New York, NY
Monday, July 30, 2001
6:20 am
Lilianna woke to find Nottingham staring down at her. She smiled and dragged his head down to kiss him soundly.
She glanced at the clock on the nightstand next to the bed and told him, "You better leave soon; we don't want to upset Irons unnecessarily."
"I still can't believe that he actually prized someone above himself. Sometimes he acts as if he cares about me but I know that he would rid himself of me without a second thought simply on a whim."
Lilianna looked troubled.
"How are we going to free you from him without killing him? I wanted to just go ahead and do that before, but now ... "
"You don't want Susanna to be hurt anymore than she has been," Nottingham finished for her. Lilianna nodded and Nottingham sat up. "We'll figure something out."
Lilianna watched as he got dressed.
She was amazed when she managed to sound casual as she asked, "How long does Irons usually go running?"
"About two hours, and then he goes to breakfast at Pierre's after for another hour, why?"
She climbed out of the bed and wrapped her arms around him.
"I want to know how long it will be before we're together again."
He smiled, and her heart skipped a beat at the love and beauty shining down at her from his eyes. Their lips met and she welcomed the now familiar flood of sensations that came from touching him. He pulled away with great reluctance.
"I have to go. We don't want to give him any excuse."
Lilianna watched him leave and then moved into action. She dressed quickly, throwing on sweats of Nottingham's and the running shoes she had been wearing. Her clothes from yesterday were special to her now that Nottingham had taken them off her, and the rest of her things were still at Sara's old apartment. The sweats were too big for her, and she had to roll up the waist on the bottoms, but she didn't plan on wearing them long. Just long enough to get to Irons' home. Inside, she would need nothing but the Witchblade.
She walked three blocks away from Nottingham's building before hailing a cab. She gave the cabby the address of a small park, located two miles from Irons' home. In the Centre, she and Jarod had often been given maps of Irons' home and the surrounding area to come up with improved security measures. When the cabby dropped her off, she jogged in the park for ten minutes before finding a spot to strip off the sweat suit, folding it neatly and leaving it on the high branch of a tree. She left the small place in full armor and headed for Irons' mansion.
When she was still a block away from the mansion's gate, a figure detached from a nearby brick wall and moved toward her. The young woman had white-blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail, and was wearing nondescript, regular clothes, a T-shirt and jeans. She looked very young, around sixteen or seventeen, but her brown eyes held a lifetime of pain. Her features, similar to Lilianna's own, were set in an indifferent mask. Around her right wrist was a solid silver band four inches wide with the Stone of the Witchblade in the center.
"Susanna," Lilianna greeted when her half-sister drew close.
The younger girl lifted one eyebrow and dipped her head slightly, "I see you've been through the Periculum, Lilianna."
"They told us that you had gone away, I didn't expect to meet you so soon." Lilianna left the vision she had seen of Susanna coming back out of it.
"Us?" Susanna's nostrils flared slightly. She blinked and drew in a breath, "Do you love him?"
Lilianna understood immediately that Susanna must have somehow smelled Nottingham on her, "Desperately. He is my life."
Susanna's brown eyes filled with unshed tears. She nodded. Taking a deep breath, she schooled her features back into what Lilianna realized must be her normal blasé mask. Lilianna recognized the look as one that Irons employed much of the time. Like father like daughter. But only in mannerisms. Susanna was good, through and through. Lilianna knew this on an instinctual level. Irons, on the other hand, was completely evil. Whatever had made him love his daughter in the other timeline had not been present in Lilianna's, and therefore probably did not exist in this one.
Besides, he did not know about Susanna. It was probably a good thing, too. God only knew what he would do with the knowledge that there were now four Wielders, and that one of them was his daughter.
"He's not here right now."
Lilianna had no doubt who Susanna was talking about. She could also hear the tension in her younger sibling's voice. At least, she assumed Susanna was younger. However, she had to have been born earlier than Lilianna if Sara had thought Conchobar was Susanna's father.
"I'm not here for him. And I don't think that I will kill him. I know you ... care about him."
Susanna stared at her, her mask slipping, "Why would that matter to you?"
Lilianna smiled, "You are my sister."
Susanna frowned and pondered this for a minute.
She began in a small voice, "I was prepared to hate you. Our mother wanted you, I know that much about your life. She never really loved me, even when she pretended I belonged to Chocolate Bar. She knew the truth all along, and it drove her mad. My existence drove her mad."
"It wasn't your fault."
"And whose fault was it, my father's? He didn't know she would go nuts. He thought having a child would ground her, maybe even attach her to him in a way. He certainly wouldn't have had me created if he knew they would both die because of it." Susanna paused and frowned again, and when she corrected herself, Lilianna realized she must have remembered how Irons had sacrificed himself for her. "Well, maybe that's not true, but what's the point in worrying about it now? I've already made sure it won't happen."
"I know your life must have been hard ... "
"That's just it. It wasn't. Not really. I had more money than I knew what to do with, and I had a guardian who cared about me. I just ... didn't have parents. But I knew through the Witchblade that things were not supposed to be that way. I knew, for most of my life, that my existence was a mistake."
"Susanna ... "
"No, let me finish. I was prepared to hate you. Because she wanted you, because you had parents who loved you even if you were taken from them, and because you are supposed to exist. But I don't hate you. I could never hate anyone who loves Ian. I almost wish you had been there, too, that you had raised me with him. He was never fully able to open up his emotions. But he must have here for both of you to be Wielders."
"You know about the Prophecy?"
"Mm-hm, it was in one of Dad's books. I always knew the man it talked about was Ian, but he wouldn't believe me. He's rather cynical."
"He's getting better about that," Lilianna smiled softly.
Susanna allowed a small smile in return, "I bet he's getting better at a lot of things."
Lilianna's eyebrows shot up, and she laughed. "I think I'm going to like you a lot."
Her sister flushed slightly and turned her head away.
They both stared at the mansion for a minute before Susanna turned around, "Why are you here then?"
"I don't suppose you've destroyed the clones of my husband?"
"My god, I had forgotten about them. The mansion lost power during the EM blast of 2009, and the pods holding the clones shut down. They drowned in the fluid that had sustained them. Ian and I didn't discover them until a week later."
Susanna stopped, but Lilianna could practically hear the wheels turning in the light blonde head, so she kept quiet and waited.
"You'll have to disconnect the pods from their power source and destroy the lab. If any of the genetic material survives, Dr. Imo will just create more, but he can't start from scratch, he was just lucky the first time. There should be some kind of self-destruct for the lab, Dad leaves nothing to chance, and the ownership of human clones would get him in more hot water than even he could buy his way out of. I'll let the Witchblade show you how to get there, but you'll need me to shut down surveillance before you go in. I assume he knows at least what you look like if you're with Ian, and he would kill both of you if he knew you were doing this. He won't be able to find out who I am since technically I don't exist. Give me ten minutes, and then you can go in. And make sure you don't leave any DNA behind. Because the Witchblade is part of you now on the genetic level, Dad may blame S-Sara."
They both ignored how she had stumbled over their mother's name. Susanna pulled something out of her back pocket and held it out. It was a metal chopstick.
"Would you mind using this to put my hair up and expose the mark on the back of my neck?"
Lilianna did as her sister had asked, using the metal chopstick to secure Susanna's ponytail into a bun above her neck, allowing the barcode there to be easily visible.
"What is that?" Lilianna asked.
"It's a long story; I'll tell you sometime. For now, it's just a little something to throw Dad off the trail for awhile. He'll try to blame some people I know, but I can keep them safe." Susanna turned away, "Ten minutes."
"Wait," the younger sister turned back to stare as the elder asked, "where will I find you?"
Susanna frowned, "I'll have to disappear for awhile after this, but I'll be back." She momentarily grinned, "I want to get to know your Ian."
With that, she was gone. Scanning the area around her, Lilianna found a place to hide while she waited for the allotted time to pass.
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Susanna easily leapt over the ten-foot wall around her father's property and landed lightly on her feet on the other side. She darted across the expanse of lawn, feeling the exhilaration that only flat out speed could give her. When she slowed near the house, one of the estate's two Wolfhounds saw her and started toward her; she growled at it. It cowered and began whining, trying to show submission. Susanna ignored it and kept an eye out for the guards as she made her way to the north facing side of the building. In the middle of the third story was a stone balcony. She leapt up and slightly forward to land on the railing of the balcony.
"Hey!"
She turned around to look down at the guard who had yelled at her from the ground. In an instant, she had leapt off the railing and onto the man, knocking him out cold. For a moment she considered killing him in case he woke up before Lilianna left, but she hadn't investigated anyone before setting out on this little exercise, so killing would only be a final resort. He might be an innocent, just doing his job.
When she had leapt back up to the balcony, she walked cautiously into the room it lead to, punching a hole in the wood door to turn the knob from the inside. By the time she had lived in the house, this room had been unused, a guest bedroom that had never housed a guest. Now the room held three packing crates, and resting her right hand on each quickly, she knew they were empty. Two of them had held furniture, while the third had held a picture of Nefertiri wearing the Witchblade, who her father and all his experts would mistake for Cleopatra. But Cleopatra had never worn the Witchblade. None of her kind ever had. They weren't allowed to.
Susanna made her way down to the first floor, knocking out three more guards on the way. She made no effort to hide herself from the cameras in the mansion, each of whose position she knew by heart. She paused in the lower part of the library, drawn to the secret room where Elizabeth Bronte was kept cryogenically frozen. But her job wasn't to set things right this time, only allow Lilianna to be able to do so without endangering her life and Ian's. She allowed her heart to lift at the thought of being able to get to know both of them in this timeline, to have something of a family again. She knew from meeting Lilianna that her sister already cared about her, especially when Lilianna had revealed that she wouldn't kill Irons because of Susanna's feelings. There was no other way to free Ian that Susanna knew about, and she decided to look into it. As soon as she shut down the surveillance system and got out.