After completing the full nine holes forward and backward, and accomplishing nothing more than wrapping her five-iron around a tree, she decided to go for a drive. No one had called her to claim her for the evening, so she figured she was still on Shane’s shit-list for challenging him. She got to the garage and began looking for a car. The Roadrunner was out of commission for a while, so she had to pick a new favorite. In a huge garage full of the finest vehicles imaginable, nothing seemed to really catch her eye, and she wasn’t in a position to go asking anything of Shane. Hell, she wasn’t in the mood to ask him for anything.
Bunny came bouncing in as cheerful as the day she died, which was an odd sentiment as far as Shamira was concerned.
“Hey! Going somewhere?”
“Apparently not,” she muttered. “May take a walk.”
“Hey, Shane asked me to go pick up some stuff so the magic types can expand the wards. Wanna come?”
Shamira didn’t mean to say it the way she did, but her next diatribe came out as a mockery to the ditzy quality of Bunny’s voice. “Oh, I so totally don’t want to!” Then she growled, “Go run his errands. Heck, why don’t you fetch his paper and his slippers too.”
Bunny stopped and looked like she’d been punched in the face. “Listen, I’m sorry . . . I didn’t mean –”
“Oh don’t cry,” Shamira snapped, her anger continuing to feed itself. “Go do what you’re supposed to, then go do WHO you’re supposed to. Just get out of my face.” Shamira left the garage on foot, no idea where she was going. She just knew that she had to get going before her dead blood started to boil.
Shamira didn’t look back as she just started walking. If someone needed her to do something besides sit quietly on her ass, they could call. She didn’t understand why she couldn’t think rationally anymore, and she was damn sure that Bunny hadn’t deserved to get yelled at, but her mouth was on a roll and her brain couldn’t catch up.
She’d only been gone for fifteen minutes when the phone started to vibrate, indicated that someone had texted her. She looked down and saw it was from Clara. It basically read that Shane was pissed, on a warpath, and that she had better get her ass back right away. Shamira sighed, and she knew it was time to pay the piper.
Clara was waiting for her outside, her face unreadable. “What has gotten into you?” the young-looking beauty said. “You actually got Bunny so upset that she couldn’t drive. She’s been in with Shane trying to figure out what SHE did wrong to set you off. Then Banshee showed up and suddenly Shane gets this look in his eye . . . anyway, he’s damn mad.”
Shamira clenched her jaw and looked away, then started to walk past Clara, figuring she might as well get it over with.
Clara put a hand on her friend’s shoulder, only to have it shrugged away. “What is with you?!” she asked, getting in front of the more muscular woman and blocking her path. “Why won’t you talk to me? You didn’t bother coming to bed last night, I haven’t seen you since you left for Macon, and now you’ve got Shane pissed, Banshee frustrated, and Bunny is practically crying –”
“Oh, give it a rest,” Shamira snapped. “When did you start caring about Bunny’s feelings?”
Clara’s face hardened. “Yeah, she grates on my nerves sometimes, but I’ve never done or said anything to try and hurt her. She’s a sweet girl who’s been through a hell of a lot, and she didn’t deserve to have you go off on her like that.” Then Clara’s face grew more gentle. “Shamira, I really care about you, but I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me.”
Shamira wanted nothing more than to just rant and rave and do the old cry-on-her-shoulder bit, but she couldn’t. Her state of mind was way too far gone for that. Her mouth opened, but her voice was denied access.
“Please?” Clara asked, her normally stern voice breaking.
Shamira looked at that face and felt something uncomfortable deep in her chest. She didn’t want to hurt Clara. The woman had been her friend, mentor, confidante, and lover since Shamira had been brought over. She had embraced Shamira’s perversions and helped the new vampire come to grips with them.
The two of them had a connection that had been born when a human cop locked eyes with a homeless girl who had turned out to be a vampire in disguise, and that relationship had made Shamira whole. And Shamira was afraid that if she forced Clara to take a side that she would side with Shane. Shamira wasn’t sure if she could handle that.
“You can’t help me here,” she whispered, her voice ragged with anger and anguish. Then she walked on, leaving Clara by the door, and headed for Shane’s office. The room was chilly, despite the fact that Shane’s eyes looked ready to burn holes in Shamira’s skull. Bunny sat off to one side, trying not to look as broken up as she obviously felt. Banshee sat on the other side, looking resigned. And Shamira felt a presence slide into the room behind her, and it smelled unmistakably of Clara.
Shane’s voice came out even and dreadfully calm when he finally spoke. “I have had enough. I tried being patient. I tried remembering the circumstances of your rebirth. But I have explained the reality of the situation, and you continue to defy me, question the way I run my house, and now you’re taking your petty issues out on other people.”
“Petty?!” Shamira blurted.
“Shamira,” Clara whispered, “don’t –”
“Clara, keep out of this. As a matter of fact, leave.”
“Hey, it’s me you’ve got a problem with!” Shamira growled, but she heard Clara slip out again.
“And you have a problem with me, but you took it out on Bunny. Correct? Shamira, I asked you a question.”
Shamira was gritting her teeth so hard, she thought that she might break a fang. “Yeah, I took it out on Bunny, and I’m –”
“No,” he interrupted, “you don’t get to apologize yet. You will apologize when I tell you that you can.” He watched as she raised her hand as if to point at him, but she wound up just snarling and otherwise staying silent. “It’s obvious that you’re not ready for all of this. I need my enforcers to understand our law and respect it. I thought you would be up for it, but I think we need to start you over at square one. You need to learn to be a vampire, and then maybe –”
“What the fuck?!” Shamira said, her anger growing. “Learn to be a vampire?”
“You make your situation worse every time you speak,” Shane said. “Yes, you need to learn to be a vampire. Vampires need to understand their world and understand the traditions of the magical world. How can I expect you to deal with the culture of others with any sensitivity if you can’t even respect your own?”
“Hey, so far YOUR culture is the only damn one I have a problem with.” Shamira was going to say something else, but someone grabbed her around her from behind, putting a hand over her mouth while wrenching one arm behind her back. Somehow, Banshee had snuck up behind her, and she was fucking strong.
Shamira was powerful for a fledgling, but Banshee was bordering on full vampire status. That was when she remembered that the Asian vamp had some kind of ability to cloud minds so that you simply didn’t pay attention to her. “Bitch!” Shamira shouted. She tried to twist away, but she stopped when she felt her shoulder try to pop out of its socket.
“Lord Stapleton, please –” Bunny started.
“Bunny, this is for her own good. All I asked is for her to compromise a little . . . wait a week. Instead, she behaves like a child. Banshee, take her to solitary.”
Shamira was so pissed she was seeing red. She felt her fangs extend, and she was damn well going to bite Banshee if she got the chance. But this wasn’t the assassin’s first time at the rodeo, and she maneuvered Shamira out the door. Outside, Clara was standing there looking lost, but Shamira noticed that she didn’t say or do a damn thing to help.
Shamira actually got free for a moment by rolling forward, bringing Banshee with her and then headbutting the other woman when they were on the ground, but Banshee latched on and Renata appeared out of nowhere. Renata actually looked scared, but the two powerful women wound up shoving Shamira into a coffin shaped cell in the basement and closing the door.
———– —————
Two days later . . .
———– —————
They had actually let Shamira out after of her cell after the first day, but she’d cursed at Banshee, spit on Shane, then turned and stepped back into the cell on her own. The hunger kicked in on the second day, and they actually slid her a blood pack which she refused to consume . . . at first. She hadn’t eaten at all since before her trip down to Macon, and vampiric hunger was much more intense than anything she had experienced when human. She drank and cursed herself, though she wasn’t sure why.