From: Delphi@oracle.org

To: C_Evans@athena.edu

Re: Arachne’s child

Christine,

I think we’ve found another one of Jackie Cavanaugh’s offspring. I hesitate to call her Jackie’s daughter. After all, Jackie only provided the egg and the funds for genetic experimentation. As far as we know, Jackie never even visited her three children, much less provided any emotional support.

This woman has received a package that we’ve tracked to the remote hills of India. We know next to nothing about her, but I’m betting she has enhancements. Her sibling in Hong Kong was a genius trapped in an immobile body. Who can guess what curses—or gifts—this other child might have?

I’m putting all of our research resources into finding this woman—and any sisters she has left. If she’s anything like her mother, we don’t want her to get her hands on any of the information Jackie accumulated over the years.

I’ll be in touch when we know more.

D.

Dear Reader,

I’m super excited about the release of Untouchable for two reasons. One, being asked to write an Athena Force book was like being asked to write for my favorite television show. As a fan of the first Athena Force series I was honored to be part of such a fabulous continuity. Then there was the added bonus of getting a pretty detailed preview of what was coming next. I go crazy for spoilers. I can’t help myself.

Two, I’ve always wanted to write a heroine with superpowers. It goes back to my Wonder Woman days. Who didn’t want those gold bracelets? When I learned that my heroine’s special gift was poisonous skin I knew it was going to be a challenge, but I couldn’t wait to dive in. I hope you have as much fun reading this story as I did writing it. It goes without saying I would love to hear what you think. You can visit me at www.stephaniedoyle.net

Stephanie Doyle

Untouchable
Stephanie Doyle

www.millsandboon.co.uk

STEPHANIE DOYLE,

a dedicated traveler, has climbed Croagh Patrick in Ireland, snow-shoed on Mt. Rainier, crawled through ancient kivas of the Anasazi and walked among the blue-footed boobies of the Galapagos Islands. A firm believer that great adventures can lead to great stories, she continues to seek new challenges that will trigger her next idea. Readers can find out more about Stephanie by visiting her Web site, www.stephaniedoyle.net.

To my brother Pat, who, like my heroine, lives in a foreign land.

Can’t wait to visit.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 1

“Lilith! You must come quickly. Lilith!”

The sound of her name penetrated her sleep. She focused on the language that was being used. English. Not Hindi. One of the nuns rather than a villager. Slowly she opened her eyes and turned her head toward the noise. The heavy tarp that served as the door to her hut was pulled back. Sister Joseph filled the space.

“They are asking for you on the hill. You must hurry.”

The plump older woman stepped inside and instantly Lilith pushed herself farther back on her sleeping mat. “Do not get too close. I am not dressed.”

The sister obeyed and turned away. Lilith got out of bed and began to assemble what had become her unique habit. First, a cotton slip. Then, a long bolt of silk she pulled over her head that covered her from neck to foot, shoulder to wrist. Ties secured the material to her body, making the uniform less cumbersome. At times she was sure she must be mistaken for a mummy.

Finally she reached for the gloves that sat on her writing table, which was the only other piece of furniture in the small hut other than her sleeping mat. As she slid the gloves up her arms Lilith felt the material cling to her skin. It was a sensual feeling that she allowed herself to enjoy for only a second.

“The brothers have need of your…medicine,” Sister Joseph told her with her back still turned to her. The brothers were Buddhist monks rather than Christian brothers, but the nuns who lived in the village situated below the monastery treated them with as much reverence.

“They have a visitor among them. Looking for retreat, I think. I believe a leg wound has festered.”

“Leprosy?” Lilith asked. “Has he become infected by one of the villagers?”

“No.” Sister Joseph shook her head. “He hasn’t been exposed to anyone long enough. Unless he contracted it somewhere else. Listen to us,” she said sheepishly. “A man comes in with a wound and we automatically assume it is one of the rarest and hardest-to-contract diseases in the world. We’re growing paranoid I think.”

“But this is our world,” Lilith reminded her. “It is what we see every day. It is natural to make assumptions. I will go to the brothers. I’ll see what can be done.”

The woman backed out of the hut and Lilith followed her at a distance. It was still night, but nearing morning. Animals in the forest just beyond the village sent signals to their comrades to start the day. They were familiar sounds but still exotic to Lilith’s ears even after all this time.

She followed the path that led from her camp up a steep hill that was flattened at the top. A hundred years ago devout monks had come together to build a monastery as a tribute to Buddha. Today it served the same purpose.

Deep in the region of Arunachal Pradesh, near the China border, this track of forest was almost forgotten to the rest of India. As were her human inhabitants. It was why the monks had claimed this space in their search for solitude. It was why the lepers had been banished here, ejected from society.

It was why Lilith called it home.

The trail steepened noticeably but Lilith didn’t falter, her legs well used to the path. Although she chose to live among the Christian nuns who had come to care for the lepers, it was the monks with whom she continued her spiritual education. Poor Sister Joseph tried so faithfully to convert Lilith. But while she enjoyed the stories of the man known as Jesus, for in many ways he was also an outcast from his people, there was something about the monks’ teachings that called to her.

Maybe because she was surrounded by so much death. The idea of coming back to life to try again appealed to her. Obviously there was more to the religion and Lilith embraced all facets of it, but it was the idea of returning as something different, someone different, that mattered to her.

Not that she ever planned to tell Sister Joseph. The woman would be crushed if she knew there was no hope for conversion. Still, despite their varying religious beliefs, the monks and the nuns had no problem coexisting. If neither subscribed to the other’s beliefs they still respected the sacrifice each had made for their faith.

As she climbed higher, the air thinned. Lilith could see the structure in the dark. The monastery was built of stone and mud bricks. An impressive sight, it rose three stories and had over a hundred different rooms linked by long corridors. It was a square design with an orchid garden in the center that Lilith knew the monks referred to as the inner sanctum.

At the main entrance Lilith pulled down hard on a rope several times to announce her presence. The bell clang could be heard throughout the compound.

Eventually the door opened and beyond it she recognized Tenzig, one of the younger brothers. His head was shaved and he was wrapped in the traditional saffron-colored robe that declared his spiritual path. His expression was as serene as ever. He stepped back to allow Lilith to enter, clearly not surprised by her arrival and not in any particular rush. They spoke in the hushed tones of his language as he directed her through the labyrinth of hallways.

“Tell me again, why am I here?” Not that she didn’t trust Sister Joseph’s version of events, but she found herself needing the distraction of conversation. There was always risk involved when her medicine was needed. It made her nervous. She could feel her heart racing just thinking about what needed to be done.

“A visitor came to us. Looking for peace. He walked with a limp. Now the fever has taken him and we fear the only recourse is to remove the leg. He needs to…sleep…before we can do this. You understand?”

“Sister Peter has seen him?”

“She is already with him. We went to her first.”

Sister Peter had recently arrived from the United States. A medical-school dropout who had been called by her faith to take a different path, she had quickly proven herself an invaluable asset among the monks, the nuns and the villagers. If Sister Peter was concerned the leg would have to come off, then the situation was as grave as Tenzig said.

“You can’t take him to a town? Find a real doctor?” Lilith could only imagine the shock the man would suffer to be put to sleep against his will only to wake and find a leg missing.

“There is no time and it is too far to travel even by automobile. Also, we think he would not want to leave this place. We think he would not want the exposure that his wound might cause in a village large enough to have a hospital.”

Lilith nodded. Many who came to the monastery who claimed to be searching for peace were actually looking to get lost. This man, it seemed, was no exception. A criminal maybe. Dangerous possibly. Perhaps she would serve a greater good by giving him more than a numbing sleep. It would be so easy. A simple touch.

If only death weren’t so very disgusting to her.

They stopped beside a door and Tenzig knocked gently. He was commanded to enter. Inside the room Lilith saw another brother, Punab, sitting side by side with Sister Peter as the two of them tended to the man on the bed.

The patient was naked but for a cloth that had been draped over his hips, no doubt in deference to the sister’s sensibilities. His hair was thick and ink-black. Damp, too, from either the fever or the cold compresses being applied.

His chest was broad, well defined with muscle and covered with the same inky-black hair as what was on his head. His legs, too, looked thick. Strong. It was as if he exuded strength despite the flush of fever on his cheeks. There was a heaviness to the man without being fat. A solidness that his entire body conveyed. Even in his hands and his feet.

Lilith wondered how much his body matched his spirit. If they were at all close, she predicted he would be stubborn. It would not be easy to kill this man. Certainly it would take more than a mere fever.

Glancing over the rest of his body, she saw, high on the inside of his left thigh, the infected injury. Almost perfectly round, it was viciously red and oozing pink puss.

Definitely a bullet wound. Lilith had seen enough of them when hunters poaching tigers had missed their mark and found people instead.

“I can’t get his fever down. And he won’t let us get close enough to the wound to see what’s causing the infection,” Sister Peter relayed.

Lilith could see the concern on the woman’s face. Her dedication was unquestionable, but she was not a doctor. She would feel responsible if something happened to him in her care even knowing that she had done everything she could. If for no other reason, Lilith wanted to help her friend. She would do what was asked of her regardless of the risk.

“He won’t let you?” Lilith asked. “He is weak from fever. Can’t Punab and Tenzig hold him down?”

Both monks were smaller than the man on the bed and more used to meditation and study than fighting, but surely in this man’s weakened condition the two of them could subdue him.

Punab, much older than his sister counterpart, a fact emphasized by his deeply lined face, shook his head. “This man is not like others. This man is…a warrior. He’ll not be held unless he chooses.”

Lilith translated the monk’s words since she knew Sister Peter still hadn’t grasped the nuances of Hindi.

“A warrior, huh? More likely a thief who got caught on the run. We’ve seen his kind come to the monastery before. They say they’re looking for enlightenment then after a few days, when they figure the coast is clear, they disappear. No doubt this one would have done the same if he hadn’t gotten sick.”

He didn’t look like a thief, Lilith thought. Something about his jaw, the shape of it, made him seem too proud. He was Indian—she could determine that by the bronze color of his skin—but his features had been sharpened by another race. She watched him for a long minute and decided that while he was not a thief, she could not say for certain that he wasn’t a killer.

Warriors killed, after all.

Suddenly his eyes popped open and he focused on her. “Don’t let them take my leg.”

Startled by his sudden alertness, Lilith took a step back. He spoke in English and his accent was British.

“You need to rest,” she replied in his language. “I can help you sleep. I can take the pain away.”

“No,” he rasped. “They’ll take it while I sleep. You can’t let them.”

Lilith moved closer to the bed. Impulsively she reached out to him, thinking to adjust the damp cloth on his head and soothe it over his face to remove the droplets of sweat that beaded his forehead. But she caught herself before she touched him.

It wasn’t in her nature to touch anyone. For comfort or anything else. Even when she was wearing her gloves. But clearly the man needed to be assured. What Lilith didn’t know was if her assurance would be a lie.

She met Sister Peter’s steady gaze. The two women were a stark contrast to each other. The nun’s blond hair to Lilith’s dark. Sister Peter’s brown eyes to her gray. Tall where Lilith was not. But despite their physical, religious and cultural differences they communicated easily and without many words.

“I can try. No doubt something was left inside the wound. A bit of dirt or debris. I can try to cut around it and clean it out. But if the infection worsens…”

There was no need to finish the thought. It was a common misassumption that leprosy somehow caused limbs to simply fall off a person’s body. The truth was that the numbness caused by nerve damage often resulted in minor cuts left untreated for too long. In the heat and humidity, infection would take hold quickly, leaving amputation as the only recourse.

Lilith had been witness to the procedure too many times since she’d arrived here from Nepal. Glancing down again at the man on the bed, she found it hard to imagine how he would handle the loss of his limb. Clearly the fear of it was enough to keep him fighting through the delirium of fever.

“Let us see what we can do. After all, it is such a nice leg.” Lilith smiled softly and Sister Peter smiled back. Tenzig and Punab made no comment.

“The cup, Tenzig.” Lilith pointed to a shelf that held a clay cup used for transferring water out of a larger bowl in the room that was continually kept filled. Cleanliness was serious business for the monks and they spent nothing short of an hour every day rinsing their bodies and their spirits of dirt.

Carefully Lilith tugged at the material bunched at her fingers until the glove slipped off. She started to reach for the cup that Tenzig filled when she saw him freeze.

She might have thought that it was fear of her that had him rooted to the floor, if she hadn’t seen the quick glance he gave toward the bed. Lilith heard the gasp of Sister Peter before she actually felt the grip of a hand around her left wrist.

The man’s grip was tight but it was clear his intention wasn’t to hurt her. Merely to get her attention.

He had it.

Her eyes were pinned to where his hand circled her delicate wrist less than an inch away from the exposed skin of her hand. “Let go,” she said softly.

“You can’t let them do it,” he said. “You can’t let them cut it off. No matter what happens…you can’t. I must be able to run. I have to run….”

Lilith looked away from where he was holding her and focused on his flushed face. “I won’t let them take it. You will run again. You will see. But you need to let me go.”

He said nothing. His chocolate eyes remained fixed on hers.

She tried to smile gently the way she thought a mother might smile to give ease and comfort to a sick child. “It is going to be all right. I won’t let them hurt you. Let go now.”

“Your face…” he whispered then swallowed hard.

Lilith’s brow furrowed. He couldn’t know her. She was sure that she had never seen his face before. She would have remembered.

“Your skin…so…beautiful.”

He used his free hand to reach for her, his finger outstretched almost as if he intended to caress her cheek. Lilith pulled her body away from his outstretched hand. Eventually his lack of strength defeated him and his hand fell back to his side. Feeling his grip loosen, she tugged slightly and that arm also fell back against his stomach.

“Quickly, before he moves again.”

Tenzig jumped forward and held the cup out to her. Lilith took it with her gloved hand. She closed her eyes and took several deep breaths.

Please, she thought. Please don’t let me hurt him. Please don’t let it be too much.

She dipped a single finger into the cup of water and circled the rim once. Then, because of his size, once more. She handed the cup back to Tenzig.

“Start with a few sips first,” she warned Sister Peter. “See how he reacts to it. If while you’re working he moves or starts to revive just a brush on his lips will work. Remember not to let it touch your skin. What you do not use must be poured out into the ground not mixed with any other water source.”

“I’ll be careful.”

Lilith nodded. She took a final glance at the man and saw that his eyes were closed but she doubted he slept peacefully. After a few sips that would change.

There was nothing left for her to do, but she found herself reluctant to leave him. It was probably irrational. For a moment she felt as if her presence had meant something to him.

“I will do everything I can, but remember I’m no surgeon,” Sister Peter warned. “I can’t promise anything.”

“I know you will do your best. That is all he can ask for. He is lucky that he has you in such a place. And if something should go wrong, you carry no guilt for your effort.”

Despite her words, Lilith felt a quiet confidence that the nun would succeed. Not only was her faith in Sister Peter unquestionable, but the man’s strength and determination was also a force to be reckoned with. Together she was sure they could beat back the infection and defeat the invasive fever.

Sensing that she had lingered too long already, Lilith pulled her attention away from the bed.

“If I am not needed anymore, I will head back to the village.”

“Tenzig will walk you,” Punab said. “Once again we are grateful to our sister. Our Sangha is lucky to have such a unique person in our midst.”

Lilith bowed her head in response.

His words only served to remind her how unusual this small piece of earth was and how grateful she was to have found this place. There were very few communities that would be grateful to have someone like her in their midst. Like a leper, she was an outcast.

Unwanted.

Feared.

Tossed out like garbage, first by her mother’s family, then by her father.

Lilith tried to forgive those who didn’t understand. More, she attempted to see the decision through their eyes. There had been a reason why she had been rejected by her people and ultimately evicted from her home.

She was an agent of death.

Chapter 2

“How is he?” Lilith called out to her friend.

It had been almost a week since her midnight summons to the monastery and every day she thought about the warrior.

Sister Peter had spent the first two days and nights at the stranger’s bedside doing everything she could to save his leg as well as his life. After a pitched battle with the raging fever it was finally acknowledged that the man was too stubborn to die. At least that was what Sister Peter told Lilith when she eventually returned to the village. She declared that not only would he live, but he would also keep the leg.

Stubborn, just as Lilith had suspected.

Since then the dedicated nun had visited him daily to monitor his progress. Lilith wasn’t sure if Sister Peter was merely doing her due diligence or if secretly she was taking satisfaction in a job well done. Hard work and success weren’t praised by the other nuns.

It was expected.

Today she had gone again to check up on him and Lilith waited for her at the bottom of the hill as she had every day to hear news of his condition. She couldn’t say why she would not go to the monastery to see him herself. She told Sister Peter it was because she did not want to risk another incident like the one that night, but now that the fever was gone she imagined she could avoid his touch without any explanation. Lilith’s condition wasn’t something she shared with passing strangers.

Each day she thought about it. Each day she waited for Sister Peter to deliver the news instead.

Slowly Sister Peter descended the steep path that led away from the monastery. Lilith could see the weariness on her face from the extra burden of his care, but mingled with the fatigue was the serenity that came from doing what she believed she’d been born to do.

Lilith almost envied her.

“He’s doing better than yesterday,” Sister Peter said. “Actually walking on the leg a little. Remarkable given his condition a week ago.”

“No danger at all, then, that he will lose the leg?”

The sister stopped and shook her head, a faint smile on her face. “Not now, no. He’s lucky I found that fragment of bullet left in the wound. Time should tell whether or not there’s any lingering damage to the muscle, but he’s young and strong. No reason to think he shouldn’t be perfectly fine in a few weeks. I’m sure I’m imagining it, but I think the brothers were particularly grateful I didn’t cut up their warrior. I can’t tell if they fear him or revere him.”

A warrior. That was what Punab had called him. However, they had also let him into their sanctuary. They let him stay to search for whatever it was he’d come looking for. There must be some trust there.

“That is good news,” Lilith said. “Once again I do not know what we would do without your skills.”

“I was thinking the same thing about you.”

“Mine is not so much a skill, I think. However, I am grateful I did not kill him.”

Sister Peter raised a single eyebrow, a trick that fascinated Lilith. “You seem awfully concerned with our new patient. You did hear me when I said I pulled a bullet fragment from his leg.”

“I heard you. And I know how the wound was caused. I am not concerned for him. I am just…”

Lilith had no answer for how she felt. He was a strong man. A handsome man, too. She supposed if she had to be honest with her friend she would say that he attracted her on some level. Which was strange. She wouldn’t have imagined that she could ever feel such an elemental connection with another person.

Attraction was useless to her. It had no hope.

It was one of the reasons she knew that although she studied with the monks on the path to enlightenment she could never consider herself a Buddhist nun. To do so would mean practicing celibacy, one of the five precepts. For those on the path this meant sacrifice. For Lilith it meant survival.

Not that such a thing mattered. The title of nun had been lost to her long ago when she had broken the first precept: do no harm. She’d broken that precept many times.

Sister Peter often tried to convince Lilith that what she did to end suffering or what she did by accident could not be considered a sin. But dead was still dead to those she touched. Maybe it wasn’t intentional, but it was a result of her actions. For that she knew she could never fully walk the path to true enlightenment. At least not in this lifetime.

There was, however, always the next.

“I am merely glad he lived,” Lilith insisted. “That neither one of us was responsible for killing him.”

Sister Peter smiled. “Amen.”

A noise penetrated their conversation, forcing Lilith’s head upward. She instantly identified the sound of machine rather than animal.

“Sounds like we are going to have more visitors.”

“Hmm. It’s been a while since she’s been here,” Sister Peter noted as she also studied the sky, waiting for the helicopter to catch up with the sound. “Several months. I thought maybe she was gone for good.”

Lilith took in the sister’s worrisome expression. “That sounds more like wishful thinking on your part. Do you not like our benefactress?”

Sister Peter folded her arms over her chest and frowned. “It seems petty, doesn’t it? After all, without her money we wouldn’t be able to afford the multiple-drug therapy that’s worked so well for those infected. Especially the children. But…”

“But?”

“There’s something about her, Lilith. Don’t you think it’s odd the way she seems to be so fascinated by you?”

Lilith shrugged. She hadn’t really considered it. It was clear to any newcomer that she was set apart from all the other groups. Not a nun or a monk or a villager. She imagined it was natural to be curious as to who she was, what role she served.

“I believe she thinks I am some kind of tribal healer. Of course, she does not understand how I make the medicine that I dispense.”

“Doesn’t she? The way she follows your every step when she’s here. The questions she’s always asking the sisters and the villagers about you. For a woman who is simply supposed to be doing good works with her money as she claims to be, her actions feel very…deliberate.”

“She never stays for long,” Lilith pointed out. “She will come and go and we will have that much more money as a result of her visit.”

Together Lilith and Sister Peter headed back to the village. The incoming helicopter caused the uproar it normally did. The children, desperate for distraction from their monotonous days, ran to the clearing that had been carved out for supply drops.

Supplies and Jacquelyn Webb’s helicopter.

A woman with apparently unlimited resources, Jackie owned the helicopter that flew her from Bomdila, the nearest city, into the heart of the jungle. A self-proclaimed philanthropist, she heard about the leper colony during a plea from the Franciscan nuns at her local church. Urged to act, she set up funds that allowed for a continual flow of the necessary medicines to treat leprosy in the tiny village. One day she decided that sending money wasn’t enough. She needed to come and meet the people infected with the horrible disease in order to determine how else she could help.

That was the story she told Lilith on her first visit. At the time Lilith saw no reason to question the older woman’s sincerity. However, now that Sister Peter had brought it to her attention she had to admit that Jackie very rarely showed any interest in the sick or even in the progress her money had made possible.

Instead her interest was in Lilith. How she’d come to be here. Why she’d chosen to stay. How she prepared the medicine that so many of those infected said took away the pain.

It was impossible to keep Lilith’s condition from those she lived with; too many precautions were needed. Although the sisters had often tried to convince her to find medical treatment for what they called her disease, they never pressed the issue or discussed it with outsiders.

Despite her financial contributions, Jackie was an outsider.

When Jackie asked about her strange garb, Lilith played it off as a uniform chosen by some women practicing Buddhism. When Jackie offered to take her out of the village, to see some of the other sights of India, Lilith simply declined without explanation.

By the time they reached the landing site the children were crowded together to watch the show. As the helicopter began its descent into the thick foliage that threatened daily to overtake the man-made landing pod, they waved and danced about. Blades rotated so quickly it was nearly impossible to see them.

The helicopter’s wheels touched down and Lilith saw that the pilot was the only passenger. Jackie hadn’t come, but her helicopter had.

The pilot emerged from the machine. On his shoulder he carried a satchel, and after maneuvering his way through the children who were all pleading for rides, he spotted Lilith. He paused for a second to study her.

Finally he walked directly to her. “You’re Lilith?”

Lilith took a step back. She didn’t recognize his accent, but he wasn’t Indian.

“I am.”

“This is yours.” He slipped the satchel’s strap off his shoulder and lowered it carefully to the dirt in front of her feet. Then he stepped away and once again threaded his way through the clamoring children. He got back in the chopper and almost instantly he was lifting off from the jungle floor.

“What was that about?” Sister Peter asked as she came up behind Lilith.

“I have no idea.” Kneeling, Lilith inspected the satchel. She flipped open a flap and pulled out another smaller black bag. Inside that she found a thin black square that she recognized. Jackie used to bring it with her every time she traveled. She said it was so she could stay connected to the outside world.

She showed it to Sister Peter.

“A laptop? She sent you her computer.”

Lilith shrugged and then reached into the satchel again. This time she pulled out a small box and an envelope. She opened the box and pulled back when she saw a fat gold spider sitting on black velvet. Shaped like a black widow, it was incredibly detailed. Small head, thin, wiry legs and a two-inch-long round bottom. Despite it being a replica, Lilith could almost feel its deadly aura. Her fingers trembled as she touched it.

“Not exactly my taste in jewelry,” Sister Peter noted. “Even if I hadn’t taken a vow of poverty.”

Lilith pulled it from the box and saw that the spider was attached to a gold chain. She looked at it quizzically.

“Do you think it was intended to be a gift?”

“Do you have a penchant for spiders?”

Lilith shuddered. “No. But it is heavy. If it is gold, it could be worth a great deal. Why would she send such a thing? I have no need of personal money or possessions. Only donations that can be used for the village. Do you think she wants me to sell it? I cannot imagine such a thing would be easy.” She didn’t want to verbalize it, but the necklace was very ugly.

“Read the letter.” Sister Peter pointed to the envelope in Lilith’s hand.

Having almost forgotten it, Lilith set the necklace back in its case and tore into the envelope. It was written in English, but Lilith had command of the written language as much as she did the spoken one.

The key is in the spider. Use it wisely.

Welcome to your new life.

Jackie (A)

“Welcome to your new life….” Sister Peter read over Lilith’s shoulder. “What does she mean by that?”

“I do not know. The key is in the spider….”

Lilith scooped up the box and stood. She pulled out the spider and studied it from all sides. Turning it on its back, she spotted a seam in the gold. Using her thumb, she pushed and pulled until the back slid open. Inside was a small silver rectangular device that Lilith didn’t recognize.

“I know what that is,” Sister Peter said. “It’s a memory stick.”

Lilith shook her head. “I do not know….”

“A flash drive. You insert this into the back of the computer in one of the USB ports. It stores files. Like a floppy disk or a CD only smaller and with more space. It means there is information on it. Information you can view if you plug it into the computer.”

“I do not understand. Why would she send me computer files? Here? And the letter A next to her name. I thought her last name was Webb. None of this makes any sense.”

“Then make sense of it. Read what’s on the files. You’ve probably got a few hours of battery life on this laptop. That should give you enough time to sort through whatever it is she wanted you to have.”

Lilith took the memory stick from Sister Peter and put it back into the spider’s belly.

“I was supposed to go to the monastery for study this afternoon,” she said absently. She had also thought that maybe today she would overcome whatever was holding her back and stop in to check on the visitor’s condition. She’d wanted to see for herself that he was doing well and that his leg was getting better.

And if she were honest with herself, she wanted to talk to him without him being delirious this time. Given his improving condition, it seemed likely he would be leaving soon. This could be her last chance.

“I have to go back up in a few hours to check on your friend’s bandages and to make sure he isn’t pushing himself too hard. I’ll let them know you’ve been detained.”

“I feel anxious, though. Reading what is on this computer. What if it is private? What if this is a mistake and Jackie simply sent this ahead of her arrival?”

“If it was a mistake she wouldn’t have written the note. And if it was that private she wouldn’t have sent it to you at all.”

“I know one thing for certain. I do not want a new life,” Lilith said adamantly, referring to Jackie’s message. “This is my life. I cannot imagine why she would write such a thing.”

Sister Peter shook her head and smiled sadly. “Oh, Lilith, this isn’t a life. This is an escape. Trust me, I know.”

“That is not true.” Lilith was stunned by the sister’s words. “I am needed here. I contribute. I belong here.”

“Of course you contribute. And yes, you are welcomed here. I didn’t mean to imply that you weren’t. Only that… Well, you didn’t get to choose this place. It was chosen for you. You didn’t get to decide what you wanted to do with your life. It was decided for you.”

“Not decided,” Lilith corrected her. “Dictated. Dictated by my condition. You have seen what I can do. I have no other choice.”

“Yes, I’ve seen what you can do,” she allowed. “But you don’t know if your condition can be treated. You have never tried to leave this place to find out. Accept the truth. You were sent here as a punishment by your family. A punishment you didn’t deserve because you couldn’t possibly help what happened.”

“I have never spoken of what happened,” Lilith said quietly. “You do not know what I did.”

“I know it must have been bad for your father to do what he did, but I also know you were a child. Barely thirteen when you were abandoned here. You stay in this place to punish yourself for this wrong you feel you’ve committed. That’s not living life. That’s suffering in purgatory.”

Lilith recognized the word from Sister Joseph’s many sermons. Purgatory was a place you went after death to atone for your sins before moving on to heaven.

Glancing around the village, she saw the small huts and so many of the thin, suffering bodies that filled them. There were good days here, but she couldn’t deny that most of them were filled with pain. Pain she could only ease for a little while.

Maybe Sister Peter was right. Maybe this was purgatory.

But that didn’t mean that Lilith didn’t belong here.

Chapter 3

The screen turned black as she continued to press her finger down on the power button. Lilith wasn’t sure if it was the proper way to stop the computer but it was the only thing she could think of to make the words go away. And she so desperately needed to make them go away.

If you’re reading this I’m dead….

The awful part was that Jackie being dead was the least disturbing piece of information in her files.

Genetic experiments. A new breed of powerful women. My offspring. My daughters.

Shaking her head, Lilith tried to remove the flashes of phrases that were burned behind her eyes, but they wouldn’t let go of her. She couldn’t unread what she’d read or unlearn what she’d learned. It would be with her now. Always.

Surrogate mother…two others created of my eggs…each of you now has a piece of my empire… Put the pieces together and all will be revealed… This is a taste…

Hungry yet?

Hungry? A taste?

Empire.

That word stood out among the rest. It was the word Jackie used to describe the endless amounts of folders on her memory stick. Some of the folders were names. Names that even in the far reaches of Arunachal Pradesh Lilith recognized. Leaders of the world, who had lied, cheated, raped and killed. Sinners, all of them, who paid money to hide their crimes rather than admit their mistakes and be punished for them. Vaguely Lilith wondered if they hadn’t simply created their own version of a lifelong purgatory.

And there was more. So many folders that she couldn’t open, but after what she’d already read she couldn’t imagine going any further. Couldn’t conceive of wanting to know more than she did.

Closing the lid on the laptop, she stood and moved away from it. Lilith knew she would never be able to move as far away from the machine as she needed to be to forget. She didn’t believe the world was that big.

Jackie Webb, Arachne as she’d referred to herself, was Lilith’s biological mother. That had been in the first folder Lilith read. The documents indicated that the woman in whose womb she’d grown had been nothing more than an incubator for a genetic experiment. Had she known when she agreed to do this what they were putting inside her? Did she have a choice?

Did she ever suspect that the baby she was giving life to would ultimately poison and kill its host?

The impact of what this meant, of what she’d learned, was suddenly too much to handle. It was like having the secrets of the universe revealed all at once. Her mortal mind was too fragile to take it in. She needed to leave. She needed to find someplace where she could let the information settle in her head and in her heart.

The monastery. There she could clean herself. In the garden she could let the water rush over her body, taking away the filth she’d been exposed to. She would remember who she was—not what the computer had revealed but who she had become since her birth.

Lilith started for the opening to the hut but stopped. The computer sat on her writing table, so out of place in the stark space she’d called home for these last ten years. She could still feel the heat it gave off. Or was what she was feeling something more sinister? Part of her wanted to destroy the computer and the tiny piece of metal inside it. But she knew she couldn’t. The information it contained was simply too important.

Walking back to it, she removed the stick from the back of the computer and found the spider necklace still nestled inside the box she’d place on her table. She turned it over and slid open the back, returning the flash drive to its hiding place. Leaving the necklace wasn’t an option, but the thought of wearing it made her shudder.

She had no choice.

Lilith pulled the gold chain around her neck and fastened the catch in the back. Then she tucked the gold body inside her silk coverall where it rested against her skin, safe from another’s touch.

Avoiding the greetings from the villagers and, more important, avoiding Sister Peter, who would have nothing but questions, she made her way up the steep hill to the monastery.

Another young monk answered the summons at the door. Pema had recently been sent to the monastery by his family in Nepal. If the beads of sweat that habitually formed on his shaved head were any indication, he still hadn’t gotten used to the weighted heat.

Lilith spoke in a dialect native to his land, one that she remembered from her childhood in Nepal, and he smiled. Thinking she had come for study, he pointed to where she knew Punab typically held his classes, but instead she made for the inner courtyard fashioned with water pumps and basins where the monks did their bathing as well as their laundry.

Winding her way through the series of walkways, Lilith found the center of the building. The burst of color inside the garden was so comforting she could have wept. This was the place she came from. The place where she’d begun to learn who she was. Not that other place. Not some lab.

Carefully she reached out and touched the delicate petals of the orchids that flourished under the brothers’ care. So much like her own skin, she thought. Soft and silklike with just a hint of dew. Sometimes others thought she glowed. It hadn’t been a curse as her father believed. It wasn’t a sickness like the nuns suggested.

What had been done to her had been done on purpose. By Jackie.

Frowning, Lilith let the flower fall from her hand and made her way deeper into the courtyard where she found a series of pumps. Taking a large clay bowl with a flat bottom that had been specifically designated for her use, she placed it under the pump and began to call up water from the well that resided under the brick building.

In deference to her sex, she sought out the three-sided partition that the brothers had constructed for her. It allowed her privacy during her bath as well as prevented the monks from being tempted by her femininity should they stumble upon her. Once behind it she felt free to unwrap the bindings that encased her.

Tarak winced. He felt the pinch in his thigh with every step he took and figured he was overdoing it, but he wouldn’t let himself stop. In a sick way, he was happy to feel the pain. It reminded him that he had a leg. His fault, he told himself. When he’d arrived at the monastery’s doorstep he hadn’t been paying attention to the nagging pain in his thigh. Only the one in his soul.

Eventually the fever had overtaken him to the point where he’d known he was in trouble. Spending more time in the jungle than most, he’d seen what fever unchecked by medicine could do to a man. A merciless thief, it could rob a man of his strength, then his sanity, until finally it took his life.

Lucky him, he’d been spared both his life and his sanity. Or had he?

Images still haunted him from that night when the monks had come to his room. It seemed otherworldly. Surely a sign that he’d lost his mind. There had been two women with Punab. A plain-faced one, simple and forthright. She’d wiped his brow and told him to hold on—that someone was coming to take away the pain. He’d felt the fire in his body. The heat was focused most intensely where the bullet had ripped through the flesh of his upper thigh.

He remembered lying in his sweat thinking that the heat was good. The pain was good. He deserved it. He’d earned it. Everyone else had died. But he had lived and for that he needed to suffer.

He wanted to tell the woman in the rumpled white habit that he craved the pain. Because not only was it punishment, it was proof. Proof that he was alive. That he’d been smarter than the enemy who had betrayed him. There was satisfaction in that even though his men were dead.

Where had it gone wrong?

Tarak stopped in his wanderings. He reached down to massage the muscles around the wound, working his fingers deep into his leg to ease the cramps. When he looked up, the colors of the garden exploded before his eyes and he realized he’d made it from his room to the center-court orchid garden.

He wanted to appreciate the beauty in front of him, but instead his mind kept working back to the question that had stayed with him every day since the incident.

How had he failed?

He could ignore the lingering questions. Accept what happened and move on. Tell himself that it was the job. The risk they all took. But he knew himself well enough to know he never would.

Instead he let himself think back to the specifics of the mission.

He took himself back to the compound outside of Monteria, Colombia. It wasn’t hard. The sweet scent of the orchids reminded him of another jungle on the other side of the ocean.

Back there it had been darker and the stench almost rancid. The rain hadn’t just fallen on their heads, it had cascaded. But they all knew the job, and rain wasn’t something they let get in the way. Six soldiers. All contracted by the CIA. Tarak had been chosen to lead.

Mistake number one, he thought grimly. He’d allowed the CIA to pick some of the team rather than do it himself. The soldier-of-fortune community was a relatively small one. In the years since he’d left MI-6 to work on his own as a freelance agent, he’d come to know most of the regular players. Those who did it for the money. Those who did it for the thrill. Those who wanted to serve but had been disenchanted by bureaucratic bullshit getting in the way of action. Like him.

But that night there were two people the CIA told him to use. One he knew and considered a friend. The other a stranger, but not new to the game, he’d been told. Those two people were responsible for providing intelligence information. The rest of the unit was to engage the compound where it was suspected that a DEA agent was being held. Their mission had been to confirm that the hostage was alive and to extract him if possible.

A task like that relied more on intel than it did on men with guns. That was why two had been chosen to gather and provide the information that the team would need.

Tarak knew one of the two was a traitor.

Unfortunately his first clue that the mission had gone to shit was when he heard shots being fired ahead of schedule. He hadn’t given the command to move forward but the explosives were suddenly triggered. A shower of gunfire over their heads had them all running for cover. The guerillas working for the drug lord were behind them in the jungle instead of at their posts inside the compound where they were supposed to be.

Tarak had immediately called for a retreat but their communication had been compromised and all he’d heard was static.

He’d found the bodies of Sheppard, O’Neill and Grace on his way out. All of them his men. It had been Grace, clinging to his last breath, that had cost Tarak the wound to his leg. He’d been lifting him when he got hit from behind. By the time he fell to his knees Grace was already dead.

His only recourse had been to run.

Once more Tarak kneaded the muscles in his leg, harder this time so he could feel the pain and remind himself that he was alive.

Why had fate saved him? Was he a better man? He doubted it.

Sheppard had been a money-hungry bastard but good at his work. O’Neill had been a marvel with explosives, and he had taken an unnatural thrill in blowing things up. But Grace was neither. Grace had been a friend. A loner. A good soldier. He’d had Tarak’s back more than once. He’d been trustworthy and in the soldier-for-hire business that kind of reputation was gold.

And now his body was rotting someplace in a South American jungle. Food for the native inhabitants.

Grace didn’t deserve that. None of them did. On the way out of that mess what consumed Tarak was why he had survived. He could see no reason why fate had been so kind to him. The dark thoughts had forced him to seek answers, and the only place he could think to begin such a journey was here. Among his mother’s people.

He’d been right. After a few weeks at the monastery with help from his mother’s uncle, Punab, he’d started to realize it was time to let go of the guilt. Time to move on with this life.

Which ultimately led him to the question…what next? He’d been thinking about his future when the fever had grabbed hold of him. It had occurred to him, even as he felt his fever spiking, that the wound in his leg should have been healing. Only it hadn’t been.

The next thing he knew he was waking up in a dark room with a nun wearing a sweat-stained wimple leaning over him.

And there was the other nun. With the strange habit and the skin that seemed to glow.

Tarak shook his head. It had been the fever. It must have been. It had grabbed control of his mind and had shown him ridiculous images. A woman who glowed with gray eyes that did not fit her face.

Had she even been real?

The answer to his question had him gasping. He moved around one of the orchid bunches in his path and froze. His breath caught as he tried to process what he was seeing.

He watched a waif—for surely she was not human—carefully sponge water over her arm, her breasts, her belly and her hips. Letting the droplets crawl down her body into a flat basin under her feet.

Tarak was on the east side of the compound, away from where he knew the monks studied in the morning. He would have expected the courtyard to be empty until noon, but here was the mystery woman from his delirium in the midst of her bath. The partition she used to block the view of onlookers closed her off to the west side of the courtyard, but she obviously hadn’t expected anyone to be walking along the east corridor.

There was no question it was her. He knew without seeing the color of her eyes. They were closed. Maybe to better feel the touch of the sponge and water as she ran the rough material over her body. Or maybe simply because she’d gotten soap in her eyes. Whatever the reason, he was grateful because it kept her from being aware of his presence for a time. With the three-sided screen at her back it was as if she was on display just for him.

His personal Venus.

He’d been wrong about the fever stealing his sanity. Her skin did glow. A luminescent sheen that made her almost ethereal. He yearned to touch her. It wasn’t just the natural hunger of man for a woman. Although based on his body’s quick and urgent response there was that as well. It was like being in the presence of art. Like a marble statue that cried out to be caressed. Only this woman wasn’t cold stone, she was living flesh.

She dropped low to dip her sponge in the water, swishing it about. Her eyes opened. He could see her lashes flicker as she concentrated on her calves. Then she reached her hand over her back, the sponge barely making it a quarter of the way down her spine. Suddenly the temptation to help her finish the job was too much.

He stepped forward, forgetting to accommodate his injury by letting his right leg take the bulk of his weight, and a rush of pain shot from his thigh to his brain, forcing a small sound past his lips.

Instantly the waif became aware of his presence. Her arms wrapped around her breasts and the sponge dropped into the pool of water at her feet. Her eyes were round with fear and Tarak felt instantly ashamed. In reality he’d behaved no better than a Peeping Tom. But while he chastised himself for it, he certainly didn’t regret it. He wouldn’t have missed this show for the world.

Her eyes, however, were still wide with terror.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said gruffly in English although he repeated the phrase in Hindi.

He assumed her fear stemmed from the thought that he would rape her, but after his words she stood slowly. One arm shielded her femininity from him. The other she wrapped securely around small but pert breasts.

“Do not come any closer,” she said in English.

“I won’t. I promise,” he replied. “You didn’t expect anyone to be on this side of the courtyard?”

“They are all in study. I did not expect you to be up and walking so far.”

Tarak nodded, then glanced around the washing area. “You bathe here instead of with your sisters down by the river?”

An irrational bolt of anger accompanied his statement. Yes, the monks were celibate but they were still men. There were times a man’s sexuality couldn’t be so easily controlled with meditation. A woman so beautiful it hurt to look at her could incite the weak-willed to dangerous acts.

“Yes. I cannot bathe in the river.”

He heard her words, but they made no sense. “Well, you shouldn’t bathe here. Anyone might come along and…”

“Like you.”

“Worse than me.”

“If you mean the monks, they know better than to touch me. The villagers, too. I am safe from everyone who knows me, but you do not. You must stay back.”

“Have I taken a step forward?”

Slowly she shook her head.

There, he thought, satisfied. The beginning of trust. “I’m not a boy to be controlled by my desire. But if I were…” He smiled softly. “You would certainly be a danger to my self-control. Do you have something to dry yourself off?”

He watched her glance toward the robe she’d left hanging on the edge of the partition, but he realized she would have to either drop her arms or turn around and give him an altogether different view of her body to reach it.

A gentlemen would have turned his back. Tarak could almost hear his father’s stiff English voice in his head ordering him to turn around and allow the woman her privacy. That nostalgia for his father won out against a hard urge to see if her ass was as shapely as the rest of her.

Tarak turned his back to her. “Hurry,” he warned.

He heard the ruffle of movement as she stepped out of the basin and reached for her covering. He counted to what he was sure was a fair five seconds in his head before turning again. The silk material she wore fluttered to her feet and he sighed with disappointment.

“Who are you?” he wanted to know.

An expression crossed over her face that he couldn’t name. Sadness or maybe confusion, as if she didn’t know how to answer such a basic question.

“Your name,” he said, making it easier for her.

“I am Lilith.”

It didn’t fit her, not at all. But he didn’t press. “Your surname?”

She shook her head. “I have no surname. My…father would not give me his.”

He didn’t know what to say to that so he offered his own name as a way of building further trust. “I’m Tarak Hammer-Smith. My father was English, but my mother was Indian. She was a niece to Punab. It is how I came to be here.”

“I thought you came to be here because of a bullet hole in your leg.”

Tarak ignored the implied censure and asked his own question. “Why are you here?”

He didn’t think she would answer, but he had to ask it anyway. She was a jewel, he thought. Half woman, half creature. So completely beautiful. But she was tucked away in the jungle among lepers, nuns and celibate monks. It made no sense.

“Are you a Catholic missionary?”

She shook her head. “I am here because I have nowhere else to go. Because I choose to stay.”

“You came to my room a few nights ago.”

“You were in pain. Sometimes I can help make pain go away.”

“You’re a healer?”

Again, she shook her head. “No.”

“But you brought medicine. I remember drinking from a cup and then…”

And then the pain had stopped. Almost as if he’d gone numb from the roots of his hair to his toes. He hadn’t been asleep and whatever he’d sipped had done nothing to reduce his fever. But the next thing he knew the nun was leaning over his leg with a small knife in her hand.

She’d found part of a bullet fragment the medic he’d gone to in Monteria had left behind. The extraction should have been excruciating, but he hadn’t felt a thing. Funny that it all came back to him now. But why shouldn’t it? He’d been awake the entire time.

“What was in that cup?”

“I need to get back to the village,” she said in answer to his question. “First I must dispose of the water. You need to leave.”

Dispose of the water? Was it some ritual she needed to perform? “I’ll empty the basin for you,” Tarak offered as he took a step toward her.

“No. You cannot. I must do it. Stay back. Stay back!”

Tarak stopped in his tracks. He was now only a couple of feet away from her, and he could see the fear return. She was pressed against the partition and couldn’t easily get around it. For all intents and purposes he had her trapped.

“Please, you must stay back,” she whispered.

“Easy. I told you I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to touch you. I wanted to touch you that night. I remember that. Your skin is so…”

“No,” she said and pressed herself against the partition out of reach of his hand. “You cannot. You need to understand. I will hurt you.”

“You’re not making any sense.” But since his ultimate desire was to win her trust, he folded his arms over his chest. “I hate things that don’t make sense.”

He watched her search for a reply and finally she shrugged her shoulders. “Tough.”

He tilted his head back and laughed. It certainly wasn’t the answer he’d been expecting. “All right. You win. For now.” Tarak took a few steps back from her and with each one he could see her relax. “But, Lilith, I will see you again. And next time you’d better come with some answers.”

She said nothing and so he began to head back to his room. Then he stopped as the image of her body came to him, an image he would enjoy conjuring for some time to come. Turning, he saw that she was wrapping the ties around her arms to secure the billowing silk to her body.

“Lilith?”

She snapped her head up, no doubt surprised he was still close. “Yes?”

“It is an interesting necklace. But if you’ll pardon me, I must say that I don’t think it suits you.”

Chapter 4

Lilith stared up at the straw roof of her hut and considered her next move. Considering she was into her second hour of thinking, she feared the answers wouldn’t quickly be forthcoming.

It was his fault. The stranger’s. No, not stranger, Tarak.

She’d gone up to the monastery to clear her mind so that she could think rationally about what needed to be done. Now all she could think about was his gaze on her, looking at her in a way that she’d never been looked at before.

She’d been desired before, but it had been different then. She’d been barely more than a child. Just thirteen. But her father’s brother called her closer to a woman than a girl. A temptation, he’d said. She remembered the look in his eyes whenever he stared at her and thought again of Tarak. Definitely different.

Her uncle hadn’t listened to the warnings that she shouldn’t be touched. Perhaps he should have known better, but that was her father’s fault. Her father had only told others in the village where she lived that she was not to be touched because she was cursed.

Unclean.

It was what she believed, too, until she began to understand that what she could do went beyond superstition. Beyond her father’s hatred.

On that day her uncle caught her alone. He professed that he didn’t believe in curses. He said he would take her to wife if she behaved and did everything he wanted. She remembered the bolt of fear that had shot through her system and how that had caused her skin to dampen with what she believed back then was merely sweat.

She tried to run, but he caught her. Then he tore away the heavy coverings that she wore in layers to protect herself from the cold as well as from incidental contact, and she watched as his hand roughly cupped her barely there breast.

Suddenly his eyes popped open and he hissed through his teeth, struggling to catch his breath. Before she could pull away from him he fell on her. Dead weight.

Her father found her struggling to crawl out from underneath the body. He blamed her for enticing his brother, for causing his death. For being born cursed.

She tried to explain she hadn’t meant to kill him. She just had.

That night he took her to a monastery in Nepal where it was known that one of the monks would soon be leaving for India. He’d warned the monk of her perfidy and insisted that she live among the outcast. The monk obeyed and brought her to this village.

What revenge she might have if her father knew how she’d flourished here. In this place she wasn’t seen as inherently evil or cursed. Here she helped people and worked to find spiritual fulfillment that would help her to someday forgive herself for taking a life.

Yes, he would be outraged to know that she had made a home here.

Lilith bolted up from her sleeping mat as a question occurred to her. Her father hated her. She’d always known that. As a child she imagined it was because of her sickness. As an adult she came to believe it was because she’d caused him sadness, the death of a wife he must have loved greatly.

But the woman who’d given birth to her wasn’t his wife. According to Jackie, Petra had been chosen from a family in Tibet who were well paid for their youngest daughter. Her father, Gensen, was from a village far south of that. Had he even known Lilith’s surrogate mother before her birth?

Lilith struggled to recall what she’d read earlier. There had been so much and it had all been so distressing that it was hard to remember the specifics. She reached for the necklace around her throat and looked to the laptop that still sat on her desk.

“Only the information about me,” she promised herself as she got up and walked over to the computer.

She removed the flash drive from the necklace and booted up the computer. Then she walked through the steps Sister Peter had given her earlier to access and read the information in the files. She searched for and found what she was looking for.

Gensen.

She clicked on the folder and selected the first file in it.

Gensen was a proud man. It was his pride that drew me to him in the first place… And made me want to crush it…

Lilith continued to read about how Jackie had met the Buddhist monk. Once a leader among his people, he had been on the path to enlightenment. But Gensen had not been prepared for Jackie’s unique brand of temptation. She didn’t immediately offer him her body. Instead she played on his intelligence, his spirituality and his pride. She made him believe that the two of them were connected in some universal way.

Then she seduced him. Once his vows of celibacy were behind him and he considered himself fallen from the path, he no longer fought her control over him. She asked for and was given his life essence. Once she had what she needed, she left him broken and humbled.

Lilith leaned back in her chair as a wave of regret and sadness threatened to smother her.

“You did not hate me because of what I was or what I did. You hated me because of her. Because I was part of her.”

She knew from the stories that her father had told her that Petra had gone into premature labor with her and that before the doctor had pulled Lilith free from the woman, she had died. Then the doctor who first held Lilith died, too. A quick-thinking nurse with a heavy blanket had pulled the child from the dying man’s hands and managed to save her. Because Lilith had been responsible for Petra’s death, Gensen told Lilith that her mother’s family had disowned her and that all she had left was him.

Doctor. Nurse. The story had always seemed odd to Lilith. All the babies born in the village where she’d grown up and even here in this village were born at home with only a midwife in attendance.

Not her.

Jackie must have been there. She must have waited to see what her egg had produced. Then she had handed her over to Gensen to raise…why? Maybe as a means of protection. Or possibly Jackie wanted to put Lilith someplace where she could easily find her again.

How angry Jackie must have been when she returned to Gensen’s village only to find that he’d banished Lilith to India. Considering what she’d read about Jackie, Lilith had to wonder whether or not her father was still alive. It seemed likely that the woman called Arachne would have dispatched him when his usefulness was over.

Lilith didn’t know how she felt about that. Surely she should be sad if her father was murdered. She had always carried the sadness of killing the woman she’d believed to be her mother. But Petra had been an innocent. Her father was not.

For that matter neither was Jackie. Lilith felt no remorse over her passing.

Vaguely she wondered how many monasteries Jackie had searched before finally finding the one near a leper colony where her daughter lived. Her visits had started years ago. If Lilith had been looking for it back then she might have sensed a certain satisfaction in Jackie’s expression when they first met. But of course, Lilith hadn’t been looking for it. Naively she’d accepted the story the woman spun never realizing that she was in the presence of her mother.

Or the presence of evil.

The memory of each visit would need to be scrutinized. Every word exchanged, analyzed for new meaning. But before any of that happened, Lilith had to make a decision about the information that was now in her control. She was about to turn off the offensive machine when a file name caught her eye.

Children.

Children. Not child. Unable to help herself, Lilith clicked on the file and began to read about Jackie’s other…offspring.

Two other women. Both with unique abilities. Both her half sisters.

Eventually Lilith turned off the laptop. It was too much to learn in one day. About her mother, her father and her sisters. Sisters. Related to her.

Family.

The crush of emotions made her nauseous.

Three women all spawned in a lab from the eggs of a woman who was clearly immoral. What Lilith was given was only a third of the entire picture. Jackie said the pieces needed to be put together, but Lilith wasn’t sure what her mother’s intention had been. Whether she imagined her three children joining together for some nefarious purpose or if somehow the three flash drives were connected.

It didn’t matter. Lilith’s piece would never be joined to complete any puzzle that Jackie had a role in creating.

And what about her sisters? Did they want to claim their full inheritance? If, like Lilith, Jackie had given the two babies to other people to raise, they might not share Jackie’s depravity. They might be just as horrified by the information as Lilith. What if at this moment they were seeking her out, hoping that Lilith might have some answers for them?

She needed to find a way to contact them. Instantly she thought of Sister Peter. She would know how to find someone. She was forever talking about how the Internet was such a powerful tool. Bringing the entire world together. Once Lilith found her sisters Sister Peter would know which authorities could be trusted. As an American, she had a deep understanding of justice and the system that upheld it.

But to use her like that, Lilith would have to tell the nun why she needed her help. The burden of Jackie’s files was too much to share. Lilith couldn’t claim to be an expert on the world, but she was at least savvy enough to know that the information in her possession could make her a target. Certainly the people listed on these files would want to find this information once they learned of Jackie’s death. Find it and destroy it along with anyone who might continue to blackmail them.

Her mind wandered back to the man in the monastery. The brothers called him a warrior. Warriors fought. But who did he fight for? A man of violence, did he use his skills to help or to hurt people?

Dismissing the idea before she let her mind formulate it fully, she knew she would not ask Tarak for help. It was too risky. She couldn’t involve anyone she didn’t trust. Better to keep the information hidden rather than risk exposure.

Which meant she was on her own in trying to find a way to locate these other women. She would see if they had received a spider from their mother. Then together they could decide what to do next. The simplest solution would be to destroy it all. Lilith, however, would wait until she had their counsel.

Outside she heard a noise. Acting quickly, she hid the computer under her sleeping mat. She returned the memory stick to its hiding place in the necklace and dropped the spider inside her silk coverall.

Another helicopter. This one circled overhead searching for a place to land. The pilot must have spotted the small landing area, because it began its descent.

“My, we’re becoming popular around here,” Sister Joseph said as she hustled her round body over to where Lilith stood in the center of the village. “Do you know what this is about?”

“No, Sister.” It wasn’t a lie but she knew it could not be a coincidence.

Calmly Sister Joseph folded her arms over her large bosom. “Are we in trouble, Lilith? I’m not asking because I am upset. I just want to know what we’re dealing with. I have more than my sisters to think about. I feel responsibility toward the villagers, as well.”

Lilith turned to find Sister Peter rushing up to join them. She stopped short and also crossed her arms over her breasts. She looked as concerned as Sister Joseph.

“I do not know what this is about. But I cannot promise it will not lead to trouble,” she said honestly to both of them. “Be alert.”

Sister Peter nodded. “I’ll round up the villagers. Let them know to keep the children close.”

Lilith waited as once more it was the children leading the parade for the visitors coming out of the jungle. Until their parents intervened and pulled them away from the excitement. At first the children resisted, but ultimately they obeyed, leaving only the helicopter’s passengers.

Lilith counted five large men of varying colors and race, all outwardly armed. Some with more than one weapon attached to different body parts. They looked as fierce as she imagined they wanted to. More men of violence.

But it was the woman in front of them that caught her attention.

About Lilith’s height, the woman’s skin was a lighter shade of brown than Lilith’s, but her eyes…they were Jackie’s eyes. Not the color, but the shape. There was no doubt she was looking at another one of Jackie’s daughters.

“Let me guess,” the woman said to Lilith, opening her arms in welcome. “You are Lilith.”

“Yes,” she whispered even as she felt the air clog in her throat.

The woman smiled broadly and widened her arms even more. “Well, hell. Come give your big sister Echo a hug!”

Chapter 5

The woman stopped a few feet short of Lilith. Her arms dropped to her sides. “Oh, that’s right. No hugging, is there? Oh well, we’ll just air kiss and call it a reunion.”

The words made sense, but Lilith couldn’t decipher her tone. Nor did she understand the woman’s attitude. They were two women who were linked by a biological bond. They were relatives coming together for the first time. Yet Lilith could find no sign of the significance of this moment in the woman’s voice. She seemed cavalier about their meeting. Not relieved. Not happy. Not afraid.

Nothing.

“You found me,” Lilith realized. “How?”

“Mummy’s little gift to me,” Echo told her. “I have to assume you got one, too. A special gift, that is?”

“I…” Lilith’s throat locked up. “I do not think we should talk about this in front of others.”

“Oooooh. A cautious little thing, aren’t you? That’s good. That means you’re smarter than I was probably going to give you credit for being.”

Sister Peter stepped up to stand beside Lilith. She was touched by the sign of support from the sister, but still Lilith would rather Sister Peter not say anything. “Lilith, what is this woman saying? Is she your sister?”

“The name is Echo.” Echo stretched out her hand to the nun but quickly pulled it back. “Oh, sorry. I keep doing that. This is a leper colony, right? Maybe I would do better not touching anything while I’m here. So, a nun? Wicked. Are you my sister’s friend?”

“I am,” Sister Peter said.

“Then you must know about her loss. Our mother—a mother we didn’t even know we had—is gone. Killed. I’ve come to grieve with the only family I have left. I’m sure you can appreciate that.”

“Killed?” Lilith repeated, focusing on only that. Killed was very different from dead.

“Yes,” Echo relayed. “It was awful. When I heard I was angry. So hurt. But it’s true. I had my people verify the information. Mummy was murdered by a woman named Allison Gracelyn. You don’t know her, but our two families have been at odds for years. Where Mummy succeeded in making something important of herself, Allison’s mother failed. Allison never got over that. She wanted revenge. More than that, she wanted to steal our mother’s empire. Something you must understand by now is quite…extensive.”

Lilith said nothing, but she felt Echo’s eyes boring into her, studying her as if to learn something that Lilith didn’t want to reveal. She tried to focus on the story that Echo was telling her, but all she could think was…danger.

“Or do you?” Echo wondered aloud. “In this backwater village maybe you don’t even know what…” She stopped herself and shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that I’m here. You and I are connected. Isn’t that amazing?”

It should have been, but amazement was the last thing Lilith felt.

“We must do something to celebrate,” Echo continued. “A feast and some wine. We can sit and talk. I want to know you, sister. Intimately. Just like I’m sure you want to know everything there is to know about me.”

“Lilith, I must go and see to my duties,” Sister Peter interrupted. “You’re welcome to use the meeting hall to talk and get…acquainted. Also, I’m sure the monks would welcome your guests.”

“Absolutely.” Sister Joseph beamed. “Please make yourself welcome. Any friend of Lilith’s is naturally welcome here. We’ll leave you to catch up. I am sorry for your loss. Both of you. Sometimes even those people who don’t play a large role in our life can still make a horrible dent when they leave it. God bless you both.”

Echo clutched a hand to her heart. “God bless you, too, Sister. Thank you for those kind and meaningful words.”

Lilith watched Echo watch the nun walk away. She watched her make a gesture behind her back and thought again that every word she said would have to be scrutinized for truth.

“Nuns, huh?” Echo asked. “This place is crawling with them. Does that mean you’re one, too? Makes sense, I suppose, since you can’t ever let anyone touch you.”

“No. I’m not a nun,” Lilith said carefully. Instinctively she knew that information was power to her sister and the less said the less power she might have.

“We could leave here,” Echo offered Lilith. “I could snatch you up in my helicopter. We could find the closest piece of civilization and hope they have decent curry. Wouldn’t that be fun?”

Lilith shook her head. She wasn’t going anywhere with this woman if she could help it. “I prefer not to leave the village. The meeting area is this way. There we can sit and talk. We have food, but no wine.”

“Oh, well. Boys.”

Lilith started walking in the direction of the lodge that was referred to as the meeting hall. It was where the sisters took their meals together. Prayed together. Where the elders in the village met to discuss issues. It was a simple single-room structure, but it would serve their needs. Glancing back over her shoulder, she could see Echo’s men following close behind, their faces strangely neutral as they passed many inhabitants who were covered to hide their faces or missing limbs.

She’d labeled them as men of violence and instantly the label made her think of Tarak. But these men seemed different to her. Colder. Tarak’s face had never been so neutral. Certainly not when he was in the grip of the fever. And definitely not when he was looking at her.

They reached the wood structure and Lilith led them inside. Sunab, daughter of one of the village elders, offered to feed the guests so that Lilith could visit with the newcomers. Lilith accepted the offer and together they sat at a long table. Echo on one side, Lilith on the other. Her men sat at the opposite end apart from the two women. None of them spoke.

“So,” Echo began. “What shall we dish about?”

“I am sorry…dish? I speak English. Sister Peter has taught me some idioms, but I am not familiar…”

“Dish. Chat. Talk. Converse. I think we should start with Mummy’s gift. You got one, too. You don’t seem all that surprised by my being here, which means you must have accessed it somehow. Where is it?”

Lilith smiled graciously at Sunab as the girl poured her a cup of water. She reached for it and took a few sips, watching Echo scrunch up her nose at the fruit and flat bread being offered.

“There is another one like us,” Lilith said, avoiding the question. “Are you aware of that? Do you know her?”

Echo focused her gaze back on Lilith. “Of course I know we had another sister. She was murdered. Sad that we didn’t get to know her. But she was also killed by that woman I mentioned. Not her directly. One of her minions. Still, Gracelyn was behind it.”

“You make this woman sound dangerous.”

Echo chuckled. “Allison Gracelyn is a very powerful, very bad woman. Her mother founded an academy where Allison now sits on the board. A school for girls. She trains them in her image. These pupils destroyed our mother, acting on Gracelyn’s orders. Then they went after our sister. Dangerous? Yes, I would say she’s dangerous. But that doesn’t mean I’m afraid of her.”

“Of course not,” Lilith said. “Our sister. Who was she?”

“Her name was Kwan-Sook. She was special like us. A real giant of a woman, if you know what I mean. But deformed. As an invalid she was easy for Gracelyn’s girls to eliminate.”

Killed, murdered, eliminated. The words came so easily. “This woman killed Jackie. Then Kwan-Sook. Why?”

“I told you why. For revenge. For the information in Mummy’s control. Information is power. Information over powerful people is, well…really valuable stuff. Anyone would kill for that.”

Not anyone. But at least Echo confirmed Lilith’s belief that information was a tool that she liked to use. “I meant to say why now? Was there something that happened that triggered this woman to act?”

Echo lifted her shoulders. “Who knows. Maybe she stumbled upon something. Some thread that led her to Mummy. That doesn’t matter. What matters is that there is only us left. And if you think she won’t be coming after us and Mummy’s gift then you’re wrong.”

“You think she could find me here?”

“She found Mummy. She can find anyone. So where are you keeping it?”

To ask Keeping what? would have been foolish. Lilith didn’t completely understand this woman yet. Maybe hopelessly, she still found herself looking for some commonality between them. But she knew one thing for certain. Her sister was no fool.

Keen intelligence resonated in the glint of her brown eyes. Just like they had in Jackie’s.

“It is hidden,” she answered finally.

Slowly Echo nodded.

“Excellent idea. Precautions are necessary. Have you read everything?”

“No. I could only open some of the files. Others were filled with gibberish.

“Encrypted.”

Lilith accepted Echo’s statement. “What I did read did not make much sense to me.”

It wasn’t exactly a lie. For a woman who tried to adhere to Buddhist precepts the acts of depravity those people committed didn’t compute. However, Lilith knew that she was deliberately misleading Echo. It was obvious that Echo couldn’t hide her disdain for the humble place where she’d found her sister. It might be useful to let her believe that Lilith was as simple and uneducated as Echo wanted to believe she was.

“It is a lot to take in for me, as well. I, too, only had access to part of the data. But tell me more about you. This skin condition you have. Is it terribly annoying?”

Given the way she reacted when they first met, Lilith had already determined that Echo knew about her condition. Suddenly she felt at a disadvantage. She hadn’t read enough to know what skill Echo or the other sister who had been murdered possessed.

“It is manageable. Sometimes I can use it to help people.”

The woman’s lips turned up in what should have been a smile. “Help people. That’s sweet. You’re a softy, aren’t you? I can tell. Help people. That’s priceless.”

Echo looked away as if she were studying the structure. Analyzing. Calculating. Lilith could practically hear her brain working.

When she focused her gaze on Lilith once more the smile was gone. “We could do that together. We could take this information and use it somehow to help people.”

“How?”

Echo shifted on her bench. “I don’t know exactly how this minute. But we’ll think about it. We’ll discuss it. You’ll show me where you’ve hidden her…computer?”

“Laptop.”

“Laptop,” Echo repeated slowly. “We’ll pool the information that we have and we’ll see how we can use it to make this world a better place. Wouldn’t that be fun? Two sisters working together to fight evil and injustice. Our first mission would be to take down Allison Gracelyn and her academy. Finding justice at last for our poor dead mother and sister.”

Lilith wondered if Echo could hear the insincerity in her voice. “I think it is important that the right thing be done with the information we have been given.”

“Ditto.”

No longer able to stay in Echo’s company, Lilith stood and worked to keep her knees from trembling. “I have chores I must see to. Please stay and eat.”

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