Nos Faux Ratu Ch. 07

Finally, Nessa was pulled from that memory back into the present, with Jenna holding her son again, over fifteen years later, on the roof of Nessa's building. Jenna's devotion to her child had never wavered, even as her fear of rejection had grown.

Nessa's spirit body drifted down from the tower window, her feet reaching the ever-changing floor of Jenna's soul plain.

"He was so beautiful," Jenna's spirit self whispered. "How could I not check in on him? Just from time to time?"

The vampire kissed her new dark child on the cheek. Jenna wasn't fooling anyone with the "from time to time" bit. "Sleep now," Nessa said, preparing to withdraw her consciousness from Jenna's mind. "You have a new family, though we could never be replacements for what you lost. You were not the mother you wanted to be for William, but you're both here now and you can be the mother he needs you to be. You have a new lover, and she wants to be with the woman you are becoming. And you have me," she said, touching her lips to Jenna's, then slipping away from a woman who was daring to feel something she never thought she would deserve . . . joy.

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In another part of New Atlanta . . .

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The Fool had somewhat recovered from his rage at the disaster at the warehouse. He had lost many men, but the Hanged Man had come up with a suggestion on how to get more, before the Roanoke Protocol was fully enacted. The Nightwalkers that had remained loyal to the Fool and thereby to the United States Government, had scoured the streets for violent criminals, those who had a taste for blood but were weak enough to fall easily into the Fool's control. By the time the new commandos arrived, sent fresh-faced by their government, the Fool would have already begun rebuilding. It is something that his enemies would not expect. Oh, how he would punish those who had betrayed him. All except the Empress would be killed, and she would be made to submit to him to in every conceivable way. They would be the government's powerful secret weapon, talons of death and teeth of terror, ruling the streets and souls of Atlanta from sunrise to sundown.

'No,' he thought, 'not just Atlanta. We will take back our entire country, tear down the corporations, and show the world what his nation could be when it was not afraid to bloody its hands.

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To be continued . . .