Eterna and Omega

by Leanna Renee Hieber

  Clara nodded. After a long moment she continued, “The Master’s Society, with which today’s demonstration appears to be correlated, has invented the strangest kind of … what’s the word for it?”

  “Terrorism?” Rose offered.

  “Precisely.”

  “I’ve only heard that term referred to in terms of the French regime and the revolution’s subsequent Reign of Terror,” Rose mused, “but it seems apropos.”

  “It appears that via terrorism, this is the kind of world the Society wants—ruling through terror inspired not by guillotine but by reanimate bodies powered by ghostly retinue and gaping graves,” Clara said mordantly, “specters, and all manner of supernatural threats we’ve been policing through the years but, when it comes to our office, always took second place to the search for immortality. I know you know about all that.”

  “Yes, I am a member of the Omega department, but do let me reassure you, Miss … Clara, that we had no direct say in what Brinkman would do. He’s a bit of a…”

  “Liability?”

  “One might say that.”

  “Is he even trustworthy?” Clara posited. “How do you know his sending you after Mosley isn’t a trap?”

  “I’ll bring along someone who is … gifted enough to assess the situation.”

  “Good. We need as many of the gifted as we can,” Clara said, as if that were the most normal thing in the world. Rose nodded. “What’s your gift?” Clara asked.

  “Codes,” Rose replied. “Although after I was hurt in an accident and then … accosted by a strange, insistent woman, I’ve been seeing the world differently. As if I’ve woken up to a world beyond our mortal one.”

  “That’s very familiar. And don’t worry, you have woken up, precisely. Most people have access to their sixth sense, but most don’t wish to wake to it,” Clara said supportively. She winced and tried to shake a clenched muscle in her forearm. “Pardon me. It takes a little bit until I’m fully clear. Usually I go right to sleep but I don’t at present have that luxury.”

  “Don’t let me keep you. I should be returning to find my colleague—”

  “No, you’re helping. The aftereffects are usually worse, and considering how many spirits were here, I should have already have gone into a full convulsion.”

  “That must be very frustrating in your line of work,” Rose stated, “with your sensitivities, to have that kind of impediment.”

  “Oh, indeed,” Clara murmured. “A Templeton curse…”

  This sparked Rose’s memory. That strange Marlowe woman had said the name Templeton.

  “Do you know anything about a Lizzie Marlowe?” Rose asked. Clara looked blank. “Imperious woman, reddish hair, sharp featured. She mentioned your name, that we would have to make sure our departments didn’t become something insidious.”

  The description of the woman seemed to ring a bell. “The visitor!” Clara exclaimed. “The visitor has a name?”

  “Yes, she did say ‘visitor’, once, but she called herself Lizzie Marlowe after barging into our offices as if she owned the place.”

  “Sounds like her,” Clara said with an exasperated laugh. “Ah! You must be the missing piece she referred to. That’s it. Do you believe in lives past?”

  Rose passed a hand over her hair, tucking errant brown strands from the ordeal back into the loose bun atop her head. “I didn’t believe in much until this work, but now … Well, I am forced to believe in a great deal more.”

  “May I be forward?” Clara asked, piercing Rose with peculiarly gold-green eyes.

  “Have we any choice but to be?”

  “I think we’ve always been siblings. I’ve a sense of where those with whom I have an instant affinity fit, in worlds past. I know mine rather clearly. You’ve either been a sister or brother, nearly every time,” Clara said, with mounting amazement as if she was seeing each iteration of possibility before her eyes. Perhaps she was. Rose was very moved by this.

  “I was born a twin. The other died…” Rose trailed off. Clara nodded with a knowing smile. “I’ve always felt something missing…”

  “I know. I’ve thought so, too. Been told so, even,” Clara said. “Well, hello, then.” Suddenly Clara embraced Rose.

  Rose allowed the embrace and after a moment returned it. “Hello, old friend,” she replied.

  Clara pulled back, her hand still on Rose’s shoulder. “So what’s this about my being the death of you, then?”

  “Perhaps our respective dangerous works coming together increases the threat for both of us.”

  Clara nodded. “Then we’ll be twice as careful. I believe that warnings should be heeded, but I don’t believe in a fixed destiny that ends only one way.”

  “Good,” Rose agreed. There was a great relief in this.

  “I was about to tell you where our offices are, but,” Clara said with a slight edge, “you already know. Can you give that Brinkman orders to not be such a lunatic?”

  “We already did,” Rose countered. “Our director, Harold Spire, is a very sensible man. If I were a betting woman, I’d say you’d like him a great deal. He was afraid the issue of the kidnapping and the séance, when all Brinkman had been asked to do was gather information, would cause an international incident.”

  “You’re lucky we’re understanding folk interested in secrecy,” Clara stated. Rose nodded. “So was your office responsible for any of today’s madness?”

  “Solely in the first tent.”

  “Agents of a secret department masquerading as mystical performers and talented acrobats?” Clara grinned. “That is rather clever.”

  Rose chuckled. “It’s innovative, I suppose … to our poor director’s chagrin.”

  “For my offices to trust yours, we’ll need to know who and what in your government—as we’ll have to ascertain in ours—has any involvement with the Master’s Society, the force behind today’s display, along with other tiers of supernatural terrorism. Come to my offices tomorrow, please. Top floor. Don’t mind Lavinia, our receptionist, she’ll have to get her own read on you.”

  “I won’t mind,” Rose said, the paranormal aspects of the work becoming part of the routine. “Now if you’ll excuse me,” Rose said, rising to her feet, smoothing her sensible skirts, they were very much two women of a set.

  “Your colleague, by all means, I hope he is all right. Heading downtown, by chance?”

  “Yes.”

  The women left the park and walked in as brisk a stride as their skirts would allow down busy, bustling Broadway that was still the epicenter of gossip, terrified declamations, and more than a few New Yorkers rousing from faints and vapors.

  “You’ll come tomorrow?” Clara asked. Rose nodded.

  “If we don’t stop what’s going on,” Clara added, “we’ll all be the death of each other. It won’t be by my direct hand. I hope whatever you can be sure of, in how familiar we feel. Sometimes instinctual trust is all I have to go on. The magic my team has been working on to keep the darknesses roused by events like today at bay is a very deeply personal one. We’ll need all the connections we can get, not alienations.”

  Rose nodded. “That sounds heartening, at least, even if I don’t really understand precisely what you mean by magic.”

  Clara smiled. “Magic doesn’t need understanding. Not wholly. That’s why it’s magic. Someday I might know the science of it, but until then, well, let’s call it something wondrous.”

  “Fair enough.”

  The women continued down toward Pearl Street, with New York all abuzz around them. The news of what had happened in the park was on the lips of every passerby, there were policemen and officials out and about on every walk and corner, but the ladies wove through dazed crowds with focused skill.

  Clara stopped at Pearl and Whitehall and reached out to offer a comforting squeeze of her gloved hand on Rose’s shoulder. “Good luck with your colleague. If I can be of help, let me know. It is good to meet you, Rose Everhart. And, I suppose, welcome hom
e.” She turned to walk away down Pearl Street.

  Watching her until she disappeared around the bend of the street, Rose recalled the Edison power plant nearby and her directive to call upon the man who may have accidentally killed her colleague. She prayed, as she hurried down the block and around the corner to the entrance of the embassy’s safe house, that she wasn’t walking into the too-personal kiss of death.

  As she came into the safe house parlor, a bland, boring room with a staid still-life painting, no windows, a plain brown carpet, and uncomfortable wooden chairs, Rose collapsed in the nearest one, utterly overwhelmed and exhausted by the tolls of the day. Blakely sat across the room, staring at the wall.

  “Thank goodness you’re safe,” Knight murmured. She hoped their somber expressions didn’t mean what she thought they did.

  “Any luck out there? I’m so sorry I lost you, I was worried sick, but I had to…” The psychic trailed off, gesturing toward the closed door of the next room, tears falling from her dark eyes.

  “We all did what we had to do,” Rose replied. “By dire circumstance and force, I met both Clara Templeton and our agent Brinkman.” She sighed, staring toward the closed door. “How is he?”

  Blakely shook his head. Miss Knight put her face in her hands. In that moment, Rose could hear Adira crying from the next room, mourning softly in Arabic.

  “Oh, God.” Rose slumped further, rubbed her eyes, and bit back a sob. “What do we do now?”

  “Continue on,” Blakely whispered. “It’s what he’d want us to do. And take care of Adira.”

  Rose nodded, closing her eyes to block the sting of tears. She explained what all had happened, withholding the more personal past-life aspect from discussion.

  “The key,” Knight said after Rose finished, “will be to get this Mosley fellow on our side.”

  “It’s clear what the Master’s Society will do with him after today,” Rose declared. “Scores of dead bodies waiting to be woken … he can give them all the charge those unhallowed bodies need to rise and connect the ghosts that trail those horrid bodies.” She shuddered. “Brinkman gave me his address, on Pearl Street, saying we should go to him. Protect him.”

  “He’s tailor-made to be exploited by their evil,” Miss Knight added, rising to her feet. “I can find out why he is so angry and access his ability to trust. I can give him the closest thing he’s ever had to a friend.”

  “If what you say is true,” Blakely said bitterly, “could he not harm you like he did our dear Reggie?”

  Knight moved behind Blakely’s chair to kiss the nerve-racked man on his perspiring forehead.

  “Trust me, darling. It’s hardly the first time I’ve diffused a danger. We’ll bring back results and make an ally out of a threat,” Knight stated.

  “Tend to Adira,” Rose added. Blakely nodded obediently. “She needs comfort and safety, and make whatever arrangements need be made. Telegraph Mr. Spire and alert him to what happened.”

  “I shall.”

  “I should not tell Adira where we’ve gone, as the man we’re to see is ostensibly responsible for her husband’s death,” Rose added.

  Blakely nodded and the two women were off.

  “Can you tell me what you saw in that tent, Miss Knight?” Rose asked as they walked toward the Pearl Street address, oddly, not far, she thought, from the Eterna offices. “I’ve never been one for second sight. But I believe I saw … spirits. Subtle forms somehow attached to the bodies of the dead scientists. Am I correct, or should Zhavia inspect me for further damage upon our return to England?”

  “What you saw was entirely so,” Miss Knight confirmed. “The bodies and spirits were bound to each other against the will of both dead parties. In effect, the bodies became banshees, magnifying the screams of tortured, enslaved spirits. Resulting in a weapon, a way to control a crowd by fear and sensory onslaught.”

  “Yes.” Rose shuddered. “But Mosley banished the specters, yes? One moment they were hovering around the bodies, the next moment they blinked into nothingness.”

  “I cannot help but find that fascinating,” Miss Knight said. “I have heard theories that ghosts are particularly able to affect electricity—and to be affected by it. I think Mosley sent a higher pulse of current that untethered the spirits, and I doubt he did that on command. I think he did that to free himself.”

  They did not bother to knock at the door of Mr. Mosley’s modest town house—Miss Knight picked the lock of the wooden front door instead. The two women stood in the front hall, not far from the door, and called his name.

  Disturbed to see that the back arch window was a gaping, broken hole, Rose could see they were not the first to have broken in.…

  Waiting for a reply, Rose noticed that the house’s carved wood paneling needed to be dusted and polished, and the carpet runner in the entrance foyer was worn and dirty.

  “Why are you people following me?” shouted an anguished voice from upstairs. “Am I at long last affecting Manhattan’s patch-work electrical system to the point where you cannot ignore me any longer?”

  “We don’t want to hurt you,” Knight called gently. “We saw what happened today, and as fellow British citizens, we would like to offer you another option.”

  Mosley sighed, a growling sound, poking his head down from around the banister. “I didn’t choose to go down that path today. I was kidnapped and forced to send electricity into those … bodies. It was terrible.”

  “We know, truly we do,” Rose added. “Those who forced you into that dread deed are whom we want to stop, believe us.”

  He peered at them. “You’re not law enforcement.…”

  “Who would send women and psychics to speak with you unless we understood just how special you were?” Rose offered.

  “As if I should trust anyone, or anything…”

  Miss Knight sighed. “Mr. Mosley, please.” She walked down the entrance foyer toward him, looking at him on the stair above her. “Your heart is full of anger and bitterness—”

  “What do you know of my heart?” he barked.

  Miss Knight offered a half smile and stared into his eyes. “Enough to understand what it is like to live in this world entirely misunderstood. An aberration. A freak.”

  At the banister, she reached up and laid a gentle hand on his cheek.

  “Don’t—” He shrank away but could not evade her. At her touch, he fell silent and still.

  Miss Knight’s dark eyes fluttered. When concentrating, her eyes shifted to nearly black, frightening even to those who were intrigued by her gifts. She winced, then spoke with quiet gravity.

  “I know you and your brother … Jack … were treated terribly. You took on his name out of deference … And I know what happened to your father. It wasn’t a fireplace poker that did the damage. I’d have done the same thing in your shoes had I been there.”

  Mosley looked down at her in a mixture of awe and abject fear as he murmured, “How do you…”

  Knight’s black eyes flashed, showing a pain that Rose had only guessed at.

  “Because I, too, am a freak, Mr. Mosley,” she whispered. “That’s how.”

  There was a long and uncomfortable silence.

  “We are, honestly, here to help you,” Rose began gently. “We do have ties to Her Majesty’s government, but we do not work with the forces that you fear. We are tasked with rooting out the inexplicable. Help us help you.”

  “To do what? I won’t be a sideshow trophy and I won’t be your weapon,” Mosley said angrily, pulling away from Knight and standing up. Rose could feel the hairs on her neck rise as the young man’s charge electrified the room. “Too many people have been after me for that. I look out for myself, a lone agent of the lightning gods. I demand autonomy and respect.”

  “We respect that you could kill us right here and now,” Miss Knight said, her moment of vulnerable commiseration gone. “But you won’t, because for the first time in your entire life, you see in my eyes that I am telling you the
truth. Because you can see that I do not wish to hurt, arraign, or experiment upon you. Whatever others have wanted to do to or with you, the Society will do worse.”

  “We’ve seen bodies and wires like that before,” Rose added, “in a dreadful English crime scene. Mechanical generation cannot compare with your power, so those who used you today would use you again.” She leaned in to emphasize the point. “You’d power a thousand dead corpses attached to ten thousand dead spirits.”

  Mosley shuddered at this.

  “With you living so close to Edison’s dynamos, you are an ongoing risk and disaster—”

  “You flatter me,” Mosley sneered.

  “Come home to England, Mr. Mosley,” Rose offered. “Our offices will erase whatever past you please. But if you accept this help, help us in turn by rooting out your attackers wherever they may lurk. Protect the force your body claims as your own. It is for light, not for harm, and not for reviving the dead.”

  He stood on the front stair, facing them. “Indeed.”

  “Protect yourself against those who took advantage of you today,” Miss Knight said with an edge. “Because of them, one of our operatives was killed today.”

  “I’m … sorry for your loss,” Mosley said haltingly, as if empathy were entirely new to him.

  “Thank you. We strange, sensitive, burdened, gifted persons have to look out for one another, do we not?” she said softly. It was the first time Rose thought that her colleague might have had a more difficult life than she’d ever let on.

  “I … never thought so,” Mosley said, “before.” There was a long, pained pause. “How can I get home?”

  “Papers will be under your door by midnight,” Rose replied, “along with a steamer ticket and directions to a safe house in North London. Should you not report there, we will have cause to come find you.”

  “Indeed,” he murmured. “Well, then, ladies. Do see yourselves out.…” With that, he withdrew up the stairs. Only then did the charge of the current dissipate and the small hairs all over Rose’s body return to rest.

  “Good day,” Rose stated, and she and Knight quickly took their leave lest they be driven out by a surge.