To Protect and Serve Ch. 01

"I can't believe that," one of them said, making the others laugh.

She grinned vapidly at him. "You're funny," she slurred, enjoying this game immensely. She almost forgot that her life was on the line here. "Handsome too," she hummed. "Isn't he handsome?" she asked one of the other guys.

"Gorgeous," the second man replied.

She made as if to step past them, then stumbled. Her primary target reached out and caught her, groping her chest while he did so. She let him support her as he leaned her against the wall, his body against hers.

A couple of things happened. First, she could feel an immediate swelling in his trousers as he asked if she was all right. Second, she felt a certain warmth in her own loins. It wasn't that she was particularly attracted to him, but he obviously was to her. And the idea of being taken in a public place by a strange man, or men, jumped around in her brain like a kitten on crack. She squashed the idea as quickly as she could, but the heat of it lingered. She hadn't even noticed that one hand was grabbing her ass as he pushed himself against her. She forced a giggle.

"You're a big boy, aren't you?" She wondered where that sultry voice game from. It couldn't be hers. She NEVER sounded like that.

"Big and bad to the bone," he said, pushing himself harder against her. Again, she felt a little thrill. If this was a guy she actually liked --

'Would you do it?' she asked herself. 'If this were Henry? If this were Shane?' And as much as she tried to suppress it, the word "yes" kept screaming at her from the pool of her self-consciousness where she had tried to drown all her fantasies.

Luckily for her, she heard a couple of distinct "thuds" from inside the bathroom. So did all the guards. She and her current would-be-seducer met eyes. She smiled, then head-butted him as hard as she could. The man dropped like the other shoe. The remaining three men started to react. Two of them were already focused on the bathroom, leaving her first victim's partner looking at her with a shocked face while reaching for something under his coat. The world slowed to a crawl as she leaped into actions. These were humans and she . . . well, she wasn't. Still, she couldn't take them lightly. If they were in here, they were probably dangerous.

She stepped forward and instantly tried planting a knee into this man's groin while unwinding her snakewhip from her waist. He was able to block the knee shot, but only barely. Like many desperate fighters, he dropped his arms when he brought his own knee up, so nailed him with the thick end of her whip. Snakewhips didn't have handles per se, but the thick end of this one was loaded like a blackjack. She cold-cocked the guy before he could even grunt.

The other two guys were opening the door leading to the bathrooms, so she lunged after them. She tripped over the fallen body of the guard she had just KO'd, but she managed to clip block both of the remaining exterior opponents in the backs of their knees. They both had guns out by this point, so she had to do something. They were both looking down at her, so she stood up and drove her forearms into their crotches. She was strong enough that both of them lifted off the ground with looks of absolute horror on their faces. When their feet hit the ground again, she grabbed their heads and drove them together with satisfying thuds. She was pretty sure they'd all live. She looked towards the door to find that Henry was standing there, smiling at her.

"Took ya long enough," he said. "I finished with mine seconds ago."

She glared at him, kind of. "Let's see, I had four and you had three. I had to wait until you'd already started --" She looked around. They'd attracted some attention, but most of the bar just kept on doing their own things. Just another bar fight. "Anyway, what do we do with them? Do we have a jail or something?"

"Or something," Henry replied. He motioned to Grolik, who motioned towards a back door. They dragged guys out into an alley, then Shamira stood watch while Henry got the others. All in all, they had four vials of morning star and about 60 thousand in cash stuffed into an envelope in one guy's jacket.

Henry called backup. "Shane will want to question them. We'll send the drugs off. We've got a DNA lab downtown, and they'll find out which beings were killed to make the stuff, assuming they were ever put into the system." He smiled. "And now one of the perks of the job. Enforcers get to keep half the cash in deals like this, assuming the money doesn't come from an innocent third party. Which in this case, it doesn't. Shane gets the rest."

Shamira's eyes shot open. "We keep it? Just like that?"

"Yep. Fifteen grand each in this case. We aren't exactly going to turn it over to the normal cops, and we can't actually pay taxes on money obtained from mystical drug deals, can we?" He handed her a stack of bills. The "good cop" part of her rebelled against this, but the logical part of her mind could find no fault in it. She took the money and shoved it into her pocket. Henry clapped her on the shoulder. "You did damn good," he said. Then he stared at her tits again. "Damn good."

She scowled at him, but knew she probably should be blushing right now. She remembered the way that she had felt inside, and for a moment dreamed that Henry would shove her up against the dirty wall of the alley and --

'Stop it!' she told herself, but her mind wasn't cooperating. Just that notion of her hands being trapped behind her back while her legs were wrapped around Henry's waist . . . she needed to think of something else. "Hey, what's going to happen to these guys?" A scary thought occurred to her. "Shane's not going to torture them is he? I mean, they're human."

"They're humans, yeah, but they're part of our world. Shane will probably just try to pry it out of their minds first, but if he thinks he needs to get more extreme to stop this trade, he will."

"But torture? I can't do that! I can't be part of that!" She turned to walk away.

"Shamira, listen to me." Henry moved in front of her. "It is always Shane's last resort, but things work differently here. And you don't know what this trade is like. This isn't like growing a plant and smoking it. I've seen a morning star bleeding house," he said, his voice grim and eyes dark. "You haven't seen bodies of vampires, weres, and faerie strung up like butcher-shop meat with tubes and needles stuck into them, or the hum of the machines pumping their blood out of them. Ever see a body with no blood? Like a withered ghost. And for us vamps, it's the worst. Ask Shane. He almost got drained once when he was a fledgling. Says it feels like your body is eating itself from the inside out. They don't sedate their victims, because that would taint the blood before mixing. This place had security cameras, complete with audio. I heard how much they screamed. Don't tell me that these guys don't have everything that's coming to them."

Shamira and Henry stared each other down. Shamira had killed a man, and it frightened her how relatively easy it had been to get over it. It was a slippery slope between between justice and chaos, and she'd seen what happens when that line blurred. "You can make me a vampire," she replied coldly, "but you won't make me a monster."

"We're not monsters, Shamira. We're just trying to survive in a sometimes brutal world that has different rules and laws than you're used to. You might want to take a look around before you condemn us all."

What had started as a good night with a successful bust and good company had soured considerably. Any carnal feelings she had felt earlier were suitably repressed, and she and Henry didn't speak to each other again. When Renata and a team of human security arrived to cart the would-be dealers and buyers off to a holding area on Shane Stapleton's property, the Brazilian werejaguar could feel the tension. She pulled Henry aside and got his account of the impromptu raid, but he wouldn't say anything about why he and Shamira were shooting daggers at each other. And the new girl seemed to have no interest in talking with Renata either. Twice she had performed admirably on the job with little to no preparation, and twice she had become withdrawn afterward.

'She's too damn new at this for Shane to keep throwing her out like this,' she thought. Renata promised herself that she'd have words with the boss once this got sorted out. She personally manhandled the prisoners into the back of a specially built and magically reinforced paddywagon before they all headed back home. Shamira rode back with Renata, still silent as the grave.

------------ --------------------

Back at the house . . .

------------ --------------------

Shamira stood in front of her closet, staring at all the nice if somewhat risqué things that they had bought just a few days earlier. She wanted to leave. She wanted out of this nightmare, but she couldn't take any of these things. None of them were really hers. She had no suitcase, no money of her own, no wallet . . . even the sweats that she was wearing were borrowed. She was a vampire, but she felt more like a ghost. She was hanging around this world, but did it really have a place for her? She wanted her old life back. It might not have been much, but it had been simple.

"What are you thinking?" came a warm, masculine voice behind her.

"That it's time for me to go," she replied, turning to look at Shane. "I don't think I can do this."

"I think you can, but the choice must be up to you." He sat on the edge of the bed. "Henry told me what happened. He feels bad about snapping at you, but he takes this personally. He told you about the bleeding house? Well, he probably didn't tell you that he found a friend of his hanging from the ceiling."

Shamira froze. 'Oh God,' she thought. She couldn't even imagine what that must have been like. "He didn't say anything about that."

"He doesn't like to think about it. He knows how dangerous it is to let the vengeance overtake him. Believe it or not, he does understand." Shane contemplated something. He wanted her to understand. "Would you believe that the bleeding house that was raided was actually run by a vampire?"

Her skin felt colder than usual. "What?!"

"He wasn't stable before he was brought over, and his creator was later punished for this. All full vampires are held accountable for the actions of their children. Anyway, he was quite psychotic but very cunning. It was about twenty years ago when he got the idea of taking gullible humans and making them fledglings. He then convinced these people, who had no concept of the world they had been introduced to, that werewolves and faeries were truly evil and used his new vamps to hunt them down. He would then turn on his fledglings and chain them up right next to those they had helped capture. He bled them dry, mixed their blood, sold it off, and then moved on."

"You make it sound like he did this more than once."

"That was his third house. He'd killed twenty-one vampires, werewolves, and faeries by the time we caught him."

"I so owe Henry an apology," she said.

"No you don't. I'm glad this is hard on you. Sometimes, even the most noble intentioned amongst us needs to be reminded of our 'humanity,' so to speak. And whenever Henry digs up those ghosts, he tends to hit the bottle a little hard."

"I didn't know vampires could get drunk."

"Oh, very much so. It just takes a while, and we can pretty much sober up at will. We just divert the alcohol from our brains by force of will and we're fine again."

"That's cheating."

"Undoubtedly." He got up and placed his hands on Shamira's shoulders. "So, are you willing to stick around?"

Her shoulders felt warm and tingly where he was touching her. Her earlier feelings were waking up, and she really didn't want Shane to still be here when they did. Actually, she DID want him to be there, and that was part of the problem. She wanted him to throw her down on the bed and do unspeakable things to her.

"I . . . Henry said that there were tapes," she muttered. "Of the bleeding house. Do you still have them?"

He stepped back. "Why?"

"I want . . . I need to see," she said. Seeing was believing for her. "You want me to fight these people and others for you, then I need to see what it is I'm up against."

He nodded. "I had them converted to video files several years ago. They're in a locked folder on the server. Are you sure you want to do this?" One look from her face, and he was convinced. She'd said it, so she'd see it through. He escorted her to his office and sat her down in front of his PC. He found a folder, typed in the password, then left her alone in the dark room. Slowly, she moved the cursor over to the first file and double-clicked.

Thirty minutes later, she emerged from the room, rushed into her bathroom, and discovered that vampires could indeed vomit. She hadn't eaten much, so it turned into dry heaves fairly quickly, but the effect was the same. Soon, she felt a hand on her shoulder and another keeping her long braid from dipping into the toilet.

"And now you know," Shane said. He sighed. "Renata was right. I'm asking too much of you too quickly. But somehow, you keep coming through."

"How . . . how do you deal with it?" Shamira got out in a gasp.

"Everyone in our world deals with the madness in different ways. But you've seen some of how those of us in this house deal."

"The kinky sex thing?"

He smiled. "The kinky sex thing. Some of us need to feel that we have control over something, and others want to forget about their responsibilities for a while and let others make the decisions. It works for us and keeps us sane." He wiped some of the residue from her upchucking episode from the corners of her mouth with a piece of tissue. "No one judges anyone else here. We state our limits and everyone else abides by them. We take care of each other and our needs, and then we're able to go out and face the world with clear heads.

Shamira wondered what that might be like – not worrying about everything. These were good people, if she could just get used to their ways. Would it be so bad to trust them? Would it be so bad to live a little, even though she was dead? She turned her face back to the bowl and heaved again.

"Poor Shamira," Shane said. "Whatever will we do with you?"

--------------- ---------------

The next afternoon . . .

--------------- ---------------

There was a lot on Shamira's mind, so she decided to unwind in a most convenient manner. She went and played golf. She hadn't picked up a club in about four years, but she still understood the basics, and muscle memory took care of the rest. It was still unseasonably warm, so she was in a fairly snug pair of shorts and muscle shirt. The hardest part of golf was keeping herself from using her vampire strength. That would be cheating, and she refused to cheat at a game that you can play by yourself.

She had just sliced on a par three, and was clambering back into her cart to enjoy a good cursing of the gods of golf and drink down one of the cokes in the cooler she had brought when she heard the low humming of another cart and the crushing of gravel beneath those solid little tires. Banshee and Shane pulled up, and Shamira actually got a snicker.

Shane was dressed like every stereotypical golfer you've ever seen, particularly if you have ever watched "Caddyshack." Banshee looked mildly disgusted by his apparel as well, and was herself dressed in loose black shorts and a black golf shirt. Shamira had been told that Banshee wearing a color other than black was a sign of the apocalypse.

"Mind if we join you?" Shane said. "Clara said you were out here and thought you might like some company."

Shamira grinned. "I've talked with Clara, and I'm willing to bet that you just want someone you know you can beat handily."

"That's what I've got her for," he replied, pointing his thumb at Banshee. She pushed him out of the car and then got out herself and grabbed a 3-wood.

"Sure," Shamira said, since it looked like they were going to play anyway.

"Normal human strength," Shane said.

"Already doing that."

He smiled. "Honorable. I like that. It won't keep me from utterly destroying you, but I like it."

She rolled her eyes, then watched Banshee land her ball on the edge of the green. She scowled when Shamira told her it was a good shot.

"I failed to account properly for wind velocity," she said. "I will not make that mistake again."

'Crap,' Shamira thought. 'She IS hyper-competitive!'

The next few holes went smoothly, though Shamira came in a solid third place each time. Waiting for Banshee to take a shot could be a bit tiresome, since the little Japanese woman was a perfectionist. It was the final par-5 that she would later wish she could forget. She was working her way through a grove looking for the small little sphere of neon yellow that had inconsiderately landed somewhere other than the fairway. She felt something lightly brush against her face. She turned and saw it was a web, and the owner of said web was a few inches from her face.

Banshee and Shane came running when they heard the scream. They saw Shamira's clubs lying on the ground, but the girl was nowhere to be seen. Then Shane sensed something and looked up. Shamira had apparently jumped twenty feet straight up and was clinging to a tree.

"What happened?!" he asked, looking around for whatever must have attacked her.

"Spuh . . . spider," she stuttered, looking around frantically.

Shane and Banshee just stared at her. "Giant evil spider?" Shane asked, trying really hard not to smirk.

"From space?" Banshee asked calmly, defying the rumors that she had no sense of humor. "From hell?" She looked around. Squinting, she was able to see a web nearby with a garden spider attempting to repair one of its anchor lines. "Poor baby!" she cooed as if she were talking to her grandchild. "You scared her!"

"How duh . . . do you know it's a 'she'?"

"The size and coloration. I'm something of an amateur arachnologist. I have a small number of habitats set up in my quarters," Banshee replied. "Fascinating creatures."

'I am never, EVER going in her room,' Shamira thought.

"Would you please come down?" Shane said. His new enforcer was afraid of spiders. He hoped she never encountered a crawler hive. She'd probably die of fright. "You're away."

She let go of the branch and fell unceremoniously towards the earth. Although unnecessary, Shane caught her in his arms.

"Tell no one," she muttered, staring suspiciously at the web. "She doesn't really have pet spiders does she?"

"Black widow," Banshee said, overhearing everything, "brown recluse, three species of tarantulas --"

Despite feeling a flight flutter in her proverbial heart being held so closely by a gorgeous man, Shamira recovered her pride and regained her footing. She tossed her ball back on to the fairway, took a penalty, and grabbed her clubs, never ceasing her muttered vocalizations about any creature having more than four legs being the spawn of the devil.

-------- --------------------

After the game . . .

-------- --------------------

"How long did she hang up there?" Clara said, finally recovering enough from laughing to ask a question. While Shane had promised not to say anything about the spider incident, she had failed to obtain such a promise from Banshee, who had calmly told everyone about the incident over dinner. Shamira had hid her face behind a napkin the entire time. She knew that she wasn't actually blushing, but she was reacting out of instinct. Everyone was having a good-natured laugh at her expense.

"Was there something particular that made you such an arachnophobe?" Banshee asked, her prim mouth curled at the corners.