The Eterna Solution Read online

  “I…” He looked away, ashamed. “I don’t have the best of luck hiring a hansom. Maybe if you…”

  “This damned city,” Clara muttered, her ungloved hand entwining with his darker one as they walked toward Broadway. “If we can save this rock, I will demand it treat all its children better.…”

  When she obtained a hansom, she handed over more than the journey was worth and said, staring at the driver hard, “Please take my precious charge, Mr. Josiah Garvey, uptown to the Right Reverend Blessing, as they are both employed on the business of Senator Rupert Bishop and the Secret Service of the United States. You will then wait and return him to this spot, doing your part in the most important business of protecting this city. Am I understood?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the Irishman said in a thick accent, staring at Josiah with a bit of awe. The child was unable to contain a smile as he bowed his head in acknowledgment, as if he were already the statesman the senator and Clara hoped he might be someday.

  After closing the carriage door, Clara saluted Josiah through the window and he did the same in return. Even the driver saluted before he cracked the whip, taking off uptown at a canter.

  * * *

  Sitting in the parlor in a fine mansion that was situated a little farther up Broadway than was precisely fashionable, drinking a concoction she’d taken to at an earlier age than one should, Celeste felt a ripple course through her.

  Someone was disturbing her art.

  It was inevitable that someone would; it could not go unnoticed forever, nor did she want it to. She wasn’t the only gifted creature on the island, and more had arrived earlier that very day. She would deal with them where Moriel had failed.

  Moriel. She could still feel him. She resolved to use this to her advantage. She would summon and contain—that would serve him right.

  Painful memories flooded her mind and her body.

  Celeste had been in the public gallery for Moriel’s New York trial and that was when she’d first realized someone else like her existed, when she’d experienced the life-altering yearning to cast off her solitary misery for a true partnership. Here was a man who saw the world much as she did and wanted to take innovative, unprecedented powers into his hands.

  Humanity would never cease to be stratified. Simplifying the layers and leaving the control of it to only those who were willing to get their hands bloody and dirty was only just—and efficient.

  Like Moriel, Celeste knew she was born for grandeur. He was an aristocrat and she, the poor daughter of an unmarried actress, but she’d learned very early to endear herself to the landed class and how to pass herself off as one. She’d done it so well she’d nearly convinced herself she’d always been an heiress. She paused her search for a rich, easily manipulated husband and devoted herself to getting closer to Moriel.

  During his extradition to England, Celeste posed as a nurse aboard his ship. She introduced herself in careful whispers as someone interested in learning his great work.

  They met in secret, her wiles and psychic talents ensuring that no one knew of her comings and goings. While he had been slated for execution, the queen herself was too fascinated by the possibilities of his work to kill him, her interest in immortality her fatal flaw. Celeste kept the nurse role going throughout his internment in the secret cell in the Royal Courts of Justice.

  She recalled their love letters. Her gifts. She was beautiful and he liked that. He was not but it wasn’t about him.

  His betrayal was the worst of the memories; a blade, slipped neatly through the bones of her corset. The greedy man even took one of his gifts back from her as she stumbled away to die in a London gutter.

  While he had never said so, her mental gifts told her the reason. She was too powerful for him and he resented her gifts, as well as her inability to be the bland, subservient queen he required. Still, Celeste had thought she’d have time to gain the upper hand and, like her inspiration and idol Lady Macbeth, seize opportunity and demand it in equal measure. But sadly, he was a petty, little man, and his inability to share glory and narcissistic greed would become his downfall.

  The night he tried to kill her she anticipated it, intuition and clairvoyant clues saving her life. Leaning in a certain angle when he lunged with the knife to make it appear it had gone deeper, she stumbled away in a great, dramatic fashion. Once she cleaned and patched herself up, she swiftly removed herself from England and headed directly to hectic, industry-filled Chicago before he could send any of his Summoned to come looking for her corpse.

  His violence toward her hardened what little heart she’d been granted. It was for the best, as working for herself sharpened her every gift. When she found out he’d died, in a spectacular blaze of demonic glory outside Parliament, she smiled.

  Wiring a bribable English policeman instructions and money to procure a souvenir for her from the wreckage of his estate meant she had an incredibly useful tool at her disposal, and she planned to use it.

  Oh, his spirit should fear her now.…

  Someone let loose the doorbell, recalling her to the present. Betrayal and hate were acrid upon her tongue and she spat into the smoldering fireplace.

  The bell rang once more. No staff hurried to answer it, as this was forbidden. Celeste oversaw who came and went and none did either without her permission. Especially her husband.

  She went to the front hall, where a small square box wrapped in thick brown paper and tied with twine waited on a table. She opened the door to her courier, a ragged-looking man in a shabby but nicely kept brown coat. He stared at Celeste eagerly from under his dusty bowler, his expression painfully readable; he was desperately glad for whatever work he could gain, the kind of man who would build a robber baron’s empire without gaining a shred of credit or capital. Such men she used, pitied, and sometimes killed.

  “Please deliver this to Mr. Volpe at Edison’s plant.” She handed over the package, which smelled distinctly, if one was familiar with the scent, of embalming fluid. From the look on the courier’s face, the smell meant nothing to him. “Volpe will pay you upon delivery.”

  “Yes, ma’am, thank you,” the man said.

  As he turned away, she added, “Please return at the same time next week.” He nodded and, satisfied, Celeste closed the door.

  As she took a step toward the parlor, she spotted her husband standing half in shadow, half in the light of the stained-glass window behind him, peeking out from the narrow gap he’d left between the parlor’s pocket doors. He froze under her stare like a rabbit before a dog.

  “What is it, my dear?” she asked sweetly. “Finished with your meal already? Don’t you like my trying to fatten you up?”

  “I … heard the bell,” he said, as quietly and simply as a child.

  “It wasn’t for you,” she replied, using the gentle tone she reserved for him.

  “No … I suppose not…” he said sadly. “Never is.”

  The poor thing wanted to be important. But he was not.

  She, on the other hand … her power would expand this week, encompassing another few blocks. While her tricks of stagecraft and chemistry and her offering to the demons would keep those who might peer into her affairs distracted, she would grow ever closer to her unstoppable tipping point, when all of the city’s energy and momentum could be wielded by her body as easily as turning on an electric light.

  * * *

  It wasn’t long before Clara had a Manhattan-specific Ward in hand, the driver having returned Josiah in as quick an order as Manhattan’s midday bustle would allow, a mere hour and a half. She’d celebrate the little victories. During this time, Bishop provided their company with a welcome picnic of beverages and tasty, roasted morsels from street vendors along Broadway and they enjoyed the park as it was intended.

  Josiah gave the Wards to her in a small box where as many as could fit were wrapped in tissue paper.

  “This is what he can spare, and he hopes you’ll come relieve him soon,” Josiah said. “Just w
hen he thinks he has the area settled down, another body surfaces,” he said worriedly. “It has gone in fits and starts for over a week.”

  “Of course,” Clara promised. “Right after this, if my colleagues can endure it. If not, I’ll go myself, I can’t have that dear man stretched too thin.”

  Bishop came close, patted Josiah on the back, and then followed Clara as she darted back up the stairs.

  “While fighting fire with fire might have an effect,” Clara explained her plan, “I’d like to experiment and see if the earth, mixed with the other Ward elements and made powerful by our respective prayers, once poured onto the offending substance, has an effect. If so, should we, heaven forfend, have to Ward large plots of land, this might be a substance to bury, till, and add to any protective bulwark. Let’s see.”

  On the torch’s rim, Clara swept her skirts clear of the oddly licking flames once more and shook the contents of the vial before tilting it to evenly sprinkle the mixed ingredients of the Ward about the rim of tar, pitch, and blood. As she moved around the torch, she murmured several benedictions that she hoped would be useful, if only to strengthen her own energy, prayers she’d learned from Evelyn. Bishop bolstered her prayers with his own, keeping silence as was their Quaker tradition. The fire flickered.

  A few more prayers, a renouncement of evil, some Shakespeare, anything about freedom and free thought, about love and kindness, about democracy and the ideals that she felt her city and country strove for, what Liberty herself could symbolize …

  That this beautiful hand had been defiled struck Clara to the core. The anger that roiled within her gave every utterance from her lips the weight of righteous conviction.

  The battle of freedoms, of wills, seemed at a tipping point and at last the flames lowered. A sulfuric stench still hung about the rim of the torch, but the ungodly fire of it seemed mostly doused. A few burning tongues refused to die. That would be for Stevens to manage with science. Whether this damnation flame would prove an eternal one was yet to be seen.

  Bishop squeezed Clara’s shoulder.

  “There is an effect for the better here. You remain the heart of the matter,” he said softly.

  In Louis’s recipe for Wards, that exact phrase was boldly scribed at the top of each local iteration he had managed to concoct. Clara smiled, hearing Bishop speak what had become sacred text.

  They descended again to street level.

  “I’ve done as much as I can do and the hellfire is mostly subdued,” Clara reported to the company.

  “Now what?” Rose asked.

  “We have to knock down these abominations one by one,” Bishop replied. “Next, Columbia University, north of us some thirty blocks, an ongoing site of grave concern.”

  “I’ve a concern,” Spire began, adjusting and smoothing his dark brown waistcoat. Everyone turned to regard his natural authority. “That these are mere distractions while some larger plan is being put into place.”

  “Likely so,” Bishop agreed. “Is there something you think we should be paying attention to?”

  “Industry,” Spire replied. “The Edison plant. Places that have exponential capacity to cause a disaster, like that warehouse of toxins back in London. We need to assess if we’re here to play cleanup or if we’ve another active enemy at work.”

  “Would you like to undertake an examination of electrical companies and outposts while we assess the reanimate, Mr. Spire?” Bishop asked.

  At the word “reanimate” Rose stepped forward, folding her arms so that her gloved hands each rested on the opposite elbow of her white shirtwaist blouse.

  “I’d like to be with Clara when encountering those creatures,” Rose said. “We’ve … particular experience. Not to disregard your instincts, Mr. Spire.”

  “No offense taken,” Spire replied. “And you’re wise to suggest we stick together to create the widest net against any of those horrific, shambling creatures.”

  “With all due respect, I’d like to wait this one out,” Franklin said quietly, his face pale against his unshaven whiskers. “The nature of the reanimate … all the patchwork bodies, I just … It’s a bit too much. My brother, may he rest in eternal peace, his body was all in pieces after Gettysburg and I can’t help but see his … parts … in those bodies…” Franklin faltered and Clara put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Go home and rest, my dear,” she said gently. “You’re not on your own anymore. It will do our tasks no good if we’re all not at our best.”

  Franklin nodded and walked away without further word, his limp exaggerated by his evident exhaustion.

  “And the cavalcade of horrors continues, like the old days of our circuses, only all the acts are made of nightmares,” Miss Knight said quietly.

  CHAPTER

  FIVE

  En route to Columbia, the noise and bustle of New York folded in around Rose in layers of sound and color. It wasn’t that this city was noisier than London, it was simply more. Everything she’d seen of America so far bore similarities to England but it was bigger, bolder, louder, faster, more urgent; desperate. It was exhausting.

  Squeezed into a hansom next to Mr. Spire, Rose was powerfully aware of his closeness despite her doubled skirts. Glancing at the dear partner she increasingly admired, she saw that he was steeled and focused, ready for the tasks that gave his life purpose. She determined to prove the same.

  “Any idea what we’re expecting to see when we reach the place?” Spire asked of Bishop, who sat across from them, between Clara and Evelyn. Rose smiled at his tone; his skepticism was unchanged despite all the improbable things he’d both seen and taken part in.

  Clara leaned forward, addressing Rose. “A repeat of the City Hall display, I would imagine, using any number of medical students’ cadavers as fair game.” A shudder of revulsion visibly swept over her.

  Rose recoiled, too, at the memory of those patchwork, Frankensteinesque bodies rising up, tethered to wires and current, black swollen mouths hanging open like something out of one of Poe’s worst nightmares. She wasn’t looking forward to confronting them again either.

  “Reverend Blessing may have the situation mostly in hand—he’s put to rest something like this before,” Evelyn said sadly.

  Columbia’s stately grounds lay north of Longacre Square but south of Central Park, in the Fiftieth Street range, not far from the line of elaborate mansions and accumulated, ostentatious wealth; set behind ornate, wrought-iron gates, all of which were locked.

  In the courtyard beyond, a spindly, brown-haired man paced nervously back and forth, frequently looking toward the street.

  Police officers stationed at each corner dissuaded any passersby from the premises, citing disease; a rotating cast of curious onlookers asked if what the papers reported was true.

  “I’m frankly surprised there isn’t more of a crowd,” Rose said.

  “A good number of citizens must have considered the news to be fake,” Clara stated.

  “I’ll take that as unexpected providence then, lest we have a frothing doctor’s riot on our hands like a century ago,” Evelyn muttered.

  When the two carriages discharged their passengers, the man within swiftly darted toward them, opening the gates from the inside. He left the gate ajar to greet his fellows.

  One of the nearest patrolmen came over to make sure Bixby wasn’t being harassed, and Senator Bishop showed the officer a card marking him as a statesman and Spire flashed his Metropolitan badge for good measure. The officer bowed his head.

  “Let me know if you need anything,” the officer said. “But if you’re going to be there working on the scene, you all need to do so from inside the gate.”

  Fred Bixby ushered them in with wild gesticulations and slammed the gate. The officer eyed all of them, and looked into the courtyard beyond worriedly, before returning to his post.

  Fred, whose center of gravity seemed to hover in his elbows, had not inherited the grace displayed by his sister, though his pale brown skin tone matched
hers, as did the dusting of freckles across his prominent cheekbones. Bright brown eyes wide, he directed a heated declamation at Bishop before the senator said more than hello.

  “For the record, Senator, sir, I do not like this. For the record, sir, I am a man for records. Papers. By the grace of the ever-loving Lord, please get me the hell away from any kind of organic detail. I find the human body a deeply flawed machine and I’ve seen far too much of its complications these past few days!”

  Amused, Effie stepped forward and wound her arms around her lanky sibling, calming him. Spire turned to Rose and commented that this man was their kind of person, at which she smiled.

  “I’ve missed you, Brother,” she said with a chuckle. “Now don’t be rude, you must meet our new friends and colleagues.”

  Fred ran a hand over his closely shorn head and murmured, “Yes, of course, do forgive me.”

  Effie performed the introductions quickly, ending by explaining that her brother maintained the files and account books for the Eterna Commission.

  “How’s Gran?” Effie asked her brother quietly.

  His unnerved rant was forgotten for love of family. “Not doing well. Effie, we should—”

  “Take time with her,” his sister declared. “Yes. We will.”

  “Take what time you need,” Bishop said softly. “Your family needs you as much as we do, and if anyone needs to be moved somewhere safe—”

  “We’ll be fine,” Effie said, an edge to her tone.

  Both siblings shifted back to the task at hand, though Effie didn’t remove her hand from her brother’s shoulder.

  “I happened to be at the chemistry department when this all began,” Stevens explained, “seeking supplies for Wards and antidotes, when I saw the first corpse shamble onto the green.” He shuddered. “From that point we’ve tried to keep the situation as contained as we could. I knew it was important to immediately quarantine the campus. Fred here contacted the right city and college officials to ensure it. But, as you can hear…”

  The wails were like sirens at a distance, a distressing blanket of audible horror over one of the most opulent parts of town.