Emerald City Shifters (Bundle)

by Kit Tunstall

  She could easily imagine the scientist beside her not having to be drugged to fight. He seemed like the type who would gladly tear apart his own species just to get ahead. He certainly had no hesitation about doing it to another—if they were a separate species. Surely the shifters must be, though she didn’t quite understand how any of it worked. She remembered he had mentioned something about a gene that controlled shifting, which suggested they were simply a different species, but there was no way to know without asking him.

  They had reached the big house now, and she was certain her time for asking had run out anyway. She took a deep breath as she braced herself to walk in with the guard and the scientist, wondering what kind of monster waited for her on the other side of the door. Judging from what he had created here, his own little private island along the lines of Dr. Moreau, she was imagining a hideously deformed man.

  Less than a minute later, after the guard had escorted her into a room on the first floor that appeared to be a library, she realized her mental imaging was way off. Señor Calderon sat in a wingback chair, a thick book on his lap, and he waved to the other chair beside him, sitting at an angle. He was probably in his mid-to-late fifties, but his dark hair was still mostly black, threaded with only the occasional shots of silver. His coppery-brown skin was lined, and it made him look distinguished. He had finely drawn features, and he was still handsome despite his age.

  As she took the seat he indicated, her stomach clenching, she met his eyes, and that’s where she saw the monster who hid behind the veneer. Perhaps he made no effort to project any sort of life into those eyes, or perhaps he’d fooled himself into believing he had masked his inhumanity behind an urbane exterior, but looking into his lifeless, cold eyes, she was certain he was a man without a conscience. She would have believed that anyway based solely on what she’d seen thus far, but looking into his gaze, she knew with absolute certainty that he was the most dangerous creature on this island.

  “Elgin tells me you were snooping around our little operation, señorita. Or is it señora?”

  “Señorita,” she said, feeling ridiculous doing so. Who cared about her marital status at the moment? “I’m sorry. I was just curious about everything.”

  “How is it you found your way to our island to start with, señorita?”

  She licked her lips, trying to control her nerves. “I heard about this place from James McCoy, and I didn’t really believe there were bear fights. I wanted to see it for myself, and then after I saw enough to know they were real, I wanted to see the bears closer. I didn’t mean to learn something I wasn’t supposed to know.”

  He leaned forward slightly, lifting a glass bottle of clear liquid and pouring some into a tumbler. He looked in her direction and arched a brow. “Would you like a tequila?”

  She shook her head. There was no way she could swallow anything past the huge lump in her throat.

  He didn’t argue with her or try to persuade her to change her mind. He simply lifted his drink and sipped slowly for a moment as he stared across the room at her. “You’ve put me in a difficult position, señorita. I don’t want to kill you, because killing women is bad karma, but I can’t have you running around telling everyone what you’ve seen here.”

  She shook her head, trying to look earnest. “I wouldn’t.”

  He laughed, an edge of mocking to it. “Of course you would. You might think you wouldn’t, but you’d tell someone, and they’d tell someone, and sometime, at some point, someone would believe you.”

  She waved a hand. “Who’s going to believe any of this?”

  He let out a regretful sigh. “I wish I could believe you, but I can’t. I can’t risk my empire coming under scrutiny, and I’m sure the shifters themselves don’t want the world at large to know about them.”

  She almost snorted aloud at the thought, as though he really expected her to believe he was doing anything to protect shifter community. His actions were designed to benefit only himself. “I really don’t want to die, Señor Calderon. It was simple curiosity.”

  He inclined his head. “If I don’t kill you, what should I do with you?” It was clearly a rhetorical question to which he expected no answer.

  Her brain summoned a response all the same, considering it a stroke of genius. “I’m in the veterinary sciences program at the University of Washington. I still have a couple more years until I’m a vet, but I know enough to help take care of the animals.”

  She stumbled on the last word slightly, having a difficult time calling the people in cages animals, as though they weren’t worthy of protection or equal status. Unfortunately, animals often received unequal treatment, so in a sense, she wasn’t insulting the shifters. She was expressing her wish that things were different.

  He seemed skeptical for a moment. “I’m not certain the doctor requires any assistance.”

  A chill crept up her spine when Elgin stepped forward eagerly, putting a hand on her shoulder in a possessive way that made her skin crawl.

  “I’m certain I can find a position for her, señor. It seems like an ideal solution to me.”

  For a second, she considered asking for death instead of being left at Stone’s mercy, but she didn’t really mean that. She was afraid Señor Calderon would grant that request if it was made. She’d have to find a way to deal with Stone and try to stay out of his way, and out of his reach, but if he could persuade the older man to let her stay, at least she’d be alive to fight another day.

  He appeared to ponder for a moment before issuing a single nod. “I see no reason why we can’t try. Just as long as you understand you’re disposable at any moment, señorita. What is your name?”

  “Maya Cole.” As she had done before, she cut off the suffix of her name, hating to share even that much, but having already done so previously without thinking.

  He nodded. “If you step out of line, or you try to leave without permission, I’ll have my men deal with you, and then I’ll chop you up and feed you to the bears as bait.”

  She didn’t bother to ask as bait for what, assuming it had something to do with riling them up before making them fight each other, after administering the stimulator. Instead, she tried to appear simpering and grateful. “I appreciate it, señor, and I’ll try not to let you down.”

  He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter if you let me down. I never expect people to live up to my expectations anyway—unless they are negative expectations.” Calderon shrugged again. “I fully expect to put a bullet in your brain before the end of the month. I doubt you’ll settle in and take to the way of life we have here, but it costs me nothing to be generous enough to allow you to prove me wrong.”

  She nodded, trying to maintain a pleasant smile even as she dug her fingernails into the lustrous fabric upholstery on the wooden arm of the chair where she sat. She didn’t speak again, and he didn’t seem to care. He just waved them away. As they reached the doorway, he called out to the guard.

  “Give her a room in the servants’ quarters, Guillermo.”

  With a sharp nod, the guard tightened his fingers on her arm, though it was hardly necessary since he was already holding her in a viselike grip, and turned to the left, opposite the direction they had entered, clearly intent on showing her where she’d be staying. She dared let out a shaky sigh of relief as he moved away from the library and Señor Calderon. She let out another sigh of relief when the doctor parted from them, giving her a lusty glance that made her blood run icy cold. He was clearly going to be a problem.

  The guard Calderon had identified as Guillermo took her down a flight of stairs, apparently in to what would be considered the basement of a normal house. She wasn’t certain what they called it in a mansion, besides the servants’ quarters.

  Guillermo seemed to know right where they were going, because he led her to a door at the end of the hallway with a number eight on it. He pushed it open without knocking and turned on the light, revealing a tiny bedroom with two twin beds shoved against the corners
, and a common night stand between them. There was an even smaller cubicle that was supposed to be the closet, and she saw a few articles of clothing hanging there. “Who’s my roommate?” It could either be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on where the loyalties of her roommate lay.

  “No roommate. The last maid displeased Señor Calderon.” He made a gesture by pulling his finger across his throat. “She was let go without a severance package,” he said with a slight twist of his lips, as though it was a humorous situation.

  His smile fled a moment later. “Hand over your phone.”

  Maya thought about arguing, but realized there was no point. At least he hadn’t asked her to empty her pockets, because the remote would no doubt spurn questions she didn’t want to answer. With a disgruntled sound, she handed over her iPhone. A squeak of outrage escaped her when he brought his large foot down on the sleek device, pulverizing it with one blow. “You didn’t have to do that.”

  He shrugged. “Make yourself at home,” he said mockingly.

  She nodded, feeling vaguely faint when she collapsed onto the bed nearest her. “I don’t have any clothes or anything.”

  He waved to the closet. “You can use what Maria left behind. She won’t be needing them.” With another chuckle, and a gleam of pride in his eyes that made her question whether he was the one who had been tasked with taking care of her “resignation,” he left the room, closing the door securely behind him.

  She waited a few minutes before summoning the courage to approach the door. She held her breath as she turned the knob, half-expecting to have been locked in. It was a bit of a surprise to discover the knob turned easily in her hand, and the door opened with a small squeak of the hinges. After closing it and locking it from the inside, though the flimsy bolt was more an illusion of privacy than anything, she rushed back to the bed and lifted the mattress, putting the pin/camera and its remote underneath the thin mattress.

  Then she collapsed onto the bed again, almost certain she could feel the telltale lump of where she’d hidden the device, though that was surely paranoia. She hadn’t been confined to her room, but it seemed like a small victory. They had security crawling the island, along with guns, and probably even more massive firepower than she had seen secured somewhere on the estate.

  She thought she had heard the barking of dogs too, so they might have canines they used to track people. Getting off the island would be a difficult task. She refused to consider it impossible, because that would be akin to giving up and either accepting the bullet Calderon planned to give her if she didn’t comply, or being complicit in the subjugation of the bear-shifters held as the other man’s prisoner. Neither alternative was something she was willing to accept.

  Chapter Three

  No one woke her, and when she made her way to the kitchen after a quick wash in the tiny bathroom next to her room—one that shared a connecting door with another room she speculated was equally tiny—and helping herself to some of Maria’s clothing, which was a little snug, but would do, she enjoyed a quick, but hearty breakfast the housekeeper served her with a smile. It was a bit like being on vacation, if she ignored the dire peril and the moral atrocities occurring on the island. Even the tastiest tortilla and freshest migas couldn’t allow her to do that.

  After eating, she moved from the kitchen, following the housekeeper’s directions on how to exit from the servants’ quarters, and started making her way toward the enclosure where they kept the shifters. It didn’t take long to reach it, and she entered the building, realizing there were no cages outside today.

  She eyed the nearest one as she stepped into the cool, darkened interior, though it wasn’t so dark she couldn’t see. She was able to see the wheels on the concrete and steel cages now that she had a moment to observe them, and fortunately the one she was studying was empty. She inferred they moved the cages in and out of the enclosure as the shifters were forced to fight, reducing the distance required to transport the shifters without some sort of protection or imprisonment.

  Slowly, she let her gaze move around the room, wincing when she realized there were at least twenty cages, though only five appeared to house prisoners at the moment. Of the five, only one was female, and she was in a deep sleep. The others were in varying states of semi-consciousness, and she approach the nearest one. He was a paunchy man in his mid-forties, and normally she would have been discomfited, if not outright embarrassed, by his nudity, but his suffering overpowered any other reactions or observations.

  Her heart stuttered, and there was a pang in her chest when she looked at his sad state. He had probably once been far more robust, and even with a slight beer gut, she could see his ribs higher up. She met his gaze, unsurprised to find him staring vacantly at her without any signs of cognition that she recognized. “Hello,” she said softly. “My name is Maya, and I’m here to help you.”

  A snort to her left caught her attention, and she moved carefully toward the occupant, eyes widening when she recognized him as the shifter who had fought last night, the one who had met her gaze and growled at her, or perhaps he had been growling at Stone. Either way, she remembered him being grumpy, though she couldn’t fault him under the circumstances. “I’m Maya, and I’m here to—”

  “Help,” he said in a mocking fashion. “Of course you are.” His words were slightly slurred, but he was the most alert of the five, despite a slight sense of haziness in his expression, and the droopy set of his eyelids.

  She bit her lip. “I really do want to help you guys. I didn’t know about any of this until last night, but I’m trying to think of a way to get you all out of here.”

  “The walls have ears.”

  For a moment, she thought he was hallucinating, but then she realized he was warning her about a surveillance system. “They’re recording everything I say?”

  He stared at her for a moment, the faintest hint of amusement in his eyes, as though he’d forgotten how to feel the emotion and was uncertain how to identify it. “No, not as far as I know. I was just kidding.”

  She let out an exasperated sigh. “Believe what you wish, Mr.… I don’t know your name, or what to call any of you, but I’m stuck here because I was trying to help. I’m still trying to help, but I might only be able to get myself off the island and then send back help.”

  An overly long strand of black hair flopped onto his forehead and into his eyes when he shook his head. It was unclear if he was disagreeing with her or perhaps trying to restore some of his awareness and shake off the drug-induced stupor. “No one would believe you if you told them what you saw here. If they did, they’d be no help in getting the shifters freed from Calderon. If you really want to help, why don’t you call Javier and tell him this is where he’ll find his little brother, the traitor.”

  “What do you mean? Javier who?

  “Calderon,” he said as he shook his head again. A moment later, he slumped against the bars of the cage. “Cartel.”

  She tried pressing for more answers, but he fell back into a restless sleep. She moved around the cages, but none of the five were capable of engaging in any real conversation. They all had injuries, and she set out to look for medical supplies to treat what she could.

  She was training to be an animal doctor, not a people doctor, but a lot of the physiology would be the same, and most of the treatment techniques would be interchangeable. In a way, it seemed futile to patch them up just to send them back into the fighting ring, but she couldn’t allow them to keep suffering if she could do something to help, even if it was something minute and temporary.

  In search of medical supplies, she left the communal room that served as the prison area for the shifters, soon entering far more complexly outfitted rooms. These all had clear medical or scientific purposes, and she assumed she had stumbled onto Elgin’s research lab. It made sense that he would be close to the shifters, and she hoped being at least somewhat of a medical facility, she’d be able to find medical supplies.

  The best
she could do was a large first-aid kit on the wall, which she removed from the mounting bracket and lugged the heavy case back to the room housing the bears.

  Equipped as well as she could be under the circumstances, she knew it was time for the hard part as she approached the first cage. She was actually relieved it wasn’t the bear-shifter who had spoken to her only a few minutes ago. This was a young, clearly healthy man, though he was drugged just like the others.

  The next problem she encountered was being able to reach the wounds. With the shifters so out of it, they couldn’t help her by repositioning closer to the bars. She bit her lip indecisively for a long moment before accepting the only alternative to walking away, which was entering the cage with them.

  She didn’t find the prospect all that frightening, especially since they were all in a drugged stupor. She looked at the latch on the cage, unsurprised to find a big lock for which she had no key.

  “I’ll be right back,” she whispered to the man she had planned to take care of first, leaving the first-aid kit on the floor before exiting the enclosure in search of a guard. She didn’t have to go far before she encountered Guillermo, and she briefly wondered if he had been assigned to follow her at a distance, but quickly discarded the idea. If he had been assigned as her shadow, they wouldn’t have bothered with discretion. It would have been blatantly obvious to her that she was being monitored. “I need you to let me into the cages please.”

  He arched a shaggy brown brow. “Are you insane?”

  She bit back a sigh of impatience. “I can’t reach their wounds outside of the cage, and they’re in no shape to help me. I’m in no danger.”

  He shook his head. “It’s a bad idea.”

  She propped her hands on her hips and faced off with him, trying to ignore the disparity in their height and weight. “What difference does it make? They’re in no condition to escape, and if one of them happens to kill me, it’s not a big deal, at least to you. Calderon already said he’ll probably shoot me by the end of the week anyway. This saves him the cost of a bullet.”