To Protect and Serve Ch. 10

"Shamira, are you awake? Please say something." Clara didn't hear words, but she heard the bed next to her creak. Her hand was shaking as she reached across the thin dark divide that separated them.

Shamira cringed away. She did not want to be touched. Broken things should never be touched, because you cut your fingers on them when you try. In her efforts to get away from Clara's encroaching hand, she unbalanced the gurney, sending it and herself toppling to the ground.

"Shamira?!" Clara shouted, unable to see in the total darkness that had been created for her friend to heal. She slowly slid out of her own bed, her feet gingerly touching the floor while she struggled to lower herself safely. Her pain and her hurts were more a matter of memory than physicality, but her memory was good enough. For a while, she had experienced a fraction of what Shamira had, and she could not imagine what the other woman was feeling now. "Shamira, I'm here." She caught herself before asking if Shamira was "okay." No question could be less appropriate considering the circumstances.

The door opened and Shane bolted inside. He looked disheveled and altogether exhausted. Tabitha was close on his heels, and she threw on the light switch. Shamira was cowering in a corner of the room, her gurney on its side. The poor woman was peeking out from behind her unkempt mass of hair with feral, angry, hurting eyes. But the scariest part were the long, dark claws that seemed to have been born of and formed by absolute, impenetrable darkness. Shamira was holding those claws out, trying futilely to cover her face and body.

Shane knelt down, trying hard to control his expression. Someone was going to pay dearly for this. He just had not figured out who yet. "Shamira, I need you to put the claws away or . . . retract them. Please, we need to have a look at you and --" He was forced to retreat a bit as Shamira hissed angrily at him, pushing herself harder against the wall in an attempt to escape.

Clara ignored the claws and the desperate glances and crawled painfully forward. The wounds that Shamira had suffered still echoed faintly on Clara's skin, but even then that remnant was harsher than anything Clara had ever experienced. That elf had tried to systematically and methodically destroy someone, which was something Clara had never even truly understood before.

"Just let me touch you," she whispered, her voice expressing a different kind of pain. She reached out and touched her friend's leg, but Shamira just stared at that point of contact. Her leg didn't move. 'She doesn't feel it. Please no, don't let her be --' Her thoughts were interrupted when Shamira's primal face broke, leaving behind . . . nothing. Hopelessness was setting in, tinged with a sorrow so profound she had no word for it.

The claws faded from Shamira's hands, reverting to whatever primordial blackness that bore them as she collapsed entirely against the wall. She knew that Clara was coming closer, but she barely saw her.

"You're going to be okay," Shane said, kneeling nearby while Clara pressed herself against Shamira's body. But the wounded vampire wasn't responding, but rather just lay there staring at a spot she could not feel.

Tabitha looked around and found a mirror. "Shamira, look. See?"

Clara had to move Shamira's unresponsive face towards the mirror. To the naked eye, all of Shamira's scars were either gone or reduced to thin white lines. There was a metal apparatus that was keeping her jaw from moving. But Shamira saw past the mirage. She still saw the shadow of every wound as if it were freshly made. She saw her jaw barely hanging on, and her chest mangled. She didn't see what Tabitha had fixed.

And she saw shame . . . something she could never let them see . . . never let them know. She wanted to lose the memories she had, but how? She smashed her head against the wall, pain billowing around her skull. What was surprising was that Clara gasped in pain, gripping her head and looking confused.

"What's wrong?" Clara asked. "Please --"

"What . . . happened?" Shamira muttered, her voice dry and cracked as she touched Clara's head.

"She cast a spell of balance," Shane said, hoping the knowledge he was about to impart might keep Shamira from doing something rash. "Until the next full moon, any harm done to you will be shared by her."

"You shouldn't have done that," Shamira hissed through clenched teeth. "Not for me." She closed her eyes, blocking out the picture in the mirror, though not the one in her mind. "You shouldn't suffer for my sins."

"Sins? What sins? Dammit Shamira, this wasn't your --" Clara wanted to complain, but she could see that Shamira wasn't paying attention anymore. Due to stress and exhaustion, she had fallen asleep, looking anything but peaceful. So she picked her friend up and placed her back on the bed, and she could not help but wonder how deep those wounds still ran.

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A week later . . .

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Shane stood on his balcony, staring down at where Shamira sat in her wheelchair, overlooking . . . nothing. This is what she had been doing since she had agreed not to kill herself, at least not as long as she was linked to Clara anyway. She barely spoke to anyone, though there was always at least one or two members of the house nearby in case she needed to. Even his field agents had taken turns coming back up to Atlanta for a few hours to check in on her, though none had any luck getting through to her.

Banshee's return had been particularly painful to watch. Shane knew that his eldest child held herself responsible for Shamira's injuries, and it hurt her to feel that she had failed. Banshee and Shamira had sat next to each other, not saying a word. The assassin had wrung her hands so hard that she had broken one of her own fingers, a sure sign that she was distressed. They had parted company without communicating at all, and then Banshee had traveled back down to Savannah and had unleashed a massive, dark, and all-encompassing fury.

Lacroix had already been completely cut off from his resources. When Jonas's compliance in the morning star trade had become confirmed, all the local lords took action. Lords from Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and Louisiana had sent enforcers to the region, shutting down Lacroix's businesses, seizing his assets, and pushing what few allies he had back to his compound.

But while they applied pressure, Banshee was applying steel. She killed anyone she could find that still held loyalty to her enemy. She did not torture them, beat them, or even question them. She sought them out and cut them down, and it was the only thing that could bring a smile to her heart. Even the other two assassins knew enough to stay out of her way until her wave of death had run its course.

The warehouse with the dragon eggs had been ransacked by Lacroix's people and the contents moved back to his property during the early days of the assault. Lacroix's compound was still formidable, and the remaining members of his house were desperate. In their world, desperate meant exceedingly dangerous.

Shane had sent a message, written in blood and shoved into the mouth of an enforcer that Banshee had decapitated before delivering it to Lacroix's doorstep. The only choice that Lord Stapleton's enemy had was how quickly he was going to die . . . slowly or very slowly. "Slowly" meant turning over Jonas, as Shane meant him to pay for his complicity in Shamira's torture.

And yet despite having a veritable ton of things to do, Shane found himself spending most of his time worrying about his damaged vampire child. He sensed Clara one floor below him, staring out the window of one of the reading rooms at a woman she had suffered for . . . who seemed to resent her for doing so. Then Shane felt a presence in the room with him, and there was no mistaking who it was.

"I know that it is not wise for a lord to show weakness," he said as his visitor approached, "but I am simply at a loss for what to do."

Alessandra put a hand on her favorite child's shoulder in a gesture of comfort. "You will find a way to help her. It is what you do. While I hate to be the . . . as you Americans say, the 'bad guy," but Shamira is not your only priority. Lacroix must be put down once and for all."

"Lacroix is surrounded. We have cut off his funds, his supply of blood, and any reinforcement he might have been able to call in. Without open and obvious warfare in Savannah, the best thing we can do is starve him out. I will not let Lacroix get away." He and the Representative watched as Clara once again approached Shamira.

The shaman knelt down next to Shamira's chair, her head bowed. It was an uncomfortable pose for her . . . submissive. Shamira was just staring off into space, her unbelievable eyes focused on nothing. Clara took some comfort in that her friend looked good, barring the hollow expression. Tabitha had managed to reset everything that was broken, remove all the scars, put her jaw back on, and had even replaced the breast implants. But Shamira's hair was unkempt and her cheeks sunken. She refused to eat, but barely put up a fuss when she was given blood intravenously. Shamira was waiting to die.

"Please," the Native American woman said for the hundredth time that week, her voice tired and full of fear, "talk to me. Shamira, you survived so much. I just felt a small part of it, but I couldn't have . . . I don't know how you did it but you did. You survived, you killed that fucking elf . . . you beat them. Lacroix and Jonas and all of them are going down because you. Don't you want to see that?"

Shamira turned her head away. "What does it matter?" she asked with a raspy voice.

Clara was startled for a moment, as this was the first time Shamira had said anything, but she was not going to let that horrible, vast silence that had existed between them to return. "It matters because you can show them they didn't beat you."

"Didn't beat me?" Shamira laughed, but it was as empty as her gaze. "They DID beat me! Don't you fucking get it?" Her voice broke back to a whisper. "There's nothing left in here," she added, tapping her chest.

Clara placed her hand on the spot that her lover had been jabbing at. "YOU are still in here. The woman I fell in love with is still in here."

Shamira's face broke from its stoic resolve a little bit, but it was only to let more pain seep through. "Don't say that. You can't love me. Look at me," she continued, still seeing every wound that was inflicted on her. "I'm going to be a fucking paperweight for all eternity. You can't love something like that. You don't love monsters without souls or . . . or whatever the hell I am."

"What are you talking about? You're exactly who you were before --"

"You don't know what I am," Shamira growled. "You weren't there. You think you felt it? You didn't feel yourself cut in half. He took half of me away. I gave the rest of me up. You didn't feel your soul die, so you can't possibly know what I am."

"You didn't lose your soul," Clara said, wiping a bloody tear from her eye. "They can't take that away --"

"They didn't take it! I gave it up, or aren't you listening?!"

"I don't understand," Clara said, wanting badly to calm an increasingly frantic Shamira. "How did you give up your soul?"

"I . . . I wished it weren't me," Shamira whispered, so angry with herself that her own words tasted vile to her. "I wished I'd just let that family be taken so that they could suffer instead of me." Shamira hung her head. "I wanted it to be over so badly that I would have sacrificed an entire family just so that I wouldn't have to hurt anymore. They had two kids. Only a monster would think of something like that."

"Shamira, you're not Superman! I've never heard of anyone suffering what you did, much less surviving. When people get tortured, they make a deal with God or the Devil or whoever they need to make the pain stop. It's how it works."

"But --"

Shane had been listening to the entire conversation from the balcony. He kissed Alessandra's hand and then leaped to the ground below. "But what?" he asked, his voice unable to remain calm, compassion slipping from his tongue. "Clara is right. You saved four people, and they've taken refuge in Huntsville until this business is done. You had escaped your chains, and the first thing you did was rescue that boy in the bleeding room."

"You did not save yourself," Alessandra added, sliding up next to Shane. She had come down so quickly and quietly that no one had noticed. "You thought of others first."

"And I know you," Clara said, kissing Shamira's hand. "Knowing what you went through, if you were faced with going through it again, you would, no matter the cost."

"You don't know that," Shamira replied, shaking her head. "I would have done anything --"

"No, you wouldn't," Clara interrupted, her voice growing more secure. "You say that now, or you might think it when the world dumps more on you than you can handle, but you would never actually do it. How many times do you have to put everything you have on the line protecting someone else before you accept that THAT is who you are? No elf, vampire, demon, angel, or monster can make you anything else."

Shamira was crying freely. Clara knew that meant the wounded vampire would need more blood soon. Vampires wept blood, which was one of the reasons they did not do it too often. Crimson spots dotted her cheeks. "I'm not anything," came a voice tinier than the muscular form that uttered it. "I'm just so empty."

Clara slid up and sat in Shamira's lap, wrapping her legs around the chair. "Let me fill you," she said. She slit her neck with one fingernail and offered it to the other vamp.

"But --" Shamira had actually felt a twinge in her own neck, reminding her that they were still connected.

"I've eaten recently. You need this," Clara interrupted. "I need this."

Shamira resisted, but she was still fairly weak, the blood being offered was potent, and it was Clara offering it. Through everyone she had experienced over the last several months, this woman had been the one true, wonderful, good thing in her life. It pained Shamira that the sexual rush she had always felt around her was gone for good, but if this could make her feel anything at all . . . well, anything was better than nothing. Her lips touched that smooth, beautiful skin where the blood still stood, and her fangs bore deep into Clara's neck. She felt Clara cradling her head as she drank and, just for a moment, Shamira felt whole again. She fed, she wept, and she allowed herself to be touched. She sensed Shane and Alessandra depart, letting her and Clara share a brief moment alone. It was not much, but healing has to start somewhere.

Shamira withdrew her fangs, unwilling to take more than her fellow vamp could safely give. "I don't know what to do now. I keep thinking I should have listened to Banshee or to Henry or to Shane, but . . . but then I think of what would have happened if I HAD listened to them. I don't know if I could have lived with myself, but now I don't know if I can live at all."

"You can live," Clara replied, kissing her friend on blood-stained lips. "Because no matter how many times you've threatened to leave or have almost died, you just don't quit. I love you for that. I love you put your heart into everything, even if it might get broken. I love . . . damn it, I just love you. I . . . I don't expect you to say anything, especially if you don't mean it. I can't even imagine what you're feeling --"

Shamira rested her head on Clara's chest, feeling neither breathing nor heartbeat, but was still somewhat comforted. "I never would have let you share my pain," she whispered, "because you shouldn't let someone you love go through that. I knew I was falling for you before . . . this," Shamira said, motioning to her crippled lower body. "I just don't know what I can offer you now. I'm only half a person --"

"Bullshit," Clara said, holding firmly onto her lover's face. "Yeah, your body always made me tingle, but it wasn't what sung to my soul. That part of you is still intact. And I believe you'll beat this," she continued rattling Shamira's wheelchair, "just like you overcome everything else. Let me help you," she said, then looked over Shamira's shoulder. "Let all of us help you."

Shamira turned the chair and saw every member of the house that had not been sent to Savannah was somewhere nearby watching on. One by one they came forward, placing a hand on her strong shoulders, or kissing her cheek or lips. One by one, they gave her a silent promise that they stood with her and, with that, her heart thawed.

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A few days later . . .

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Shamira had never been a big fan of dresses or skirts, but putting on pants was too frustrating for her. Monique had quickly provided a number of long, flowing wrap skirts that she could pretty much roll into on her own. No one had offered to help, but not out of a lack of desire to assist her in any way they could. Shamira wanted . . . no, NEEDED to reestablish some semblance of independence. But in her mind, she could not equate being able to dress herself, play golf with the others, or feel any sexual longing at all.

Tabitha had assured her that the sexual urges would return to a certain degree, but that almost made Shamira more depressed. The idea of wanting something she could no longer perform. No sex . . . no bondage games. The very thought of being put in chains again made her skin crawl. The notion of being whipped with a leather strap for mutual pleasure filled her with dread. She had been whipped until she gave up. She had been chained when she had been cut in half. But she knew now that she would never be kicked out of the house for inability to "satisfy" the masters. Her master felt sorry for her. Pity was an unwelcome savior.

She hauled her butt over into the wheelchair, then threw on a sweatshirt. Three months earlier, this was her standard fair. She hated going back to it, because it meant that the clock had struck midnight. She wasn't sexy anymore; the coach had turned back into a pumpkin. She wheeled herself down to Banshee's quarters. Shamira, who had once been terrified of spiders, had appointed herself the caretaker of the assassin's arachnid pets. For some reason, they just did not seem that scary anymore. She had even gotten fond of the tarantula she had first handled a short time ago. It just wanted something warm to walk on. Shamira could give it that.

She was just finishing up with the highly venomous Red Back from Australia when she sensed a presence at the door. Renata came over and gingerly placed a hand on one muscular shoulder.

"Done? Dinner's almost ready and . . . and your guests will be here soon."

Shamira let out a mental sigh. She had tried to get Clara or one of the other vamps to take up Kira and Arthur Blanks as donors now that Shamira was unable to provide real compensation for their blood, but Shane had insisted that she explain everything to them in person. Shamira had objected. Strenuously. The fewer people that saw her, the better. But Shane was still in charge, the ass.

"I guess we should go," Shamira replied, her voice tired. "I really wish I didn't have to do this."

"It's really for the best," Renata replied softly.

"Renata . . . I'm really sorry."

"Why? I mean, you don't have to --"

"I mean from before. I shouldn't have held it against you for doing your job. I just --"

"Shane was an idiot," Renata said firmly. "Yeah, I did what I was told, but he never should have told me to do it. You didn't know the rules very well, and what did he expect? You're one of the most impossibly stubborn people I've ever met. You're going to save the world in spite of anything anyone else says and . . . oh damn, I'm sorry," she finished, noticing that Shamira was beginning to squirm. The young vampire was incredibly uncomfortable thinking about her rebellious nature or heroics. Those were why she was in a wheelchair, and she blamed herself completely.