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She was cold, as cold as she had ever been. She was in the chair, gaze fixed on the hearth, the last red embers reminiscent of a city that had been razed.
She tested her fingers. They moved on the arms of the chair but prickled with sleep. She needed to get up, find her bearings, and get the hell out of here. Whatever game Knutson, John Taylor, and that strange woman, Sister Jillian were playing would be dealt with swiftly and severely.
Was Taylor a traitor? Had he been turned by FEEN?
The coffee and cookies the man claiming to be Alexi had given her were probably laced with a slow-acting drug. It would be convenient for her enemies if she were to perish in an unmarked building deep inside the contamination zone.
She tried to push herself up, but there was no strength in her arms or legs. The sensation of needles prickling her body was maddening. Even if she wanted to call out for help and expose her position, she couldn't. Her mouth was dry, her throat gunked up, unable to take a deep enough breath to hawk it up while the drug was still circulating in her system.
Time. She needed a little more time.
She listened intently for the slightest noise as she pieced together the events of the last twenty-four hours, examining them for clues to the plot. Deciphering its mechanisms would be the key to her survival.
John Taylor had visited her at her campaign headquarters in New York City to congratulate her. There, he reiterated that he did not want a cabinet position. He wanted something else, and it was all linked to that woman. Allgood had accepted this, for it was the billionaire and powerful senator who selected her as the SP candidate and guided her to victory. Their political destinies were linked. One did not simply rise to the most powerful office in the world without the attachment of strings. Numerous were the stakeholders who had been promised a thread or two of her position in return for their money and influence. If this was a conspiracy orchestrated by Taylor-her campaign advisor, her former commander who had saved her life on the battlefield, her friend-it was idiotic. Unless there was something she wasn't seeing.
The most obvious culprit was the man who would immediately benefit from her demise, Vice President-elect Dana Martz. She'd never liked the man, never trusted him. Under heavy pressure from the Speaker of the House, she had chosen the heir to a garbage reclamation and recycling empire as her VP because he protected two vulnerabilities in her right-wing body armor. He was a token to the old guard Republicans who ruled the Floridian panhandle and islets, and he was a top lieutenant in the Pastor Tony's Boys organization.
The image of the bearded, steroid-bloated pastor flashed across her mind. The man had given her the votes of his congregation but had condemned her as a necessary evil in God's long game. After all these years, God still didn't like dykes.
She laughed, and a wave of searing needles swarmed across her body. Her mind ached to take a deep breath, but her diaphragm refused to respond. She focused on a succession of short, fractional breaths until she had enough air, and then she slowly let it out.
After Taylor left her headquarters, she accepted two congratulatory phone calls. The first was from the president of Canada, which she managed in her passable Québécois. The other, an obligatory call, was from Pastor Tony himself. "Congratulations, Jane," he had said in his deep, breathy baritone. "He sets up kingdoms, and He tears them down." And then, before she could say a word, he started to pray. "May the God of Abraham and Isaac fashion this wretched sinner into His divine tool. May He guide her hand as He guided the stone of David and the sword of Gideon. Amen." She said nothing. "I said Amen." She said nothing. The line went dead.
It was midnight when she quit her office for the apartment three floors higher. The private elevator opened into the living room. Christy lounged in an oversized t-shirt on the sofa, staring through her AR glasses, now and then lifting a hand or flicking a finger as she manipulated something on her social media accounts. The large television played a drone feed of the protest fires.
Over the months leading up to the election, as the death threats started to roll in and her freedoms became limited, Christy had begun to study the protesters. She learned their aliases and read their social media. She followed their movements and their tactics. It grew into an obsession that worried Allgood, but this was their new reality, and they both had to deal with it in their own ways.
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"You're back." She removed her glasses and set them on the coffee table. She stood, her shirt coming off one slim shoulder. "Mrs. President." She bit her bottom lip in that sexy way and came toward her.
Allgood took the hem of her shirt and pulled it up her shapely thigh. She was nude underneath. Smooth and fresh.
She filled her hands with her soft, luxurious hair, golden blonde. It smelled like roses. She ran her fingers through it, pulled her head back, and kissed her with a savage passion.
"Jesus," Christy said when she finally let up.
"Not you, too."
"What?"
"Pastor Tony called to bless me."
"Christ-Sorry-Fuck-I hate that guy."
Allgood palmed a full breast. "I need you, baby."
Christy pushed her down onto the sofa and straddled her lap, her shirt falling to the floor. She was glorious when naked. She buried her head in her breasts, and suckled on her nipples until she exclaimed her lust.
They made noisy love in the firelight of the drone video.
The call came at 4:30 AM. She dressed in a jogging suit, descended in the golden elevator with its eternal music, and at the front entrance, under the watchful eyes of a dozen Secret Service agents, entered the black SUV that would take her to Taylor's private jet.
A woman in a black bodysuit with short, sharp hair sat across from her.
"I am Sister Jillian," she said.
"I've seen you around," said Allgood. "You and your crew are kind of hard to miss."
"Do you understand the significance of what is happening?" asked Sister Jillian.
"John Taylor explained. If I did not trust the man with my life, I wouldn't be here."
"The ceremony will take place tomorrow night, local time. You will meet your predecessor in the anointed room. There will be a chair, a fire, and a door. Do you understand?"
"Simple enough."
"No. There is nothing simple about this. Do you understand?"
"Yes. I understand. What is the ceremony?"
"I cannot say. That is a mystery that will unfold. You will see, you will say, and you will do. You must follow it through."
"And then?" asked Allgood.
"Clarity," said Sister Jillian.
"So, you're some sort of cult?" When the woman didn't respond, she added, "You know, like the Gretas? Or is it more like Pastor Tony?"
Nothing more was said until they reached the airport, where a JTS jet waited with silver stairs leading up to the fuselage.
"One last thing, Jane," said Sister Jillian.
"Mrs. President-elect," corrected Allgood. On the tarmac in the cold morning air, she was annoyed. She needed coffee.
Sister Jillian gave a slight smile. "Do not lose yourself. I cannot protect you if you do."
The cold darkness of the room. The fire barely visible under a pile of ash. Far beyond the walls, a wail lifted, then changed to a howl, and then another. It was a series of calls and returns, not of wolves but of some other more sinister creature. Then, as suddenly as they had risen, they stopped.
The needle pricks in her flesh faded to a dull heat as the numbing agent wore off and blood flowed into her muscles. She could feel her toes in her boots, and she was able to flex her legs and buttocks.
Beyond the closed door adjacent to the fireplace, she heard a dry scuff of movement. The fire's last embers reflected a question mark on the brass doorknob. The question mark turned clockwise. The latch clicked. Then... five seconds of stillness. The door opened, and a presence lingered at the perimeter of shadow.
She controlled her breath and heartbeat with a soldier's discipline. Whoever, whatever it was, moved behind the chair. Helpless, she waited for it: gunshot to the head, knife to the throat-whatever may come.
"Come," spoke a soft voice.
She did not respond.
"Come," said the voice again, a female voice.
"I can't move well. I think I've been poisoned."
This time, when the howls went up, they were much closer. Down that dark hallway on the street in front of the Stalin Building. The presence moved next to her. A hand went under her arm, and a face eclipsed the fire. Warm, moist breath against her skin. Lips touched her lips. The wetness of a kiss.
Instantly, the needles vanished. She could move. Her joints, sore from her years at war, felt steeped in warmth like soothing water from a natural hot spring, like the flush of muscle after a good workout.
The figure in the darkness pulled up on her sleeve again, and she rose, stretching and trying her limbs. She was in full control of her faculties. She could fight. By sense of closeness, she knew she was taller than this shadow that had kissed her. She could break its neck. She could do it now.
"Hold still," said the voice. It was a girl.
A delicate sharpness tickled down her side, then down her back and down her legs. Each arm. Now down her front between her breasts, slicing her clothes from her body. The freezing air on her bare shoulders as her garments fell away sent goosebumps across her flesh.
"Take your shoes off," said the girl.
"My shoes?"
"And your underwear."
"I don't-"
"Naked we come. Naked we go."
The crash of splintering wood from the front vibrated through the building.
"Fast," hissed the girl.
Allgood kicked off her boots and slipped out of her panties.
She was grabbed and pulled to the door. At the threshold of it, there was a darkness denser than anything she'd ever known. The howl came from the hallway. The rush!
"Now or never!" shouted the girl, and she was gone into the dark.
Now or never.