"That's the problem with dead enemies. You can't question them afterwards," Kincaid replied sleepily. "If I had my time again, I'd have tried not to shoot him for you."
"No matter." Malloryn shrugged and stood, his shadow falling over the bed. "I just wish I knew where those bloody dhampir were now. They can't have just vanished, and I suspect they're up to something. Hurry up and get better. Now we've got Byrnes and Ingrid back, I want all hands on deck. Ulbricht and his Sons of Gilead have been vanquished, but now we need to work on the real mission: discovering just who has been pulling the strings behind the SOG and the dhampir. The mastermind behind all of this nonsense."
"Sounds good." Kincaid yawned. "But you'd better get me a new hand first."
Epilogue
"WHAT HAVE YOU got to tell me?" the Master asked.
Obsidian bent his head as he knelt upon the rotted timber floor, and stared at the hem of the Master's velvet robe. It was so bloody cold and dank in here, and he hated it, but the subterfuge was necessary for the next stage of the Master's plans. If anyone found them before they could complete phase two, then everything would be ruined.
And he did not want to be the one to tell the Master or Ghost their little plan had been destroyed.
"Everything's going according to plan," Ghost replied, tugging off his gloves, finger by finger. The tall dhampir was ghostly pale in the dark confines of Undertown, faint light highlighting the stark slope of his cheekbones. "The clinical trials of the control chip work. We can move forward with that plan once our pet mech's created enough of them."
"Casualties?"
"It has a success rate of 50 percent."
"Hmm," the Master murmured.
"We can't get close to the queen, as expected," Obsidian stated emotionlessly. "We've been testing the defenses of the Ivory Tower, and it's too tight."
"You'll figure it out, I assume?"
"Yes, Master," they both echoed.
"We just need time," Ghost added. "Ulbricht's little scheme has been a distraction, as we cleaned up after him."
"It was actually rather clever, for Ulbricht," the Master replied. "Poisoning the Echelon's entire drinking supply. Imagine the uproar."
Obsidian froze. Sometimes it felt like the man was testing them. He shouldn't have known that.
"It failed," Ghost said. "And now Malloryn knows what the caterpillar mushroom does. His little company interrupted Ulbricht halfway through completion, and Ulbricht tried to detonate the charges with them inside the factory. Malloryn had brought the Nighthawks in on the scheme, and they managed to capture the remaining Sons of Gilead before they could destroy the other factories."
"So only one factory burned? Obsidian?" the Master demanded.
Obsidian couldn't tell if the Master was displeased. "Yes."
"You watched and did nothing?"
A frisson of alarm went along his nerves. Obsidian looked up, meeting Ghost's eyes where the leader of the dhampir stood on the underground train platform at the Master's side. "As instructed, Master," Obsidian replied. "I was told not to interfere. Not to be sighted. We wanted to know what Ulbricht was up to, now he was off Zero's leash."
He held his breath. Ghost brooked no challenges to his leadership, and any infringement was punished cruelly-but the Master... he'd saved them, and brought them together. They owed him everything.
"And Ulbricht?" the Master continued. "Where is he now?"
"Dead. Malloryn must have killed him."
"Any witnesses?"
"The Nighthawks got their hands on a couple of SOG members. I killed a few with the serum when they tried to flee."
"The serum worked?"
"Within minutes," he replied, and then hesitated.
"What is it?" Ghost asked. He never could fool that bastard.
Obsidian swallowed. "There was one anomaly. Corbyn died in the assassination attempt upon Miss McLaren, but to all extents she seems to have survived an injection of the serum."
They looked at each other.
"All of the blue blood test subjects have died," Ghost said slowly. "How did she survive?"
"I don't know, sir."
"Yet," Ghost said, and it wasn't a question.
"Yet," he conceded.
"So Ulbricht failed, and the Sons of Gilead are dead, my lord," Ghost continued. "Most of their higher-ranking members were killed in the explosion, and the rest captured by the Nighthawks."
"It's not important," the Master stated. "Ulbricht was a puppet, and his loss means little to the cause. What is important is blue bloods are being killed all across London-at the hands of humans and mechs. The aristocrats of the Echelon are running scared, and bleating to the queen and the Council of Dukes that the people want them dead. Three of their precious draining factories have been burned, and they'll blame the humans for it. The humanists have clashed with the Nighthawks in a catastrophic manner. London's ripe for dissent. Now is the time to divide the classes. I want war in the streets."