"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."

"The Nighthawks are claiming blue bloods were involved with the draining factory explosion. It's all through the papers, my lord," Obsidian said.

Ghost cut him a sharp glance. They'd agreed not to mention that.

The Master's lips thinned. "Malloryn's doing, no doubt. He's starting to truly irritate me."

"I could deal with him," Ghost offered. "Slowly."

"No." The word was hard and emphatic. "Malloryn must be the last to die. I want to take everything away from him first: his precious queen; the city he loves and fought to protect; I want to destroy his ancestral home; to kill every single person around him, including all the agents he's surrounded himself with...."

Obsidian watched as the man paused. He recognized hate when he saw it—the same emotion bound him to the past.

"Then what do you want us to do? This draining factory scheme was a defeat. Malloryn won, despite Ulbricht's maverick plans. That can't be tolerated, despite the desire for secrecy while we enact the next phase of the plan," Ghost argued.

Obsidian waited breathlessly.

"It's not a complete loss. The blue bloods are running scared. Spread some whispers the Nighthawks are covering up the truth about the explosions. Paint a few humanist symbols around the site, or on one of the remaining factories." The Master paused, rubbing at the blackened scar across his throat he usually hid. Its edge was puckered, and it looked as though it had never truly healed. "And then kill one of Malloryn's little company as punishment for ruining my little scheme with Ulbricht. One of the women."

"Which one should we kill?" Ghost asked.

"What do they look like?"

Obsidian and Ghost exchanged glances. "Why?" Obsidian chanced.

"I want to send Malloryn a message," the Master said. "I want to remind him of the past, and let him start to wonder who he's dealing with." He laughed suddenly, a rusty noise, as though this was a great joke.

Obsidian had spent the most time observing Malloryn's Company of Rogues. "Miss McLaren is a blonde with a slim build; Isabella Rouchard has dark hair and voluptuous curves; Ingrid Byrnes has brown hair, amber eyes, and an Amazonian figure typical of her verwulfen race; and... the woman who calls herself Gemma Townsend has dyed black hair."

And an even blacker heart.

Pale eyes seared him as the Master clearly heard something in Obsidian's voice he hadn't been aware of. "Gemma Townsend?"

The name echoed through the abandoned underground train station.

"Hollis Beechworth," Obsidian stated coldly, hiding a flinch. His fist clenched. Not her. He wasn't done with her yet. "Emma Rusden. Alice Clayton. Or Gemma Townsend, as she goes by now. She's been Malloryn's right hand for years."

"The spy in Malloryn's party in Saint Petersburg seven years ago," Ghost added quietly, and both he and the master exchanged a significant look.

"Black hair," the Master repeated, reaching into his pocket. "Her. She's the one. The perfect candidate. Have her killed. Put her in a white gown, like something a debutante—or a thrall—would wear. Then shoot her straight through the heart. And leave her on Malloryn's doorstep."

Obsidian's chest tightened, as though a metal fist gripped his heart. No. Blood began to rush through his ears as the darker half of him rose to the surface, picturing her death.

Violence rose in his throat, threatening to choke him. A demanding rage he fought, locking it down deep inside him. He could almost feel the electric lash of the whip across his back, the leather gag between his teeth as Ghost put him through his conditioning after he'd failed to kill her the first time.

"Do you still love her?" Ghost had asked, as Obsidian fought to breathe around the gag. Ghost held up the electric wire. "Do you have any feelings for that lying little bitch still within you?"

No. He'd shaken his head. And that no had echoed in the place his heart used to lie. Before she ripped it out of his chest.

Ghost straightened. "Yes, Lord Balfour. I'll get one of the new recruits to do it. Perhaps Langley. He needs to prove he's ready to be initiated into the Brotherhood."

Langley was a dead man. Obsidian kept all signs of it off his face, however.

The Master removed his hand from his pocket, fingering something with a certain kind of careful grace. He stared at it for a long moment, as though it meant something to him. Then his lips thinned, and he thrust the thing at Ghost. "And have him put this around her neck."

"A locket?" Ghost sounded surprised.

"Malloryn will know who it belongs to." The Master finally smiled. "Make sure you watch when he finds the locket. I want you to describe the look on his face to me, in perfect, exquisite detail."

"And you, my lord?" Ghost dared to ask, the words echoing distantly in Obsidian's ears.

Control it, he told himself, staying utterly still.

The Master swung a fur-lined cape over his shoulders, the sable color highlighting the gray in his coppery hair. "I'm going to take care of the Russian problem. You have a month until I return. Initiate phase two of our plan. I'll expect to see the blood splashed all across Europe's newspapers."

"Yes, my lord," they both echoed, though only Obsidian felt the crushing heat of fury ignite in his heart as Lord Balfour vanished through the blackened tunnels of Undertown.

Gemma's death belonged to him.

And no one else.

Is that why you saved her life last month when Ghost sent one of the recruits to kill her?

He pushed to his feet. He'd had his chance then to repay the debt she owed.

It was just the shock of seeing her again that stayed my hand.

The sight of her pale, heart-shaped face as she lay unconscious and bleeding had thrust him years into the past, when she'd whispered love words in his ears and almost swayed him to her side. Gemma—or Hollis, as he'd known her—had been the one person who'd threatened the foundation upon which he'd placed his trust, and made him question exactly who he owed his loyalty to.

Just another of her pretty lies.

But he'd had time to think past the shock of seeing her. Time to reassess what she meant to him, and the damage she'd done him.

Next time... next time it wouldn't be as difficult.

But first, he had to keep her alive long enough to exact his revenge.

Skoro moya yadovitaya lyubov....

Soon.