Chapter 28

Knowing he was going out for a bit, Rob had decided to wear his hunting boots with the jeans and sweatshirt he'd thrown on. In consideration of the lowering skies, he'd also decided to wear his duster and hat. Figuring to kill several birds with one stone, Rob took the Mustang to the bodega after loading the dry-cleaning in the trunk. He double-parked to make the quick stop to get his newspaper, gathering several envious looks for the Mustang, then went on to the dry cleaners. This time he parked properly, knowing he would be a few minutes inside.

The dry cleaners wasn't in the best neighborhood, although he'd never had any issues before. This time, the Mustang drew some sharks, so, when he came out of the store, he was confronted with a small group of young thugs sporting gang tattoos. The obvious leader strutted up to Rob.

"Nice ride, man," he said with a sneer. "Give me and my buddies a lift?" The rest of the gang snickered in anticipation.

Rob looked down at him, trying to decide whether he should fight them all or just make a serious example of the one in front of him. The leader started to snarl when it became obvious that Rob wasn't intimidated. Just when he gotten himself all puffed up, Rob noticed the rest of the gang stand up and take notice of something. Rob knew it wasn't him because he hadn't done anything yet. One of the gang members trilled a low whistle causing the leader to look around.

"Hey, Harry," a voice said from the far side of the Mustang. Rob shot a glance to the voice and recognized the kid he'd met on the sidewalk the day of the fight with Hugh. He was surrounded by a group of his friends that outnumbered the gang two to one. Still, they were young compared to the gang toughs, and Harry didn't think they'd stand a chance against the seasoned bangers. That was until he saw how they were spreading out and cutting off the gang from the leader.

"You're lookin' pretty good for a guy who was almost dead," the kid continued.

"Yeah, well, you should have seen the other guy," Rob answered, keeping an eye on the thugs. "What are you doing around these parts?"

"Just chillin', you know? Takin' in the sights," he answered. He flicked his left hand down low and the others stopped moving.

The gang leader was looking around, trying to assess the situation and determine if he still had the upper hand. The new group couldn't really be called a gang. They didn't have that swagger or cohesion of a group up to no good. They were more like a bunch of high-schoolers out on a tear, misbehaving in the name of fun. If it weren't for the fact that they were responding to the first kid in an organized fashion, that's exactly what Rob would have thought they might be.

The gang leader must have decided he liked the odds, because the sneer returned to his face. Rob saw this and decided that if they were going to dance, he was going to lead, and the quickest way to end it would be to take out the leader of the pack. Moving too fast to follow, Rob spun everything up at once and grabbed the leader by the front of the ratty leather jacket he was wearing. He head-butted the guy in the face, knocking his hat off in the process, and smashed the guy's nose, then he flung him away from the Mustang and past the gang to the pavement. Rob realized he'd overestimated the amount of force he'd needed to use when the guy didn't move after impact. The remaining members looked at their leader then back to Rob. One of them held his hands up and backed away to their fallen comrade. When no one moved to stop them, the rest picked their leader up off the ground and hustled off to a nearby car, piling in and burning rubber as they left.

"Here." Rob looked down to see what he had at first thought was a younger male member of the posse, but who was actually a girl dressed in jeans and a baggy jacket, with her hair stuffed up under a baseball cap. She was holding his hat out to him.

"Thank you," he said, slapping it on his leg and putting it on his head. She nodded and stepped back, blending back in with the others. He turned his eyes back to the leader of the posse of kids. "So, fancy meeting you here. You guys patrol the neighborhood?"

"Naw," answered the leader. "We just stick together for protection. A couple a guys walking around with nothin' to do get jumped by guys like that," he said pointing to where the car had gone. "You get a bunch of us together, no one messes with you."

Rob nodded, then narrowed his eyes. "You use hand signals," he commented. "That implies a lot more organization than just a bunch of guys..." he gave a telling look to the back, " ... and girls hanging together. What gives?"

"Sometimes you gotta be careful," the kid replied offhandedly. "Can't let the bad guys get the jump on ya, ya know?"

Rob didn't buy it, but he couldn't think of any way to get the information without interrogating the kid, so he tried a different tack.

"What's your name, kid?" He knew as soon as he said it that he'd made a tactical error. The kid smiled at him.

"My dad used to call me 'Slip.' Said it was the name of some guy in these old movies he liked when he was a kid," Slip replied. "What's yours?"

Knowing that the street-wise Slip wasn't going to give him anything, Rob shook his head. "Harry will do," he answered. Chuckles ran through the posse. Slip tilted his head as he considered "Harry."

"You gonna tell me how you did that?" Slip asked, pointing now at the spattering of blood on the pavement where the gang leader had lain.

"Clean living," Rob answered casually, "And lots of practice." Slip just smiled at him.

"Hey, what happened to that babe you were with?" another posse member asked. Someone in the back jabbed him with a quick elbow and he grunted.

"She's keeping the home fires burning," Rob answered with a grin.

"What, she's your old lady?" the same loud-mouth asked, getting another elbow for his trouble. "Hey, I'm just askin', okay? Knock it off." The flying elbow belonged to the young lady that had handed Rob his hat. Rob declined to answer.

Rob thought about warning the kids to be careful, but it was more than apparent that they already knew that. He offered a hand to Slip, and after giving it a distrustful look, he accepted Rob's hand and shook. As fast as it started, it was over, and the posse faded into the streets. The last thing Rob saw of them was Slip giving him a considering look as he followed the others.

Rob spotted a piece of paper on the ground and bent down to retrieve it. Turning it over, he realized how lucky he was to have spotted it: it was his dry-cleaning receipt. Smiling to himself and shaking his head, he climbed into the Mustang and drove off.

He was originally headed to the garage, then remembered at the last minute that he needed a new alarm clock. He stopped at a local appliance outlet and grabbed the first clock he saw on the shelf, bought it and went back to the car. Then he headed to the garage. Elaina had given him the access codes a while ago, so he had no problem getting the Mustang tucked away in its stall. When he turned off the engine, the car settled on its wheels, happy to be home and safe. He patted the Mustang on his way out, closing and locking the stable behind him.

It was a brisk walk home. The threatened rain never happened, and a cool March wind was blowing debris around. Rob walked right by the street urchin hanging out on the stoop not far from his home without noticing. If he had turned around, he would have recognized the young lady with the generous elbows watching him from under her cap as he strode up the stoop to his building.

Elaina knew as soon as he stepped through the door that something had happened. She stepped away from the window where she and Dawn had been standing and looking out at the city, and pulled his hat off his head. She said she could smell the adrenaline, so that, of course, required that he explain in detail why he'd been fighting. She was mollified by the fact that he was defending the Mustang, then she took him into the bathroom to wash the blood off his forehead, collected when he'd head-butted the banger.

Rob went back to the foyer to hang the duster after stopping by the bedroom to store his boots and put his hat on the dresser. He padded over to where the ladies were once again surveying the city. Dawn cast a concerned look over her shoulder when he approached, and if he hadn't already known Elaina was worried, that would have told him. He got behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist and pressed his cheek to her hair.

"He's stopped circling now," she whispered. "He got about two-thirds of the way around and stopped testing. Now he's gone back to where he started and is barely impinging on the border. He's getting ready to make a move."

"What can we do?" Rob asked.

"Nothing," she replied. "If I go out to where he is, he might move and catch me out of position. I have to stay here, in the center, so I can respond as quickly as possible when he does finally move."

Rob sighed into her hair and squeezed tighter. Elaina sighed back then straightened up decisively.

"We may not be able to preempt him, but we can prepare for him," she said firmly. "Dawn, today we need to get your other skill under control. Go get the mirror."

Dawn groaned theatrically, then slouched off to fetch the mirror, casting a sad-puppy look over her shoulder. Elaina laughed at her silliness, and Dawn smiled back happily, skipping the rest of the way. Elaina went to the kitchen to prepare snacks in advance of the need. Rob went to the window and looked out and down, frowning when he spotted a gang of kids gathered on the stoop across the street. He had a fleeting thought of the posse, then shook his head, thinking that was just too paranoid.

They spent the next several hours getting Dawn trained to handle her camouflage skill. By the time they were finished – and all the snacks were eaten – she could fade into the woodwork even with a light shining on her. Even the prismatic display on the edges was gone now, and she blended seamlessly into her environment ... until she moved. There didn't seem to be anything they could do about that: even Elaina had that issue when in bright light. They concluded that the skill had evolved for use in the shadows, and that using it in broad daylight was asking for trouble anyway.

Dawn asked if Rob could demonstrate some of the moves he'd learned in class. Elaina's eyes lit up, so Rob shrugged and went to put on her favorite outfit. Dawn laughed delightedly when she saw him and reciprocated by getting her sports bra and wearing that ... and nothing else. It took less than half an hour for them to figure out that she didn't get any of the physical gifts that Rob did, aside from a general boost in strength. As hard as they tried, Dawn just couldn't activate anything that approximated Rob's afterburners. She did manifest heightened senses, but not to the degree Rob did, and again there wasn't any boost, just a general heightening. Essentially, everything Dawn got from becoming a blood servant was defensive, while Rob was nearly exclusively offensive.

While Rob had been trying to teach Dawn some of his moves, Elaina had become more aroused the longer they worked. She decided to join them and had stripped nude within the first five minutes. She sat on the couch, which she had turned around to have a ringside seat, and was gently stroked herself as the Rob and Dawn worked up a sweat. They decided that, even though she wouldn't be as aggressive as Rob, she would still benefit from learning formal self-defense. Rob, of course, took outrageous advantage of Dawn while pretending to be positioning her limbs. Before they were done, she was so worked up that her oils were trailing down her thighs.

Elaina's eyes were sparking rainbows as she sat there watching them, and her hands had gotten very busy on her pussy. So far, she hadn't come, but she wasn't far from it. The restraint of the jock strap was beginning to cause him discomfort, and he took it off. Seeing the state both ladies were in, Rob made a command decision.

He came up behind Dawn and picked her up by the waist. He walked to the couch holding her struggling form to his chest, then turned and sat next to Elaina with Dawn in his lap. Although he hadn't planned it that way, when he sat down, Dawn was lined up with his cock. Elaina reached in when she saw how things were going and made sure he stayed on target. He let Dawn down and she was immediately impaled. She shrieked at the sudden intrusion, then shrieked again when she had an orgasm from the penetration. Rob held her in place while she quivered and shook in his lap.

Elaina took the opportunity to get to her knees in front of them and leaned in to apply her tongue where it would do the most good. Dawn had barely come down and seeing Elaina at her pussy drove her over the edge again. Rob was fighting off his own release by that point. He hadn't done anything other than sit there, but the undulations of her channel were driving him mad. It was only that fact that he wasn't moving that allowed him to maintain control.