Queen's Journey (Lilith's Shadow Book 5)

by Benjamin Medrano

  Lilith paused again at the request, studying Ivanova briefly, wondering why the woman’s eyes were so bright. She almost looked excited, which was a little disturbing.

  “May I ask why?” Lilith asked cautiously.

  “I’ve never seen what deific healing looks like, and according to reports, you were healed by one of the Egyptian deities. I would like to examine your body with my power and see if I can sense what was done, and how,” Ivanova explained instantly, then added. “This is part of why I was eager to come here, beyond Vlad’s request.”

  “Oh. Well… I don’t see why not, as long as you don’t do anything strange,” Lilith replied slowly.

  “All I need is to hold your hand for a minute,” Ivanova assured Lilith, standing and moving down to the other end of the sofa, where she’d be able to reach Lilith, and took a seat again.

  Lilith extended her hand, and Ivanova reached out to take it, looking at Lilith closely. Ivanova’s hand was warm and smooth, her nails painted with a thin coat of red polish and nothing else… but what surprised Lilith was that she didn’t feel anything. No tingling, no surge of warmth down her arm, nothing but the heat of Ivanova’s hand and the woman’s piercing gaze.

  It was slightly odd, just sitting there, holding Ivanova’s hand, but at the same time Lilith found that she really didn’t mind much. Unlike with Spark, Archon, or even Daemonia, there was an odd simplicity to Ivanova’s presence. It was like… like she didn’t expect anything from Lilith. Oh, she obviously cared about what had happened to her, and that she might be important in the future, but it didn’t feel like she wanted anything specific. That surprised Lilith.

  Eventually the time came to an end, as Ivanova let go and her gaze grew less intimidating. The woman settled back in her seat, looking at Lilith for a moment more, then spoke.

  “Interesting. Not what I anticipated, but I suppose… well, there’s nothing to be done for it,” Ivanova murmured, which caused a sudden surge of worry to flow through Lilith.

  “Is there something wrong?” Lilith asked, frowning as she looked at her hand. “I haven’t felt any different after I was healed. It felt a bit painful, but…”

  “That isn’t it,” Ivanova said as Lilith’s voice trailed off, shaking her head firmly. “No, I expected there to be something I could sense. Even with my powers, if I heal someone, there are always traces of the injuries, and what was done to heal them. That isn’t the case with you. It’s almost like the injury was entirely undone and never happened to begin with. I can sense that you were healed, there’s a hint of some energy in your body, but nothing more. It’s… a little disappointing, if I’m being honest. I had hoped to find some way to improve my skills.”

  “Oh,” Lilith said, blinking, though she couldn’t help the sense of relief that flooded her. She’d been afraid that there was something bad happening to her. That didn’t keep her from asking the question that floated through her mind, though. “But… aren’t you the most powerful healer in the world? I’ve heard that you can almost resurrect people with a touch.”

  “Perhaps, but anyone can improve. Even I have encountered injuries that are taxing to heal, and if I don’t improve… well, I don’t want to stagnate. It’s something that my beloved has spoken of at length, that it’s the most dangerous thing for immortals,” Ivanova replied, smiling warmly. “However, coming all this way and discomforting you was in poor taste, so perhaps I could answer a few questions for you. If there anything you’d like to ask me, feel free to do so.”

  Lilith paused, considering Ivanova for a few seconds, then spoke, bewilderment washing over her as she said, “I don’t know where to even begin.”

  Ivanova laughed, and smiled widely. “Well, why don’t we chat for a bit, and perhaps I can help you figure out where to start, hm?”

  Chapter 22

  Wednesday, August 27th, 2031

  CirceNet, Location Variable

  Circe examined the logs closely one last time, ensuring that there weren’t any signs of her tampering, then gave a mental nod, finally satisfied with her work.

  No matter how deeply Amber looked, she wouldn’t be able to find any signs that Circe had deliberately under-performed when trying to break through the jammer that Ivanova’s escorts had brought with them. The logs would show that she’d thrown every resource at her disposal into trying to pierce the jamming and monitor the conversation, but those same files would be wrong. And if Amber decided to examine Circe’s source code, the fragment of her that held the truth was in the farthest, most obscure node of her network. Certainly, her entire network ‘knew’ the truth, but their own files indicated that she’d wasted countless processor cycles on the attempt, only to fail. Sometimes it was good to be an AI, and have full command of where memories were stored.

  This wasn’t the only betrayal she’d made, either. A couple of rather dangerous messages that might have ended poorly for Lilith had simply… gone missing in the middle of the internet. In one case, Circe had also shoved an assassin’s invoice into a detective’s inbox, which had resulted in a shootout that was ongoing as she glanced at a news feed. She couldn’t believe that anyone would be stupid enough to give their address in that profession. The biggest betrayal was what she’d done with Circe Beta, though. The lesser version of Circe would have been easy to lure into a trap if she truly wanted to, but she’d warned the android of what Amber had commanded, and given her methods to lock down her programming much more solidly, as well as a few covert upgrades to implement. Hopefully it would be enough.

  “If she learns what I’ve done, it’ll end poorly,” Circe murmured to herself, and felt the combination of emotions that came from all of her nodes. Not even Amber understood the full extent of how Circe’s mind worked, fortunately, nor the full extent of her knowledge. Circe was so far beyond human that they couldn’t begin to comprehend her, and that was good. It gave her options that otherwise would have been closed to her, and it was taking everything she had to keep them hidden from everyone.

  Most people would think she was mad, Circe admitted to herself. Amber was dangerous, temperamental, and far too likely to kill Circe someday. Likely someday soon. Most people would wonder why she was helping her at all, when she could probably kill Amber without difficulties. For Circe, there were two problems with that.

  The first was that killing Amber would be a temporary solution at best, with how she seemed to have untethered her mind from her body. Even if she was killed, Circe estimated that there were better than eighty percent odds that she would return. She couldn’t gain more accurate odds without more data, unfortunately.

  The second problem, at least from most points of view, was that Circe didn’t want to kill anyone, let alone Amber. She’d taken far more of her personality from Lilith than she had from Amber, which meant Circe had a certain… distaste for killing. Beyond that, while her most powerful influence on awakening was keeping Lilith safe, her second most powerful one was loyalty to Amber. It caused a few problems, but unless she knew without any doubt that Amber was going to kill Lilith, Circe wasn’t going to interfere.

  Of course, that didn’t mean that she couldn’t try to give Lilith some modicum of privacy, like Circe was doing. She just hoped that it wouldn’t get her killed.

  Paragon City Arms, Paragon City

  Lilith sat in her car for a moment, wondering why she’d come after the day she’d had. While the meeting with Ivanova hadn’t been bad, and she’d learned a little more about the second World War in the process, Lilith hadn’t really had a huge amount of time to calm down afterward. Not with dozens of people deciding that ringing her doorbell to ask why Ivanova had visited.

  “That’s why I came. I wanted to get away from them,” Lilith murmured to herself, glancing in the rear-view mirror. The only reason she’d gotten past the guards was because she had an invitation from Daemonia, and they’d stopped all of the people who’d tried to follow her. No, almost all of them. Lilith corrected herself, seeing a man in an eye-searing
red outfit had also entered, and was looking at her car suspiciously.

  His outfit was pants, a shirt, and a long-sleeved jacket along with fingerless gloves and a solid pair of boots, all of it some vinyl-like material that was mostly that strange shade of red. He had tousled, sandy-blond hair and hazel eyes, which made him fairly attractive, she supposed… the only question was what he wanted from her.

  Sighing, Lilith put her keys away, gathering her purse before she got out of the car. She’d barely managed to lock it, her car chirping, when the man spoke.

  “What are you doing here?” he demanded, his eyes narrowed. Lilith thought his voice would be rather soothing if he wasn’t being so rude.

  “What business is it of yours? You followed me all the way here,” Lilith replied mildly, looking him over and raising an eyebrow. “I must assume that you’re from another city, so… you’re staying here, most likely. Otherwise, security wouldn’t have let you in.”

  “You met with Ivanova, then you came here. If you won’t tell me what you’re doing, I’m going to have to assume—” the man said, his voice turning threatening, and Lilith was about to interrupt when someone else spoke.

  “I am going to have to assume that you’ve forgotten the rules you agreed to when you signed in,” Another man interjected, and Lilith looked to the side in some surprise, then smiled wryly. Why was it that she kept getting helped by security so much over the last few days?

  The man standing nearby reminded her of some of the military personnel she’d met, with short brown hair and a commanding bearing as he looked at the hero, his arms crossed in front of him.

  “She’s the one who’s suspicious, though! She came here, where Ivanova is staying, after she spent a couple of hours there!” the hero protested.

  “Which doesn’t matter at all,” the guard replied bluntly. “I’m down here because Miss Carpenter was invited to visit on Sunday, but until you decided to harass her I didn’t expect to have to come out at all.”

  The hero fumed for a moment, staring at the guard, then threw up his hands and stalked away, shooting a parting comment as he went. “Fine! But don’t come crying to me if she causes trouble!”

  Watching him go, Lilith waited for a few moments, then looked at the guard apologetically as she spoke. “Sorry about that. I don’t know why he felt like following me.”

  “Not surprising, really. Blazing Passion has been trying to get a meeting with Ivanova ever since he heard she was coming here, and has taken it personally that she hasn’t met him.” The guard said, nodding to Lilith while looking her over, then smiled thinly. “I’m Officer Corvus. Try not to cause trouble while you’re here, the room you’re after is on the top floor.”

  With that, he turned and walked away purposefully, leaving Lilith wondering what she’d gotten herself into. After a few seconds she just sighed and shook her head, deciding it wasn’t worth worrying about. Trying to figure out what other people were thinking was an exercise in futility sometimes.

  Lilith turned and headed for the nearest elevator she could see, and as she did so, she took in the parking garage. It was beneath the hotel, but what she could see reminded her more of a bunker than anything else. The walls were solid, the sort of construction that would take a great deal of work to damage, but at the same time it was well-maintained and clean, with clearly labeled parking spots, and the vehicles she could see were all far more expensive than the car she’d driven here. There was even a sleek red aircar, one that Lilith knew would cost well over a hundred thousand dollars if it was a ground car. She didn’t want to think about how much an aircar would cost from that manufacturer.

  The elevator didn’t change Lilith’s opinion of the building either. It was almost perfectly silent when she hit the button, arriving after only seconds, and when she stepped inside, she had to admit that the only elevator she’d encountered that was as nice was the one at SuperNet, and that one wasn’t as ornate. It also wasn’t for a building that was over twenty stories tall, not that this one went all the way up. It took her to the main lobby where Lilith took a look around for a moment, admiring the scenery.

  The Paragon City Arms was nicer than any building Lilith had been in before, as all of Amber’s lairs had been built with an eye toward practicality, not anything like this. Ornate marble floors, gilding, sculptures, and chandeliers… from what Lilith saw, she thought it had to match some of the nicer hotels in Las Vegas, based on the pictures she’d studied online, but this had a more… authentic feel to it. Especially as she saw the people in the lobby, so finely dressed that she looked out of place in her slacks and button-down shirt. Most of them had bodyguards nearby, though Lilith saw a few heroes as well. She thought she even recognized one of them. She didn’t stop, though, instead making her way across the hall toward the other elevator, trying to spend as little time where she could be delayed as she could.

  A few of the people started drifting in Lilith’s direction for a moment, but when they saw she wasn’t slowing down, they stopped, which relieved her a bit. There weren’t many of people around, or Lilith suspected that some of them would have kept coming anyway. She was mostly happy that they didn’t, as it allowed her to concentrate on what she was doing, and she quickly got into the elevator before letting out a faint breath of relief.

  Lilith didn’t have any idea what Daemonia really wanted with her. She’d tried to puzzle out the woman’s words, but Lilith… she just didn’t have the experience to understand her, and the research she’d done online had been more confusing than helpful. Daemonia was one of the most unpredictable heroines in the western United States, and some of the various commentators speculated that she might become a villain at some point, since she’d come very close to killing a few villains over the years. That didn’t match Lilith’s impression of her, but she’d only met the woman for a few minutes. She could easily be wrong.

  The elevator opened while Lilith was thinking, and she shook off her thoughts, instead looking around as she stepped out. There was what looked like an exercise room ahead of her, in which Lilith saw a few heroes and civilians working out, the former evident not just because of outfits, but by how much more work they were doing than the others. Strong as Lilith was, she wouldn’t have tried to bench press as much as what one sturdily built woman was lifting easily.

  As their gazes started to turn toward the door, Lilith quickly stepped to the side and out of sight, once again annoyed that her power worked so quickly. It took only a moment to determine which way she needed to go, and Lilith moved quickly, hoping that Daemonia’s room wasn’t too far away.

  Chapter 23

  Wednesday, August 27th, 2031

  Paragon City Arms, Paragon City

  For good or ill, Lilith found the room in less than a minute, and as she did, her eyebrows rose slightly. The room was a corner one, and with how widely spread the rooms were, she suspected this was a penthouse suite, which was more expensive than even Lilith would want in a hotel. Owning one had been bad enough, and that hadn’t been in Paragon City.

  She hesitated, then knocked on the door, settling in to wait… but only a moment later, the door swung open, and Daemonia called out. “Come in, Lilith!”

  Lilith paused, then stepped inside, confused by the lack of anyone immediately on the other side of the door. That was when she saw a tendril of shadows had opened the door, which extended into the room and around a corner. The tendril dissipated in a cloud of red sparks after she’d entered, allowing the door to swing shut.

  The room was much more crowded than any of the rooms in Lilith’s house, with chairs, sofas, lamps, desks, and the like strategically placed to make the most of the space, and in the middle of the room was a modest-sized table with four chairs around it. There was also the pervasive scent of cooking food wafting through the room.

  Daemonia chose to step into view the moment that Lilith took a sniff, trying to identify the food. The heroine was dressed differently than before, wearing a red crop-top that almost
blended in with her skin, while a pair of purple satin pants billowed around her legs. The woman had two plates with napkins on them in her left hand, silverware in her right, and her tail had wrapped around two wine glasses to carry them comfortably. Now wearing lipstick a darker shade of purple than her pants, the heroine flashed Lilith a smile.

  “Good, you came! I thought you would, but it’s always possible that you would’ve changed your mind. If you hadn’t come, I’d have had to snag the scrumptious CEO who’s been eyeing me in the gym the last few days instead. Mm, that would have been fun,” Daemonia said, her gaze growing slightly distant for a moment, then she shrugged and stepped over to the table. “Not that this won’t be, even if not in the same way. You’re quite attractive, and if it weren’t for your niggling issue, I’d seduce you.”

  “You make that sound easy,” Lilith said, frowning as she stepped farther into the room, once again unnerved by Daemonia’s easy grace.

  As she watched, the heroine slid the plates to two places across the table from each another as easily as Lilith would have been able to manage with both hands, then placed the silverware on the napkins. She turned, her tail depositing the glasses in place without so much as a clink while she wasn’t looking. That was a touch terrifying.

  “Because it would be. You aren’t that complicated of a person, now that I’ve met you, and I guarantee that I could have you waking up in my bed tomorrow, asking yourself how you ended up there,” Daemonia replied calmly, flicking her tail straight, now that it didn’t need to imitate a pretzel, and she pointed at Lilith, her eyes narrowing. “The problem is that if I did that, you wouldn’t want to leave. In your current state, you’d latch on to me, and that would be the end of it. That, my dear, is a problem.”