Apocalypse: The Savior with System

31 Morgan's Lackey

Who the hell is this woman?!

Paul stiffened, wanting to stop swaying to the music but she would not let him go and continued to lead him.

“You must be here for Phelps, then,” she told him and sighed pityingly. “That man must have had it coming. You know, karma and all that s**t. I want to kill him, Rahu wants to kill him—“

“W-Wait! You know Ra—“ Paul started to say but the woman shut him up by giving him an open-mouthed kiss.

Oh my God—

When she ended the contact, she grinned up at him, cat-like eyes teasing. “Don’t say that name here if you know what’s good for you, Tommy. Don’t look now but our VIP has just arrived…a bit earlier than usual but no matter.” She ran a fingernail down the side of his face. If Paul’s face was not yet red as a tomato, that would be a miracle.

“Tell you what. I’ll help you take care of Phelps but I get half of what you want from him,” she said. “Half of the arsenal.”

“For what?” he asked in a curt tone, realizing he forgot to ask her how she knew about the arsenal, too. The woman shushed him and licked his ear for good measure. Paul shuddered.

“A step in the right direction for my revenge,” she answered plainly, finally stopping the dance and taking a step back. “As for your plans, I don’t give a f**k. I’ll take care of Phelps, you give me half of what I want. Our old friend over there insisted I had to ask you, too, like I was asking permission from a parent. It’s annoying but for old times’ sake, I agreed.”

Old times’ sake…so she and Rahu really knew each other?!

Before Paul could talk, she expertly twirled him about, turning him a full 180-degrees and giving him a good view of Phelps entering the establishment with a posse of uniformed and Wall Street-looking type of men. A man who looked to be Braxton’s manager greeted them and led them to a place off the side of the stage, possible backrooms for meetings, of the government and non-government kind.

Phelps was a tall man, easily over six feet, bulky in the way most men who’ve spent years of their lives in active military service. His was face was nondescript but there was an aura of command there, supported by those hangers-on surrounding him. Here, Phelps was the boss and the man everyone was obviously in awe and afraid of.

With that, definitely the most guarded and secured.

How to get to him, though?

He looked down at the woman whose eyes were now boring into him, most likely reading him and already knowing what he would say. Behind him, he also felt Rahu’s eyes on them.

Paul nodded once. “I don’t even want to know how you’d do it but if you’re in a better position to get to our target, all right. Half-half…but we get to pick of the loot first.”

The woman smiled, which would have been beautiful if not for the glimmer of madness in her eyes. How long is this dance going to go?!

Thankfully, the song ended and she steered him back to Rahu. She did not go back to her table and told them, “Target will be acquired in three hours at the most. I’d prefer an hour but I’d rather not mess up my dress because of a helter-skelter method.” She indicated the long ivory sheath dress on her body. With a finger, she opened the neckline of her dress, almost exposing herself. Paul managed to copy Rahu’s bored expression. With a laugh and a naughty wave, the weird woman turned and headed to where Phelps and his entourage went.

Once she was gone, Paul slumped on the seat beside Rahu.

“I’m not one to judge other people for their tastes but if you’ve been with that woman, you’re really crazy,” he told Rahu.

“I was crazy but not crazy enough to take up with her,” Rahu said.

Suddenly, Paul remembered that they were sufferers and weren’t supposed to be out and about. As if he had read Paul’s thoughts, Rahu told him, “That’s why we’re all the way here at the back. We wait for her to finish the job then we move.” Rahu took out a battered old smartphone, typed out something, then returned it to a hidden pocket. “Eric will be in a position with the rest at the arsenal.”

The two men spent the next few hours sitting quietly at the back of the club, just watching and observing, their eyes trained in the direction where Phelps and the woman disappeared to, refusing offers of drinks, dances, and other activities Paul didn’t even want to think of. At one point, one of the strippers had boldly approached them and was rejected, only to look from Paul to Rahu, then back again, a look of dawning realization coming over her heavily made-up face.

She giggled and said, “Oh! I think I know now! I’m so sorry! You must have gotten confused. I think you should be over at Sonic House, that’s two blocks from here. You’d like the menu there better.”

The confused one was Paul and it took him several moments to realize what the stripper mistook them for.

“But if you decide for some group experimentation, me and my girls here are game for anything,” she said cheekily. “We don’t discriminate.”

Rahu grunted. Paul choked. Someone called the stripper’s attention and finally left them alone. Paul started laughing. “The last time someone thought I was into men was when I spent a lot of time with Eric back in the day. Nothing against it, though. And it did keep away girls we didn’t want.”

His giant friend grunted again.

Seemingly, the strippers of the club must have been told of the two men at the back and Paul and Rahu was no longer bothered. People left them alone, no one wanting to occupy the tables that were too far away from the stage and the naked girls. On one hand, Paul wished none of those girls had to make money this way. On another, he didn’t really know if it was their true choice to go into the business anyway.

Taking the measure of a person is hard when your own is so lofty, Paul, his father told him when he was a boy. The only standard you can trust is the one that measures a person’s worth by his actions.

A person’s worth can be measured by his actions, Paul repeated in his head. He felt Rahu turn his head to look in his direction and realized he must have said the words out loud.

“Something my dad used to say to me,” he explained. “Having the intention is one thing; having the guts to actually make it into reality is another.”

Paul’s eyes went to the side of the stage, trying to imagine how the weird woman would get Phelps to surrender access to the arsenal.

The guts to make an intended reality happen—

Did he have it in him?

Two hours after he entered the VVIP room at the back of Braxton’s, Phelps felt the need to leave the place. Half a bottle of premium Irish whiskey and he knew he’d had more than his usual. He shouldn’t be blamed. It was what he deserved after all the stress of the past several months.

An increase in new sufferers and Phase Fives…a vaccine still undeveloped…the pressure from the government…

He’d needed a break and when opportunity came, he grabbed it. That was his way since the beginning. He was never one to waste an opportunity.

He’ll just call his chauffeur and head home to his worthless wife and their equally worthless brats.

First, he needed to go piss.

Or he could f**k that woman who had been eyeing him from Townsend’s lap for the past two hours.

Piss or f**k?

Fate—or his c**k—decided he’d have to empty his bladder first.

Phelps headed to the private toilet, indeed emptied his bladder and readied himself to get to the woman. He opened the door and found himself face to face with the object of his desire.

She smiled up at him, cat-like eyes drawing him in…or out of the comfort room to the dimly lit corridor.

“Going home so early?” she asked in a husky voice, the kind that made him want to pounce like a rutting beast.

“Not going home,” he almost stuttered, his wits scrambled by too much drink and the woman before him.

“No, you are not,” she said confidently, smiling.

Phelps grinned. Oh, you are so going to get screwed, young lady…

“Could you take three steps backward and then two to your left?”

Her request seemed strange but he could not care. What’re a few steps away when he was obviously going to get more steps forward—inward—later?

Phelps followed and when he stopped, she looked up and then gasped. “No! I think I made a mistake! It’s two steps to your right!” She ended her sentence with a giggle that sent his c**k pulsing. Phelps chuckled drunkenly and took the required steps to the right. He was far from the walls on either side of him and he wondered if she had something besides wall s*x in mind.

“Ah! That’s perfect!” she said happily. “I don’t like doing things in full view, you see.”

Phelps decided to let her play with him a little now. Then he’ll play with her long after.

“And what is it that you don’t like people to see you doing, little p***y?”

The woman licked her lips, a blatant invitation. “Something like this.”

Phelps blinked and something like a fruity scent—like ripened grapes—wafted past him. In a split second, he could not see the woman in front of him. His head exploded in pain, slime, and wetness. In a full one, his eyes began to get blurry and his body felt heavy.

In the final moments before Braxton’s premier patron died, he briefly registered the sight of a woman in a pristine white dress and the smell of freshly pressed grapes.

Grapes—his last thought.