Opera of the Abyss, Part I: Murder and the Rue Morgue

Field Agent Nils Lund of the Republic of Deseret pursues an unnatural monster and a stolen invention across the rooftops of Paris

October, 1902
Above the streets of Paris

Leaning against the dubious cover of a crumbling chimney, Field Agent Nils Lund ejected the empty magazine of his Browning-Odgen automatic pistol and slapped in a new one.

The Paris slum La Vilette snaked in all directions, rooftops twisting maze-like limned but dimly by the sliver of moon. Streets below were lit not at all. The gas streetlamps of the La Vilette had been ripped up years while residents awaited electrification. They still waited. French planning.

He racked the slide.

“I thought Paris was the City of Lights,” Lund told his French associate who also served as his minder.

“And I thought Mormons had magic bullets,” M. Dupin growled back at his Deseretan charge, knowing full well what bullets Lund had in his pockets. He’d frisked Lund often enough.

illustration by Kevin Wasden

The fat, mustachioed Frenchman fumbled in the dark to reload the cylinder of his revolver. Some of that was due to the gun having to be loaded wrong-handedly; the cylinder on a Lebel swung out on the right side, the rifle-length 8mm pistol cartridges were long and clumsy to load. 8mm. Leave it to the French to be needlessly unique. The overly slender reed-like barrel of the Lebel made it look like a toy and it had the stopping power of a spit wad.

“I, at least, hit our prey,” Dupin boasted, jamming the last round in.

Dupin had not, but what would be the point of arguing with the fat man?

As for the whipcord-lean Deseretan, Lund had grouped the entire contents of his magazine of ordinary copper bullets—seven in all—dead center into the thing they were chasing. Alas, his bullseyes had accomplished no more against the creature than Dupin’s six wild misses.

That the Frenchman had missed was only to be expected. Dupin was an amateur, after all.

All of the secret agents of France’s Rue Morgue were amateurs. Amateur part-time secret agents. The Rue believed that all that was needed to face down a supernatural menace was elan. Elan and simply being French. Training and proper equipment were superfluous.

Lund snorted. If French elan truly overcame all obstacles, the Rue would not have needed to turn to a hated Mormon for help—a Mormon agent trained up to the exacting standards of the independent Republic of Deseret’s Correlation Department.

Lund peeked around the edge of the chimney. The creature was still on the next rooftop over, its great bulk blending into the thickening fog.

Down on the street, a cat screeched and a dustbin lid clanged. Shrill police whistles tweetled. Shoe leather slapped cobblestone, echoing in all directions. The flics—the Parisian police—undoubtedly rushing to-and-fro, blue serge cape aflutter, nightsticks drawn like cavalry swords for a charge and haring off after what they thought was the creature.

“It’s down on the street!” Dupin cried, trying to peer over the coping. He fumbled with his cased baton.

Now he’s getting it out!

“The police have it cornered, certainement!” Dupin insisted.

“The police are chasing a cat, certainement,” Lund said. The Frenchman was supposed to be a private detective of some note. Couldn’t he even follow sounds?

“The creature will get away!” Dupin insisted.

Lund plucked the cased marshal’s baton from the fat fingers of his French minder. The Rue Morgue marshal’s baton was the sole piece of arcane equipment the French agency issued its agents. If Lund had used his baton on the creature earlier instead of his pistol, they might have just captured it then and there.

“It’s not getting away,” Lund said. He extracted the baton and tossed the empty gutta-percha case away. It clattered off the cobblestones down in the street, which would no doubt turn the flics back this direction in their snipe hunt.

One could only hope.

Lund gave the baton a couple practice strokes. It felt good in his hand. Solid. Fashioned well. Eighteen inches long and one inch thick. Plated with silver and chased with fleurs-de-lis. Underneath, the rod was iron. A very special iron. The same selenite meteor that Charlemagne’s mystic sword Joyeuse was fashioned from. Much about the Rue Morgue was a sad joke; their batons were not.

He’d need it for what needed to be done next.

Ordinary bullets wouldn’t stop the creature and Lund had been sent to France without the usual Departmental load out of runed rounds. The “magic bullets,” as the Dupin had so sneeringly called them. Without access to arcane ammunition—Curse his boss for being right. Resupply, indeed!—Dupin’s baton would have to serve.

Provided Lund could shake his watchdog.

The creature was fifty-feet straight ahead, crouching as Lund was behind a chimney. Lund could hear it scraping against the brick.

“Listen!” Lund exclaimed. “It is down in the street!”

Dupin, already distracted by the snatch of his baton, fell for it. He faced away from Lund and hung his whole fat face over the coping to stare downward into the dark.

Lund tensed his legs in just a certain way, activating the hidden springheel jacks on his boots. Tensile coils of rarefied air lifted him noiselessly a good thirty yards in the air. To Dupin, it would seem, once he turned around again, like Lund had simply vanished into the fog.

The Deseret agent landed catfooted on the other side of the chimney, less than an arm’s length from his crouching quarry. Man-shaped the creature might be—seven feet tall and four-hundred pounds—but it was no man even though it wore an ankle-length greatcoat and an enormous floppy-brimmed hat.

Gaston Leroux. Or rather, what Gaston Leroux had become.

Lund stabbed the borrowed baton into the small of the creature’s back. Blue eldritch lightning lit up the Paris rooftop.