To Protect and Serve Ch. 06

"You took the part that you wanted, dumped the non-consensual crap aspect of it and made it your fantasy. Nothing wrong with that. It was neat seeing what goes on in that head of yours. Shane added it to the list, by the way."

Shamira actually laughed. "He would."

"It must've been strange having your deepest fantasies satisfied like that. And what was that at the end?"

Shamira covered her face. She hadn't figured out what that had meant yet. "You mean when it turned into . . . you know --"

"Clara?"

"Yeah, that. Renata, I don't know what to do with that."

"Maybe you should talk it over with her," Renata said smugly.

"I can't. What would I say? How would I even tell here?"

"Shamira?" Renata said smoothly.

"Yes?" Shamira uncovered her face to find that Renata was pointing behind her. Shamira's heart dropped in her chest. "Please don't tell me --"

"Shamira, is that true?" came a soft, beautiful and young (sounding) voice behind her.

"Gotta go," Renata said, ducking out the other side of the kitchen.

"That bitch," Shamira muttered. She slowly turned around to find Clara staring at her wide-eyed.

"Is it true?" her friend asked. "The conduit looked like me?"

"Uhm . . . yeah. Kind of. I mean, towards the end and . . . yeah towards the end. Well, it still had the tentacles instead of legs and it had a penis and . . . well, a cock for a tongue too, but besides that --"

"Why didn't you tell me?" the slim beauty asked.

"Because I don't know what it means. You've been amazing to me since I came here and I didn't want to freak you out and have you not want to be around me anymore."

"Fat chance. You've had sex with strangers, a weird octopus-thing, and everyone else in this house just about, but you still fantasize about little old me?"

Shamira nodded.

Clara smiled. "I wish you'd told me. Because I could've told you I fantasize about you too."

Shamira's eyes opened wide. "You do? Me?"

Clara approached her friend and put her hands on the counter on each side of Shamira, trapping the woman in place. "How could I not?" With that, she kissed Shamira, shoving the girl up onto the counter while she used her lips and tongue to wash away all doubts from the muscular newcomer's mind as to exactly how she felt.

"See," Shamira said after a minute, "you kiss a lot better than the conduit could."

"I could've told you that." Clara did it again, just to prover her point. "It's okay," she whispered. "You've been important to me since the first time I saw you. It doesn't mean that you or I can't enjoy other people's company. It just means that what we have can be special. We just need to take it one day at a time." It was Clara's turn to look a little sheepish. "I feel kinda silly. I haven't been this nervous about courting someone's affections since I tried to get Shane to bring me over."

"Is that what you're doing?" Shamira asked. "Courting me?" She wrapped her arms around Clara's waist.

"Kinda feels that way, doesn't it?"

The house siren started to blare and Shane's voice came in, telling all enforcers and assassins to meet at the armory.

"Damn it," Clara grumbled, stealing another kiss before Shamira had to rush off. "Finish this later."

"Looking forward to it."

Shamira was off to the armory, finding herself to be the first one there. She was half into her body armor before the others started arriving, starting with the crew that had woken up to watch football and the regular day shift. Soon, nine people were getting prepared while Shane gave them the run down.

"We received an anonymous tip that some shell walkers have been hassling a number of non-human owned business in downtown and College Park. They're shaking people down for money and telling the store owners to 'be ready for a changing of the guard.' This likely means --"

"Lacroix?" Henry said. "Sir, this is getting out of hand. I can't believe he'd be moving forward with this after the Tribunal has warned him and the meeting is just a few weeks off --"

"He has been somewhat arrogant, hasn't he?" Shane said. "Once Bunny and Pierre have been brought over, my personal house will be full. We will then step up our surveillance on Lacroix and work on expanding our out-of-house forces. But to recruit more help from the local populace, we need a show of strength here today."

"Uhm, what's a shell walker?" Shamira asked.

Sebastian moved to Shane's side before speaking. He wasn't trying to usurp the stage, but was just trying to avoid startling Shamira and getting decked again. "Shell walkers are insectoids that can take the shape of other beings. It's an imperfect disguise that even a regular human can spot; a hard and almost shiny skin is a dead giveaway. They can pass for whatever they're imitating if people don't look too closely. See one in its true form . . . well, you won't mistake it for anything else. If these are working for a vampire, then they're renegade drones, which means they've got a poisonous bit. The poison will kill mortals and make weres really sick, but doesn't effect vamps."

Shane nodded. Sebastian knew his stuff, and Shane was glad to have him on board. "We'll be sending out three groups of three to investigate, mixing up the weres and vampires. Henry, take Sebastian and Reaper, and start your search at Antonio's jewelry store. Bjorn, Banshee, and Bangaly, you will all start at Prime Cuts, a were-owned restaurant. Shamira, Yosyp, and Valeska, hit as many other downtown areas as you can. I'm willing to bet Shamira's already memorized the maps and she knows the streets better than anyone. There may be other stores that were approached where the owner's are afraid to come forward. It may be Sunday, but it is daylight in downtown Atlanta. Don't expose yourselves and try to keep things quiet. But make no mistake, I want these things taken care of. Capture one if you can, but don't let any escape. Any questions?"

Everyone was gearing up and everyone shook their heads. Then, Shamira stopped.

"Sir, how do you know those other two specific businesses were hit?"

"They called in. Why?"

"Before or after the anonymous tip?"

"After." Shane saw the gears turning in Shamira's head. "Why?"

"I'm just wondering why someone would call you anonymously."

Henry was loading a couple of knives into hidden compartments in his jacket. "They may not want to get involved publicly, in case this gets ugly."

"But they aren't a store owner or employee, otherwise they'd have told us who they were so we could help them. So a magical being just happened to see this bug men and call it in, but not tell you who they were? Not try and curry any favor with the boss? I . . . it's nothing. Never mind. It just sounds a little weird to me."

Shane nodded, deep in thought. "So you think something else is going on here?'

"Maybe, maybe not. Pierre has a couple days of life left, right? He was a super spy? Any chance of him being able to track down who made that phone call?"

"I'll contact him right away."

"Thanks," Shamira replied, feeling relieved. "And be careful. In the end, this is about Lacroix versus you." The group broke and everyone headed to the garage. Shamira looked at Yosyp on the way. "Are you going to be okay? I know the sunlight affects older vamps more --"

"I'll be fine. I can't levitate in the daylight and I would be hard pressed to defeat opponents I might normally take with ease. As long as we do not brawl in the middle of the streets, I will survive."

"Good. I'm driving."

Shortly thereafter, three nondescript SUVs with tinted windows were tearing downtown on I-75. Shamira realized that, between her and the two other people in the car, that she'd been with Shane the longest. And she really didn't know anything about Valeska. She knew Valeska was a weresnake who could supposedly turn into the biggest damn anaconda she'd ever seen and that she was going to be Shane's newest assassin, but that was about it.

"So," Shamira started, "tell me more about you."

Valeska was a tall, lean, beautiful woman with that light-brown skin similar to Renata's. She gave a shy smile, showing off perfect, pearly white teeth that contrasted well against her dark lips. Her dark brown hair was done up in cornrows that reached to her shoulders and was decorated with dark green beads. "This is a little out of the chute, isn't it?" She had a definite accent, but Shamira couldn't place it.

"Seems to be par for the course around here."

It turned out that Valeska was from Chile and was of Spanish/Amerindian descent. Her mother and father had been staunch opponents of Augusto Pinochet when he began his coup. She and her parents had gone into exile in the jungle, because they were too poor to escape to the "civilized" world, and most places they could afford to go were almost as bad. Valeska was taught to hunt, track, and kill by tribesman from her mother's side of the family. Her father had been captured when Valeska was only ten, and had become a victim of the infamous Caravan of Death.

Shamira's heart broke a little as she listened to her new colleague's tale. Being born into that kind of oppression and losing your father that way . . . Shamira had it easy by comparison.

Valeska seemed comfortable talking about these things, probably because she'd accepted them a long time ago. She had been a cold and calculating revolutionary, killing who she could in the new Chile's upper echelons and hoping for a shot at Pinochet himself. But even after being forced out of power and being arrested, she'd never been able to get to him. But once one started down the road she had taken, one could never really turn back. She was a revolutionary without a cause, which had led her to become a mercenary, willing to strike out at those who would do harm towards those who couldn't defend themselves. She'd been helping take down a criminal organization in Chicago when Renata had come looking to recruit for Shane.

"How did you become a were, if you don't mind my asking?" Yosyp asked from the back seat.

"I was in Brazil and was spending some hard earned money on . . . extra-curricular activities."

"Sex? You can't possibly be telling me that YOU --" Shamira was shocked at the notion. Valeska, like everyone else in the house, was the kind of person you paid to be WITH.

"Well, I kind of had . . . have certain things I like which I wouldn't trust to just anyone," Valeska said with an unrepentant smirk. "Besides being submissive, I'm into erotic asphyxiation."

Shamira glanced at her, confused as ever.

Yosyp explained it for her. "It means that she likes her orgasms to be intensified via oxygen deprivation, such as by choking."

Shamira's eyes were wide opened. "People like that?" She grimaced. "Sorry. I'm really in no position to criticize. It's just not something I knew people did."

"It's okay," Valeska replied. "Lots of people freak out about it. I discovered it kinda by accident, and finding someone who knows how to do it right and safe and all is hard. A lotta doms don't even know how to do it, so I generally just found a pro, ya know? Someone I knew would do it right. Turned out the guy who did it for me in Rio was the same guy who looked after Renata when her change went bad. Anyway, I didn't know none of that. I just knew that he knew how to use his hands. Of course, finding out later on that he was a constrictor, it all kinda made sense. Anyway, I accidentally saw him change once, freaked out, then kinda realized that it turned me on, ya know?"

Shamira grinned. "I think I can sympathize."

"Yeah, I heard you could." Valeska's smile was just as big. "The things one can do with a giant snake if you like being restrained and strangled. He made good use of the tail too."

Shamira's heart started to pound involuntarily. The problem wasn't the mental image . . . it was how horny that image made her. "Maybe you can show me some time."

Valeska nodded. "I'm sure that one of our masters or mistresses can arrange it."

Yosyp pulled out his blackberry and started typing a message. "Shane instructed us to send him notification any time we had anything to this list of yours," he said to Shamira. "I believe this counts."

"List?" Valeska asked.

"Yeah. I . . . Oh, just ask Shane. It was his idea. So, this guy in Brazil bit you?"

"Yeah. Actually, he wanted me to do a job for him, so I took getting changed as payment." She looked over her shoulder at Yosyp. "What's your story?"

"We're there," he said with a slight smile.

"Ah, dark and mysterious . . . huh?"

The three of them got out and got "dressed." Their body armor was hidden under their baggy clothes, and each was armed to the proverbial teeth. Valeska was even carrying her special briefcase that contained a sniper rifle, complete with scope and silencer.

'I have dangerous friends,' she thought. She pulled out the list of businesses, many of which she already knew. She just hadn't known they were owned by magical beings. The three of them walked from business to business within the area of interest. Shamira met goblins, light and dark elves, vampires, and weres in varieties she never could have imagined. None of them had seen the shell walkers, but all were grateful for the heads up and promised they'd call. Then they got on their phones and called some local sorcerers to get the "Black Flag" ward, which Shamira could only surmise worked well against insectoids.

"This is odd," Shamira muttered as they turned the corner and headed back towards the parking garage. "An anonymous caller reports these guys, but no one else has seen hide nor hair of them." She pulled out her cell phone and called Henry. "Hey, you guys seen anything? No, us neither. But they were there right? Okay . . . okay . . . got it. No, just wondering. Give the other a call and see if they're chasing their tails the same as --" Shamira stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, causing Yosyp to walk right into her.

"Something wrong?" he asked.

She raised her hand to ask for silence, then got back on the phone. "Henry, is there any chance that this is just to get us running around? I mean . . . no, I don't doubt that they were down here, but why just hit two stores with the whole doom and gloom thing but that's it. It's like they just happened to confirm the anonymous tip. Yeah, you're right. Sounds like they're just getting our measure, but it also got nine enforcers out of the house. Yeah . . . yeah, I got it. Just keep me in the loop." She hung up the phone and looked at her compatriots. "Henry's going to get a hold of Bjorne and his crew and send them back up to the house. We rendezvous with Henry over by the Fox and then we'll --"

"We have company," Valeska said, her eyes not moving from Shamira's face.

Shamira looked back down the way they'd come, pointing towards a random building. "Where?" she asked.

"Parking garage. Saw three distinct forms looking down at us."

Yosyp looked across the street at an unrelated restaurant. "They've ducked away, but one of them looked back . . . probably at another. Assume four minimum."

"You're in charge," Valeska muttered. "How do you want to do this?"

"Let me think," she said, turning on her cell phone in her pocket while inconspicuously activating her blue-tooth headset. "Henry, we've got bugs." She smiled and laughed at an untold joke. "Premiere Parking on . . . yeah, that's the one. Good point. No, you're right. Keep Bjorne's crew headed home. If you come up from the south side and cut across from those . . . no wait, that side is fenced off. Okay, you figure out how to get in and we'll come up under their skirts. Oh yeah . . . I CAN do that, can't I?" She hung up.

"We got most of that," Yosyp said. "What did you mean by 'I can do that' though?"

Shamira smiled nervously and looked around for a shady spot to hide. "I'm going to jump into the interior while you guys take the more traditional way in. I'll see see if I can spot them and relay their positions."

"Jump?" Valeska asked dubiously.

"Ah," Yosyp said. "I forgot you had so many weapons at your disposal." He looked to Valeska. "Shamira is a shadow jumper. The shadows are her allies and doorways."

"I'm going to use the bathroom," she said, making sure her face was pointing in a direction where the insectoids could see her. "I'll see you two at the car." Shamira waltzed into a nearby McDonalds and immediately turned into the restroom. She had to wait a minute for the one lady using it to leave before switching off the lights and looking . . . her vision tore out, crossing the white landscape and finding the dark places, however few there were in the daylight hours. Finding the parking garage was easy enough, and there were patches here and there she could use. Then she tried something new . . . she used her shadow sight, looking to see if there something already in those shadows that sought to hide from --

'There you are, little buggers,' she thought. The shell walkers were hiding in what shadows were available, concentrating on what Shamira guessed was their car. 'Wait, how would they know it was our car unless --"

She quickly dialed Henry on her cell phone. "Hey."

"What's up?"

"They were waiting for us. They wanted us to come down here. They're watching our car, and the only way they could've known what we came in is --"

"-- if they were watching us. Well, we've got the upper hand on them now but --" Henry was muttering something, then, "Shit! Just got a text message from Renata. A bunch of these suckers just hit the house! You were right to be suspicious."

"Crap, are --"

"They were on guard, so they've got the advantage, but there's a lot of the buggers. Pardon the pun. Let's clean these guys out and get home."

"Okay. I'm seeing six on the second floor, but those are just the ones hiding in shadows." She relayed their positions.

"And where are you in relation to them?"

"I'm in a McDonalds bathroom about a block away."

"Wait, then how are you seeing them?"

"It's kind of hard to explain, but I'm sort of combining the whole Shadow Jumping thing with Shadow Sight."

There was a pause on the other end of the line. "I didn't know you could do that."

"I just kind of made it up. Anyway, pass that info along to the rest of your guys and then call mine. I've found a place I can breach. Wait, what do we do if there are innocents in there?"

"Wait for my signal. I'll drive 'em out. After that . . . well, humans tend to suspend belief when things get hairy." Then he hung up.

"What signal?" she muttered. Then she called Yosyp and let him know the plan and the probably locations of the enemy. He seemed as surprised as Henry had been that she could even do what she had done. Then, Shamira jumped into the building, appearing underneath a Hummer on the third floor in a part of the structure that was untouched by the sun. Sliding out from underneath, she looked around. The lots weren't as busy on Sundays anyway, so she didn't see anyone nearby. She pulled out her snake whip from around her waist and her 9mm with silencer from beneath her vest. It was a time she was glad that she was ambidextrous.

She found another shadowy spot and surveyed the level below her. Her enemies hadn't moved. She found another spot next to the stairwell that had enough shadows for her to move to so, with baited un-breath, she jumped again . . . and almost completely blew the element of surprise. There was a shell walker standing three feet in front of her, facing the other way. And then, Henry signaled. By "signal," Henry had meant the fire alarm. All the shell walkers did what most humans would do when they heard an alarm. They looked up.

Shamira cursed silently and then put a bullet into the back of the insectoid right in front of her. The thing's hard "skin" exploded, sending goo all over the Pontiac Aztec it had been hiding behind. The lights started to flicker and the sprinklers came on, and the shell walkers were looking around for the source. Whatever they were, they weren't stupid. It was interesting watching them spring into action. They looked vaguely human, but their clothes and skins looked like watercolor . . . close to reality, but not quite. For the softness of their colors, their was a hardness to their edges, and lines where there shouldn't be any. Then those lines broke apart, allowing wings and additional insect-like arms to come out.