By this time I’d reached Yberio. I calmly took his head in my heads and gave it a single vicious twist. There was a loud crack, Yberio’s eyes went wide, and his silver aura winked out. When I released his head, his dead body slumped to the floor. “You shouldn’t have called her that,” I whispered. Then I turned and went over to see how Devona was.
She managed to rise to a kneeling position, and I took her hand and helped her to stand.
“You all right?”
She drew the back of her hand across her mouth to wipe away Yberio’s blood. “I’ve been better, but I think I’ll live.”
I intended to take her into my arms and give her the hug of her life, when I saw Skully standing in the doorway, axe held at his side. I searched for pinpricks of anger in his sockets and found none. He looked down at Yberio’s dead body, his boneface expressionless as always.
“I never did like that dick,” he said.
“I’ve known you ever since I first came to Nekropolis, Skully. Hell, I was still alive when we met. I knew you worked for the Dominari, but I never figured you’d associate with a scumbag like that .” I gestured toward Yberio’s corpse.
“I had my orders.” Skully said. “And given who my bosses are, it’s a good idea to do what they want, regardless of what I might think about it.”
“Yberio was Arcane-not to mention Talaith’s former consort,” I said. “Was she in on this operation?” I asked.
“Not to my knowledge. The bosses don’t like messing around with Darklords. Far as I know, Yberio worked here only for the money.”
Did that mean Gregor-as impossible as it sounded-had been wrong about Talaith’s involvement? Or was Skully not telling me the truth?
“What do you know about the theft of the Dawnstone, Skully? And what do the Dominari plan to do with it?”
“The bosses had nothing to do with stealing the Dawnstone. They were working with someone else, someone whose identity I don’t know. I wasn’t particularly chummy with Yberio, but we talked a few times. From what I gathered, someone approached the bosses with the formula for veinburn, but needed some capital and the technical know-how to produce it. For providing both, and giving a relatively small quantity of the finished product to their silent partner, the Dominari got to keep the formula.”
“So the Dominari are probably setting up other veinburn labs around the city even as we speak. Great. Tell me, Skully, didn’t it bother you what they were doing up here?”
“Sure it did.” He gazed down at Yberio’s body. “I may have to take orders, but that doesn’t mean I always like it.”
It was impossible to gauge his emotional state from his face (or lack thereof), but he sounded sincere. “And you have no idea who your Dominari’s mystery partner might be?”
“No, and I don’t think Yberio knew, either.”
“How does Morfran fit into this?”
“He’s one of the bosses’ regular dealers, a small timer who usually sells mind dust. The bosses wanted him to try veinburn out on the market, see how people took to it.”
“Which they undoubtedly did, given how addictive it is.” I thought for a moment. “You said Morfran’s a small timer. Why would the Dominari choose him for such an important project?”
“I wondered about that myself, but like I said, it’s best not to ask questions.”
“Perhaps because the Dominari’s new partner asked them to,” Devona said. “Because one of his regular customers was Varma.”
“Who, fun-loving guy that he was, was probably first in line to try Morfran’s newest product,” I said. “Which got him hooked-”
“And after that, he’d do anything for more,” Devona finished for me. “Including risk Father’s wrath by stealing the Dawnstone.”
“This unknown ‘partner’ probably made his or her own arrangements with Varma. The theft of an object of power from a Darklord is far too difficult an undertaking to involve a sleazy little bug like Morfran. And then, once we started nosing around, Mr. or Ms. Unknown decided to have Varma killed, in case we found him and got him to talk.”
“And if Varma wouldn’t have told us what happened to the Dawnstone, I would’ve had no choice but to tell Father everything myself, and he most definitely would’ve gotten Varma to talk. So Varma had to die.”
I didn’t want to think about what sort of persuasive techniques Lord Galm might have used on his bloodson. Varma’s death by veinburn, ugly as it had been, might well have been kinder than leaving him to Galm’s less-than- tender mercies.
Devona frowned. “What I don’t understand is why wait to kill Varma? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to kill him as soon as he delivered the Dawnstone?”
“Murdering Varma then would’ve drawn too much attention too early. Mr. Unknown wasn’t worried about Varma spontaneously confessing. Varma would’ve been too afraid of Galm-and the punishment he would deliver-to admit his crime. It wasn’t until we got too close that Varma became a liability and needed to be dealt with.”
Devona’s already pale skin grew paler. “Then…we’re responsible for his death. No, I am, because I was afraid to go to Father, afraid of his anger, his disappointment. If I had spoken to Father instead of hiring you… Varma might still be alive.”
I took her hand. “The only ones responsible for killing Varma are the Red Tide vampires, and whoever was pulling their strings-or in their case, wires. Okay?”
Devona didn’t look completely convinced, but she nodded anyway. I figured it was the best I was going to get just then. I turned to Skully, who had been standing silently by while Devona and I tried to piece this mess together. “Do the Dominari have any connection with the Red Tide?”
“No, those tech-psychos are too unstable.”
“So they worked directly for Mr. Unknown. I thought as much.” There was something important about that particular tidbit of information, but I couldn’t quite put my rapidly decomposing finger on it. Not yet.
“So where does that leave us?” Devona asked.
“Not much farther along than we were before,” I admitted. “It appears Talaith doesn’t have the Dawnstone and neither do the Dominari. It looks like Skully’s bosses are the only ones who know who does have it, but I doubt they’d agree to share that information, assuming we could even locate them.” I sighed. “I think it’s safe to say that our investigation has run into a very large and very dead end.”
“Uh, Matt?” Skully said. “There’s something else.”
“What? You know something you haven’t told us?” I said hopefully.
“Not exactly. Remember when I told you it was a good idea to follow the bosses’ orders? Well, they gave me some instructions about what I should do if you discovered the lab.”
He lifted his axe.
“You don’t want to do this,” I said.
“No, but I have my orders.” He took a step forward.
“If you really wanted to kill us, it would have been much easier to lead us up here in the first place, get us off our guard, and then let Yberio catch us unaware. But you didn’t do that. You tried to send us away, and then you tried to stop us from coming up here.”
Skully’s grip on his axe tightened and loosened, tightened and loosened, as if were trying to decide his next move.
“So?”
“So I think you were disobeying orders, not following them, when you asked us to leave. And I think it’s because you didn’t want to have to kill a friend.”
Skully gave forth a hollow laugh. “The Dominari and their servants have no friends.”
“Then prove me wrong. Go ahead, make like Lizzie Borden. I won’t stop you.”
I heard Devona draw in a nervous gasp of air, but otherwise she did nothing.
Skully stood silently for several moments before finally lowering his axe. “You’re right, Matt; I don’t want to kill you. You’re the closest thing to a friend I have. But when the bosses find out I couldn’t go through with it…” His
