Shamira continued, oblivious to Shane’s reactions. She turned and did an overhand flick, snapping the tip about four feet away. She saw a sudden gleam of something metallic come out of the cracker. “What the hell?”
“Silver spike,” Reaper explained. “The whip was designed for combat against magical creatures. A whip can be a dangerous weapon in the right hands.”
Shamira looked around, seeing a number of varieties of whips. “So these aren’t your . . . toys?” she asked, glancing over at Shane and looking flushed.
He looked smug. “Actually, we don’t use full whips when we play. They do too much damage.” He glanced over her hard body. ‘But you,’ he thought, ‘could heal so quickly –‘
Reaper handed her a seven foot bullwhip, black-braided and deadly looking. “You should practice with them both. I think they’d fit your style. You can use the snakewhip as a belt. That would give you a short-range and medium-range hand-to-hand weapon.”
She held the snakewhip in one hand and the bullwhip in the other. She did an overhand snap with the long one and a side snap with the other.
“You seem adept with both hands,” Reaper said appreciatively.
“I wanted to be able to shoot with either hand if I got an arm messed up, so I started practicing with both hands before I even entered the academy.”
“A woman of many skills,” Shane said. “I’ll tell Henry to be expecting you.”
———– ——————-
Several days later . . .
———– ——————-
Shamira liked having a routine again. Strangely, being a fledgling vampire wasn’t so bad. She didn’t need much sleep, couldn’t gain weight, didn’t have any more periods, and could eat anything she wanted. She slept from sunup until the middle of the afternoon, even though she could navigate in daylight if she chose.
She was still wearing sweats all of the time, but at least they were her own sweats. The modified Desert Eagle hung in a low shoulder holster underneath a light jacket, and the snakewhip was wrapped around her waist. She’d been practicing with the whips a lot the last couple of day and had made great progress. And while she would never admit it, she enjoyed the sound of it cracking.
“What’s the name of it again?” she asked. She liked Henry. He had a nice smile on top of a gorgeous body, but he didn’t feel the need to fill the silence with pointless chatter. They often just listened to country music on satellite radio as Henry piloted the Lincoln Blackwood truck that cost more than Shamira would have earned in a year.
“Cho’s Tavern,” Henry replied with a grin. “The owner’s from China and was hooked on ‘The Simpsons’ before he ever moved to the states. He’s a good guy, but most trolls are.”
“How can he hide?”
“He’s got a glamor charm. Besides, most of his clientele are magical in nature anyway.”
She relaxed in her seat. Shane had gotten word from the troll that there was more morning star being offered up in the local drug market. Grolik, the troll in question, didn’t like it and had called in the local authorities. He wouldn’t mind dealing with it himself, but buildings tended to collapse when a troll got into a fight, and he didn’t want to bring undue attention to himself or the community. Then Henry got a call on his cell phone.
“Yep? Now?!” Henry pushed the proverbial pedal to the metal, weaving through traffic like shot from a gun. He looked over at Shamira. “Grolik says he thinks a couple of the guys just walked in. And the house is packed, so we need to get there in a hurry.”
Shamira checked her gun, then rested her hand on the thick end of the whip. She would have taken a deep breath if would have done any good.
“It’s okay,” the cowboy said, that goofy grin on his face again. “Just another day at the office. All we’re doing is walking into a bar full of drunk magical beings to try and stop a deal involving drugs that make you god-like. What’s the worst that could happen?”
She punched him in the arm. “Besides everything you just said? Not a damn thing.”
The pulled into the parking lot and stepped out. To say that this was a hole in the wall would be an understatement. There wasn’t even a neon sign advertising its location. Just an old wooden plaque over the door. As they approached, Shamira felt like this whole thing was a waste of time. Maybe they should —
“There’s a spell on it,” Henry said. He felt the same tug that his companion did, but he’d been here before.
“What spell?” she muttered. “Listen, I’m sure there’s more important –”
Henry grabbed her hand and pulled her towards the door. While she objected, he placed her hand on the metal handle. The strange feeling of dislike for this place faded abruptly. “It gets easier after the first time.”
“What the hell was that?”
“As I said, it was a spell. It encourages people to go away, mostly pure humans. You’re young enough that it still effects you. Can’t have tourists walking in and getting themselves chewed on.”
She opened the door and walked inside, then followed Henry to the bar. There was a large, hairy man behind the bar, but Shamira thought there was something “off” about him. When he moved, it was like there was a tiny little disconnect between that movement and reality. It was like watching people’s lips move in a badly dubbed movie. She figured it had to be the glamor.
“Hey big guy,” Henry said, bumping fists with the bartender. “This is Shamira. She’s new to the team, but she’s already helped out in one of these situations.”
The enormous man looked at her and offered her a paw . . . uhm, hand. “Nice to meet you.” The voice was too low, even for a man that size. Shamira wondered what a troll really looked like, then wondered if she really wanted to know. She shook his hand though, and could definitely feel that he was a powerful fellow. “I’d much appreciate it if you could handle this with as little fuss as possible.”
‘Fuss?’ Shamira thought. ‘Even in the South, people don’t use that word anymore.’
“We’ll do our best,” Henry replied. “Whiskey while I wait?”
Shamira wondered if he should really be drinking on the job, but he had been a vampire for almost a century, so she figured he knew what he was doing. She just sat on a barstool, scoping out the room using the enormous mirror on the wall. She wondered if these guys would be more inconspicuous than the last.
“So what made you think something was going on?” Henry asked, his lips glued to the edge of his shot glass. He wasn’t asking questions as far as the rest of the bar was concerned. Just having a drink.
“Heard rumors it’d already happened a couple of times,” Grolik replied. “And I’ve had a couple of groups show up that ain’t regulars, are a little too quiet, and seem to clump together. Heard that a deal went bad at one of ’em leather bars the other day, so I guess they’re getting a bit gun shy.”
Shamira avoided abandoning her poker face. Luckily, they had gotten the local security to hush up about her involvement, so her Shadow Jumping ability was still a secret. She wanted to keep it that way, as it could potentially get her out of a lot of trouble in this job. ‘This job,’ she reiterated. She had accepted that this was her new job. It made her feel surprisingly better. She saw one group that Grolik had been talking about. She watched as they failed to drain their beers in any significant fashion, and were sitting around making small talk while not every looking at each other. And it wasn’t like they were scoping out potential mates either. They were just “looking”.
To both her chagrin and surprise, she had to fend off a couple of drunken advances. Eventually, Henry wrapped an arm around her muscular shoulders, “claiming” her as his.
‘He smells kind of sexy,’ she thought. ‘No cologne. Just . . . sweat?’ She had been smelling things in a whole new way as of late, and it was hard to set things straight. The guys she was looking at seemed to make eye contact with someone else that Shamira couldn’t get a good angle at. One of them stood up, made some kind of gesture, and then headed to the men’s room.
“I think it may be happening,” she whispered, keeping her mouth fairly still.
“I think you’re right. I got a group of four in the corner who just sent two in.”
“I got a group of three that sent one. Dealer is probably the two.”
“Okay, they’re all male and human I think,” Henry muttered. “I’m going in to take a piss, you distract the guards.”
“Distract them? How?”
He grinned at her, then stared straight at her tits. “They’re guys.” He got up and sauntered towards the bathroom with a drunken sway. Shamira looked at his butt as he walked.
‘Looks good in denim,’ she thought. Then she sighed. “Water please,” she told Grolik. She really, really didn’t want to do this. She’d spent so long convincing herself that she HAD no feminine charms that the idea of using them like this just made her uneasy. She got her water and made her way to the entrance to the restrooms, taking a roundabout way to avoid looking like she and Henry were together. Then the excitement set in. This was one of the things she had wanted to do with the police department, but no one had even considered letting her. Shane and his crew seemed a lot more confident in her than they had been. Hell, they were more confident in her than Shamira herself.
While in the crowd, she actually tore a slit in her sweats so that her cleavage was showing. Then, holding her drink high, she bumped into one of the guards. Her drink splashed all over her freshly exposed boobage.
“I am SO sorry,” she said, looking straight down at her wet breasts. She didn’t need to make eye-contact, since she was just a drunk woman at a bar and in no way interested in these gentlemen. She did finally look up and was getting admired by both sets of guards. ‘Hmm. These things are mightier than the sword. Maybe the DD’s weren’t such a bad idea after all.’ “Listen, any of you guys –” She intentionally swayed a little bit, doing her best impersonation of a drunk. She didn’t actually drink herself, so she was going based on the many exemplars around. “I’m not feeling so hot.”