Bad, Very Bad Shifters- The Complete Mega Bundle

by Daniella Wright

  Valentina nodded her understanding and was left alone, the door shutting rapidly behind her jailers.

  It went exactly like the twin had laid out. Valentina lost count after four days aboard when everything started to run together. There was no night and day, no way to tell time aside from the blaring alarm that went off anytime the door was about to open to let her out. The dim lights, tinged barely greenish in color, stayed on all hours. She slept under the faint glow of those overhead lights, ate the food she brought back to her room, and did her push ups and sit ups bathed in their glow. Ward had told her to eat, sleep, and rest for her training. What he'd neglected to mention was that she'd have no choice in the matter. There was nothing else to do.

  The mess hall was the only place where interaction happened, but Valentina shied away from conversation. Others around her talked, some laughing at their luck to make it this far, others despairing over what would come next. Valentina did neither. Aside from searching the crowd for any familiar faces and finding none, Valentina didn't interact with her fellows. This wasn't the time to make friends. One didn't kill their friends.

  The idea of what was coming entered Valentina's thoughts whenever she wasn't vigilantly blocking them. She'd never struck another person, let alone done real harm. She was no fan of the sight of her own blood, though as a lifelong athlete she'd gotten used to the scrapes and cuts that were commonplace. She remembered the time one of her teammates had gone for a dive roll before transitioning into her floor pass. It was a fairly routine skill, one they'd all mastered as kids. The other girl's handstand was wobbly so she tried to tuck into a roll out, and gotten her leg stuck somehow beneath her. Seeing her mangled ankle and wrong facing foot had almost made Valentina lose her lunch.

  In just a short time she'd be expected to turn living, breathing beings into corpses. She had to shut out that reality or it would consume her.

  One way she did that, aside from forcing herself to workout until she was drenched with sweat in the small space of her room, was practice shifting back and forth. At first it had been difficult, and one shift to her cheetah fur and back was all she could do in a day. She had to take naps in both forms as well, in order to have the energy for each transition. However, the more she practiced the easier it became. In her solitude and boredom she learned she didn't actually mind the big cat's body at all. It was sleek. It was agile and flexible. In it her senses were sharper and her mind clearer, simpler. It felt good to react to her body's demands, to arch her long spine and practice unsheathing and retracting her deadly claws.

  She couldn't help it though, as much as she searched for another way. Whenever she needed to put on her human skin she resorted to thoughts, carnal and graphic, of Ward's big body. Yes, he'd been nicely endowed, but it wasn't that part of him that so captured her imagination. It was the rocky planes of his stomach, the harsh jut of his jaw, and the strong curve of his full lips that she imagined roving her body when she needed to feel like a woman again. She imagined her movements with him would be almost catlike, her back deeply arched against his rigidly tall frame, her nails making crescents into the skin over straining muscles of his back. Damn him. The man underneath all that appeal had been as hard as the body, as unforgiving. Fantasizing was one thing. Acting on it was another. She needed to get her head on straight.

  She knew when they landed. For a brief second the greenish lights flickered, and a noise she'd never really registered, constant and obscure, faded. It wasn't the strength of an engine's hum, but without it her little space seemed utterly and eerily silent. She stood, waiting on the balls of her feet for whatever would come.

  After some time the door opened and an armed guard walked in. He said nothing to her as he placed the light blue band around her neck. It wasn't cold like metal and had very little weight. However, she felt like it was a shackle, unwelcome and repugnant. She felt even more so when the guard explained it in clipped, aloof words.

  "Follow that. It'll take you to Ward's villa," the guard said, his one small, mean looking eye staring at her.

  "How?" she asked, never having had a necklace give her directions before.

  "Just follow it," and with that he turned out of her room and stopped before the next one, about to give some other sorry soul the same directions.

  Valentina followed the draw of light until she found an exit door. She looked for anyone to stop her, but no one seemed to be monitoring. She took one step off of the cumbrous ship and was blinded by the brilliance of two competing stars in the sky. One, she noticed when her eyesight adjusted, was the bright blue of a lighter's flame. It was a crescent, but even so was breathtakingly beautiful. The other star, fully round and less painful on the eyes, was a deep, dark crimson. It burned the color of blood.

  Wherever she was, it bared very few similarities to the earth she'd known.

  The building soared in groupings, though they didn't look at all like the city skyscrapers that had so inspired man. Instead, these buildings were formed to look like flora. Trees reached into the sky, thirty stories high and more, with ivy clinging to their surfaces. Other buildings looked like bushes, squatter and wide. Buildings in the shape of floating flowers rested atop large bodies of water, pushed along by some unseen current. Translucent peaks emerged here and there in the waters, signs of buildings submerged.

  In Valentina's narrow mind, having never seen such wonders, she could only compare it to a jungle. It was like a jungle had met the inner workings of a computer, mated with it, and produced this monstrous and yet somehow delicate amalgam of the very old and the very advanced.

  As Valentina moved farther away from the ship, never once looking back, the collar started to pull at her. When she let her feet follow it's pull the intensity lessened. When she decided to try to disobey the collar almost choked her with it's pressure. She realized quickly what the guard had meant when he said, 'Follow that."

  Valentina's choker and feet took her along several roads through the metropolis. However, the roads were formed of things like slick snow or deep, plush grasses, or even one that was made up entirely of soft petals that opened as she tread on them. She had a hard time picturing that the inhabitants of such a majestically beautiful place could be such brutal warriors.

  That was until she saw two female creatures haggling in a corner market over the price of something, something odd that Valentina could make no sense of.

  "Two quintans!" the proprietor shouted at the kerchiefed older woman.

  "One," the woman negotiated, turning up her nose.

  "Two or in a moment it will go up to three," the proprietor warned.

  "You're a dirty hound!" the old woman sneered.

  "I'm no hound. I'm a snake. Would you like me to sink my fangs in you?" the proprietor stepped from behind the stall, unhinging her jaws like the villain in a child's nightmare.

  The older woman slunk away, clearly not willing to answer the threat.

  Valentina had stopped too long to watch. Her necklace pulled on her, dragging her down another street where the buildings became squatter, rounder, shaped almost like the stumps of logged trees. She saw a few others moving in the same direction with matching collars. She must have been getting close.

  The necklace led her to the door of a small building, shaped like a wide fallen leaf. As she stood before it and considered knocking a grizzled, hulking man tore open the door from the inside. He kept his head down, never saying a word to her. She stepped inside and he shut the door behind her.

  He strode with purpose from the entrance, and Valentina had no idea if she was supposed to follow or to wait. She chose to follow, since standing in the massive doorway seemed idiotic. She didn't want to wait on Ward or have him find her standing in the entrance of his house feeling lost and small. While she did feel that, as well as thrown forcefully outside of her element, she didn’t need him to know it.

  She followed the man's deeply scarred and puckered back. While Ward's scars had looked clean and tended, this man looked
like he'd been raked over coals and somehow managed to knit himself back together. Some of the wounds were blobby and raised, as though they'd healed after infection. It hurt just thinking about the ways in which a person could scar like that.

  Valentina looked at everything but his back because it made her think in even more depth about the task she was barreling toward. A fight in the pit. A life to take or give.

  Breathe in. Breathe out. It wasn't time yet.

  Ward's house was beautiful. Everything gleamed or was polished. The furniture, all expensive pieces that looked like they could fit a resting bear, were made of a dark wood like material. The colors were warm and restive, deep blues and shady greens. Several water features were tucked away, but the sounds of their dripping and rushing was sublime. Rugs were scattered throughout the open spaces, and they were plush and soft. She would have pictured his home being as clinical as the room she met him in, as austere. This place looked like a velvety, alien palace.

  That was until the brute of a man led her through another set of massive double doors. The doors spat them out onto rough, sandy ground. The two stars now visible overhead bathed the atrium style room in jarringly bright light. The room was lined with metallic columns like some sci fi take on ancient Rome that reflected the light back into the center. And standing there, haloed in the blinding light, was Ward.

  He moved with a liquid grace, his stance wide, his chosen weapon a braided leather whip. He seemed to be in the midst of warming up as he drew the tip of the whip in circular motions before snapping it over his shoulder. It was a practiced move. It was magical, the way he didn't split his own skin or tie himself into a knot. Valentina had never seen anything like it.

  "Now!" he shouted, the whip in constant motion.

  More silent bodies emerged from the upper balconies that hooded the sandy atrium, all carrying bows. The only noises they made came from the twang twang of arrows being loosed and the buzzing sound of Ward's whip cutting through the air. She watched, mortified but entranced, as he fended off each arrow with the spinning of his crop.

  The same hulking man that had led her into the room grabbed a large, studded shield from a nearby weapons rack, almost casually rushing Ward. For a big man the drudge was quick on his feet and quiet as a mouse. How Ward heard him coming over the sounds of his slicing whip Valentina didn't know. She chalked it up to shifter senses, those honed more than her own. Ward snapped out at the shield with his crop and then quickly downward, trying to trip up the man's feet. The other man was quick, and lowered the shield to guard his ankles. The whip bounced off harmlessly. Ward cracked the whip up, going for the brute's face. The other man deflected again and overran Ward, knocking him back with that massive shield. Ward allowed it but, as he fell, he wrapped the whip around the man's neck, dragging him down as well. The man launched to his feet and stood over Ward, pressing the edge of the shield into his neck. Ward, in response, tightened the whip, closing off the man's air supply.

  "Draw!" announced Ward in a rough, projecting voice.

  The silent man hurumphed but obeyed, lifting the shield that had to weigh more than Valentina. The brute turned toward her, she froze in wary response, and replaced the shield in the rack. Without a word, he left the atrium and her alone with the sweating Ward. She glanced up to the balconies but the people that had drawn the bows had either stepped back into the shadows or gone on their way.

  "You made it," Ward said, his voice as chilly and proud as she remembered.

  "Didn't have much choice," she answered, trying to make it clear she didn't want to be there.

  "Of course you did. You could have laid down and died. That's always a choice," he said it without any added feeling, making it clear to her it wouldn't have bothered him either way. A real gentleman.

  "That's not an option for me," she answered letting her eyes drift over to the weapons rack. So many choices. So many objects of death she'd never seen before.

  "We'll see about that," he responded, still standing in the light.

  Before she could move her eyes back to focus on him he was on her, his whip wrapped around her torso, the rough leather chafing her skin underneath her clothes. His chest filled her vision, still slick with sweat.

  "What the hell?" she screamed, her anger going from zero to sixty immediately.

  "Never take your eyes off a potential opponent. Never get comfortable," he said.

  "Opponent? You're supposed to be my trainer," she barked through gritted teeth.

  "That makes me a better trained, highly dangerous, currently unpredictable opponent," he warned before asking, "Now how would you get out of this?"

  She had to think about it. Most of her tricks involved her arms, which were currently pinned to her torso. His grip on the pommel of the whip was loose as he talked though, and her legs were free. She quickly jerked away from him, diving to the left, and ran as hard as she could toward the opposite end of the atrium. She lifted off her feet when she reached the right speed, executing a sloppy but working aerial. The whip loosened as she was mid flip, and she grabbed it in her hands on her way down. She snapped the tip out at him, trying her best to mimic his technique. He easily caught it, wrapped it once around his wrist, and used her grip on the other end to wrench her forward.

  "Not bad," he said as she let go.

  After that he'd wasted no time. He put her through a series of grueling drills, mostly for conditioning, but focused on close range hand to hand combat. He pulled no punches. She learned quickly that if she didn’t defend he wouldn't hesitate to land a blow on her face or any other sensitive place on her body. He lit her up with a kick so hard she was sure she would pee blood for the next week. Whenever she fell onto her butt or knees he would snarl at her to get up, to remember that any weakness was a signal for an opponent to come in for the kill.

  She spit out a bloody glob of saliva near the end of the first day, not caring that it landed by Ward's booted feet. He was having her throw punches and showing her how to block with his forearms and by ducking under. Though he was in a defensive position, getting popped in the mouth by his elbows and forearms was as equally hellish as being on the receiving end of the jabs.

  She was so done. Her entire body was one big, purplish bruise. She hadn't had a decent meal in a day, and she was thirsty, tired, and at the end of her rope. She knew it was a jerk move. However, when she feigned the next punch and he went to block she crouched down low with one leg out, turning to sweep him off his feet.

  "I hate that you dress like a fucking space pirate," she said as he fell, the only insult her equally pounded jaw and brain could come up with.

  The bastard's eyes were huge, rounded with surprise. She was certain he'd retaliate, but she couldn't find the energy to care.

  Instead she went on, "Never get comfortable," throwing his own words back at him.

  She turned her back on him and strode into his house. She didn't hear any movement, though that didn't mean he hadn't sprung up. She was finished fighting for the day, no matter what her violent ass Yoda wannabe thought.

  Another silent domestic stepped in her way, although this time it was a well muscled woman. She noticed that the woman was missing a hand and definitely should have had two. While the left arm, longer and more elastic that Valentina's, ended in a fingered hand, the right arm turned to a stump at the same place. Did Ward abuse his servants? Was that commonplace? The bile in Valentina's stomach rose, and she had to push it down. No feelings. Nothing should surprise her.

  The girl gestured forward, toward the slightly curving stairs that led up to the balustraded hallway. Valentina nodded her assent and followed the woman. She didn't care where she was lead to. It need not have had any furnishings or food. Valentina was convinced that all she needed was enough floor space to curl up on. She felt like she could sleep for days.

  The mute woman opened a door for her, gesturing Valentina through. She also shut the door behind her, and all the movements were as quiet and attentive as if Valenti
na had been waited on by shadows. She wished the woman would have spoken. She could have used the sound of someone else's, not Ward's, voice. She was so alone.

  She surveyed the room before her with mildly piqued interest. In the middle of the room, surrounded by translucent mesh nets that hung from the ceiling was a small pram shaped tank. The walls were probably only a foot high, there was a rounded hood over part of the top, and it was filled with a handspan of water that glowed with a pretty golden luminosity. She walked to that tank and dipped a careful hand in. The water was as warm as a bath and made her skin tingle. Next to that very elegant vat sat an equally opulent side table, made of silvery, curving legs and a glassy top. On it was a tray of food, filled with raw fruits and smoky flavored meats. Without any restraint Valentina shoved a handful of the food into her mouth, stepped a foot into the tank, and sank down. She didn’t bother to take the clothes off her body or to wonder if the food was poison. She was simply too tired to care.

  The water, although not covering her breasts or face, buoyed her up. It was warm and welcoming, a little more viscous that pure H2O. In moments Valentina's heavy eyelids shut on a dreamless, all encompassing sleep.

  Valentina woke to the feeling someone was watching her. However, she didn't bolt upright or lunge out of the tank. The warm water, temperature unchanged from the night before, was too good to leave. She didn't look forward to the aches and pains that would welcome her out of the vat.

  Though, when she thought about it, Valentina didn't feel the bruises she'd watched bloom on her skin the day before. Her jaw felt fine. Her lungs sucked in air with no hesitation. She sat up and assessed all her appendages. There were no contusions or gashes, no swelling or sprains anywhere on her person. She looked and felt better than she had in years.

  Her shoulder! Her injured shoulder! She rotated it around in it's socket without any of the soreness or stiffness she'd gotten used to since the injury. She splashed out of the tub, landed her feet on the cool floor, and launched into a back handspring. Her injury, her unwanted companion for so long, didn't protest at all as her hands hit the floor and her shoulder joint took on the brunt of her weight.