Eros Element

by Cecilia Dominic

  “Yes, for when she awoke, she had no memory of what happened and very few of the year leading up to the accident. The doctors cautioned me and her parents that seeing us could trigger further injury to her mind. So, with the aunt’s help, Claire went to college in Vienna. She’s almost done, and my time of mandatory service is over, so I hoped…” He looked into his now-empty wine cup. “I thought I could go and see if she would react negatively to seeing Patrick, whom she also knew during the time she’d forgotten but who wasn’t on the list of people she shouldn’t see.”

  “Did she?” Iris asked.

  “Looked right through me like I was invisible,” O’Connell said. “Didn’t respond when I spoke to her or called me by name.”

  “Her mind is still injured,” Iris said. “That must be horrible for you.”

  Radcliffe continued, “So when I got a message from Parnaby Cobb that he would allow me to join this expedition, I had a faint hope that whatever we discovered may help her, heal her. Asylum doctors have been working on electricity and the brain, and while their results have been promising for melancholia, they haven’t done anything for psychic shock. It’s a small chance, but I’ll take anything.”

  Iris fiddled with the buttons on her gloves. “I wish I could give you some hope, but I don’t know what we’re dealing with.”

  The bell over the trattoria door opened, and Jeremy Scott walked in. Iris shrank into the shadows and hoped he wouldn’t spot her. He didn’t seem to.

  “If nothing else, listen to me,” Radcliffe said. “You don’t get many chances at true love. Some say you get one. Don’t throw that away out of fear.”

  “I can’t go back on my word, and he holds the mortgage on my house.”

  “You’re clever. You and the professor will figure it out,” O’Connell said.

  Formerly, Iris would have thrilled at someone acknowledging her intelligence, but now it didn’t seem like enough. “I don’t even know if Edward has feelings for me after my betrayal.”

  “Love isn’t so easily killed,” Radcliffe said. “I believe Claire loves me, that her regard for me is somewhere in her fractured mind. Edward has been moving toward healing in both mind and body, and his feelings for you are part of that.”

  If only it was that easy.

  “Well,” Iris said, “shall we order an early dinner since we’ll be stuck here for a while?”

  Something different about the atmosphere woke Iris before dawn the next morning. Marie snored through the wine she’d drunk as she slept on the cot in the room. Iris’s head felt stuffed with gravel, but she wouldn’t have traded the previous evening with Radcliffe and O’Connell for anything except maybe a similar one with Edward where they could bare all their secrets and interact as themselves. She grabbed the courtesan’s poison case from its hiding place and put it in her pocket to serve as a reminder that no matter what happened, history would erase all but the most solid of details.

  That line of thought produced more stomach upset, so Iris rose, dressed, and tiptoed from the room in search of tea. Or one of the coffee and milk concoctions the Italians drank in the morning would do. The morning kitchen staff gave her a cappuccino and two sweet rolls, and she carried them outside.

  Light barely streaked the sky, and something tugged Iris toward the temple. Had Edward solved the puzzle? Would he be there doing his experiments in the pure dawn? Before she knew it, she was across the piazza and descending the ramp. The fog hung heavy around the entrance as if it guarded the place from prying eyes.

  Iris plunged into the gloom and emerged into a candlelit world. Is this romantic or some other sort of atmosphere? Edward stood behind the altar, and the circles under his eyes told Iris he hadn’t slept. He set up his apparatus and kept consulting his watch. His movements were slow like one of the statues.

  “Do you need something to eat?” Iris asked. The ordinary question hung in the air between them, but it pulled Edward out of whatever trance he’d been in.

  “Iris? What are you doing here?”

  “I brought you something.” She held out one of the rolls and handed him the rest of the coffee drink. “You can’t work on an empty stomach.”

  She thought she remembered her mother saying something similar to her father back when the two of them got along, and she couldn’t imagine herself taking care of Lord Jeremy like that. Not that he would need it—he would always put himself before his work.

  “Thank you.” He quickly ate and returned to calibrating his equipment. “I’m going to try this at sunrise. You’re welcome to remain, but please stay back since I don’t know what will happen. It could be dangerous.”

  He’s concerned for my well-being. That’s a start. “You’ve calculated the proper frequencies, then?”

  “There are a couple of possibilities based on Pythagorean mathematical principles such as the Golden Mean. I’m going to start with the most likely one. Will you assist me by watching and taking notes? Here’s a spare watch.”

  Iris took a set of goggles out of the box by the altar and moved to the aisle on the side so she could duck behind a pillar if she needed to. A ray of sunlight passed through the high windows and hit the altar above where Edward’s glass globe stood.

  “How soon?” she asked.

  “Two minutes.”

  Iris counted heartbeats, but hers was faster than the second hand of Edward’s watch. It’s amazing how emotion and frequency can be linked.

  “Starting the vacuum process,” Edward said.

  Iris noted the time and smiled at the excitement in his voice. No matter how far apart they ended up, they would always have the joy in scientific discovery in common. The sunbeam now pierced the top of the glass.

  “Vacuum chamber closed.”

  Iris hardly dared to breathe so as to not create any interfering noise.

  “Striking tuning forks. Silence, please.”

  If Iris listened hard enough, she could hear the two frequencies, but they were complementary enough they augmented the tone that vibrated through the air as a single sound.

  That has to be it. Iris peered around the pillar and watched as Edward touched the two tuning forks to the copper globe. The aether formed in the glass one, but it looked the same as before, and it dissipated as soon as the sound did.

  “What happened?” Iris asked.

  “Nothing.” Edward rested the tuning forks on the altar. “Now we try the other one. Stand back because it will be less harmonious and therefore more dangerous.”

  Iris moved one pillar back and again kept notes and watched as Edward went through the procedure. Although the two new tones made Iris’s ears buzz at first, they intertwined and formed a new sensation. Edward touched those forks to the copper globe, and while the aether remained stable for longer and glowed brighter, it disappeared after about thirty seconds.

  Edward looked at the two tuning forks in his hands and frowned. “That second one should have worked.”

  In spite of the space being small, it had some reverberation, as Iris found when she walked to the altar. The air hummed with the second new tone.

  “Perhaps we should try it all together.”

  Edward’s frown deepened. “That could be dangerous, unpredictable. Are you sure you want to risk being injured and disfigured?”

  “What do I have to lose? A marriage to a man I don’t love. And I have a major scientific discovery to gain if it does work.”

  “Very well. You strike the first two tones and hold them to the copper globe, and I’ll do it with the next two. But if the glass looks like it’s going to shatter or the aether threatens to expand beyond it, duck under the altar. The stone may protect you.”

  Iris nodded. Now her stomach fluttered with a new frequency, but she didn’t show her anxiety.

  They made sure their goggles were firmly in place, and she struck the two original tuning for
ks on the altar. The vibrations traveled up her arms and felt like they went to her heart, but she ignored the strange sensation and placed their ends on the copper globe. The aether appeared much as it had in Edward’s lab, as a glowing, writhing, opalescent snake eating its tail. Then he struck his forks.

  A note of dissonance came into the sound, and he hesitated, but Iris mouthed, “Do it.” He placed the ends of those tuning forks on the copper globe, and the aether brightened considerably. It also increased the frequency of its undulations until its motions were too fast for them to see. Iris had to look away from the searing glow, and when she tried to blink the after-image from her eyes, she noticed the sound waves had quieted.

  “I think it worked,” Edward whispered. He gazed at the glowing mass at the center of the glass globe. “It’s not dimming or disappearing.”

  “You’ve made a new element.” Iris placed the tuning forks on the altar. Edward swept her into his arms like the hero of the novels she’d stolen from her mother long ago, and their lips met. Now the opalescent colors bloomed behind her eyelids, and her heart beat in harmony with his. She wanted to merge with him to become a new, different, better person.

  “Professor Bailey, I would thank you to unhand my fiancée.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Hotel Segreto, Rome, 28 June 1870

  Marie woke when a stray sunbeam speared her left eye. She listened for Iris’s regular breathing and bolted upright when she didn’t hear it. Relief that Iris’s breathing hadn’t stopped was replaced by panic—where had she gone? Marie didn’t know exactly what had transpired between Iris and Edward or between Iris and Lord Jeremy, but she hadn’t missed how Iris rubbed her left elbow off and on all evening or the mumblings in Iris’s sleep, mostly to let go of her and she didn’t love him. Marie had seen all kinds of men at her mother’s theatre and knew better than most how some were not to be trusted with a woman’s well-being, either physical or mental. Lord Jeremy’s expression, which contained a new level of hardness since they unearthed the temple, had made it quite clear that things would not go well for Iris, and Iris’s stab of fear when she saw him enter the trattoria confirmed Marie’s suspicions. He’d hurt her and promised more if she didn’t obey him. Knowing Iris, she wouldn’t.

  So if Iris had gone to the site, and if Edward was there and Jeremy walked in on them… He might do something to eliminate the competition permanently. Or eliminate Iris before she further injured his pride and caused him more trouble.

  Marie dressed as quickly as she could and rushed from the room. She ran into Johann Bledsoe on the stairs. His bloodshot eyes, disheveled clothing, and alcohol odor told her all she needed to know of how he’d spent his night. She gave him her best Lucille glare. I know what kind of man you are. But he blocked her way.

  “Where are you off to in such a rush?” he asked.

  “Iris and Edward might be in danger.”

  He blinked, and the foggy expression on his face cleared. “Where?”

  “The temple.”

  He followed her down the stairs. “Why do you think they’re in danger?”

  “I don’t have time to explain. Call it a sixth sense.”

  “Nothing’s ever normal with you is it?”

  Now they crossed the hotel foyer. “No. Nor is it boring,” Marie shot over her shoulder.

  “I have no doubt of that.”

  Was he flirting with her? No time to think about that now. The edge of the sun peeked over the horizon, and a new sense of urgency bloomed in Marie’s gut. “Hurry!”

  The odious lordling stood at the top of the ramp and held something in his right hand. The early morning sun streaming into the chapel glinted off of the object. Iris didn’t need to look closely to see it was one of the long, thin stiletto knives the Italians favored.

  Edward tried to shove Iris behind him, but she wouldn’t let him rescue her. Lord Jeremy was her problem, not his.

  “I can’t marry you, Jeremy.” She moved around the altar to block the globe with the aether from his view. “You and I both know it wouldn’t be good for either of us.”

  “I don’t care what would be good for you. I warned you to stay away from him, and you said your relationship was professional. Apparently it isn’t.”

  She tried again to appeal to his self-interest. “I watched my parents have a loveless relationship. I’m not going to inflict that upon myself or anyone else.”

  He moved toward her more quickly than she thought he could, and she turned to flee, but her skirt caught on a rough corner of the altar, and the pocket that held the courtesan’s poison case caught and tore. The gold container clattered to the floor, and when Iris reached for it, Lord Jeremy grabbed her arm with one hand and the golden object with the one that held the knife.

  “What’s this? Have you been hiding temple treasure from me along with your dishonorable behavior?”

  “Give it back,” Iris twisted and tried to grab it, but he held her firm against him.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s an Italian courtesan’s container. Completely wrong period for this place, which you should know. My father gave it to me.”

  “Fine. It along with everything else will become my property when we marry.” He dropped it into her hand.

  Images flooded through Iris. Hands opening the container in a ballroom in London and pouring something into her father’s drink. Lord Jeremy watching the whole proceeding. The lordling receiving payment from a shady-looking character in an alley and passing it along to another one. Iris couldn’t see the first criminal’s face but did see the tattoo on his wrist, of the same symbol that had been etched on the study window and that was on the piece of paper the doomed Monsieur Anctil gave her.

  “You killed my father!” Iris kicked him in the shin, but he held her tighter. “You took bribe money from the Pythagoreans and paid the Clockwork Guild to finish him off.”

  “How do you—? Never mind. Stop struggling, or I’ll cut your throat.”

  “No!” Edward moved toward them, but Jeremy held the knife to Iris’s neck.

  “One step closer and neither of us will have her,” Jeremy said. “Yes, I arranged for your father’s illness, Iris. He humiliated me in class and was going to have me kicked out of the program. Luckily his unfortunate and sudden need for a sabbatical made sure that wouldn’t happen. But I didn’t mean for him to die.”

  “I don’t believe you,” she said. “Lie all you want to me, but I’ll never marry you.”

  “You gave your word. Or were you lying about that as about so much else? Either way, what you discovered in here including this glowing thing in the glass globe belongs to me, as do you.”

  Edward picked up two of the tuning forks. “Then allow me to demonstrate.” He gave Iris a significant look.

  “Don’t,” she said. “It’s not worth it. I’m not worth it.”

  “What’s another copper globe in the grand scheme of things?” He struck the two forks on the altar, and a discordant combination of tones slithered through the air. He held the tuning forks over the copper globe but didn’t touch them to it. The air vibrated with the discord, an almost solid manifestation of what was happening among them.

  “What are you doing?” Jeremy asked.

  “Augmenting its power. Look at it.”

  The mass grew, and its edges became ragged.

  “How much will that be worth?” Jeremy leaned in to see better, but to do so, he had to move the knife away from Iris’s neck. She let her muscles relax but couldn’t pull away without focusing Scott’s attention back on her.

  At least I can breathe. She watched Edward’s face. His expression was that of a patient teacher, but behind his goggles, his eyes held a ruthlessness she’d never seen in them. Was he willing to do it, to destroy the temple and everything in it, including them, to keep the Eros Element away from Scott?


  “It requires testing and development to make it practical,” Edward said. “But once we do figure out how to harness it, it will be a new source of power, particularly important because it’s self-sustaining.” He glanced at Iris and then down. She understood his message: duck under the altar. She shook her head—not worth it—but he ignored her.

  “Self-sustaining power. I can be like those coal moguls, but without having to bleed resources on personnel and property,” Jeremy mused. He leaned in closer so his nose almost touched the glass, and Edward put the two now barely vibrating tuning forks to the copper globe. The mass inside expanded, and Scott put his hands to his eyes, releasing Iris. She dropped to the floor and darted under the altar. Shattering glass filled the air, and two bodies hit the floor.

  Iris curled into a ball under the altar. The air buzzed with the dissipating energy, and the next two noises—a loud bang and footsteps—made her cringe further.

  “Oh my god!” It was Marie. “Dammit, Johann, I told you to break the door down.”

  “I tried. Who knew Italian construction could be so strong?”

  “They build churches that last for centuries, you ninny. Iris? Iris, are you here?”

  Iris crawled toward where Edward lay with an arm over his face. The fabric over his elbow hung in ashy shreds, and his skin blistered. Iris moved his arm out of the way and was relieved to see it had blocked his nose and mouth, but his face also showed burns, and worse, he didn’t breathe.

  “Edward?” she tried to ask, but all she could manage was a moan. “Edward, please don’t be dead. I can’t lose someone else I care about.”

  Marie knelt beside her and put two fingers to Edward’s neck. “I’m not feeling a pulse.”

  Iris put her head to his chest and remembered how good it had felt in the train when they’d all ended up tumbled on the floor and he supported her. Nothing. Marie removed his goggles, and he lay there as if asleep.

  “No!” Iris pressed her hands to his chest and moved so her face was a whisper away from his. “No, Edward, please don’t leave me.” She took a deep breath and parted his lips with hers. She exhaled into his mouth, then breathed again and again for him.