Lilith's Shadow Omnibus: Volume 2, page 15
The next instant Lilith saw a flicker of almost imperceptible movement across her vision, and before she could do anything, something thin and rigid snapped taut around her throat, cutting off her ability to breathe almost instantly as pain radiated through her body.
“Thank you for coming to me,” a man said quietly in her ear, his voice strange with its almost artificial lack of accent. It sent a chill down Lilith’s spine, but she overruled her instinct to reach for the garrote. Instead, she tried to deal with her attacker, wishing that her shields activated against physical attacks.
The stomp of one of her feet missed him, as Stalker Seven dodged almost effortlessly, and her attempt to elbow him in the gut didn’t do much better. He seemed to be used to people trying things like that. He did not anticipate her flipping her pistol around and firing it backwards, however.
“Ugh!” the man grunted in pain, and the garrote suddenly loosened around her neck, allowing Lilith to gulp down air again before something twisted the garrote tight again, and he growled, “Bitch!”
A kick in the back of Lilith’s knee made it difficult for her to struggle as she was forced to a knee, and an instant later he knocked the pistol out of her hand just as she was about to fire again. She heard a sound she recognized over the clatter of it across the floor, that of a blade clearing its sheath, and he grunted again as she elbowed him, but this time the angle was bad, and she didn’t manage to put much force behind it.
Something hit her in the lower back, and she felt a tearing, stabbing sensation as something sharp pierced into her side. With how the edges of her vision were starting to get fuzzy, all Lilith felt was faint regret. She really shouldn’t have come down here, not alone.
Then she noticed that it was oddly brighter in the room… and her ears popped before she abruptly found herself able to breathe again.
CirceNet, Location Variable
The alarm hit Circe hard, and she dropped half of the tasks she’d been taking care of, instead focusing on the priority alert from the Circe shard in Lilith’s RV. The shard had been operating on limited bandwidth to keep others from detecting its communications, but when Lilith’s suit had lost integrity, it had gone to full power and communicated with the RV, which had then made contact with her.
Circe was just beginning to process the data, horror tinging her thoughts as she saw Lilith’s life signs, and how poorly the battle was going… and the transmission suddenly, abruptly came to an end. Lilith’s suit stopped transmitting entirely, and all vital signs vanished. Circe instantly expanded the range of her search, hoping that perhaps Warden had teleported Lilith away and that she’d reconnect to the network a few milliseconds later. She didn’t, though.
Instead, Circe found that Morgan and Warden had been nowhere near Lilith, as Warden finally teleported to the location where Lilith had been such a short time before. Looking through the heroine’s suit sensors, Circe felt her worry spike even more… and she desperately hoped that the dagger she’d seen hadn’t pierced Lilith’s liver. That would be very bad… and she was angry enough with Morgan and Warden not being there that she might just overreact if she spoke to them.
First, she needed to report to Amber.
Astrodome Convention Center, Las Vegas
The phantom pain caused Morgan to fumble the marker she’d been spinning. It took her a second to realize what the source was, a fact that ashamed her slightly. She fumbled, grabbing the marker as the faint pain around her neck intensified.
“Warden—” Morgan began, but the blonde spun away from Damper and interrupted.
“I know, I know! Damn it, what did Lil get herself into this time?” Warden demanded, her tone unusually angry.
Behind Warden, Damper looked more confused than anything else. The blonde heroine’s hair was similar to Warden’s, save that she had bangs that covered her right eye. The heroine paused, then asked, “What’s going on? Lil?”
“Lilith,” Morgan said, shrugging. “She’s in trouble, so we’ve got to go!”
Warden didn’t waste any more time, grabbing Morgan’s hand as she nodded to the black and blue garbed heroine, and Morgan felt magic gathering around her friend, crackling with potential.
That was when she felt another stabbing pain, this time in her lower-right side… and all the phantom sensations vanished an instant later. Morgan’s stomach felt like it clenched, but at virtually the same time they disappeared in a flash of light.
They reappeared in a dimly lit corridor, only a handful of feet from a bald man in black who was looking at the ground in front of him in shock. Blood was dripping from a dagger in his right hand, while his left hand had both ends of a garotte in it, which was rapidly untwisting itself. He had a char mark on the right side of his chest, revealing what looked like armor beneath it, and there was a pistol that looked very familiar spinning on the floor a few steps into the room.
The man jerked and cursed at their arrival, turning into a vaguely human-shaped shadow, but neither of them paused. Morgan snapped out a spell, magic spilling out of her rings and lashing out at him with violet light, followed by a sphere of blue-veined gold light snapping into existence around him. Morgan’s spell wreathed the man in violet, making him more corporeal again, and a moment later he returned to normal, looking particularly pale.
“Where is she?” Morgan snarled, snatching out a wand as rage caught up with her at last. “What did you do to her!”
“I don’t know!” the man protested, looking down at his dagger distrustingly, and continued a moment later. “One second we were fighting, then she vanished. Poof, gone, like she was never even here!”
“Don’t you dare lie to us! She didn’t have a teleporter on her, and she’s not capable of anything of the sort!” Warden said, stepping forward with her hair beginning to flicker with magic. “You had to have—”
“I’m not lying!” Stalker Seven shot back angrily. “If I had my way, she’d be dead, not vanished, you stupid broad!”
Warden’s scowl grew even more pronounced, but Morgan laid a hand on her shoulder, her rage giving way to fear, as she took a breath and reached out for Lilith… only to find nothing there. No connections, no sense of warmth. There was nothing, and that made her fear for Lilith more than she cared to admit. Then she looked around the room, trying to sense any foreign magic.
“I don’t think he’s lying, Warden. Something is terribly wrong, though. I can’t sense her, and if anything happened here, it wasn’t magic. At least no magic I’ve seen,” Morgan said, frowning as she sensed an odd… residue of sorts.
Then there was a faint crackling sound in the distance before electric blue light lit up part of the corridor. Seconds later, Spark darted into sight and looked around, a pistol in each hand as she blinked, then smiled.
“Hey, you two joined in and caught him! Where’s Lil?” Spark asked brightly, grinning at them.
Morgan looked at Warden unhappily, then let out a soft sigh.
Chapter 19
Thursday, August 14th, 2031
Shadowmind Redoubt Invincible, Asteroid Belt, Sol
“Where is she?” Amber demanded angrily, glowering at the monitor.
“I do not know, Mistress. I have checked every sensor in the solar system and beyond for Lilith’s tracking beacon and found nothing. Unless she ended up in a location where the beacon cannot be detected, which is possible, she is not present in the system,” Circe said, her worry quite obvious to anyone listening. “I believe she may be in another plane of existence, based on Morgan’s reactions.”
“It’s more than that, Circe. My question was more rhetorical than anything else,” Amber snapped, taking a deep breath, then growled, “I can’t find her, either, and I have an extremely strong link to her! Virtually every plane of existence borders the astral, which means that I should be able to find her anywhere, yet it’s like she suddenly ceased to exist. Even if she was killed that shouldn’t have happened.”
“Could someone have kidnapped her and shielded her from your senses, Mistress?” Circe asked, sounding like she was grasping at straws. “Or perhaps she was transported to one of the planes that isn’t connected to the astral plane?”
“Both are possible, but neither bode well for her,” Amber said, tapping a few keys to adjust her search, but as she watched the results were beginning to change rapidly. She was only the first person to realize something strange had happened, and now other people were searching for data as well. “Anyone who could do that is not on good terms with me, and I doubt they’d treat her as anything more than a toy to be examined. No hero would acquire her that way. As for other planes… they’re dangerous, Circe. Even most of the ones that are adjacent to the astral are incredibly dangerous, and it took me an enormous amount of work to find a setting on the teleporter that wouldn’t risk someone getting eaten or vaporized in the brief instant that they were on the other side. Those that aren’t connected are even worse, by and large.”
“I understand, Mistress. I will continue to search for Lilith,” Circe replied, her voice growing ever so slightly distant, and Amber scowled.
“You may do so, but you aren’t to neglect your duties to do so!” Amber warned, standing up as she considered the situation unhappily. “She may very well be gone forever. I doubt that, not with how she vanished, but I don’t want you wasting too many resources on this.”
“Of course, Mistress. I will keep your instructions in mind,” Circe agreed.
“Good. Now, I’d best see if I can find anything else. Lilith is such an enormous troublemaker,” Amber said, growling under her breath.
How was she supposed to get her planning done when Lilith kept causing so many problems?
Astrodome Convention Center, Las Vegas
“Jake… what were you thinking?” Carolyn asked, rubbing her forehead, the headache forming far too quickly for her taste.
“She went off on her own while searching for a villain who’d tried to assassinate her. It’s not my fault,” Jake said stubbornly, folding his arms in front of himself. One of the other security guards nodded in agreement, and Carolyn glared at the woman, who froze.
“You told her to get off your back. People heard you say it, as you got to the bottom of the stairs. I don’t care what you meant, or how short of a fuse you have, the way that I interpret that, and that most juries would interpret that, is that you told her to go away,” Carolyn said flatly, staring at him hard. “You told a woman who had two separate attempts on her life made in as many days to leave when you were assigned as her guard. What were you thinking?”
Jake’s jaw worked, but he didn’t say anything, instead looking at the wall behind her, his arms crossed in front of his chest. It caused Carolyn’s blood pressure to spike, and she paused, counting to ten while imagining how lovely it would be to put the man’s head on a stake. She wouldn’t put his head on a stake, even if she had the chance to kill him, but the mental image suited her mood at the moment. If this ruined their plans, General Mayhem would not be happy.
Carolyn let out a breath and turned to the side, looking at her assistant. Adam looked like he’d swallowed something foul, and she couldn’t blame him. This was likely the worst incident in the history of the convention, and if it made people hesitate to sign up… Carolyn had to stop her thoughts there, as she was getting a bit too into character, perhaps. Instead, she spoke a little more calmly.
“Do we have any idea what happened to Lilith yet?” Carolyn asked, tapping the table nervously. Having so many heroes in the basement worried her.
Adam shook his head, swallowing hard before he spoke.
“Nope. They’ve thrown several dozen psychics, magi, and inventors at the spot, and none of them can make heads or tails of the energy signature. It’s powerful, they can tell that much, but it also isn’t anything they’ve seen before,” Adam said unhappily. “Several attempts to track her down haven’t gone anywhere, and they say that the weapons Stalker Seven used were well-made but mostly mundane. He didn’t do it to her, whatever ‘it’ is.”
“Shit,” Carolyn said, taking a slow breath and counting to ten. “What about the media?”
“They haven’t blown it out of proportion, yet, which is good. They’re just saying she’s missing after she was attacked, and some of them are claiming she went back into hiding,” Adam said, shrugging as he added, smiling wanly, “I haven’t discouraged that claim, but I certainly haven’t tried to suggest it.”
Carolyn nodded, flashing him a smile as she looked around again. It took her a moment to put her thoughts in order, then she continued bluntly. “That’s all we can do, then. This has all the makings of a disaster, and I have a feeling that it’s going to get worse before it gets better. I want all the guards on high alert, Jake. If Lilith shows back up, I want to know immediately, even if it means you’re waking me up in the middle of the night.”
“Yes’m,” Jake said, sounding a little more subdued. That was probably because of the comment about a jury, Carolyn thought, but she couldn’t be sure. She’d take the acknowledgment, though.
“Good. Adam, try not to let too much news leak. We don’t know what really happened to Lilith, so I don’t want anyone claiming she died until we know for certain. If anyone has questions, direct them to me,” Carolyn told him, and the man nodded, swallowing hard. She continued. “Now, a few other things we need to do is…”
Carolyn continued, but as she did, she wondered what in the hell had happened to Lilith.
“Why did we let her wander off on her own?” Rachel asked, pacing back and forth through the room and occasionally glancing over at the spell diagram inked onto a sheet of paper. It was glowing softly as it rested on the desk, but there wasn’t any reaction from it, which just made her stomach clench a little harder. “We knew she was being targeted by assassins.”
“I don’t know,” Gina repeated herself yet again, rubbing her eyes wearily. “I mean… sure, villains almost never are stupid enough to attack here, yet it’d already happened once. I just… got caught up in things. First, there were our fans, and dragging her into that would’ve been a mess. I didn’t realize how many of my fans really dislike her. Then we ran into Vindicator, and we chatted for a while, then Damper…”
“I know, I know!” Rachel exclaimed, shame rippling through her, along with fear. She’d never run into a situation where she couldn’t get a reading on someone when she had a good sample. Not being able to localize Lilith would be one thing, but it was like she’d popped entirely out of existence, and that was terrifying. The heroine inhaled slowly, then shook her head as she spoke softly. “I just… I hate that I didn’t think about it, Gina. Spark seemed to take it even worse than we did.”
“She left Lilith with Jake… of course she feels responsible,” Gina said, watching Rachel now, looking even more concerned. Then she stood up, prompting Rachel to stop pacing.
“What is it? Is there something—” Rachel began, looking toward the spell again, but it hadn’t changed, and she was cut off as Gina kissed her.
The kiss was startling, and Rachel stiffened, then relaxed as warmth rushed through her, as well as relief and a welcome respite from the worry that had been turning her stomach into knots for hours. It didn’t last for long, but it was long enough to calm Rachel down, as Gina’s touch caused Rachel to melt into her arms.
“We’ll get through this, Rach. We always have before, and we will this time, too,” Gina said softly, pulling Rachel into a full embrace, running her fingers through Rachel’s hair gently. “We’ll search for her, but there’s no reason to fret yourself into a breakdown. Please… just calm down? I love you too much to let that happen.”
“But I…” Rachel began to speak. She let her voice trail off as she realized how tired she was, though. And how comfortable it was in Gina’s arms. So, after a few seconds she lowered her head, resting her chin on her friend’s shoulder, and she spoke softly. “Alright, Gina. I’m just worried.”
Gina nodded, rocking back and forth gently, and her voice was quiet as she replied. “I know, Rach. I know.”
As they stood there, Rachel also resolved to do a proper examination of herself. Something about all of this seemed strange to her.
Chapter 20
Thursday, August 14th, 2031
Unknown Location
“Ugh…” Lilith groaned, her eyes fluttering open for a moment, then closed them again, wondering why she could feel sand beneath her cheek. The brief moment that her eyes had been open had been rather painful, as bright light had prevented her from making out much of anything. It hadn’t been shining directly into her eyes, but she hadn’t opened them for long enough to let them adjust.
Pain was throbbing through her side with every beat of her heart, and Lilith felt faintly bloated, which she couldn’t imagine was a good sign. Similarly, her neck ached from where the garrote had been wrapped around it, and even the weight of her necklace was making it throb unhappily. The last thing she remembered was a flash of light, then… nothing. Which meant that Lilith had lost consciousness, and she really should figure out what happened.
Slowly opening her eyes to let them adjust, Lilith focused on what she could see, and confusion washed over her, as she certainly wasn’t in a hospital room.
She was laying in the shadow of a wall, at least that was what she assumed since she was in what looked like a courtyard of tall, slightly tapering stone walls, above which was a broad, almost cloudless blue sky. The walls were pale, except where they were covered with murals, ones that reminded her vaguely of ancient Egyptian ruins, save that these ones were in good repair. The ground was warmly colored sand, except that there was a pond in a corner with several palm trees around it, and a stone table. A table where a man was sitting, with an elaborate scale resting in front of him.
