To Protect and Serve Ch. 11

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 character 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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"Are you sure?" Shane asked.

Shamira shrugged and then shook her head. "Burnt stone and a building that got hit by something big. I mean, we have no idea about the missing vamps from the boat. The building could have been hit by an explosion of some kind, but it doesn't explain what tripped the alert wards in both cases." She gripped her hands tightly together. "But we know they've had the eggs for a while, and it isn't completely unreasonable to think that they had a plan for hatching them. And Jonas DID mention an insurance policy."

"But a dragon?"

Alessandra stood next to Shane, but her face gave nothing away, so Shamira was not sure if she believed this theory or not.

"Shane, remember when you asked why it was so easy for me to understand that I was a vampire?"

He nodded. "If it walks like a vampire and talks like a vampire . . . Ockham's Razor. If you have competing theories then, all other things being equal, choose the simplest. But is the insurrection of a species that's been dead since before Stonehenge was ever built by a unstable drug addict really the simplest solution?" He shook his head. "Yet I find myself in agreement with you, or at least am willing to entertain the notion."

"I will contact the Tribunal," Alessandra added. "We must proceed with great urgency if there is any chance that this is true."

"Has anyone tried to do what he's being trying?" Shamira asked. "I mean surely he's not the first to try."

"Not to my knowledge. To bring dragons back as a race into this world would have been disastrous for the magical races. The Great Dragons, as opposed to the smaller kind that we have today, would be impossible to hide away, and no one wanted to risk them taking up their old arguments."

"I want you to head back down to Savannah," Shane continued. "Take Clara and Lillian with you. Trying to bring back the Great Dragons may require some science, but it will also require great magic. They should be able to help determine what magic is being used and hopefully counter it."

Shamira started to open her mouth and object to sending Clara into a field situation, but she quickly snapped it shut again. Shane smirked, because he knew what she had been thinking. If Shamira had tried to protect Clara like that, the Native American shaman would probably kick what was left of her ass. Everyone who played this game was at risk.

"We'll leave about four o'clock this afternoon," she muttered. She loved being around Clara, but that instinct she'd always had for protecting those she cared about was sounding alarms all over the inside of her brain. Did Clara even have battle armor? She remembered seeing Lillian in it once. "I'm going to go visit Banshee," she finished, then whirled her wheelchair around and made her way to the assassin's room.

She and a werewolf on loan from Lord Pritchard had gotten buried in the collapsed building and while both survived and would be just fine, both had suffered broken bones and would be out of action for a few days while their magical bodies healed themselves. Banshee had been on a one-woman crusade to avenge Shamira being tortured and paralyzed by a man working with Lacroix's chief of security, a man named Jonas.

The slight Asian woman was obviously not happy about being told to stay in bed. When Shamira rolled in, Banshee was angrily throwing whatever book she'd been reading at the dresser, where a pile of books was accumulating.

"You read all those already? You've only been here for a few hours!"

"They're all boring," Banshee replied grumpily. "I have read them all once already, so I get a few pages in and then want something else."

"Would you like me to get you some new books? Or you can read books on your laptop now."

Banshee forced herself to sigh. "I should not be complaining. My injuries are a mild inconvenience compared to yours."

Shamira met the assassin's gaze. "What happened to me wasn't your fault. You know that, right?"

Banshee was quiet for a moment, then, "I was the senior partner and I was not there to back you up."

"WE made the decision for me to go after those fake cops, and there was no way you could stop me from doing what I did. You wouldn't have been able to get there in time no matter what."

"The call to let you go was mine to make. I made it and --"

"-- and it was the right call," Shamira interrupted. "Clara was right about that. What happened to me is something I'll have to live with, but it's what we're here for. We knew that those guys were up to no good and would have hurt other people. And yeah, now that I'm done feeling sorry for myself, I know I would do it again. Would YOU want those five people dead and bled out if it got me out of this wheelchair? When it happened, that's what I told myself . . . that I wished it was them instead of me."

"You did?" Banshee asked.

Shamira nodded. She had not made this common knowledge, with only Clara and Shane and the Representative knowing. "I have to live with that, even though some people have been trying hard to remind me that people have wished for worse after suffering less. But that's what we're here for. We put ourselves in harm's way to get other people out of it. And you did have my back. You punished the wicked."

"I have not been able to get to Jonas," Banshee muttered. She was embarrassed, and it was not a pretty side of her.

"You will. Or someone will. Maybe I will. I can't walk, but I can still Shadow Jump and I still have Shadow Claws. All he needs to do is slip up," she said coldly, "and I won't let anyone else get my revenge for me."

Banshee's mouth quirked up. "Even if Shane tells you to let someone else handle it?"

Shamira outright grinned. "Hey, until he gets a wheelchair accessible cell, what's he going to do if I ignore him?"

"You are an intensely single-minded woman. Now help me out of bed so I can go check on my spiders."

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The next night . . .

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"Holy shit!" Henry exclaimed after the van had disembarked all passengers. "Shane said it was happening but I didn't believe him. Clara in the field? What's next? A rain of toads?"

Clara made a petulant face. "I can arrange that." She looked across the lot at the front grounds of Lacroix's plush estate. "One of those times I wished I was a sorcerer. Maybe just fireball the place."

"Wouldn't work," Sebastian said. "I don't know who he got to set up his defensive spells, but he's got some of the best stuff I've seen. More than a normal Lord would or should need."

Shamira fixed her handgun into a carrier attached to the side of her chair and checked out her sniper rifle. She had been practicing everyday with it, but it certainly was not her preferred form of combat. She did not like the idea of staying still that long. "Any other weird incidents?" she asked.

"Let's just say I'm glad that our magical wonder-twins are now here, because the barrier wards have been getting some really weird power fluctuations."

Instantly, Clara and Lillian were in their elements, setting up circles of bone and earth to cast their respective magics, analyzing the wards and the defenses and just about anything else within line of sight.

"How's Banshee?" Reaper asked, kneeling next to Shamira's chair as they both stared at the estate.

"She's bored, pissed, and will probably have talked Shane into letting her come back down sometime tomorrow."

"She is like you that way," the big man replied. "She needs something to do. Did you bring a silencer?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"If it might make you feel better, take a couple of shots at the building. There are some windows on that side of the house we haven't destroyed yet."

"Won't that let them know where we are?"

Reaper shrugged. "They already know that. This just reminds them."

Shamira and Reaper wound up playing tic-tac-toe on the side of Lacroix's garage with sniper rifles because it turned out that the remaining windows could not withstand the bullets that well. Who knew? Things went on like that for the rest of the night and into early morning. About two hours before dawn, all hell broke loose.

Sebastian was actually the first one to notice the eerie silence that prefaced the attack. He had been looking over some maps, when his head shot up and he started looking around.

"Shamira," he said quietly," look into the night sky and tell me what you see."

She understood his tone for what it was and immediately looked up as everyone else started to scramble.

"Something's broken the inner wards," Lillian shouted as she hid in the armored car that had been acting as their command post. She was not a fighter.

"Outer wards breached," Clara shouted, standing behind Shamira for a moment.

"Get in the car," Shamira whispered, staring up into the dark. Clouds had rolled in, and it was black as pitch in that little corner of Georgia. Something flickered by, blasts of light occasionally marring it's perfect silhouette. "Good God!"

She had seen pictures in books, many owned by her and her brother back in their role-playing days, and she had seen images on movie screens and paintings, but nothing compared . . . nothing could have prepared her for this. Wings of leather carrying aloft of muscular reptilian body . . . legs tucked underneath the body with a long, barbed tail coming out the back and a serpentine neck coming out the front. And those eyes . . . even in Shamira's Shadow Sight, they glowed an angry red.

"Dragon," she said in an awed voice barely louder than a whisper, but it carried throughout the group like wildfire. Voices were raised, cover was sought out, communications relayed through the radios to the other groups. No living or undead being currently walking the planet had ever seen one, and even the legends were mired in obscurity. This was real; it was big, and it was headed straight for them.

Shamira couldn't move. Some girls had been fascinated by dolls and unicorns as a kid. She had been fascinated by death on wings, fire in the sky, and it was in front of her now, coming fast. Shamira let her eyes follow its body, even when she knew that she should be wheeling for her life. 'So beautiful,' she thought. 'Beautiful and . . . sparkly?'

Clara was the first to notice that Shamira was still outside next to the transport van she had come down in. "Shamira!" she shouted, bursting out of the armored car and bolting towards her girlfriend. That was when she saw what Shamira had been looking at and her mind warred with her body as to what action it should take. Fight or flee. The rational part of her brain was choosing the latter, but the part responsible for love was egging her on to defend Shamira.

The dragon landed, whipping its tail around its body and wielding it like a scorpion might wield a stinger. It roared so loudly that despite the isolation caused by the blockade, someone somewhere had to have heard it. Its ember-like eyes twirled around, filled with a rage so primal that every sentient creature nearby could feel them. They locked on Shamira.

She did not hear Clara yelling at her, and certainly did not realize that her friends and colleagues were about to do something very foolhardy like charge to her rescue. She did not notice much, because once she had locked gazes with this ancient creature, her eyes rolled back in her head and fell unconscious, directly in front of an angry, fire-breathing dragon.

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Shamira had never been nowhere before. It was disconcerting to say the least. This was not "middle of nowhere" nowhere . . . that phrase was referring to places that actually existed on the edge of civilization. There was no civilization here. No earth, no sky, and not even air to breathe. Just a darkness so deep and vast and . . . comforting. How could nothing and nowhere be so familiar? She had no body to feel with or eyes to see, but she could apparently still hear.

"Welcome," came a deep voice from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. "I have very much wanted to meet you."

Shamira was not stupid. "Shadow Wing."

"Yessssssssss," the voice came. The serpentine quality did not seem menacing, but rather natural.

Suddenly, Shamira was very angry. "You did this to me! Why? Why me?"

"I am sorry, but 'why me' what?"

Shamira would have clenched her fists if she actually had any in this weird "nowhere" world. "You know damn well! I never asked to be your damn . . . avatar or whatever the hell it's called. I never wanted your damn power or your damn trials."

She felt . . . sad amusement. Wasn't that a contradiction in terms.

"Those I choose to inherit my powers never ask for it. They are the kinds of people who never would ask for that much power. And there are no trials."

"Bullshit!" Shamira shouted at the emptiness. "They told me about the trials. Some of your 'chosen' don't survive. You get your kicks out of seeing if they're tough enough? Get your jollies out seeing them tortured?"

"There are . . . NO . . . trials," the voice whispered again. "You think me so powerful that time and creation bends to my will?"

"You have to! I was cut in half --"

"And that was your own doing," Shadow Wing responded.

Shamira was actually speechless. "My own . . . you son of a bitch. How dare you --"

"You blame me for your first death as well? Do you blame me for the death of your childhood friend? Do you blame me for all the evils that have ever befallen you? Listen to me, for I speak the truth. These things did not happen to you because of me. They happened because of you."

"Me? You're blaming me for getting tortured?"

"Yesssssss." Shadow Wing replied. "Before you ever could have even imagined a world like this, you would have sacrificed yourself for Jimmy Fisk. Every day, you stood between against evil forces. You took bullets for a vampire because it is in your nature to suffer so that others do not. All of those I have chosen were similar, though few matched your dedication. You yourself have said that for evil to triumph, all it requires is for good people to stand by and do nothing. You never stand by. You never do nothing. You always fight. Sometimes you lose, and sometimes you suffer. But you ALWAYS fight."

Shamira wanted to cry or scream or both. It was easier when she could have at least partly blamed Shadow Wing or fate or both. But she knew in her heart that he was not lying.

"Those I choose sometimes die not because they are not worthy, but because they were like you in intention but not as strong. There is a difference between real strength and power. I can give you power. The rest was yours to begin with."

"How strong am I?" she replied angrily, though the negative emotion was broader now and not directed at her host. "I'm broken."

"You were wounded," Shadow Wing contradicted her, "never broken. And even wounded," he said, sounding proud, "you still fight. You fight for justice and now for love. And I ask you to fight for one more thing."

"What?"

"Dragons."

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Shamira's eyes opened just as Clara's hands grasped frantically at her chair to pull it back. Just as the dragon opened its mouth to coat them both in flames. Her eyes met those of the beast. Her back screamed in agony. Shamira stood up.

"Shamira?" Clara murmured, her mind filled with fear and hope and disbelief, all at the same time.

"Stand back," the risen vampire replied. She thought back to something she had seen when the dragon had been flying. Her ears picked up noises that did not belong . . . buzzing, humming, and a crackling "pop." She stepped toward the dragon.

The creature pulled its head back, looking almost like a cat with its back arched. It growled, looking around, then trying to twist its head around as if looking for something just out of reach. Shamira knew what it was looking for without even seeing it. Then the creature turned its head back and bared its teeth, creeping its head forward until it was mere inches from Shamira's face. It sniffed her and then . . . it whined. It swung its head to look at Clara, but Shamira moved her body between them.

"What the hell is going on?" Clara asked.

Shamira did not answer, but rather held out her hand and ran it over the dragon's head.

"What are you --" Clara started to say, then watched in amazement as Shamira's Shadow Claws enveloped her hand and tore something from the dragon's neck. It was a leather strap with a number of glowing stones and wires and mechanical devices attached to it.

The dragon's reaction was the most surprising thing of all. It instantly stopped growling and glanced around, trying to see the spot where the collar had been. It settled down against the ground and sniffed Shamira again. She held the device behind her.

"Take this," she said, waiting for Clara to gingerly take it from her hand while keeping her attention of the serpentine form in front of her. "Sebastian?"

"Yeah?" came a confused voice from off from her right. Like Clara, he had been coming to rescue her from the ravaging beast before the oddness began.

"I have to go inside."

"Inside where?"

"Lacroix's house." Shamira caressed the dragon's head with both hands, feeling the cool, hard scales. "You're so beautiful," she told the creature. 'Not a creature,' she thought suddenly. 'No more a "creature" than a vampire or a werewolf. Are you a boy or a girl? Do you have a name?'

The dragon cocked its head, then nuzzled her face with its nose. It was confused. It saw a little pinkish bipedal creature, but it smelled . . . something else.

"Shamira, you're sounding crazy now," Henry said from another direction, causing the dragon's head to swing that way and growl ever so lightly.

Shamira felt something inside her, and she knew what was coming. Knew it was time. Her hands started to calmly unbutton her vest.

"Uhm baby, is this really a good time?" Clara asked.

"It has to be now," she muttered back. She tossed one bit of clothing after another onto the ground until she stood naked in the center of the lot.

"Are you . . . going to have sex with it?" Clara asked absently. Despite the dire situation, her eyes were drawn to Shamira's shapely ass and those powerful legs that seemed to be working just fine now. 'What the hell's happening?' she wondered.

Shamira actually turned her head and glowered at her girlfriend. "Of course not," she said. "Really, is that all you think I think about?"

"That and football," Clara replied with a wry grin. But her mouth popped open in disbelief as she watched darkness start to ooze out of her lover's pores, flowing from inside her like lava from a volcano. The smoke-like blackness surrounded her body and then started to grow . . . and grow . . . and grow. The darkness began to coalesce into a new form.