by Tim Waggoner
At last, I managed to wrap my fingers around the beaker.
"Tell me something, Yberio," I said. "Do you still know how to catch?"
Before he could react, I hurled the beaker toward him. As I'd hoped, he wasn't prepared for the attack and the half-broken glass container sailed through his silver energy aura without resistance. I got lucky and the jagged edge of the beaker hit him in the face, and the greenish-yellow liquid inside sloshed into his eyes. Yberio screamed and staggered backward, and as his concentration shattered, the silver hands holding Devona and I down vanished, along with the energy aura surrounding him. Crimson blood mixed with yellow-green chemicals as Yberio desperately wiped at his eyes, trying to clear them.
I sat up, intending to rise to my feet and confront the warlock who had killed my partner, but before I could stand, Devona leapt to her feet and closed on Yberio with the savage speed and grace of a jungle cat. She grabbed hold his shoulder with one hand, grabbed the top of his bald scalp with the other, and yanked his head to the side. Then she bared her fangs with a snarl and plunged her teeth into the warlock's exposed neck. Yberio shrieked as Devona tore out a chuck of his flesh and blood gushed from the wound.
Devona stepped back, her mouth and chest covered with the warlock's blood. She spat out the hunk of meat she'd bitten off and it hit the floor with a wet plap. Now Yberio pressed his hand to his throat, trying to keep his lifeblood from spilling out.
"A few hours ago, I was joined to Matt soul-to-soul," Devona said. "I experienced his thoughts, his emotions… and his memories. I know what you did to his partner, and more, I know what that loss did to him. You should've died the day the Overmind was destroyed, you bastard. But you didn't, and so I'm glad to finish the job. For Matt." She paused. "For my love."
I was so overwhelmed by what Devona had done – and even more by what she'd just said – that for a moment all I could do was sit there gaping like an undead moron. Her fangs were distended, her eyes were wild, and her mouth was smeared with gore… and I'd never seen any woman more beautiful.
But then Yberio's free arm flared with silver energy and he backhanded Devona, sending her sailing through the air to collide with the far wall. She bounced off and fell onto her side, moaning.
Silver power flickered to life around the hand Yberio held pressed to his neck wound, and I knew he was attempting to heal it. I slowly rose to my feet and started toward him.
"You know, Richter, as long as you and your little bloodcunt didn't find out about this lab, I was going to leave you alone. Sure, your destruction of the Overmind ruined my life, but I like to think I've risen above such petty things as revenge. If you don't stand in the way of my acquisition of power, why should I bother with you? But things have gone way too far now, and I'm–"
By this time I'd reached Yberio. I calmly took his head in my hands 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 shoulders slumped. "Maybe I should just go ahead and turn myself in to the Adjudicators. Spending the rest of eternity locked away in Tenebrus would be a far gentler fate than what the Dominari will do to me when they learn I've failed."
Tenebrus was Nekropolis's prison, located deep beneath the Nightspire. Run by the ancient Egyptian sorceress Keket and her jackal-headed Warders, even in a city built from terror and darkness, it was among the most feared of places.
"Don't worry," I said. "We can make it look like you tried to kill us. Yberio is dead, and the lab's already trashed from our fight with him. We'll clonk you on the head again, this time with your own axe. We'll take off and you can just lie here unconscious until someone comes looking for you – or your customers downstairs steal all your booze, whichever comes first. With any luck, when the Dominari investigate, they'll believe you when you say you tried, but how could be you expected to stop of pair of dangerous characters like us who killed a former Demilord? "
"Won't they punish Skully anyway?" Devona asked.
"I doubt it. Skully's place has been a fixture in the Sprawl for years, and I bet the Dominari get too much use out of it – and its owner – to get rid of either." I turned to Skully. "If your bosses ask why I didn't turn you in to the Adjudicators, tell them you bribed me to keep my mouth shut."
"You'd do all that for me?" Skully asked.
I smiled. "Hey, what are friends for?"
Just then a solemn, sonorous tone sounded off in the distance. Several seconds later another sounded, and then another. They kept coming every ten seconds, soft and low, reminding me a bit of the lonely, mournful sound a foghorn makes.
"What's that noise?" I asked.
"Father Dis!" Devona swore. "It's the Deathknell summoning the Darklords to the Nightspire – the Renewal Ceremony will start soon!"
It was my turn to swear. We were too late. I was certain whoever had the Dawnstone planned to use it during the ceremony to kill Lord Galm, or maybe even Dis himself, if such a thing were possible. And there was nothing we could do about it. Unless…
I grabbed Devona's hand and pulled her toward the door. "I'm afraid you'll have to hit yourself over the head, Skully. Devona and I have to go." I shoved past him, and Devona and I stepped over the late and very much unlamented Yberio. We hurried down the stairs, taking them as fast as my bum leg would allow.
"Where are you going?" Skully called after us.
I shouted over my shoulder. "To crash a party!"
TWENTY-ONE
From the outside, Lady Varvara's stronghold is a glass and steel building ten stories tall, which wouldn't be out of place in the business district of any midsize city on Earth. Inside, Demon's Roost is a paean to pleasure, a twenty-four-hour-a-day bacchanalia that makes Las Vegas look like a kindergarten playground. It's an adults-only amusement park which contains such a dazzling scope and variety of decadence and perversity that it might give Caligula himself pause.
Beside the mass of partiers, getting inside wasn't a problem. Varvara doesn't believe in locking doors or posting guards. Anyone can come in and play, from the lowliest street beggar to any of the Demon Queen's fellow Darklords – but once inside, you're on your own and good luck to you. Just remember: there are no guarantees you'll ever make it out again. Devona and I made out way into the Atrium by squeezing through a mass of beings drinking, drugging, gambling, screwing, eating, talking, laughing, yelling, fighting – often, it seemed, all at the same time.
Any number of Nekropolitan luminaries were in attendance. After all, Demon's Roost is the place to be on Descension Day. The Scream Queen and her band Kakophonie provided the musical entertainment – if you could call the banshees' dissonant wailing music – and I spotted Marley's Ghost rattling his chains in time to the beat. Fade, who had made her way over from the Broken Cross, had gotten herself cornered by the Else, who was obviously trying to convince her to do a feature story on him, while the Jade Enigma looked on in cynical amusement, Antwerp the Psychotic Clown was stabbing himself over and over with a butcher knife and laughing uproariously, much to the annoyance of those unfortunate enough to be in range of his blood spatter. The Suicide King stood nearly, watching Antwerp's gory display with a critical eye and shaking his head. As Devona and I passed by, I heard him mutter, "That's not how you do it."
I noticed a trio of Demilords standing off to the side and keeping to themselves. Baron Samedi seemed to be enjoying himself well enough, if his broad grin was any indication, but Slitheria the Serpent Goddess watched the revelry with a reptilian gaze of cold disapproval. Molog, Demon Lord of Insects, stood with his arms crossed over his chest, the millions of six-legged creatures that formed his body scuttling about restlessly, making it look as if he might fall apart any second.
I'd seen them – and other Demilords – around the city before, but after our recent encounter with Yberio I now viewed them in a different light. Maybe they weren't quite as powerful as the Darklords, but they weren't saddled with the responsibilities of the five Lords, either. The Demilords were incredibly powerful beings free to do as they pleased, and they had no need to conserve their strength to help renew Umbriel once a year. In that sense, they were more powerful than the Darklords, and I wondered if – like Yberio – they resented being passed over by Dis during his Wanderyear in favor of the five current Darklords, and what they might intend to do to even the score one day.
The party wasn't confined to the ground, though. The Atrium extended several stories upward, and numerous beings flew or levitated above our heads, some swooping
and darting about, while others merely circled slowly – perhaps hoping to spot prey of one sort or another below. Ichorus was there, no doubt having accompanied Fade. I wondered if they were an item. If so, I bet that would be one tidbit of gossip that would never appear in Fade's tabloid column. A number of ghostly figures were ballroom dancing in the air, their graceful moves somehow perfectly complementing Kakophonie's thunderously strident melodies.
Devona kept swiveling her head this way and that, trying to take it all in and failing dismally. It was like trying to hold the ocean in your arms. No matter how hard you work at it, it's just not going to happen.
"Varvara has a one-word philosophy," I shouted to be heard over the Scream Queen and her band. "More!"
"She certainly appears to live by it!" Devona said.
The atrium of Demon's Roost looks as if it had been ground zero during the explosion of an atomic kitsch bomb. Gaudy pastel-colored carpeting, black velvet paintings in neon-tube frames, mirrored disco balls spinning above… We passed a wall collage formed from thousands of tiny cheap toys from fast-food kids' meals, and soon after that, my favorite piece, a thirty foot-tall pewter statue of Elvis gazing benevolently down on a flock of plastic pink flamingos.