The Eternals Read online

  The undergrowth's obsidian shadow concealed me, as carriage after stunning carriage shot past. Gold filigree merged with ebony, polished leather abutted ivory inlay, no detail neglected, everything at its finest; a caravan of travellers on their way to the new Mecca. The coachmen, Eternals of lesser status, yet Eternals nonetheless, flayed the living daylights out of their steeds to extract every last iota of speed. The cyborgs, or at least genetically enhanced stallions, contained such raw, unbridled power within their velvet carcasses, I felt sure they'd explode with their exuded efforts. Cold sweat and spittle flew from their bodies like sea spray and with each additional passage I became rewetted. Everybody seemed in an incredible hurry and would not have given me a second glance if I'd sat in full view with a banner advertising my presence.

  When the crescendo of hooves diminished, I almost stepped from my hiding place, but some sixth-sense hitherto ignored, prevented it. It was nothing, a strange glint, a flicker out of the corner of my eye, perhaps just a lonesome bat, but I stopped. Instead, I remained hidden.

  There, I waited in frustration as the tremors of approach grew closer. A solitary, and most gaudy contraption rolled its steady way in my direction. A bunion on wheels would be the closest thing I could compare it to, one I recognised in an instant.

  The carriage crept forwards as though moving through deep mud. No matter how hard the coachman whipped his steeds they appeared to toil beneath their towed weight. I knew they'd come far and it must have been at great speed to have made the journey in one evening. The driver appeared a rugged specimen for an Eternal, his long pitch-black cloak fluttering over the carriage roof, his tricorne hat pulled low to reveal just a pair of determined, steel-grey eyes: not determined enough.

  I waited until the carriage was almost on top of me then sprang from my hiding place to the coachman's side. To say the man surprised was an understatement, if human, he might have befouled himself. A quick turn of his neck, a snap, and he lay sprawled in his seat beset with the same shocked look upon his visage. I was thankful the owner of the vehicle was too stupid to have noticed the slump of a dead body, also for the soundproofing I knew she'd had installed for different purposes. Steering the horses whilst stripping the coachman of his outer garments proved difficult, but I was not about to let something so minor stay me, and it didn't. When finished, I was an almost exact match for he who I'd robbed of immortality. I despatched him with a flourish into the foliage and reasoned it to have gone unseen. I believed the woman within the carriage so emotionless that a broken nail would have caused greater concern than her servant's death; the Marquise de Rhineland was always so inclined.

  The drive relaxed me a little. The highway led only one way, and the horses knew it well. So, I left them to gallop, barely holding the reins at all. Instead, I took in every glorious detail of Rudolph's looming residence. For a buffoon, the man had style. He'd even spruced the palace up with a fresh coat of porcelain for the occasion, a particularly nice touch, I thought.

  We crunched to a gravelled halt just one of a long line of carriages that disgorged their contents in a slow, serene and tedious manner. Each couple, for that seemed the contents of each carriage, stepped onto a trailing bruise of a carpet and entered the palace with a polite dignity I knew none possessed.

  We followed the rotund Comte de Burgundy, an egg of a man who to my knowledge had never left his domain in all the time I'd committed carnal acts under his roof. The pompous fool rolled out of his carriage and trundled up the walkway with his equally obnoxious wife at his side.

  I waited for the Comte to have put a good distance between us before I pulled us into position, jumped to the gravel, and opened the carriage door for its passenger. With my head inclined enough to proffer respect and keep my identity concealed, I awaited her exit.

  Anger is a difficult sensation to master, but master it I did, pushed it way down into my gut, as not one but two pairs of feet exited the brass steps. The idea the Marquise would attend such an occasion with her husband had never entered my head. They hated each other and did nothing to disguise the fact. I guessed there times when all must do as ordered. The Marquis' corpulent frame bounced from the carriage and off up the carpeted walkway.

  “Oh, yes, that's right!”

  “Sorry, my dear,” came a grovelled response.

  “Just leave the woman you married behind, why don't you!”

  “Sorry, my dear.”

  “And you can stop saying sorry when you aren't in the least.”

  “Sorry, my dear.”

  “You aren't even listening, are you? I think you've forgotten what decorum means to polite society. We depend on it, Vincent, it is all we have. You're so stuck in your technological mumbo-jumbo that you've forgotten what it means to be a man.”

  “Sorry, my dear.”

  The Marquise seemed set to release another verbal tirade upon her ear-bashed spouse, when a call from a fellow nobody distracted her enough to take the Marquis' arm and totter towards the palace steps. I could see by her lime green skirts trimmed with rainbow hued ermine, she'd set out to impress.

  The desire to laugh was great, but I remembered myself at the last moment and suppressed it. Neither of the two deigned to offer a thank you in true upper-crust fashion and were soon well down the carpet and approaching the ironclad guards who stood sentinel. Not everything was so prim then. I hopped back into the driver's seat and ushered the horses off after their diminishing brethren.

  With the stallions stabled, and the carriage tucked amongst its more tasteful kin, I followed the procession of coachmen into the bowels of the palace and the servant's areas therein. A far easier entrance to the palace, I could neither have imagined nor dared hoped for.

  Once inside it was easy to lose myself amongst the heaving throng all voicing complaints at their masters, yet all too eager to be in their employ. Out into a multiplicity of arcing corridors, I wandered, each almost identical to the next. Picking a random direction, I made my way in a haphazard manner whilst hoping for some spark of inspiration to hit, when a butler of sorts accosted me.

  “Where do you think you're going? This area is not for the likes of you,” he huffed with false pomposity.

  He didn't huff for long what with my fingers around his throat.

  “You appear to have mistaken me for something I am not,” I hissed. “If I was you, I'd guide me someplace where I might find more appropriate attire.”

  “But…but!”

  “No buts, or my hand may twitch; my fingers may tighten; my good mood may slip, which may have severe consequences for your spine.”

  “Yes, sir, of course, sir.”

  “I thought you might see it my way. Now lead on and keep us away from discovery if you please.”

  The butler, his bald pate gleaming in the light of a million candles, I'm sure for effect, as they never seemed to melt nor lessen, shuffled along ever further from the general hubbub and deeper into the palace. As usual, the promise of violence worked wonders. But I must confess I felt a slight pang of guilt after what Albert had sacrificed for his mistress. The man whose throat I clenched was possibly just as fine, but I could not take the risk.

  The butler led me to a bland and undecorated staircase which wound up innumerable flights until we reappeared in a more ostentatious part of the complex.

  “This way, sir,” he heaved from within my grasp.

  “No tricks.” I gave an extra little squeeze on his Adam's apple to remind him I was more than serious.

  “I wouldn't dream of it, sir,” he gasped.

  “Good. You better make sure you don't fall asleep then.”

  The corridor, carpeted in so deep a tread as to muffle an elephant wound a languorous route through the palace. It amazed, as to how so many guests, servants, and other disparate people that roamed the palace could be so lost due to a mere staircase?

  “We are here, sir,” the butler heaved through my vicelike grip. The man's sudden stop almost causing self-decapitation.
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br />   “If you please.” I indicated for him to enter the room, just one door in a long line of identical others.

  A sharp click pierced the still, and we slipped into darkness. There was no need for the butler to turn on a light, after all, we were both night creatures, but when he clapped twice and hundreds of candles leapt into life, I gasped. The servant had brought me to the largest walk-in wardrobe I'd ever seen. A myriad colours in an infinite variety of textures and styles, hung, draped, and sprawled from every conceivable angle. The room was a veritable treasure trove of garments, and best of all just peeking out from between two rows of jackets stood a sink.

  “May I go now, sir?” the man pleaded.

  “That depends?” I said, spinning him around to look me in the face. “Have you got anything in black?”

  * * *

  Stepping from that room, washed, groomed and dripping in ebon luxury was the best feeling I'd had in ages. The black, velvet cloak I'd draped about my shoulders gave particular pleasure. A cloak offered so much extra finesse to a man on a mission. I would have almost said I relished the evening's upcoming challenges.

  The door closed with a reassuring click. Rudolph's butler, or was it Vladivar's now, wouldn't awaken anytime soon wrapped as he was unconscious in a box of furs. I strode off down the corridor, clueless of where I was, but frankly not giving a damn. Things were on the up at last.

  I'd been walking for a minute or two, bouncing along the padded floor, when the distinct sounds of merrymaking availed my ears. With a modicum less self-indulgence, I proceeded in the same direction until met with a bend in my route and the flickering of shadows playing upon it. I rounded this demarcation between activity and calm just as a distant orchestra erupted into the first bars of, no surprises, Strauss. And there it was, life in all its opulence.

  I emerged at the top of a side staircase to what had to be the palace ballroom. Stepping to the balustrade which enclosed a rather quaint pulpit styled viewing area, I gripped the polished bannister with both newly gloved hands and regarded the show. A raven, eyes polished to an onyx gleam, I gazed down upon those I despised. They danced. Even at so dark an hour the fools twirled in rows of idiocy, waltzed as though they had lives for it to depend upon. I thought they should have danced into Hell itself. Perhaps, they were?

  I was so high above the crowded dance-floor that those who spun and frolicked looked more like twirling parasols than people; droplets of rain on a painter's palette, colours mixing in circular monotony. The world below was a mass of rainbow movement like cogs in some grand machine that wouldn't quite fit together. I knew if I merged with them I should stand out like the proverbial sore thumb: I did not care.

  I scanned the ballroom, wall to bustling wall, but there appeared no sign of the proposed bride and groom. There was also a surprising lack of Vladivar's rusting guards. I spied one near the ballroom's faraway entrance and two more near another distant doorway, but no more. It was most peculiar as I would have expected them to have descended upon the guests like a plague? Instead, like cattle being fattened before the slaughter, Europa's finest indulged.

  I tarried a touch longer in my eyrie, observing the goings on and soaking up the music, before deciding to descend into the pit.

  Descending the stairs, lower and lower, I sank into wretched frivolity. Each step carried me into further extravagant surroundings. From the heights of the domed ceiling to the marble floor, King Rudolph had lavished attention upon the ballroom, a marker as to his wealth. Strange it should be used after his removal from office? I couldn't recall having frequented that part of the palace with Linka, and Rudolph had no predilection to hosting such functions. The little, fat king had become the plump gooseberry ripe for Vladivar's picking. Judging from what I saw, Merryweather's statement that the takeover had gone through without incident seemed correct. There wasn't a scratch upon the marble, not a snag upon the red, velvet drapes, nothing to show for a struggle of any kind: how pathetic our single-fanged majesty had proven. I dared an opinion that neither of his daughters would've been so weak.

  That thought spurred me on, as I stepped from the stairway, black cloak flapping behind me, and into the hustle of decadent gloss.

  “Jean!” came a call that cut through the music like a sharpened dagger through a vein. “Jean, toodles, over here!”

  The urge to ignore the Marquise's most annoying tones was great, but decorum and etiquette was paramount at such occasions and I reluctantly adhered to it.

  “What were you doing on the balcony, so high in the sky? Were you observing me?” she asked with a chuckle and great heave of her almost revealed bosom.

  “Well, I was observing.”

  “I knew it, I knew it! You couldn't keep away from me could you?”

  “Does it look that way?”

  “Oh, Jean, always playing the mean and moody, aren't you?”

  “I play me,” I replied, already looking around for a way to be rid of her.

  “I must admit I'm a bit surprised to see you here,” she chuckled, the excess folds of her chin wobbling to her grotesque laughter.

  “And why is that?” I said, with a menacing narrowing of eyes. If she noticed it did not stop her from voicing that which she so desperately desired to.

  “Linka, of course. You and she were never meant to be. You must feel a little silly after dumping me for her.”

  “There was nothing to dump,” I retorted.

  “Now, now, she was far too young for you, anyway. You need a more fulfilling companion.”

  “I can assure you,” I snapped, “I have sampled the companionship of every woman here and none could shine a light to her.”

  “Is that so?” she sneered.

  “It is.”

  “Well, I don't…”

  “Isn't that your husband?” I interjected pointing behind her.

  Before the Marquise could look whence I'd directed and back again, I escaped, but not before she hurled an array of vociferous and colourful insults my way. I did not respond, she wasn't worth it, and pushed on towards the far corner of the room and the doorway with the single guard.

  I received several cold stares, a handful of dramatic gasps, and a modicum of abuse, as I scythed my way through the whirling guests. I responded with pleasantries and the occasional smile. It looked like my recent past was neither forgotten, nor forgiven.

  I crested the wave of swirling blancmanges just missing a woman I knew to be the baroness of somewhere or other attired in a pink frock that expanded her girth times ten and stood, back against the ballroom wall, less than ten feet from the iron guard. If he recognised me he did a good job of not showing it. Scrubbed up as I was, I doubted my own parents would have recognised me compared to if they'd seen my recent state.

  I pretended to fake engrossment in the revelling as I considered my next move. It looked like, in true to form fashion, the Marquise had been the last guest to arrive. Some of the more notable Eternals were from far afield and I surmised they must have travelled through the previous evening. In fact, I couldn't help noticing just how many recognisable faces the ballroom's ample charms held. Vladivar's soiree contained every notable person in Europa, not that many remained. I'd have even said that if the roof collapsed from excessive merrymaking there'd be nobody left at all; nobody at all, but the few who were missing.

  “Get out!” I screamed, but the orchestra's tidal tones swallowed my voice. “Get out it's a trap!” I bellowed to the obvious notice of the one guard. He advanced upon me and drew a rather nasty looking sabre from his belt. “Get out!” I offered once more as a steady droning seemed to overtake the sound of Strauss within the ballroom. A few people stopped mid-twirl to listen to the strange buzzing and the odd one to gawp at my plight, but not many. As for me, I thought it better to turn my attention to the swinging blade about to cut me in twain. I ducked low, dodged the arcing slice and swung up with my fist; I took the guard's head clean off with a clang of glassware as it hit a chandelier. Blood spewed from the op
en neck and like a brainless fool, I couldn't help but feast upon it. By the time I'd finished, I felt more myself, yet less a hero, as everybody in the room turned in horror.

  I'd have shown them the charity of their impending doom, but the resounding boos that echoed around the ballroom dissuaded me. So, cutting a direct passage between them all and out of the entranceway from which the guards wisely withdrew, I left the revellers to their fates. The last things I remembered, as I walked down that purple stain of a carpet and out into the crisp night air, was the contempt in the eyes of the Marquise as I passed her, and the annoyance that I'd once again made a mess of a clean shirt. Then came the explosion.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  -

  Zeppelin

  I came around to a resounding headache and a mouthful of foliage. In a surreal moment the rose in my mouth changed from red, to white, to black, attempting to match itself to my mood: it settled on storm-grey; I agreed with its choice.

  I felt the heat at my back before my ears remembered how to work to an accompanying roar of flames. One glance over my shoulder told the tale. There was no point looking for survivors, there wouldn't have been any. The palace was no more, blown apart. It looked like God had enclosed the building in a gigantic globe, given it a fierce shake, then tipped the bits out in the exact same spot. There wasn't a speck of paint out of place beyond the outer structure's confines even the awful bruise of a walkway carpet was half intact. But followed back, one's eyes peeling from the unaltered outbuildings, there was nothing but rubble. A cyclonic episode had taken place, yet I'd escaped intact.

  I heaved myself from the floor and sat on my haunches just soon enough to pat out the fire that took hold of one corner of my cloak. It was most frustrating to have ruined the one accessory I liked. I rose to my feet, ash falling all around, ran gloved hands through the straggled mess of my hair, and shook my head. The thought of the Marquise and her kind obliterated, and with them almost all of Europa's social elite, sent a shiver through my already cold, dead body. Vladivar had a lot to answer for.