Bad, Very Bad Shifters- The Complete Mega Bundle

by Daniella Wright

  5) Other. Please explain in the space provided.

  Liz felt a lick of fiery anger. Even the wording of that email was inciting. They were writing in terms of 'them' and 'us' already? That was a thing we were doing?

  Liz quickly marked the other option and wrote in, "Space travel should be made a priority. Then we superior humans can move to the moon, an environment more suited to our isolationist, distrustful tendencies. I would vote for this entire political party being the first to populate said space colony."

  Okay, Liz, it was time to stop pissing around. She had an article to write and submit along with an assignment of four listicles about award season. Her 'who wore it best' one was lame and she knew it. She hated comparing women and instead mostly travelled down the snarky side of the road. Who wore it best? Clearly the starlet's assistant, just visible in the right corner of the picture. She got to hold the $5,000 designer umbrella, after all, the poshest of posh accessories.

  The morning passed by in a blur. Like usual, Liz would write an article to completion, open a new tab, do some browsing, and then go back and read her piece with fresh eyes before saving it for submission. This morning all the news had one thing in common. Everything was about the supernaturals. Those that stood out to her were Archaeologist claims to have always known of supernatural life on Earth and Scientists say vampiric blood drinking is a low cal diet. She would only find that out for herself if they came out with a blood flavored ice cream. She smirked at that. No good ice cream was low cal.

  Her work took her a couple of hours, and by the time she was done her eyes felt strained from too much time looking at the screen. She needed to stretch. She needed to get up and enjoy the sunshine that had been teasing her through the windows. Liz had tried writing outside before. While she didn't normally have attention span issues bird and car noises mixed with the sun glaring off her screen didn't make for a comfortable creative space.

  Liz texted Macy, who was busy with her boyfriend. She then texted Sage, the cousin she saw more than any others. Sage, too, had plans for the night. While the plans were Netflix and chill, Liz could respect the need for that. Sage was in the middle of her Masters in something to do with renaissance literature. The girl needed a night of pajamas and wine.

  Liz wanted a drink too, but she wanted to get out of the house for it. She loved living by herself, a thing she did with great pride. She had no pets, no dug in lovers, and no drama. Whenever the cottage started to feel a little too quiet she'd get up, throw on something presentable, and walk downtown to the touristy shops and eateries of her town, which felt coastal but wasn't. Liz had more tees than she could count with the words "saltless" or "freshies" on them. When one lived in a lakeside town dotted with beaches it was par for the course.

  She did just that; closed down the laptop, threw on some clothes, and headed out the door holding a knock off clutch that could have fooled 99% of her fellow fashion writers. The clutch was white, which matched the eyelet lace of her vintage inspired white sundress. She layered a white leather jacket over the dress, making the outfit feel more like her. She paired the ensemble with red heels, a bit too garish to be understated but which made her feel like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman.

  Liz, however, was no call girl. In fact, her last good lay had been almost a year ago. He'd been a vacationer she'd met at a bar in town, cute in a 'this is my first summer away from my parents house' kind of way. He'd worn expensive sunglasses and cheap shoes, and they'd had sex on Friday and Saturday night in his hotel. She'd gone home each night, slept in her own bed. He was gone on Sunday and tried to call her on Tuesday. She'd ignored the call since she had been in the middle of reaching her word limit for her assignment. He'd never called back and she hadn't felt the need to reach out for a reconnect. Like most of her former lovers, which she could count on a single hand, she remembered the tryst warmly but distantly, like a photograph. He was fun and warm while it lasted and faded quickly when it was over.

  She let her heels march her into town, where she stood out like a sore thumb among the cutoff clad beach goers and shades wearing picnicers. She was used to it. She had grown comfortable enough in her own skin not to mind being different than the crowd. Her teenaged self would have wanted to fall over and die. Her adult, I-live-alone self said, "Ask me where I got the rad shoes." Being a grown woman was wonderful.

  Liz made her way up to her favorite sports bar, the kind of place where a girl could still sit in a booth alone without being set upon by a pack of curious men that thought she was dense enough to believe in their pretend second careers as athletic commentators. In her experience, in places like that, most men had barely ever even seen an athletic support.

  This place was quiet, mostly. Every once in a while, if a homer flew over the warning track and into whatever city lit up the tvs or someone sank a three pointer coming off a hard, playoff foul there would be exclamations. It was still mostly guys, but here and there a wife or daughter dotted the crowd. Last time she'd been here the ladies rec softball team had been holed up in a few corner booths nursing beers.

  Before settling into her own booth, set back from the bar counter and the high tops, she ordered an electric lemonade from the bartender. The blue drink was handed over, her tab opened, and Liz made her way to the booth that got the best view of the many games but didn't advertise her to the general bar crowd.

  Her drink was about halfway finished, and she was scrolling through competitor sites checking how they'd handled breaking yesterday's news into the fashion industry, when a shadow crossed her shining tabletop.

  She looked up into beautiful, frank dark eyes. They were so dark they bordered on being black, but the light caught on the flecks of lighter brown within. There was no way to describe the gaze that wouldn't make it sound like a mud puddle, but in reality it was strikingly suave.

  Those dark eyes belonged to a face that was just as unique, just as welcoming. His lips were thin but shapely, the two points of his upper lip sharp under his wide, even nose. Something about his face hinted at the perfection of a Roman statue, if one had impregnated an ancient African queen and resulted in him.

  He was lean like a soccer player, though his shoulders were rounded and wide. The mix of the narrow hips that suggested a perfectly flat stomach and those very masculine shoulders sparked something deep and untouched in her. He would never be a model. He lacked the thin face and cutting, severe jaw and cheekbones that the couture niche preferred. He also wasn't golden. Instead, she was reminded of things very old, very strong. He'd never be a model, but if Hollywood ever casted for an ancient battle magician, he'd be a shoe in. He could have been a swarthy Merlin.

  Swarthy Merlin? Wow, Liz, just wow. Earlier she'd been swooning over Mr. Darcy and now she imagined the guy in front of her to be a swarthy Merlin. Clearly, she needed some loving in her life. A year long dry spell was too long, even for the woman who so happily lived alone.

  "I'd like to sit and have a drink with you, if you don't mind?" the guy said while brandishing a full drink at her, clearly meant as an offering.

  “Thanks but no,” she smiled up at him, turning her phone face down so as not to be rude.

  “Is it this sweater? I thought the bike pattern might have been a bit loud,” he said through a dazzling smile.

  “Not the sweater at all. I actually think it's charming, like the prairie. I'm saying no because you bought a Manhattan when I'm clearly drinking an electric lemonade. That means you either 1) don't know what an electric lemonade is or 2) think all women drink either Manhattans or Cosmos. Either way, makes me think we'd be incompatible,” she delivered the snark with a genuine smile in place. He was, she realized as she looked longer, incredibly handsome.

  “Let me redeem myself then. I'll drink the Manhattan, you can order whatever you want and put it on my tab, and we can sit here and chat until I tuck you in to a cab to catch a ride home,” he offered, pushing it but never stepping forward to make the advance seem threatening.

 
“Yes to all of those accept the tucking in part. I've lived on my own for some time now, and haven't once missed having someone pull the sheets up to my chin. I'm, if you hadn't noticed, a grown woman,” again she said all while smiling, able to be comfortable with herself.

  He smiled and said, “Yes, I noticed.”

  Then he took what she imagined he thought would be a long, ironically manly sip from his cocktail glass.

  “Oh my goodness, that's utter rubbish. Sorry I tried to give that to you,” he choked.

  “Yep,” she agreed, her internal walls coming down. He'd taken a drink of the glass so there was nothing in it. He had a decent sense of humor about it too. Even someone with cataracts would be able to see he was a living fantasy.

  She sipped on the rest of her first drink, not in a rush to finish and hyper aware of her makeup, her posture, her clothes. She wanted to look good for this man she just met with the killer smile. If not look good for him, looking good around him was close enough.

  Liz wasn't the best conversationalist and knew it. She despised small talk, had no reason to discuss the weather, and mostly her social group consisted of friends she'd had for a decade or more. One didn't make friends with coworkers over Skype and emails, therefore she had little to go on in that department. Despite all that, she found him easy to talk to and found herself laughing at his fearless sense of humor.

  "You know, it was embarrassing but I wouldn't take it back," he was saying as she sunk back into the conversation.

  "Very brave of you. I'm not sure I'd feel the same if I lost a bet and had to run naked around my dorm building," she said, shaking her head with a smile.

  "I was certainly not naked. I was wearing a tutu," he corrected her over a sip of the Manhattan that he was forcing down.

  "Yes, the tutu makes it a much more elevated prank," she said as she watching his lips meet the rim of the glass. They were good lips, lips that turned up in a gallant smile that made her unintentionally lean in toward him.

  "Not a prank. I lost a bet. I'd given my word. It was fair. They also didn't take any pictures, which proved their worth as decent friends," he said.

  "Ah, to have a friend that doesn't give in to the temptation to take a someday career-ruining picture when the chance arises! Why didn't Shakespeare ever canonize such an unbreakable bond?" she teased.

  "Because, as my father would have said, Shakespeare was a 'right bastard' that plagarized other people's work," he said with a brogue she couldn't quite place. It was lilting and unique, and it sounded good from those lips.

  His voice was a voice that could do things to her and probably many, many women. It came from deep within him, and it almost rumbled. It was too big for his medium frame, and it resonated like it came from a man much older, a man who had sung the blues when they were still new. She wondered if he could sing.

  "Don't we all plagiarize? And this is coming from a writer. How many of us who have ever picked up a pen have written some version of Romeo and Juliet, have tried our hands at the fragile beauty and the mountainous beast? Even in fashion writing, there's bound to be some overlap. There really are only so many thoughts you can have about a dress at the Met Gala. Like 'ooh, yay' or 'boo, no' or 'meh, another weird ass dress'," she told him, placing herself firmly in the other, Shakespeare-really-wrote-his-own-work camp.

  "You write, girl whose name I should have asked half an hour ago?" he asked.

  "Yep, I write for a fashion blog and print mag. It's a funky gig, but I love it. And my name is Liz," she answered.

  "Liz like Elizabeth or Liza or just Liz?" he asked, looking at her as if by studying her closely the answer would come to him.

  "Liz like Alisa, which never fit me," she answered, "I would have killed to be just a normal Elizabeth, sold my soul to be Elizabeth Bennet."

  "I'm Kiro, but mostly I go by 'Ro'. That's what my sister's always called me," he answered.

  "I never got the Mr. Darcy appeal, if I'm honest. I mean, the guy is a douche when she meets him, condescends when he proposes for the first time, and clearly thinks her family is bottom of the barrel material since he drove his guy away from Jane," he blundered on, clearly having no idea how deeply he'd just wounded her.

  "You didn't..." she said, her voice dramatically low.

  "I did. I stand by it," he challenged her.

  "I've always wanted to name my first child Pemberley. That's how attached I am to his mythos," she admitted.

  "We are not naming our first child Pemberley. What do you call her? Pem? Who wants to be named Pem?"

  "This coming from a guy who just told me to call him Ro?" she teased, wondering if he could take it. Some guys found her verbal jabs off putting. She found thin skinned people off putting. If you had opinions on other people's stuff, whatever that stuff may be, Liz believed you should be able to take prods at your own stuff without whining.

  "Touche," he responded, raising his glass and drinking to her snark.

  She took herself off to the bar, ordered another lemonade, and only then did it sink in that he'd used the words "our first child." She let it go as quickly as she'd remembered it. He was flirting. The way she'd felt her body leaning into him, as if his words were a thin filament that kept pulling tighter, drawing her closer to him millimeter by millimeter, she'd been flirting too. She liked him. She wanted to see him again.

  The second drink and the third went down faster than the first, though two hours passed by in a relative blur. They found so much to talk about, and she found his mannerisms fascinating. She'd never met a man like him, and he seemed to be made of contradictions. He was widely well read but understood modern humor and television references. He liked and had played sports but hadn't sold his soul to a home team. He was smartly dressed, but she assumed he would have been just as comfortable in worn jeans and a discount store tee.

  "Well," she said after realizing how much time had passed, more than she typically would spend at a bar, "it's time I take off."

  "I'll get you a cab," he answered, standing up.

  "Not from around here, are you?" she asked as she stood as well.

  "Nope, just visiting," he answered.

  "We don't really have cabs. I'm sure there's an uber driver around somewhere, but almost the entire town is in walking distance. I appreciate the offer, though," she explained.

  "You're going to walk home?" He asked, as if the idea were beyond his understanding.

  "Why yes, sir," Liz answered in her best Scarlett O'Hara impression, "and I do believe I may make it before falling victim to the vapors!"

  "It's not the vapors I'm worried about. It's, ya know, muggers, thugs," he said, giving her the sternest look she imagined he could muster after the Manhattan and two more beers.

  "Gypsies, tramps, and thieves?" she teased.

  "Do the allusions increase in number the more you drink?" he asked, a smile threatening behind his worried dad expression.

  "You bet they do," she said, moving toward the door.

  "Can I at least walk you home?" he asked, opening it for her.

  "No, sir. But if you ask for my number I'll let you have it," she said, feeling the flirtatious smile on her face. She hadn't felt that particular expression for a while.

  "Hold on," he said, going back inside the bar.

  He returned with a napkin and a pen.

  "Go ahead," he said, pen poised over the paper.

  "Umm, what is this, 1975? If you write my number on that will our next date be driving to the disco in your Ford Pinto?" she asked.

  "You've got jokes, Liz. I don't have a cell," he said.

  "Oh, okay," she responded, confused. Everyone had a cell phone. In fact, nearly everyone had an iPhone. Apparently, there'd be no FaceTime in their future.

  He wrote her number down, returned the pen to the bar, and kissed her on the cheek as they said goodbye. He smelled good when he got close, a lingering masculine scent that she was sure she would remember.

  She started home with a smile on her face
. She'd been expecting to sit at the bar, watch one of the games on the big screens, maybe exchange some pleasantries with the staff. She certainly hadn't been expecting that. She wasn't complaining.

  Overhead she heard the whoop whoop sounds of something heavy passing by, and she felt again the puffs of air over her skin that was the mark of something huge stirring the air. She had been willing, at first, to ignore these signs and ride the high that was a night of flirting and drinking with a handsome man. When the noises became loud enough and close enough to drown out her thoughts, she looked up.

  Whatever it was was carmine and bigger than an elephant, bigger than a small house. What she thought were metal plates were actually scales covering an enormous hide. Something in her, something that had existed in humans when they were still clad in animal skins and sharpening spears, awoke and screamed that this was the moment of her death. She was nothing but a plaything, a prey animal that would soon be filling the belly of a monster. Liz shook so hard she couldn't move, couldn't scream. She was alone and vulnerable on the streets of the town she'd always thought of as safe and peaceful.

  "I should have taken the damn cab," she managed to say in a squeak of terror.

  Claws, somehow reminding her of a chicken despite their enormous size and lethal sharpness, plucked her from the ground, wrapping about her waist. With the same whoop whoop sounds the beast carried the two of them aloft.

  She grasped at the claws wanting both to hug them for safety as she flew over the town she called home and to punch them for picking her off the ground as she were nothing but a flower in a child's hand. Her feelings about the supernaturals, earlier in the day unclear, had quickly chilled. She decided to go for the grasping, making sure the claws wouldn't just open and spill her onto the earth below. Punching them would probably have resulted in nothing anyway. Her punches would have been as small as raindrops on a rooftop.

  She didn't know how long they flew, but during the entire flight she felt like she was one heartbeat away from a coronary. She could feel her heartbeat in her chest, each pound of its drumming filtering more concentrated fear to her cold limbs. She didn't wet herself, but she was pretty sure that was only because she'd gone at the bar. Otherwise, she'd be a noxious, urine covered morsel when this horror finally swallowed her. She was as angry as she was scared. Of course. Of course after she finally bought and furnished her little cottage, had a job she would have committed crimes for in college, and lived a life by the water the way she'd always dreamed she would did she get scooped up by a flying nightmare and hauled to what she assumed would be his grim, otherworldly lair. Of fucking course.