Lilith's Arithmetic: The Revelations of Artemisia Wright

Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Contents Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 About the Series Eve of Light Story Order Newsletter Sign-Up About the Author Also by Harambee K. Grey-Sun By Harambee Grey-Sun Cover Title Page Copyright Contents Beginning About the Series Also by Harambee K. Grey-Sun 
 
 
 
 
 Lilith’s Arithmetic
 The Revelations of Artemisia Wright
 
 An Eve of Light Novel
 
 
 
 
 Harambee K. Grey-Sun
 
 
 
 HyperVerse Books, LLC
 
 
 
 
 This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
 
 Copyright © 2023 by Harambee K. Grey-Sun
 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including scanning, photocopying, or otherwise without the expressed written consent or permission from the publisher or author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a review.
 
 Cover design by Kelvin Reese
 Cover art copyright © KaiJaeArt | Depositphotos.com
 
 Published by HyperVerse Books, LLC
 PO Box 23642, Alexandria, VA 22304
 www.hyperversebooks.com
 Crossing genres without apologies.
 
 Print ISBN-13: 978-1-64044-028-9
 Ebook ISBN-13: 978-1-64044-027-2
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Contents
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Chapter 1
 
 
 Chapter 2
 
 
 Chapter 3
 
 
 Chapter 4
 
 
 Chapter 5
 
 
 Chapter 6
 
 
 Chapter 7
 
 
 Chapter 8
 
 
 Chapter 9
 
 
 
 
 About the Series
 
 
 Eve of Light Story Order
 
 
 Newsletter Sign-Up
 
 
 About the Author
 
 
 Also by Harambee K. Grey-Sun
 
 
 By Harambee Grey-Sun
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 One
 
 
 
 
 
 Traces of wildflowers and other long-gone weeds floated upon the January morning’s breeze, essences almost as sweet to Artemisia as the more metallic aromas expelling from the corpse’s fresh chest wound.
 She’d tried to hold her breath while she crouched over the broken body, using the enhanced senses filtered through her eyes and ears to detect any remaining signs of life, any toxic flickers that might revivify the body, making it a newer, stronger threat. But she let her lungs refresh when she realized there was no hope of resurrection for the boy.
 It had been easy. Much easier than usual.
 Artemisia straightened her legs and back, standing as tall as an upright coffin as she glanced around. She hadn’t a care for witnesses. She’d scared off what few there’d been by casting a trio of well-defined holograms—three furious black bears—an excellent distraction that had allowed her to swoop in on the jogging boy, then trip and trap him as she bent the light around them both, rendering them invisible to any human onlookers as she performed her unique surgery.
 Now only she remained, inhaling frigid air among the skeletal red maples. She heard the cawing of crows in the distance, the only sign of life apart from herself.
 Lazily, her gaze fell to the body lying flat on the frozen grass before her; her eyes traveled from the gaping hole in its chest, which gave partial view to where its heart had been, to the unhinged jaw, a modification made so that his newly extended mouth might act as a nest for the bloody lump. His skin had gone pellucid, giving a clear look at the multicolored circulatory network that had been so abruptly disrupted. She lingered on the eyelids, thin folds of flesh squeezed as tight as his anguish could manage and now frozen that way. When she spotted the tiny spidery creatures trailing out of his ears like ants, she turned to walk away.
 She was getting better at these divine executions. But there shouldn’t have been opportunities to get better. There should have been one opportunity, just one for her to do her best against the archenemy and end him. What was she missing?
 Her stroll down the frozen path became less confident with each step. Her posture less erect. Her feet were just as likely to move to the left or to the right as they were to move forward. Dizziness struck her, a sensation of her own blood pressure plunging.
 Stumbling about, she was engulfed by a parti-color mist, an opaque congregation of droplets matching the hues of her fallen foe’s arteries and veins. She stopped trying to walk and bent over, her hands on her knees in an attempt to regain stability, to retake control of her breathing.
 She felt some measure of balance as the mist faded, giving view to her new hazy surroundings: a grand garden of wondrous flowers, plants, and trees, populated by even more fantastic creatures great and small—amalgamations of beasts she recognized and things she could hardly imagine.
 She could, however, understand all the creatures’ calls—their barks, their chirps, their whistles, their roars, their grunts. Her awe increased as her range of vision lengthened. She was fluent not only in all the creatures’ varied tongues but also in their body language—all the communications of their sounds and movements and patterns and (for some) their rapid color adaptions as they passed in and out of camouflage with all the varied leaves and stalks and grasses.
 There was one, however, with whom she was not in tune. In the distance, between two irregular rows of spectacular fruit trees with glittering foliage, she glimpsed a lone bipedal figure. It tramped through the garden and toward her at a spritely pace, its movements somewhat robotic.
 Artemisia squinted at it, telescoping her vision. Its nude body was clearly human, male. Trying to focus on the hairless figure’s face, she discerned no eyes, no ears, and no mouth. Whatever facial