Eterna and Omega (30 page)

“Gentlemen of the Parliament,” Lord Black said once the roll was completed, standing and seizing the floor.

There were a few calls of “Now what?” and “Don't you lords ever get tired of bossing us around?” before a horde of police officers, Clara glad to see all in powder-shielding scarf masks, entered the House.

“Do not be alarmed,” Black said, speaking loudly to be heard over the complaints and concerns of the lawmakers. “I have been advised by a commissioner of the Metropolitan Police that a drill is being run today, a—shall I say—Fawkes-ian preemptive measure, hence the masks to protect from imagined fire and smoke. Let them do their job as you do yours, thank you.”

There was a hush and then a hubbub of voices as the parliamentarians considered this, watching Spire and Grange as they led sets of half-masked Metropolitan officers into the upper gallery benches.

Lord Black continued from the Commons floor, Bishop by his side, glad that Lord Black invited a considerable contingent from the House of Lords to sit in for this special session. It seemed to Clara that Black had his own pull and mesmerism unto his colleagues. He was indeed an engaging, persuasive man. They were interesting complements to one another, these two contingents forced to become colleagues.

“Gentlemen,” Black boomed over the hubbub, “if you value your lives and the fate of this country, you shall listen to this American.”

At the word “American,” the air erupted with infamous hisses, boos, and general reactive shouts that emanated from parliamentarians no matter, it seemed, if the sentiment being expressed was favorable or hateful. It was hard to tell, Clara realized, what the British liked at all. Disdain, or the love of noise, seemed the default here.

Clara felt the atmosphere of the room change as the senator began to exert his mesmeric qualities. The parliamentary rabble quieted the moment he opened his mouth. Just as in Congress, the reaction to his speech was magical. The men leaned in, a wave of murmuring creaks of leather seats and a sea of shifting frock coats.

“Gentlemen, there is a great threat at work in your city. I lead a commission that has been dealing with strange, paranormal matters.”

The word “paranormal” broke Bishop's thrall and generated another round of boos and hisses. Undaunted, Bishop continued, and his eyes—his very presence—exerted complete authority over them and all fell silent. Clara caught Black's and Spire's looks of amazement, clearly never having seen such an effect before.

“I don't care whether you believe me or not, hell
is
coming home to roost on your banks, London,” Bishop proclaimed. “Now you can either stand with us as we give you an antidote for a weapon that may be at any moment deployed upon you, or you can suffer the consequences of a mind-altering, recklessly endangering compound and vulnerability to dark forces.

“Take heart, whether you believe in the existence of ghosts and spirits, reanimated dead, or the power to transform a mind with a mere powder, this is not unfamiliar to us. In my city of New York we have already encountered and dealt with these pending threats. Take part in preventative care and we'll be a united front. If any doubt this, I'm sure you recall the Master's Society, and one Beauregard Moriel, one of your own citizens, the madman behind the plots our countries face. His work lives on. Join me here in protecting yourself. I will be the first to do so.”

Bishop turned to Clara. She handed him an additional vial with a small bit of the powder, to which she'd added water to make it drinkable. Their team, including Black, Spire, and Rose, had all ingested the antidote the moment it was unloaded from the carriage outside. He downed it in a swig and worked not to grimace at the taste.

While it was hoped that Brinkman would wait until the MPs could make a choice to take the antidote willingly before charging in to detonate the drama, he did not heed anything but his own timetable. There was a flurry of movement at a mezzanine door, and Clara's nerves ratcheted to a new height, but as there were no spirits present, she was in no danger of seizing. She was nervous and alert, but in control.

All in black, collar and shirtsleeves undone, frock coat billowing, either the picture of a careless revolutionary or Mr. Rochester after one too many drinks, Brinkman burst into the room with antiquated blunderbuss of a gun.

“For the old ways and blood rights!” he cried, and the American team had just enough time to cover their own mouths with their kerchiefs—none wanted the offending substance in their lungs regardless of having ingested the antidote—before Brinkman fired the chamber, releasing a cloud of red powder into the air.

“Cover your noses and mouths, gentlemen,” Bishop cried. “Don't breathe in, that's the very toxin itself! We have the treatment, keep the faith and hold on!”

The assembled MPs reacted to this in a variety of ways. Some did exactly as Bishop instructed and came right to him. Some panicked and went toward the doors, only to find them blocked from the outside. Clara wasn't sure who was responsible for that. Some just sat in the benches, stunned. Many turned toward Black and the rest of them and began shouting accusations of treachery, as if this were staged to hurt them.

They weren't entirely wrong.

For those who happened to take in a lungful of the offending agent, the change was nearly instantaneous—hideous and thorough. Bodies seized and hunched over, cries turned guttural and bestial, and the desire toward rage and violence was palpable.

Men lunged for one another like fighting bulls. Fists were thrown, insults from the most puerile parts of the mind were lobbed in unfolding volleys, and some just thrashed around on the benches where they had been sitting or where they collapsed. It was a terrible display of devolution.

At these first transformation signs, the Metropolitan Police deployed their designated response. They strode in files from the upper seats down to the Commons floor and pried apart members who were at each other like fighting dogs in a pit. Whatever Spire had said to these men had prepared them well. None looked daunted, some seemed surprised, and most, carefully dispersed among the throng, were perfectly able to keep these men from hurting themselves, others, or the parliamentary grounds itself as they flailed, wailed, and wrenched at their subduing officers.

The fits subsided eventually. Members who were overcome slumped to their knees and then to the floor, or over the green leather seats. Those who had taken the cue of the officers and the Omega and Eterna teams, and tied a kerchief or lengthened a cravat or ascot over their mouth and nose, had kept their wits together and looked on in wide-eyed horror at the scene unfolding. Some turned to stare at Lord Black as if he were either a savior or directly responsible.

Rose took to the House of Commons desks and rails with moist rags and began wiping up the dense powder residue. Thankfully, the stuff had weight to it so as not to be a continuously airborne threat. A few of the most sober of the MPs assisted her. Clara was busy tending to those who were horrified as they came up to her for an antidote, whether they had been affected or not. Her reassuring smile seemed to calm them.

Rousing those who had gone unconscious during the throes took about fifteen minutes, and as they came to, they stared around the Commons floor as the vague, hazy memory of their “fits” came back to them.

Clara grimaced. Even though a lot of these men were stubborn and arrogant, she empathized with what it was like to come to after being overcome, wondering what kind of scene one may have made. She knew that all too well from her condition.

Lord Black no longer had to shout to get anyone's attention; he merely spoke quietly into the murmuring throng. “Well, gentlemen, I'm sorry it came to that. I had word of an attack and thought we'd have time to better protect you. But we still can. Please comply with Senator Rupert Bishop of the great state of New York. Thank you.”

Everyone turned sheepishly to Bishop as he stood, climbing atop the clerk's desk for better effect.

“My English friends,” Bishop began, “if you do not work to protect yourself, all of London, perhaps the country, will fall. We are here to help you. Believe me or not, you are lucky that what just happened was not infinitely worse.

“If any of you are involved with the Master's Society, if Beauregard Moriel or Francis Tourney was an associate of yours, you will be found out,” he stated.

Clara was not surprised to see Spire studying the lawmakers as Bishop spoke, taking note of who looked nervous. He was very good at picking up subtle clues and cues. While she could make an interrogation list based on clairvoyance and sensitivity, his abilities came from thorough study of human behavior.

“If you are guilty of such associations, come forward now and protect yourself. The longer you wait, the greater the likelihood your supposed allies will destroy you. You will be torn limb from limb and your body exsanguinated, as if the room in which you die has become a canvas for your blood. I wish that were an exaggeration, but it has happened with those involved in the Society that have invited in the purest evils. If you have aided or abetted them in any way, there is yet hope for your eternal soul to escape the jaws of hell.

“We are working on Wards that can protect you. We bid you to Ward each of your representative districts. Be cooperative with Lord Black and all will be given you. The Wards will be vitally important in the coming days, so please be amenable to them at Lord Black and Mr. Spire's distribution. If you have not already received the antidote for this toxin, please see my associate, Miss Templeton.”

Terrified, quiet, affected men lined up soberly before Clara at the desk of the clerk. Vial by vial, she administered the antidote to each contrite member, if it hadn't been done already, bid them drink the contents, and collected the vials in the wooden boxes that carried the tubes as pegs in holes fit for their circumference. For the Wards, many MPs were discussing with Lord Black how to access and distribute them.

“Last,” Bishop cried out to the room, in perhaps his most persuasive of reverberate tones. His powers of thrall still had the room by its throat. “Lord Black will give an account of these proceedings to local papers, on
our
terms and serving
our
purposes only. If any of you
are
involved and expect to report to Master's Society operatives about this little display, do so, but say only that dark aims gained a success today. Say nothing of intervention. That is for
us
to know. Is this entirely clear?”

There were murmurs and nods.

“People of the British Parliament, is your cooperation entirely clear?” The senator had raised up his arms, as if collectively holding the room.

A rousing “yea” shook the floor.

He lowered his arms slowly. Clara's senses allowed for the pull of his magnetism to shift and wane, his field returning to that of a mere enigmatic presence, not a whole dynamo in and of himself. He turned to find her gaze, and she was glad she was there waiting for it, so she could beam at him. He allowed himself a pleased smile in return and stepped down from the height upon which he had stood.

The next moment, she felt a presence next to her and turned to see the familiar face of Ephigenia Bixby. At the sight of her friend, she routed the remaining men to Miss Everhart, who was serving the line on the opposite side of the House dais.

“Effie!” she cried with a hug. “I'm so glad you received our wires. Did they give you hell trying to get in here today? Women don't seem to be much welcome.”

“Mr. Spire saw me poking about outside as he gathered his men and showed me in, via Miss Everhart's secret passages,” she said with half a smile.

“Tell me everything and help me prioritize what I need to know and do, and in what order,” Clara begged.

“I've amassed a fairly good list, thanks to the help of Evelyn's friend Mr. Knowles. Apex took over the old Society offices in Earl's Court, as if nothing ever happened, evil begetting evil under new names. The Master's Society crest went out of vogue when Moriel was first arrested and Apex replaced all. I wired the offices not long ago with any American property holdings I could find listed here.”

“Good, Franklin needs to be kept abreast of every detail.”

“It's
bad,
Clara,” Effie murmured.

Clara noted the dark circles under the woman's sharp eyes. “You've not had an easy time of it, have you?” she asked quietly.

“No, and when I return home, I think I'll be resigning.”

“Why? What have we done?” Clara said, aghast.

“Not you, Clara. I just…” She stared at the still milling members of the House. “Today, when a company I was inquiring about said of one of its workers who fell to his death that ‘it didn't matter, because his skin color was brown' … I just … I can't do what I've been doing in the manner in which I have been.” Effie stared at Clara with unmasked pain on her pale brown skin. Silently, Bishop had joined them and Effie folded him into the conversation. “What good is
passing
in your world if it's only adding more numbers to those who feel they've the right to visit injustices time and again on those arbitrarily considered lesser? I think Fred and I, once all of this is resolved, will move back to the Tenderloin.”

Her anguished gaze found Bishop. “There, at home, if blood runs in the streets,
our
blood, not just that of the pigs and cattle, some seem unable to distinguish from human, at least it is blood I'm no longer pretending isn't of a lineage it is.”

Bishop replied calmly, “I will support you and your family in whatever decisions you make. Just let me know how I may help facilitate, if at all.”

Perhaps Effie had imagined Bishop would put some barrier in her way, for she seemed relieved at his response. Clara saw tension leach from her friend's body.