To Protect and Serve Ch. 01

He looked up. "You're the cop who got iced over at the Casa de Sade?" When Shamira nodded, he continued with, "Welcome to the big show. That place was a dive. Nothing like that would've happened here." He went back to looking at his screens.

"What'cha looking for?" the Brazilian asked, looking over his shoulder.

"Got word that someone was looking to trade some morning star here, and it was supposed to be tonight."

Renata laughed. "Who would be dumb enough to try and make a deal like that here?"

"Folks looking to make ten grand a vial."

"Uhm, what's morning star?" Shamira asked.

"It's a magical drug. It's a mixture of vamp blood, were blood, and some faerie blood to bind it. Makes the user pretty much God-like for about thirty minutes before they crash. Unless they're in good shape, it might collapse their heart and make their brains leak out their ears. It's the most illegal drug in the underworld of course, but that doesn't stop people from dealing it. It's death to be caught carrying or distributing."

"Death?!"

"Considering the blood has to be harvested from a dying host, yeah. Our world is dangerous," Renata said, looking a bit impatient. "Keep that in mind."

Shamira realized that not everyone in Shane's brood was necessarily happy about her being brought over. She wondered if she'd done something to offend this woman. She had seemed nice earlier, and Clara had said she was normally perky. "How many doses per vial?"

"One."

"One dose for ten-thousand?" She paused. "Morning star. As in Lucifer?"

Now it was Travis who smiled. "Precisely."

"You take it if you want to feel powerful enough to challenge God," Renata said. "And it's incredibly addictive."

"Power always is," Shamira replied. She sat down and looked at the screens. "So it would have to be a regular?"

"Or a guest," Travis said. "Something about the faerie blood keeps the stuff from showing up on our scans."

"Hey Travis, you've got contacts in the security field in Chicago and New York, right? Anyone looking to relocate?"

The two of them talked business for a bit while Shamira kept her eyes on the screens. She could see that Henry and Clara had already made friends, as both were sitting with a severe but attractive woman in her forties who had a young man in tow. He wore nothing but leather shorts and a dog collar, which the woman had a firm grip on. The man was barely in his twenties, and his body was clean shaven to show off his athletic figure. Both Henry and Clara seemed quite taken with him, and Clara was actually checking his teeth with the apparent permission of his domme.

She watched them all stand up and walk slowly through a door in the side of the main room. It appeared that there were a lot of doors that she hadn't noticed, and there was a little light next to them. When her companions went through with their new friends, the light turned from green to red. She saw them appear on another monitor. There was a couch in the stone room, and it faced a pair of stocks like one might see in a movie about the Inquisition. The woman shouted something at the boy, who shirked his shorts and put himself willing into the stocks while Henry secured them.

"They're not going to --" Shamira paused. She had no idea what they were going to do.

Renata looked over and grinned. "Lady Teresa has a new boy toy," she said.

Travis nodded. "Your friends showed up on the right night. Normally she demands an exchange if someone wants to play with her sub, but she's been giving people test drives with this one to see how he handles it.

"Test drive?" Shamira tried to sound disgusted, but couldn't quite manage it. She looked away, unwilling to watch anymore. She saw Renata flash a disapproving look at her and then turn back to talking with Travis. And "disgust" aside, Shamira's eyes kept glancing over there. She had one boyfriend, for all of about three weeks, who had handcuffed her hands behind her back a couple of times. She couldn't deny that she'd felt pretty comfortable, but that was just light stuff. And the guy hadn't been much for foreplay, or cuddling . . . hell, for anything but getting his own rocks off. Then he'd dumped her for an aerobics instructor. Not that she was still bitter about that.

She started scanning over the main room and, almost by accident, her eyes fell on a screen that let her know something wasn't right.

"Travis, I think your deal is going down."

The big man wheeled over. "Where?"

"Here," she said, pointing to where two men were sitting in a dark corner of the bar. Her vampire vision couldn't illuminate what she saw through a monitor, but it did make everything crisper.

"Why do you think this is a deal?"

"Well, they shook hands twice in the course of a minute. First shake exchanges money, the second shake is for merchandise. Also, one looks like a dom and the other a sub, at least as far as I can tell --"

"You're not wrong," Renata said. She was seeing some of what had alerted Shamira, but wanted to test how good the woman was.

"Well, but they don't look like they're together. Unless a sub can wander off on his or her own and engage in normal conversation with a stranger in a bar like this, then something is up. And the sub is wearing a fanny pack for crying out loud. People don't wear those things in the real world if they want to have any chance of getting laid, but they're great if you're carrying something you want to get too quickly or put something away quickly. And it just looks tacky and, like it or not," she said, glancing at Renata, "this place isn't tacky. It's . . . civilized."

Travis looked at his fellow were. "I like her," he said. "Any chance Shane will let her work here?"

"Depends on her," Renata replied, appreciative of the girl's skill. She'd be a great enforcer; Shane had been right about that.

Travis turned on a microphone. "We've got a potential code one in the lounge." He gave a description of the two men who were talking. "One should be carrying cash, the other some vials of morning star. Take care of this quietly."

Shamira noticed a few people who she'd thought were guests stand up and move quickly but quietly to the bar area, their faces awash with purpose.

"Wait, they're not going to kill them, are they?" Shamira just realized that she might have sentenced to people to death. Should she stop them?

"Only if they're holding." Renata tried to sympathize with the girl. "Remember," she said softly, "that drug is harvested from dying creatures, none of whom volunteered to be donors. Every vial is a little piece of murder, and in our world, we believe in an eye for an eye."

The two men were rounded up and taken to another room, and Travis sat squarely in front of that monitor and watched. It was for the best, because Shamira really didn't want to watch. So her eyes "accidentally" found their way back to that dungeon room and her companions.

'Oh God!' she thought. Henry was naked and standing in front of the young man's head and was shoving his cock into the submissive's mouth. 'That's another guy!' she thought. 'He's getting blown by a guy!' She wasn't sure why that should bother her, since girls making out didn't really bother her. Actually, she felt a warm sensation down . . . 'No!' she thought. But though her thoughts said no, her eyes and body were still saying yes.

Henry was not gentle as he rammed his manhood into the younger man's mouth. Sometimes he would hold the human's nose shut, making him gasp. Clara stood behind the captive with an unusual device in her hand. It was a foot and a half long and made of hard black plastic. One end had a small knob, and the other end had a set of inch-wide straps . It was these straps that Clara was flogging the young man's buttocks and upper thighs with. She wanted to hear the sound . . . wondered if the man was gasping with pleasure like Renata had. It was hard to gasp with another man was drilling his throat.

'Look away,' she told herself, feeling a tightness in her chest and a tingling in her groin. She found herself begging her own eyes. 'Please look away.'

Clara turned the device around, sucked on the knob end lovingly, then shoved it up the young man's ass. She raked her fingers along his back as she shoved the device up into his body, taking it slowly. Henry had withdrawn temporarily, awaiting the pain to diminish so that he wasn't in danger of having anything important bitten off. On the sofa, the submissive's owner had her skirt hiked up and she was pleasuring herself while she watched her pet being used by these two strangers.

Henry's tempo increased until finally he pulled out, blasting a load all over the man's face. 'The man can cum like a fire hose,' Shamira thought, watching line after line of semen splatter on the young man's cheeks, nose and mouth. She watched the domme stand up, walk over, look disapprovingly at her charge, and then slap him sharply across the face. She wiped Henry's goo off of her slave's face and then fed it to him, making sure he licked her latex gloves clean.

Clara was still fucking the man's ass and playing with herself, her loin cloth pushed aside while her fingers did their dirty work. And she seemed to be doing a good job of it too, as her body shivered with delight and she came. She let her loincloth fall back into place, then she pulled the toy out of his butt. She spun it around and thrashed him again across the buttocks. Then she reached around him, taking his softened member in her hand while her teeth (non-fanged apparently) bit him on the shoulder just below the stocks. It didn't take much to get him hard again, and she stroked him while both she and Henry made bite-marks all over his body. They were making sure that he was rewarded for his punishment. It made no sense to Shamira, but damn, he looked like he was a step or two from heaven. Then she realized how wet she was.

'No,' she thought. 'It must be some weird vampire thing.' But she could only fool herself so much. She was getting off on what was happening. Just like she had at Shane's house. This young man had not one but three people whose only thought was him and the sensations they could make him endure. Pain and pleasure . . .

'You're sick,' she told herself. 'You aren't weak like that. You developed this body because you wanted to be strong.' And in her heart, she knew she wanted someone stronger. Someone who deserved that body. Someone who would look at her the way Clara and Henry and this other woman were --

"Shit!" Travis said. "Things are going south!" He jumped out of his chair.

"What?" Shamira asked.

Renata was scowling. "Once they realized they were caught, one of them downed a vial. He's as strong as a half-form were and fast as a vampire, and he's got a hostage. One of the security people."

"Let me help," she said. This was something she could do.

Travis motioned for her to follow, so the three of them went charging through the bar, through another door and into what looked like a holding cell. A single light swung overhead, making the room seem even more ominous by casting shadows in the corners. There was also a drain in the middle of the floor. Shamira didn't want to think about that.

The security forces were backed up against one wall; one perpetrator sat cowering in a corner, and the other held a young woman by the throat.

"Don't come any damn closer!" the man said, snarling like an animal. His eyes were as red as a sunset and his face had lost all vestiges of humanity. "Clear the damn way! I'm taking her and leaving. Anyone tries to stop me and she dies, along with the would-be hero. Got that?"

Travis motioned for Renata and Shamira to move back. They weren't official staff.

Shamira's mind was going a mile a minute as she pushed her way back into the shadows in the corner of the room. She couldn't let the man leave. Never let a psychopath leave with a hostage. He'd kill her. She knew in her heart of hearts that this poor woman would die if he got outside with her. He was a creature of ill intent, mad with the power of a godling. She looked at the shadows in the room, then closed her eyes for a moment while wondering if she could scoot around the edges --

Then, her mind showed her the real shadows. It was almost as if the rest of the world dropped away and the only things that existed were blinding whiteness and the black of night, just light and shadows. She saw the shadows of the room, and even the shadows cast by the people in the room, or at least those in a position to cast a shadow. But she didn't see the people themselves. It was like a Rorschach inkblot test come to life and gone insane.

She wanted to get behind the man, to get into his shadow. She saw something that looked like two figures struggling. She saw the shadows of the corner of the room behind him. That's where she wanted to be. She could stop him if she could just . . . Her mind reached out and touched those shadows, and the world shifted. Suddenly, she was looking at the same scene but from a different perspective. She opened her eyes. She was behind him! She didn't know how that had happened, but somehow she had appeared in the darkness behind the crazed druggie.

She knew she had to stop him. And she knew what would happen to the girl if she gave him any quarter. She stepped out of the shadows, grabbed the unsuspecting man's neck, and broke it like a twig.

The body fell to the ground and the girl charged forward, clutched in the protective arms of a comrade. Now it was Shamira who stood in the light of that single overhead bulb, and everyone was staring at her. Not staring like Clara and Henry had stared at their victim or like Shane had stared at Renata, this was not lust or desire. This was fear and awe. That's when it hit her.

"I killed him," she whispered. In all her time on the force, she'd never even shot someone much less killed them. Now this man lay at her feet, his body facing downward while his eyes stared up at her, that snarl still stuck on his lips. He was very dead. It was Shamira's fault. She stared at her hands, and they began to tremble.

"What did you do?" Renata asked. She realized too late that what she had meant to be a question about Shamira's apparent teleportation sounded like incredulity. The muscular newcomer's face went blank, then she charged blindly through the crowd which parted before her. Renata tried to give chase, but she had to struggle past people just to get to the door. "Shamira!" she called out, but the girl was running too quickly. She hurried after her, encountering an emerging Henry and Clara along the way. Apparently, playtime was over.

"What's going on?" Clara asked.

"Can't explain right now," came the reply as the Brazilian woman hurried past. "Shamira just did something and now she's freaked." She ran to the door, which the front guard was in the process of closing. He'd had no reason to detain Shamira, so he'd let her through. Renata emerged into the dark alley, looking both ways. Nothing. Shamira had vanished.

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Hours later . . .

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Shamira wasn't used to being undead, so being a ghost was almost overwhelming. But that's what she was, a ghost in the house she had called home less than a week earlier. She stood on bare feet in her parents' house in Kennesaw. Her brother, her sister, and her two young nephews were still there, having come into town for Shamira's funeral.

She walked around in absolute silence, all noise absorbed by the darkness. Her brother Stan was crashed in the guest room, while her sister Samantha was on the pull-out sofa with Shamira's brother-in-law Patrick. Their two children, John and Craig, were asleep on an inflatable mattress nearby. And as usual, Shamira's father was asleep in his recliner because of his bad back while her mother was in their bedroom. It would have been perfect, if it weren't for the fact that they were mourning the loss of someone standing in their very midst.

Shamira had snuck into the house utilizing the shadows, and she was looking down on each member of her family, one at a time. Even in sleep, they looked haunted.

'Aren't they?' she thought. 'Aren't I haunting them right now?' She wanted to scream. She wanted to wake them all up and tell them she was okay. Tell them everything was fine. Tell them she was coming home and wouldn't ever leave them again. Lie to them. She was dead, and she didn't even know what that meant for her. She knew she shouldn't be there, but she didn't know where else to go.

The worst by far for her to look on was her sister. Samantha was more than Shamira's blood, she was her best friend. When the boys mocked her or broke Shamira's heart, it was Samantha who had been there, threatening violence against anyone who hurt her baby sister. Samantha had shown up to Shamira's competitions when her mother called them indecent. Apparently, women weren't supposed to be muscular and parade around in bikinis while waiting to be judged. Who knew? When Samantha had gone off to college, they had talked on the phone often. Sometimes, Samantha had just known when Shamira needed to talk, even from hundreds of miles away.

Now, her far-too-pretty sister lay turned on her side, her husband's arm around her as they spooned. She looked safe and protected, but also sad. Next to her, on the arm of the sofa, was Shamira's lucky hat. The black Stetson been a gift to Shamira from her sister before a Georgia regional competition, which turned out to be the younger sister's first major win. Ever since, that hat had brought Shamira luck.

'If I'd been wearing you the other night, would my luck have held?' She touched the brim, comforting and worn. 'Would I be talking to my sister on the phone instead of staring up at her from the grave? Would I be a murderer in that world?'

Samantha stirred, and Shamira leaned over, kissing her sister on the top of the head.

Samantha Kingsley opened her eyes, feeling something wasn't quite right, or maybe it was too right. "Shamira?" she asked of the darkness. On the razor thin edge of sleep that she'd been balancing on since she'd heard the horrible news, she'd felt a distinct pull. It had felt like resolution of a tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon, suddenly remembering something that should have always been in her mind. Shamira had been such a force in her life, including looking after an ailing father and mother in denial when Samantha herself was simply unable to. For a moment, Samantha could have sworn that she felt that force again.

She picked her head up and looked around, tears coming to her eyes when they fell on that damn hat she'd bought to cheer her sister up. She missed her sister so much it hurt, and it felt like it would never stop hurting. She didn't see the eyes looking at her from the shadows in the corner of the room, and she certainly didn't notice when those eyes slipped away.

Outside, Shamira appeared in the shadows of a tree lining the road in that quiet little suburban neighborhood. She leaned in and put her head against the tree, her eyes aching with a need to cry that her pride denied. She could have stayed and told her sister everything. She could have had that one person back in her life. But she had chickened out. She didn't think she could handle Samantha seeing the monster that she'd become.

Glancing down the street, she saw a car that was a bit too ritzy for the suburbs of Kennesaw. It was a Porsche of some kind, and Shane Stapleton was leaning against the door. Suddenly, Shamira wanted to hit someone, and that someone had just made himself available. She strode down to the aged vampire with ill intent clearly decorating her face. Shane stood up and away from the car, not backing down and not looking particularly afraid. He looked sad.