The Eterna Files

by Leanna Renee Hieber

  He drove the horse hard, nearly running over pedestrians and almost crashing the poor beast into an oncoming carriage. Pearl Street was won in a surprisingly swift bout and Andre leaped off the animal and ran to the front door.

  He tried with his pick to unlatch the lock but his nerves only jammed the knob, so in his haste he broke the pane of the front door with his elbow, reaching through the jagged glass to unlock it. Before bounding up the stairs, he paused for an instant to consider the redheaded doorkeeper slumped in her chair. Andre hoped she wasn’t dead but knew he didn’t have time to find out.

  As Andre ascended, the grayscale draft of his brother gave instructions. “The material is in Smith’s office fireplace, up the chimney. Tell her only she must know!”

  “Always with the fire.” Andre chuckled despite himself, writing out what Louis requested.

  “Now to the safe,” Louis continued, “below her desk, below the carpeting.”

  “How do you know the combination?” Andre asked, genuinely curious.

  “I watched her, place an item of mine—the only one she had left of me—in that safe. In that moment, because she held something that had belonged to me, I could get close, though I could not speak, couldn’t move anything to let her know I was there.” Louis’s voice was plaintive. He recited the combination and Andre opened the safe.

  It was the work of mere moments to toss the paper within, close the safe and conceal it once more, then flee.

  Finding himself conveniently near the tip of Manhattan Island, Andre hurriedly planned his further escape. Used to having to escape at a moment’s notice due to angry wives, husbands, or creditors, he tended to have money sewn into his clothing and hidden in his accoutrements.

  He stowed onto a cargo clipper making a night run across the river, desperate for constant movement. Not sleeping, he barely ate or breathed, unable to relax until the train he boarded in New Jersey had cleared Ohio and he was confident none of his pursuers were following.

  Andre still intended to return to New Orleans, to put to rest some of the dust that his dead brother had unwittingly kicked up, but he wondered now if he wasn’t being chased by more than British spies.

  Something else had been going on in the house where he and the others had been held that night. Something had been lurking in the shadows. He’d sensed it before, in Goldberg’s home, and before then, back home, in Lafayette Cemetery. He’d found his brother there at dawn, drenched in blood and unable to remember what had happened to him during the night. Louis had always been a bit haunted, and paranormal things loved clinging to him. He was, Andre supposed, a bit magical. But that hadn’t saved his life. His precious mystères hadn’t intervened, then or now.

  Andre had set sail for London the day after he found his brother in the graveyard and years had passed with no contact between the twins, until he was dragged back into his brother’s sphere by England itself. That he had been under the thumb of England was laughable anyway—that damn, fool, uptight, moralizing, hypocritical country. He longed for the days when a libertine might be left well enough alone. Well, they were, if they were well-placed enough. That was the trick, wasn’t it: placement. How you were born. Who you were born.

  “What have we gotten ourselves into, brother?” he asked the cold patch of air beside him as he sat in the back of a train car full of sleeping people, hat low over his olive-toned face.

  “I’m not entirely sure,” came Louis’s whisper. “Whatever it is, it’s just gotten worse. Something is afoot in this country that wasn’t here before. The priestess back home knew it. She and her colleagues were trying to warn me, trying to create new prayers, new wards, demand of the spirits some answers. She said that something ugly had ‘opened up’ in this country, and if we weren’t careful, we’d be slaves to it. All of us.”

  Andre shuddered.

  “I’m going to go back to New York, Andre,” Louis said, his ghostly form receding. “I need to watch over Clara. Good-bye, brother, take care of yourself.”

  In the next breath, before Andre could say good-bye, Louis vanished.

  Andre felt hollow, and terribly alone.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Andre could have sworn he saw what looked like an entirely opaque, man-shaped shadow standing at the head of the carriage. But that was surely a figment of his weary imagination. Andre was tired. Dead tired.

  * * *

  “Do you promise me you’re not putting on a show of being all right?” Bishop asked Clara as the hired carriage turned onto Pearl Street.

  “I’ll be fine, Rupert,” she said. “I’m tired. Abductions are so exhausting,” she added, trying for a light tone.

  “Would you tell me even if you did need help?” he asked sadly.

  “I would. I will, Rupert,” she said, staring into his eyes. “I don’t want to keep things from you. It wasn’t fair.…”

  Her guardian was inscrutable as he helped her out of the carriage, taking care of her wrists. They’d gone to the offices to see if Louis’s diary and the other papers were still in the file cabinet. It would be a few moments’ walk home after that.

  Walking up the steps, Clara noticed the broken glass at the door.

  “Lavinia!” Clara whirled back to the senator. “She was drugged by the bastard. In the tumult, I forgot.”

  Flinging the door open they rushed in to find her crumpled at her post in a splay of black fabric, red hair tangled in the beads of a fascinator whose feathers were now broken. Oh, Lavinia’s rage would be palpable when she woke and saw her accessories had been sundered. Bishop straightened her in her chair, trying to rouse her.

  “Wait here with Lavinia, I’d like to fetch one of my talismans,” Clara said, her feet already on the stairs. In her office, she lit the candle in a mirrored lantern with shaking hands, then whirled around the room to make sure nothing lurked in what had previously been shadow.

  Closing and locking the door behind her—she did not care to replay her abduction—she darted to her desk. In an instant she had opened the safe, using the so-familiar combination Evelyn had picked up from Louis.

  A piece of paper. Like magic, like a ghost; suddenly and unexpectedly there, lying atop the precious bit of fabric that had once belonged to her Louis.

  She snatched it up and read the words, seeing the difference now between this handwriting and Louis’s. It was up to her and her alone to gather more of the Eterna files. Louis didn’t want England—or whoever was behind their abduction—to know about this. Not Bishop either.

  She memorized the information, trying to calm her racing thoughts. As for the Eterna Commission … she should have tried to stop it long ago, before the project had become steeped in death. Irony, when it was a search for life.

  Unsure she could convince Bishop to understand why this mad pursuit had to end, she deemed it best to take certain matters into her own hands.

  In that moment Clara decided she would destroy and bury the whole lot, everything she had, including Louis’s cravat. There was no body left to bury, but she would honor him as if there were.

  Whatever Eterna had done to them, it wouldn’t ever happen again, so help her God.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTEEN

  Deep within the Royal Courts of Justice, Moriel’s pet lieutenant made sure the other guard—there were only two—had left before drawing close to the narrow bars to deliver a message.

  “Interrogation of American operatives was successful,” the large guard murmured to the small, balding man curled in the shadows. “Too easy, even.”

  The Majesty clucked his tongue, a fervor cresting as he spoke. “People are easy to best. What concerns me is the material. Our summoned were blocked from gaining further ground even though they were directly invited in by the Jew scientist I had poisoned and thusly turned. So my chief concern now is if there is a ward in play. There may well be. And you know, my friend, that a ward is unacceptable.” Moriel seethed, pacing his cell.

  “That’s what must be stopped, the
trail thrown cold as ice. Neither team can gain such a shield. Are samples from the site en route as ordered?”

  “Yes, Majesty; three vials in secret, to our royal seat, where augury will determine the precise nature of the incident, and if a ward was indeed present or no. One vial will be sent to England’s governmental division.”

  “Make sure the one is intercepted. In detonating, change the sample’s properties to be unrecognizable,” the Majesty said firmly. “The American and British teams will be at each other’s throats, each of them thinking the other is responsible for all ill deeds done. Make sure someone targets one of England’s team—throw them off the trail, derail them toward other magics, away from ours. Understood?”

  O’Rourke nodded. “Understood.”

  “Go, out with you,” Moriel shooed him.

  “Yes, sir.” The guard scurried away.

  Moriel turned to his immaculate cell. He’d cleaned up the rat; his little game of bones. It was a childhood comfort and it soothed in such a place as this. But as he’d find a way out of this dank pit soon, such behavior wouldn’t stand in high society. He would soon have to sacrifice his indulgences and instead regain the sort of subtle, gentlemanly grandeur expected of his status.

  As he ascended, he’d need to leave gore to others; his predilections would have to carry on without his direct hand in the entrails. He smoothed his prison garb, lifted his hands and brought them down upon his head, feeling the weight of a future crown he’d wear forever.

  * * *

  Miss Everhart passed along the latest message. Decoded, it briefly described kidnapping Eterna associates and conducting a séance. A detailed account would be wired when time provided.

  Spire didn’t trust a word of it. “Absurdity of the premise aside,” he said, shaking his head, “kidnapping several operatives and keeping them in a room together … Who was he working with?”

  Everhart shook her head. “This says alone. I’m sure when he sends the full account there will be more details. Only so much can be done over telegraph wires.”

  “He couldn’t have managed that alone, no matter how talented he or Black think he is,” Spire said, looking at his team, gathered in full in their Millbank offices. “So why specify working alone if it’s implausible? Who else is he protecting? What other operatives do we have there?” he asked, exasperated. “Is there more Lord Black is withholding from me?”

  “I truly do not know,” Everhart replied.

  Spire stared at the second half of the decoded message: “Material in hand will be sent by swiftest packet. Please advise route.”

  “Is the material safe to possess or transport, whatever it is?” Mrs. Wilson asked. “It obviously didn’t bode well for the Americans that engineered it. Are we putting British lives at stake by bringing it here?”

  “Brinkman survived to send the message,” Knight countered with a shrug of red-satin-decked shoulders, “so whatever it is, it is somehow contained.”

  “Well, we need to work out a route to ensure the safe arrival of whatever is sent to us,” Spire said.

  “Concerning the route, if you would, Mr. Spire, give us somewhere with height,” Mr. Wilson requested politely.

  Spire nodded, already thinking how to accommodate their skills. Their “circus act” aside, he remembered something about the Wilsons’ legendary exploits as reported in the papers; a particularly impressive extraction of an operative using rappeling.

  “Living there, we know Longacre like the back of our hand,” Mr. Wilson suggested.

  “Awfully busy,” Spire stated.

  “Midday, between lunch and close of businesses,” Mrs. Wilson countered. “It’s busy but manageable.”

  “All right, then, but I want everyone there. The Americans may be aware that there is material coming, and surely after the abduction we’re on far less friendly terms than we were. We’ll be lucky if there is not a forthcoming diplomacy issue.”

  “That’s the beauty of their own secret development team,” Everhart stated. “They don’t want anyone to know about it either.”

  * * *

  In New York City, on a pallet in one of the empty rooms he kept about the island and used in an unpredictable rotation, Brinkman awoke alive and with all his limbs intact. Because of this, he was granted permission to proceed from the greater of two masters. From the lesser he would be receiving his next instructions.

  As far as his supervisors knew, his mission would unfold from here as planned.

  To have called himself Faust was not inaccurate. He was beholden to the devil. The beast’s crafty claws had dug deep into the only thing that he cared about in this whole world. Shirking off both the chains of guilt and the paralyzing reason why he was constrained into this double-agent capacity in the first place, Gabriel went to work.

  Dressed as if he were a middle-class merchant, he left his temporary lodgings on the Upper East Side, carrying with him two small packages bound with twine. Inside, painstakingly packed, were the securely closed vials he’d filled on Tenth Street.

  One vial would be sent to London via the channels Lord Black and his company would provide. As far as they knew, it was the only sample taken at the disaster site.

  The rest of the vials would go to a factory in New Orleans that neither the Eterna nor the Omega office knew of.

  The long stroll down Lexington, accompanied by the screeching music of the elevated rail, terminated in a telegraph office near Union Square. A new clerk, whom Brinkman didn’t recognize, handed him a waiting message. Brinkman tipped his wide-brimmed hat and stepped again onto bustling Fourteenth Street, maintaining his casual, strolling pace, one that was more measured than that of the average bustling New Yorker.

  To send packages, he used any of several post offices scattered about the city, where British agents were in place. Today was all about efficiency, so he went to the closest one, eager to get the material out of his hands. While he was not a superstitious man, there was enough empirical evidence to suggest that his current business came with some cost. He’d decided to limit his exposure.

  Brinkman gave his contact the transportation information he’d received from Black’s people, and warned the young man with all proper doom and gloom that if he bungled the job he’d likely die. Mr. Brinkman then washed his hands of the whole ugly business for a while, off to investigate a few matters of his own interest that bore no country’s allegiance, just that of his own burdened heart.

  CHAPTER

  FOURTEEN

  Clara slept for nearly an entire day after the abduction, a fact she learned from Miss Harper when she finally awoke, feeling very disoriented, after a sequence of restless dreams filled with shadows. She asked the housekeeper for tea and something simple to eat, and the woman seemed happy to make quite a fuss over her.

  It seemed to take forever to dress, even in garments suitable for home. Her mind seemed reluctant to work and only slowly cobbled together full memories of the abduction and its aftermath. She felt hollow, lonely, and confused.

  She suspected Bishop would watch her closely for a while, which would make it difficult to return to Smith’s office, but Clara could not come up with a plan to evade him. At length she drifted down to the parlor with a novel in hand; Harper kept bringing her tea and plates of food, some of which she nibbled on.

  The bright spot in the day came when Bishop came home and attended to her wrists. As he approached, supplies in hand, she smiled at him gently. Her wrists bore nasty burn marks and cuts, but thankfully hadn’t become infected.

  He knelt before the cushioned chair where she sat in a diffused ray of sunlight through floral lace curtains and began tending to her with careful, sure hands.

  “Thank you for your ministrations, Rupert,” she said after a long moment. “I know you’ve so much to do with the legislature soon in session, so I appreciate—”

  The look he gave her was so intense, eviscerating, so pained, it cut her breath from her. “If anything ever happened to you, Clar
a, I don’t know what I’d do. The abduction … made me wonder. I pray to your father every day, I ask his spirit if I’m doing right by you. He’s never once responded to me. How do I know, then, if I’m—”

  It was her turn to stop him short by swiftly leaning down to kiss his forehead, her breath glancing off the gentle creases of his brow. Her lips lingered there as she murmured:

  “Wonderful, you’re wonderful, Rupert. I am so lucky to have you.”

  He released his kept breath and leaned his forehead into her, the slope of his nose pressing against her chin. For one paralyzing moment, Clara wondered if he would tilt his face up further, meet her mouth with his … but they both remained still, though Clara could feel his fingers trembling where his bandage dressing had paused.

  She was overwhelmed. She thought of Louis and the lingering pain of her wrists was nothing compared to the whole of her ache for him. Yet the energy between her and Bishop in this lifetime had never been so charged. For an instant, she truly let herself wonder for the first time why he hadn’t courted and married someone during the nearly two decades they had known each other.

  They both pulled back at the same time, as if breaking from a reverie.

  “Just … promise me that you won’t keep secrets from me again,” he said, keeping his voice neutral as he finished with one wrist.

  “Can you promise me the same?” she countered softly.

  He looked up at her again, his gaze steeled now, vulnerability gone. He slightly shook his head. She tilted her head to the side with a gentle look that spoke of their impasse. He finished her second wrist.

  There would have to be secrets.

  She owed it to Louis not to betray his wishes, to find the rest of Smith’s material and keep quiet about it. Tying off the plaster, the senator rose and bowed his head to her, preparing to exit.

  “I need to know what’s happened,” Clara called after him, rising from her chair. “If Franklin has found Allen, Rupert, you can’t cloister me here.”