had the potential to yield more interesting results, and he was the sort of man to follow his interests above all. He was quite sure New York City would prove the key to everything, and, hopefully, release him from bondage.

  He watched the building for a long while from one corner of the intersection. It was late, hardly anyone was out. But those few passersby he saw inevitably crossed the street, avoiding the address in question, stepping away as if an invisible barrier prevented their feet from coming too near the space. Carriages and delivery carts seemed to speed up as they passed it from the street.

  Next he sized up the town house from across the street before crossing toward it. The saplings that had been planted along the street offered him little cover, but the brownstone overhang that made the garden level entry into a sort of portico put him entirely in shadow save for those directly crossing the sidewalk behind him. As the place itself seemed to divert curiosity, he felt safe enough.

  He wished he could bottle whatever deterrent was in the air and sell it to every spy ring in the world. He’d never have to pick a lock again, he could simply lay on some tropical isle.… But no, that was one thing those who used and abused him and his family could never take away; he loved picking locks.

  In one preternaturally swift motion he flipped up his wide black collar, revealing a sequence of gleaming metal picks slid into the seams. Unerring, he plucked out two thin spikes with subtle hooks and picked the lock on the door with a skill that any thief or spy would kill to possess.

  Entering, Brinkman noted the oxidizing hinges, which appeared to have decayed at an abnormal rate given the structure’s age, flaking rust onto the charred wooden floor. He drew a small lantern from his bag, struck a match, and lit it. The rectangular glass fixture reflected light enough for his task.

  He bent to peer more closely at the floorboards. Near the threshold he spied a blackened mark in the shape of a human forearm and outstretched hand—or, rather, the shape of their bones—as if a person had been reaching for the door. If the imprint of bone was burned upon the floor, that would indicate a spectacularly terrible way to go—

  Brinkman stopped his mind from imagining further, nodding slowly at the sight rather than shuddering at it. He had been desensitizing himself to the sorts of sights he’d be seeing with increased frequency.

  A small bit of gaslight from the street filtered in through windows whose shutters were just enough ajar to offer dim yellow swaths into the space.

  Stepping slowly from the entrance hall with its peeling wallpaper and singed wood paneling, he crossed under the arching wooden beam, past open pocket doors revealing the wide, main floor room beyond where any partitions had been removed to allow for a high, molded ceiling and an open space. He took in the scene of tables and various mysterious equipment, the repeating, curving patterns of odd charred markings like the pattern of waves making undulating patterns in sand.

  He bent with his lantern swinging slowly from his hand, a small, boxy leather bag filled with glass bottles at his side. The only sounds in the room were the soft tread of his leather boots, the gentle scrape of his heavy brocade frock coat against the floor when he bent low, and the flick of his pocketknife as it opened in his palm with a flash of silver.

  He worked quickly, moving from one end of the room to another with his pocketknife out and working in small flurries, scraping bits of residue and film off the floor, the surface of the tables, any lingering broken glass, odd substances crystallized in spiderwebs.… Residues and ash, powders and dust, he separated the collections into different vials and bottles. What had happened to the bodies of those who died there was something Brinkman tried not to think about. He was fleetingly glad the light wasn’t bright enough to reveal if there were any further impressions of human bone upon the floor.

  There was an empty shelf at one side of the room and behind it, the shelf lending the wall a bit of shadow, was a carving into the wood paneling and up onto the flocked wall. A rectangle, about the size of a door. He knew that well.

  “Ah,” he said.

  He looked around the floor once more for other markings. He climbed the second floor and saw the thrown-back carpets.

  “There’s the madness. So. One of the scientists was turned,” he stated, descending the stairs. “I don’t like that I didn’t know that. Or who poisoned him.”

  If he couldn’t control the ebb and flow of operations, he didn’t know how he could continue on. If the scale was greater than he could fathom, at any point he could be ripped from the equation and the soul that depended on him would be lost forever. He forced back a wave of frightened despair.

  As he reached the landing of the entrance hall, the jaundiced light filtering in through the shuttered windows was immediately extinguished, as was his lantern. Brinkman took a long breath and withdrew a box of matches from a deep pocket that held a number of useful items and small weapons. Striking a match, he saw six silhouettes blocking the door. Roughly human sized and shaped, not entirely touching the floor.

  Brinkman smiled. “Hello again, old friends.”

  He wished he didn’t understand who and what he was dealing with, the forces driving him, constraining him to make concessions to England for the sake of an innocent life.….

  The air around him sighed with a low hiss that ebbed and flowed with something of the feeling of language, the temperature plummeted. His next exhalation caused a cloud of vapor.

  “If you are trying to communicate with me, I do not understand you. But allegiances are very clear and you’ve nothing to fear from me. I am going to be on my way and leave you to your unfolding destiny. May I pass?”

  One silhouette shifted, giving him a narrow path of exit.

  He crossed between the shadowy forms, every hair on end, moving slowly out of the building, casting not a single glance behind him. He did not slam the door but allowed it to shut behind him slowly. He did not race up the steps to the sidewalk, though he wanted to run fast, hard, and far. He thought about what was clanking in his bag as he moved stiffly toward Fifth Avenue.

  Those poor sots in those messy, unorgan
ized, inconsequential New York and London departments had no idea what they were in for. There was no way for all this to end but in war. And no one was the wiser. Not yet. None of them would be until it was much too late.

  * * *

  Andre’s penchant for fistfights had come in handy there in the dark. He could feel the chill presence of his dead brother freezing the already cold sweat on his skin.

  “Thank you, Louis, for saving me,” Andre said as he ran. If not for Louis, Andre would likely have been carted back to England to face Lord Black and the many powerful people Andre had angered and offended in that delicious city.

  “You’re welcome,” the ghost replied. “Now you must do something for me.”

  “Something more?” Andre cried.

  “What you left in Smith’s office was only part of the work,” Louis explained urgently. “His spirit came to me, in the perilous half sleep that happens in this purgatory I’m in. He hid some of his chemical compounds from me. They went into our final mixture but were ingredients I had not recorded. Smith also concealed some of Goldberg’s material from before he went mad.

  “He did not wish the entire compound to ever be listed in a single document. Leave Clara a note to go back to Smith’s office. There’s more to find there.”

  “What about the material at Allen’s?” André asked.

  “Old files with work from previous theorists who long abandoned the project,” the spirit replied. “If England knows about those tests, so be it. We have to throw them something to scrabble over, like vultures. Clara is the only one I trust, not even Bishop, no one else. There must be more power in my work than I even know, to have gotten this much attention—”

  “That’s what those numbers were about? Her safe? I nearly blurted them out. But Louis, I need to hide—we need to hide!”

  “We have time for this, Andre. You’ve the advantage here, you must do this.”

  Andre spied a healthy mare tied to a post near a sort of gentlemen’s club where the men were dressed well and the women were barely so. He grabbed the horse from its hitch and took off at a gallop despite cries of protest and a shout of “thief!”