To Protect and Serve Ch. 03

Proofread by FernieLyn

This story is a bit wordy and fairly long, so if you are looking for immediate gratification, you might want to look elsewhere.

The following story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance between these characters and events and any real person or events is strictly coincidental . . . and pretty darn impressive seeing as it is a science fiction story. Do not reproduce or copy this story without the consent of the author.

This story is based in an alternative universe, where history took a different course than the one we are used to. In this world, the creatures which we now believe to be legends have walked alongside man for the duration of our existence. Vampires, werewolves, wizards, witches, sorcerers, and a host of other beings share our world.

The following story contains, in one chapter or another, lesbian, homosexual, heterosexual, anal, group, sci-fi/fantasy, non-human, and BDSM sexual activity. There may be some erotic horror in there somewhere as well, but I haven't made up my mind.

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Shamira hadn't slept for crap. She'd managed to avoid all the doms and switches the night before, as she was in no mood to play any reindeer games. She had burned out a couple of magazines at the firing range, done whip practice for an hour, then went out and just walked the golf course a couple of times.

'What's the point? I thought this would be different, but no. I come up with an idea, someone else takes credit for it. Good enough to do grunt work, but nothing delicate. Oh no, the girl with the muscles can't to the diplomatic part.' Deep in her heart, she knew that she was overreacting a bit, but being mad was a powerful thing, kind of like an avalanche. Once it started, it just had to keep going until it ran out of things to eat or until it ran into a wall bigger than it could handle.

'Screw 'em,' she thought. Once the sun rose, it was Sunday, her safe day. She was going to go hide out in the lounge, say to hell with research and all the rest, and she was just going to watch football until her eyes bled.

So she had finally gone to bed, getting a grand total of four hours of sleep. That had given her time to throw on some comfortable sweats, sneak out, grab a ton of snacks and soda (the benefits on being unable to gain weight), and stake out a place in the lounge. The lounge had been set aside as a domination free zone.

Since she was the only sub she knew with Sunday off, she figured she'd have it to herself. So she poured some Pepsi on ice, heated up about twenty pizza rolls, broke out the chips and salsa, and turned to the giant HD flat-screen to enjoy the ESPN pre-game show. She had her laptop with her, but she was just going to use it to check scores on the games she wasn't watching. She was NOT going to do research, damn it.

Her personal sanctuary remained sovereign for about twenty minutes. Clara strutted in wearing a thong, an abdomen-exposing half-shirt, and a pair of slippers.

"Wa'as up?" Clara said, flopping her butt down on the sofa next to a stunned looking Shamira. The Native American beauty stole one of her friend's pizza rolls. "How can you eat this stuff?" she said, then stole another one. "Horrible."

"You could always NOT eat them," Shamira said, moving the platter further away on the coffee table, but not before Clara stole two more.

"Can't help myself. Finger food is addictive." She grabbed a chip, dipped it in salsa and downed it. "Now that's the good stuff."

"Shouldn't you be asleep?" Shamira grumbled. "Or . . . somewhere else?"

"What's got your panties in a bunch?" Clara said. "I always watch football on Sundays, and I figured it'd be fun to watch with you."

That sounded far too damn . . . reasonable, so Shamira just sat back, scooted a little further away on the sofa, and raised a class of soda to her lips and kept it there. You didn't have to talk when you were drinking, or even just pretending to drink.

Clara sighed. Renata had actually dropped by in the waning hours before sunrise specifically to ask Clara to intervene with Shamira on her behalf, after telling her the entire story. Well, Renata's side of the story of course. Both she and Shane had agreed that Shamira was more likely to listen to Clara than anyone else. Wounded pride was something that even Shamira's shadow healing couldn't touch. "Ahem."

Shamira ignored her. Well, actually she turned up the sound on the television and popped another pizza roll, then went back to her drink.

"AHEM! I asked you a question. What's got you so pissy?" She actually had to take the remote away before Shamira turned up the volume again.

"Hey, it's my safe day," Shamira snapped. "So if I want to sit here and watch damn football by myself, then I can. Right?"

"Actually, it being your safe day means that you cannot participate in any BDSM activities, even if Shane told you to. But you're still part of this house in other ways, and we're friends. As a friend, I feel obligated to find out what's got you so upset."

"Like you don't know," Shamira said, looking sullen and grabbing a handful of tortilla chips.

"You are not going to make this easy for me are you? Yeah, Renata talked to me about what happened, and I'm usually pretty damn confident in her judgment. But she isn't perfect. She's also really not used to someone not liking her, and --"

"Then maybe she should actually let me do my damn job," Shamira snipped, then settled back. She didn't want to talk about it, not even with Clara. Gorgeous, sexy, mostly-naked Clara. She shook her head.

"How did she not let you do your . . . Oh for crying out loud," Clara muttered, reaching out and taking the glass of soda away from her friend before she pretended to drink it again. "Now, how did she prevent you from doing your job?"

Shamira realized she was never going to get to watch her sports in peace until Clara was satisfied. So she blurted out the whole thing, including how her tentative authority had been basically shit upon when Renata had overridden her choice of ceremonies. "I mean, blood energy versus sexual energy. How difficult of a decision is that really? Bleeding a vampire is bad, right?"

"Yes, very bad. But did you think that maybe we could send a couple of vamps to each provide a little? Did you think about what this 'sexual energy' ceremony might actually require? Or were you just jumping on a chance to do something else wild and say it was just for duty?"

"Great," Shamira said. "Nice to know you're solidly on her side."

"There's only one side around here," Clara said, her exasperation beginning to show. "You're mad because Renata pointed something out that maybe you didn't want to hear, even if you knew she was right. So now you're making this into more than it needs to be."

"Shane said that this wasn't going to happen. What happened to having confidence in my abilities? My first job and she pulls the rug out from under me. And believe it or not, I am quite capable of being upset about things without it having to be about my sexual hang-ups."

Clara was actually suffering a phantom headache. She hadn't had an actual headache in 62 years, but she was able to remember them. "Shane still has confidence in your abilities. Renata still has confidence in your abilities, but you don't have the experience in dealing with our world that she does. That old saying that things that sound too good to be true usually are? That goes double for us. The fact that Shane let you run with this with only minimal backup means a lot, but you don't know Shane well enough to have guessed that. When someone is learning to fly a plane, they don't give them the keys to the 747 right out of flight school. I hope. Anyway, this is just mentoring. And it's Renata's job to keep you safe, just like it's her job to keep Shane safe. Shane ignored her, and look what happened? You died! If you were getting ready to walk into something that might kill you and she knew about it, would you really be that pissed about it if she stopped you?"

"But I researched faeries! They don't respond with force, lethal or otherwise, unless provoked. I did what I was supposed to, but --"

"Research is great and it was smart for you to do. But research is only part of it, and experience is the other. Renata's been a werejaguar for 12 years. She was attacked and changed when she was sixteen. She learned what she needed to in a hurry just to survive, because female werecats tend to be taken as mates by dominant males in areas like that, and being willing or not doesn't make much difference."

Shamira leaned away from the other woman and proceed to sulk. She knew she was being childish. She knew that Clara was right and that Renata was just trying to help. But knowing the truth and admitting it were two different things. Something else that Renata had been right about.

Clara saw that her friend was distancing herself again, and just decided to let it be. Shamira was a smart woman; she'd come around. The first quarter of the football game was spent in awkward silence, with snacks being mostly uneaten (except for Clara snagging most of the pizza rolls) and beverages not drunk.

Shamira couldn't have told you what happened in the first quarter of play to save her life. During the commercial break, she got up to microwave more pizza rolls that she wasn't eating, only to stare at infernal contraption for a full minute after it made the dinging noise. 'Just apologize,' she told herself. 'You're being a baby. Wait, why apologize to Clara? You should be apologizing to Renata.' She opened the microwave, grabbed the plate and turned around, only to find that Clara was standing two feet behind her, staring at her with quirks in the corners of her mouth.

"Listen --" Shamira started to say, but was cut off when Clara kissed her. It was one of those toe tingling kisses that made her put the plate down, grab Clara's mostly bare buttocks and pull her closer. Clara didn't seem to mind. "What was that for?" she asked at last.

"For seeing it my way. Your whole body is really expressive, you know that? Expressive and hot." Clara ran her hands down her friend's back and grab her ass.

"Hey!" the muscular woman said, "it's my day off. Okay, maybe I did grab yours first --"

"Your day off means that you don't sub. Doesn't mean you can't have fun."

Shamira smiled, and just that act lifted an invisible weight from her shoulders. She grabbed a pizza roll and placed it in Clara's mouth.

"These really are horrible," the girl said, munching happily.

"You keep saying that." Shamira realized that every time Clara had initiated every kiss. The newbie vampire wasn't sure why, but Clara's kisses just made her feel better. Once the Native American was finished with her treat, it was Shamira's turn to start it. And Clara responded happily, her arms wrapped around Shamira's waist as her tongue shared the same space as her friend's. "I really do want to watch the games," she finished with a chuckle.

"And I really do want to watch them with you," Clara said. "I like being around you. And I plan on making out on the sofa while we're watching and stuffing ourselves silly.

Shamira almost wanted to blush. "I think that sounds like the best plan for a Sunday that I've ever heard."

Clara popped another pizza roll. "Told you that listening to me was a good thing."

The rest of the first game was a lot more pleasant to watch, with Clara spending most of it resting her head on Shamira's lap getting fed snack food. Periodically, other people would walk in and chat, and Henry actually stuck around to watch the second game (after convincing the girls to turn it to the Cowboys). Even with Henry present, the "making out on the couch" went forward as scheduled. They spent the fourth quarter looking out of the corner of their eyes, locked at the lips. Shamira was enjoying caressing Clara's bare back and mostly bare backside, whereas Clara was caressing her friend's defined arms and abs.

"Would you two get a room?!" Henry said at last.

"We had one, then you showed up," Clara said, then kissed Shamira on the neck.

"It's her day off," he muttered. "Can't you two calm your hormones for the next game? Normally I'd be all over watching the two of you play footsies --"

"I don't think we've used our feet . . . yet," Clara purred. Shamira's brain wasn't working well enough to participate in banter. She just wanted Clara's hands to move a little further up to her chest and --

"Okay, I like watching the Cowboys play. I want to watch it here," Henry said. "And if you don't tone it down, I'll make sure that you so aren't in the mood --"

"Henry!"

"-- that you won't even be able to think about sex --"

"Don't you dare!"

"Washington Redskins."

Just like that, Clara's face twisted into an unflattering scowl. "You jackass!"

"I just think that you're too damn sensitive --"

Henry had riled a sleeping dragon. Clara was all business, feet on the floor espousing the evils of racial stereotyping in the sports and entertainment industries and how Native Americans were the last targets of openly derogatory cultural slams, as was made perfectly obvious by the insulting "mascot" of the Washington D.C. football franchise. Henry responded with some kind of platitudes about them being overly politically correct, mentioned something about the complacency of certain portions of the Native American population in selling their images for profit and maintaining their own stereotypes, and that Clara should "get the hell over" herself.

Shamira was sitting on the far end of the couch now, amused at an argument that these two had obviously had before while simultaneously being highly annoyed that she wasn't having the fun she had enjoyed earlier. She might still be having issues about some things, but she'd been damn sure that she liked kissing Clara . . . and making out with Clara. Even as the tan-skinned hottie was yelling at the cowboy vampire about political repression, Shamira kept staring at those long gorgeous legs and the flat tummy exposed just below that half shirt. She didn't feel weird or guilty about being with Clara, which surprised her a bit. She was a girl after all, and Shamira was under nobody's thumb at the moment.

"See," Henry was saying, "this is why you weren't allowed to watch football for an entire year! You've got no sense of humor."

"I'll show you my sense of humor! I'll be laughing like hell when I shove my foot up your --"

"Uhm, what do you mean?" Shamira asked. She looked at Clara, who looked . . . pouting? "What happened?"

"Miss high-principles here followed the Redskins all over the country in 1961, using her shaman magic to cause them to lose most of their games and have their worse season in their entire history. That kind of interference was hard to keep off of the Tribunal's radar, even with Shane doing spin control. He got so mad at her that he banned her from watching football for a year, and now she still can't go to any live game where Washington is playing. Hell, she can't knowingly go within a hundred yards of the team or cast any magic at them."

Shamira looked again at her friend, who still looked like an eighteen-year old girl. "An entire football team has a mystical restraining order against you?"

"If they had simply conceded to my demands, that never would have happened," Clara sulked.

Henry rolled his eyes. "Yes, she actually issued demands. Know those shows and movies where the psycho sends the police messages made from cut-up magazines? She did that. 'Change your team's name or face the consequences, imperialist scum.'"

"They should've taken me seriously," Clara said, grinning a little. "I actually made the turf of the field rebel against them. Lost footing, every ball bounce when their opponents' way, radical shifts in wind direction while the ball was in the air --"

Henry turned up the television. "That kind of exposure could've been bad mojo. You're just lucky that Shane had so much stroke with the Tribunal, even back then."

Shamira poured herself another soda, and one for Clara. She grabbed a beer out of the mini-fridge and handed it to Henry. "Okay, if we promise to behave ourselves . . . for the most part . . . during this next game, assuming it doesn't turn into a blowout, will you kindly shut up after that?"

"Hey, I was --"

"Don't tell me shit," Shamira said, "I'm on her side. Or we could talk about what a bunch of fuck-sticks that the Cowboys are."

Henry shot her an evil glare. There were two kinds of fans in football: those that loved the Cowboys with a flaming passion and those that hated them just as fervently. She'd guessed correctly about Henry. Shamira was a Packers fan anyway.

"Okay. One game of peace."

Clara was grumbling, but stood up to heat up more pizza rolls. "Don't know why you can't go watch (grumble) fucking Cowboys (grumble) another room." She grinned a bit though when Shamira ran her hand up one leg and softly squeezed ass flesh.

'She's just so damn . . . incredible,' Shamira thought. The next game came on, and Clara settled down against Shamira's hard body on the couch, nestled in the crook of her arm and acting like any other young woman . . . except that she was mostly naked and was actually eighty years old. Both women were vocal in their opposition to the Cowboys, which was making the hair on the back of Henry's neck stand up on end. And there was some fondling and groping to be had, regardless of Henry's half-hearted glares. The Cowboys wound up winning, so Henry got the last word on that battle line.

"Well, I'll leave you two ladies to whatever you're going to do," he said, raising his eyebrows. "I'd stay and join you, but --"

"But you weren't invited," Clara said sweetly. Actually, she normally wouldn't mind a three-way with the cowboy. Hell, they'd tag-teamed that young male sub at Prometheus, but she wanted Shamira to herself for the night. She'd only been able to go so far in expanding her friend's girl-on-girl education, and wanted to give her more of a taste . . . something in a more normal atmosphere, or as normal as can be for a brand new vampire. Then, Shane's voice blurted over the intercom.

"Reaper, Banshee, Henry, Bjorne, Lillian, and Shamira . . . Report immediately to the armory. We've got a hell cluster forming in Canton. Clara, start looking for whatever dumbass sorcerer started this damn thing."

'Crap!' Clara thought. 'Not now!'

"What's a hell cluster?" Shamira said, getting to her feet but unwilling to let go of Clara's warm body before she absolutely had to.

"Could be a bunch of things," Henry said, grabbing Shamira by the arm and dragging her toward the hallway. 'Damn, she's strong!' he thought, as making her move was more difficult than he thought it should.

Clara followed them. "Usually someone or something causes a dimensional rift too near to a node --" She stopped when she saw that Shamira was looking both confused and alarmed. "I'll give you Magic 101 another time. Abbreviated version is that there are multiple alternate dimensions. Some magic taps into the energy fields that surround each dimension. If the magic isn't well controlled and happens near a node, which is a place where multiple dimensional fields criss-cross, then it can cause a small and temporary tear. But before it closes, things can slip through, usually in random numbers. It could wind up that we face nothing more than a couple of confused six-legged monkeys . . . yes, it's happened. But it could be a lot worse."

"How did we know about it?"

"There's a global weather coven of witches within the Tribunal. They monitor for crap like this. And as one of Shane's enforcers, you have to keep it from getting out of hand."

They got to the armory about the same time as Bjorne, who had red welts all over his body. Apparently someone had been enjoying his services. Banshee and Reaper were already geared up in some fancy looking outfits.