To Protect and Serve Ch. 09

'He's bringing up a hostage from the back,' she thought. She waited patiently for the voice to get closer, listening to the scuffle as someone was pulled past the bathroom door. Shamira quietly opened the door and grabbed the gunman by both the neck and the wrist. He struggled to keep hold of the little girl that he had grasped against him . . . a little blond-haired girl that clung just as tenaciously to her doll.

In an instant, Shamira took in the surroundings. The RV was obviously not a luxury item for a family traveling across country. It was well worn on every edge, with carpet that looked left over from the seventies. These people had invaded another family's home, threatened their lives, and scared a girl who couldn't be more than eight. Her hand quickly covered the man's mouth so he couldn't scream and she yanked him back into the bathroom.

She didn't know why she did what she did next . . . she'd never felt a need to do so in her previous fights, but now she was feeling savage. She yanked the man's neck to the side and buried her fangs in his flesh. As she drained him of his life's essence, she let her anger backlash through his mind. All he did was let out a whimper as she fed, growing stronger by the second. He made no noise at all when she broke his neck. She looked at the little girl who was a hair away from screaming and motioned toward the back of the RV with her head. The girl nodded and fled.

Shamira walked outside again and pulled both pistols from under her vest. Two men stood towards the front, looking out for the thing hunting them, not knowing they'd locked themselves inside with it. Each had one of the parents heads locked in the crook of their arm with a gun pointed alternately at the head or the window.

There was another child, this one a young boy, cowering next to the beat-up table halfway down. He froze when he saw Shamira slowly approaching, her finger pressed to her lips. She put the tips of the silencers inches from the backs of her enemies heads and promptly sprayed brain matter all over the front windshield. Luckily, the parents were already screaming, so the fake cops weren't instantly alerted. But they would probably notice the red smears on the windows pretty quickly, so she had to act.

"Listen close because we don't have a lot of time," she told them. "I'm going to clear a path for you. Get to the interstate and head north." She took a deep sniff. "Weres?"

The man nodded. "What's going on? We were told we had permission --"

"Permission from who?"

"Lacroix," the wife stammered.

"His security guy," the husband countered.

"Jonas?" Shamira asked.

"That's him."

"Do NOT contact them again." She grabbed a crayon off the ground and started to write on the back of a receipt. "Call this number and ask to talk to Renata. She is Lord Stapleton's security chief. Tell her what happened here."

"But --"

"But nothing," Shamira hissed. "Lacroix and his people betrayed you."

The man looked angry. "Let me help. Werehorses may not be the most ferocious , but --"

"But you have a family that needs you. Once I get those cars out of the way, you floor it and don't look back. Got it?"

They heard more shouting and Shamira had to duck as bullets came flying through the windshield. Apparently, the bad guys had figured where she was. She handed one of the fallen men's weapons to the driver, and he looked like he knew how to handle it.

"Guard your family," she whispered angrily. "They're what matters." She meant it. He nodded. She moved. Shamira dived out the door, drawing gunfire and flame blasts away from the RV. She moved faster than she'd ever thought possible as the surround woods erupted in nightmarish noise, minor explosions, and burning wood.

'Gotta get those cars out of the way,' she thought. From the shadows of the woods, she jumped behind the cops and watched them scan the shadows for someone they couldn't catch. The closest patrol car to her new location was empty. 'Perfect.'

She crept slowly up to the car, crawling into driver-side. She needed to time this perfectly. She scooted down in the seat until three of the surviving assailants were in the road. She started up the patrol car and gunned it, plowing forward and t-boning the other car. Smoke erupted from the tires as the squealed in agony as Shamira shoved both cars through the enemy ranks and then off to the side. She managed to mow one guy down, but the other two were able to dive for cover.

But the road was cleared and the RV began moving forward awkwardly, as the father was trying to keep his head down and drive at the same time. Shamira physically jumped out of the car with guns drawn, shooting at the enemy and drawing their attention to her. She was able to down one permanent, while another hit the dirt but was still moving. They apparently had body armor.

'Six dead, one injured,' she thought. She hid behind a tree as another hail of shots sought her out, but she was able to see the RV passing the wrecked cars. 'They're going to make it.' That was when she saw one of the fake cops hold up an amulet and point it at the back of the slow-moving vehicle. She leaned over and put two shots into the man, making sure he stayed down.

Then she heard another series of shots and her arm exploded in pain as silver bullets ripped through it in two places. She quickly collapsed to her knees, trying to avoid going into shock. She'd never been hit with silver before, and it made the night she was killed and brought over seem like a flu shot. The substance seemed to infect her blood, searing through her veins like liquid fire.

'Seven dead,' she thought again. 'One injured.' The RV was far enough away that she hoped the remaining guys would catch it. 'No, I've got to be sure,' her thoughts laced with agony. With her good arm, she leaned out and shot at the two remaining patrol cars, puncturing tires with uncanny precision. All the while, her injured arm screamed at her, defying her mind's attempts to achieve clarity. She had done all she could . . . it was time to jump. But the silver was draining her energy, and the pain clouded her mind. She could not picture where she wanted to go, so she decided to make a run for it.

Shamira ran through the woods, and she could hear the pursuit through the pounding in her ears. She had lost her cell phone, so she couldn't call for help. 'What the hell am I doing?' she thought. She looked back and saw her pursuers shining eerie blue lights through the trees, and she knew that they'd be able to find her with those lights. Of course, they also helped her find them.

With no small amount of effort, she steadied her gun in her fully functional hand and fired just behind one of those lights, and she heard the death sigh of the man carrying it. Two lights turned towards her and she took aim. She extinguished one through silver-tipped violence, and the other turned itself off. They realized what she was doing.

'Nine dead, one out.'

She burst through the trees to find herself back on pavement. She was too exposed there, and it wasn't where she wanted to be. She saw lights approaching from up ahead, but it didn't look like any cop car. She dove off the road just before a tow-truck came trundling up, its brakes whining and complaining at the sudden stop.

The woods rustled behind her and she stumbled back towards the road, trying to keep her eyes on the truck and on her pursuers at the same time. The truck door opened and she was able to make out a single lean shape getting out of the driver side. The temporary distraction brought her guard down just a little, but it was enough for one of her enemies to graze her arm with another silver bullet.

But those same enemies thought that the darkness hid them from her, not realizing that the thick black night was her ally. She made them out as easily as if they had been glowing, and her remaining shots in that gun ended two more lives.

'Eleven dead, one out. That's all of them,' she thought as she sunk to her knees on the far side of the road.

"Hey," came a warm, masculine voice from the truck. The man stood in the light, so her night-sight was actually backfiring on her. But as he got closer, she recognized him. "Daniel?" she whispered. It was the elf she, Bunny, and Sebastian had met on that last trip down into this area. "What . . . what are you doing here?"

He approached and looked down on her, then offered her his hand. "You're not just some random passerby are you?" he asked softly.

Shamira struggled to her feet, shaking her head and trying to concoct a cover story. She was pissed that she wasn't as quick and creative as Sebastian had been, but she need not have bothered.

"You lied to me," the elf said, his voice suddenly less warm. "I was nice to you and you lied to me." His other hand swung at Shamira's head, holding some object he had gotten off his belt, and it connected with the side of her skull like a ton of bricks.

Shamira barely had time to groan in pain before her consciousness left her and she heard, "I warned you. You should have stayed gone." After that, a less comforting darkness than that brought on by night claimed her and she heard and felt nothing more.

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Elsewhere . . .

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"Damn it!" Shane said, slamming his phone onto his desk and breaking it into small shards. Renata sighed and grabbed another one out of his desk drawer. Ever since Shamira had joined the house, they'd had to keep a lot of extras for just such tantrums. "She's not answering!"

"You think she's hurt?" Clara asked nervously.

"She could have just turned off her phone," Renata mumbled, not at all convinced of that.

"No, it's on. It's not going straight to voicemail. Why does she absolutely refuse to listen to anything I say?" fumed Shane.

"At this point? Probably because YOU say it. Besides, she's just making the same kind of decisions that got her killed the first time that you admired her so much for." Instantly, Renata wished she hadn't said that, because Clara looked even more edgy.

"You don't think . . . damn, why can't she wait for back-up?" the shaman replied.

Shane shook his head. He did not want Clara getting more agitated than she already was. He also felt lost. He knew that everyday there was a chance that one of his children could get into trouble, but Shamira was a special case in more ways than one. He'd never felt like such a failure as a sire before, and he selfishly resented Shamira for making him feel this way. "She made this bed," he said slowly, locking Clara's eyes with his own, "now we have to see how it plays out."

"Sir," Renata asked quietly, "might it be possible for you to send me?"

"You're my chief of security. Your job is here."

"My job is to protect your house. The Representative and her entire bodyguard contingent are here, so I doubt anyone will be insane enough to come after you. I'm a better tracker than anyone down there."

"Lord Pritchard's men are nearby, and he has a number of weres that he has dedicated to my command. I'll send a team of them."

"Sir, please!"

"Any issues or guilt you have regarding Shamira must be put aside. We still have a job to do, and I can't drop everything else to go chasing after a renegade vampire."

"She's just trying to protect people!" Clara growled. "Like she always does! Yet you seem to see that as a bad thing. She defied you, so you're hanging her out to dry?" Clara actually squeaked a bit when Shane charged across the room and grabbed her by the front of her leather corset, lifting her off the ground.

"I will only tolerate so much insolence," he said, his voice cold and edgy. "And don't you dare think that I don't care. I love all my children and my house, even if they do drive me crazy." He knew he should send her to a cell for her challenge, but not this time . . . not tonight. Not with Shamira missing, and not when Clara was currently helpless to do anything about it. Sticking this woman in a cell now would put too much of a strain on her psyche. So he put her down and turned away.

"Sir, we need to show that we can look after our own." Renata looked almost as pained as Clara. "Send Pritchard's men as well, but we should have one of our own leading the search, and Banshee's talents would be better suited tracking down Lacroix's flunkies. Please," she whispered.

Shane stopped and looked back. "We give her a few more hours, then I'll decide. We don't even know where to look."

"Please be all right," Clara whispered, mostly to herself though the other magical beings picked it up. "Please, please --"

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Some time later . . .

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Shamira's mouth felt like cotton and bile when she woke up. Her vision was blurred, and the intensely bright light hanging somewhere overhead was not helping matters at all. Her hands were secured, with what felt like leather-lined metal, and her restraints were secured to a chain attached to the ceiling. She hung freely, her feet cuffed together with similar devices, and she was at least two feet off of the ground. She was also naked as the day she was born.

"Wuh . . . what --"

"You should have left when I warned you," came a masculine but now no-longer-tempting voice from behind her. "I was nice to you because I disrespected you about your car, so I gave you a way out." Daniel the elf walked into her view. He still looked like a Greek god, with a chiseled and smooth chest exposed to the world, tight leather pants and his beautiful hair flowing unrestrained by a headband. But his eyes were anything but friendly now. They were just . . . dark.

"Why . . . what --" Shamira babbled, trying to get her eyes to focus. Slowly, things began to clear up, and she saw chains . . . chains lining every wall in her field of view. Those walls, those chains, and the floors beneath were splattered with rust covered splotches . . . blood.

"You aren't who you claimed to be," Daniel continued calmly, then slugged her hard in the ribs. Shamira growled in pain and yanked on her bindings, but they didn't give. This elf apparently knew how to restrain people. He sighed, then continued talking. "You lied to me. Who are you?" He slugged her again on the other side.

Shamira stopped trying to pull on her chains, realizing that she was just wasting her strength. She blocked out the pain she felt from where she had been shot and more recently punched. She felt so weak. "What . . . I was just passing through and those guys . . . Augh!" She yelped when another blow landed solidly in her midsection.

"Stop . . . lying. You killed eleven well armed and trained men, and wounded the twelfth. You carried substantial firepower. You've been shot several times, and yet you kept fighting. And you cost us so much blood," he whispered, gripping her arm in a place a silver bullet had passed through, digging his thump in until it ruptured the scar. Shamira bit back her scream this time, though the pain rampaging through her system was worse than anything she had ever imagined before.

"You fucker!" she hissed at last. "You're a bleeder?! You . . . you son of a bitch!" He was one of them. She had been looking for those involved in the morning star trade, and she had stared one of the worst of them in the face and did not even know it. She looked up and saw a couple of grates nearby and she knew . . . she was underneath the garage. Damn it, she had stood not more than twenty yards from where she was now. How could she have been so foolish? She had completely and utterly failed, and now she was going to die for it.

"Luckily, weres are a dime a dozen," Daniel said softly, pulling his had away and wiping Shamira's own blood on her exposed abdomen. "We still have one left over," he added glancing behind her. Shamira heard chains rattle, and she realized that she wasn't alone in her captivity. "He's too scrawny though. I doubt he'll give us even a sixth of what we need for another batch. And faeries have gotten damn hard to catch around here."

Daniel hauled off and punched Shamira in the kidneys. She may not officially need them anymore, but it still hurt like hell. Then he spun her around so that she could see the other captive, and her heart broke. Were or not, the kid couldn't have been more than sixteen or seventeen years old, and he was a scrawny as Daniel had claimed. He did not look starved, but he did look . . . empty.

"You couldn't just stay gone," she heard Daniel say from behind her, "so now . . . now I make you less of a problem and more part of the solution." His voice dropped to a thin whisper. "I may not be able to bleed you dry yet, but I can do so many things with a body like this without spilling a drop."

Shamira thought about those words, especially "a body like this." When Clara said those words, it made her feel like the most beautiful woman in the world, even if the feeling only lasted for the utterance. The way her friends at the house had looked at her had made her feel so amazing. Hell, she even admitted to herself that the first time Shane had said something similar had been one of the first times she'd genuinely felt desirable.

When Daniel said them, she felt a void inside her, and that void was growing. Suddenly, she felt a sharp and searing pain in her back and she heard the familiar sound of a whip cracking. A silver-tipped whip . . . Shamira's own whip. She screamed into her teeth, but trapped the sound there.

"It will be a while until my partner is able to round up more men," Daniel said, running his hand over the scar he had just created. A normal whip would have opened her up and caused her to bleed, but the silver caused the wound to instantly cauterize and form a nasty scab. "When he does, they'll go hunting, and then you'll be nothing more than a blood cow. But until then, I'm going to practice my art on you. You might as well let the scream out," he added, letting the whip fall on her left shoulder-blade. "They all do."

Shamira didn't know how long it took before she started to scream . . . then sob . . . then whimper. The elf landed lash after lash on her skin until she the scars covered almost a fourth of her exposed skin. When he broke both of her knees with a sledgehammer, she let out a shrill whine that she could not even recognized as herself.

Daniel had to magically revive her after a shot to her jaw dislocated it, leaving her jawbone only attached on one side and otherwise hanging limply in the skin. Shamira though she had no screams left in her. Her face was covered with sweat and tears, her body with sweat and scars. The were looked at her with terror and revulsion.

The only weeping Shamira could do was in her own mind. She prayed for death. She had never been particularly religious, but she prayed as hard as she could. Daniel had won. Lacroix or whoever this partner is could have her. She'd sell her soul for just a second without pain. But Daniel was not quite done. She saw him approach with some kind of high powered dremel saw that sported a blade that shone like silver. He started it up and let the blade roar into her back.

Shamira screamed as her captor dug into her spine. She screamed and moaned like the broken soul she had become. She screamed until she could no longer feel anything. She screamed until the world finally and thankfully went black.

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To be continued . . .