A man, huge, all ripped muscle around a skeleton that could have supported side doors like a car, waited for her. He was perfectly human looking aside from the variations of scarlet scales she could see shimmering just under the thin veil of alabaster skin. The eyes he turned on her were electrically, unnaturally blue. They had no pupil, but she had no doubt he was looking her over.
"Hit me," he said, an order that was more animal snarl than recognizable diction.
"Umm...wha..." was all Valentina was able to get out before he charged her.
He moved fast for being the size of a truck. She wasn't going to hit him and was pretty sure the quickest way to fail whatever test this was would be to punch someone physically superior to her in the face. However, she wasn't going to let him whale on her either. As he barreled toward her she bunched her muscles, launched herself up, put her hands on his shoulders, and vaulted over him in a straddle jump.
He whipped around, a feral grin on his face. He charged her again, although this time she knew her trick wouldn't work. He was prepared for it. He swung at her, a punch that snapped out as quick as lightning. She got the feeling he was holding back, playing with her. In order to dodge his jab she bent backward into a bridge, kicking up from it away from him, taking herself to the other side of the curtained room.
"Ha!' he said in a voice that could shake the leaves off a tree but somehow managed to convey his entertainment.
She held herself ready for another of his passes, ready to slide under or leapfrog over his brute force.
"You," he said, and she could see his struggle with the language as he worked his Adam's apple, "you're making it through."
Two females appeared from the side of the room. They must have passed through the curtains, but to her untrained eye it looked as if all their parts had coalesced together out of thin air. Their gowns were gossamer and white, their faces identical. She wondered if they were twins or simply from a species where all the individuals looked like replicas. Their faces were pleasing despite the lack of noses and hair.
"This way," one of them said in a voice that certainly matched her appearance. It floated to Valentina like music.
"Good luck, sprite," the brute said to her back.
The two creatures led the way out of the curtains, though they each placed a slender four fingered hand on Valentina's arms as they passed through.
Valentina was disoriented in the dim, snaking passageway the twins piloted her through. She felt as if she were descending underground at a slight angle but that couldn't be right. The invaders had only been here for three days. They wouldn't have had time to dig an elaborate and lighted subterranean tunnel.
That is, unless they had some sort of dirt eating beast the size of a double decker bus that did all of their excavating for them. At this point, Valentina wouldn't have been surprised. Any sort of unnamed terror seemed possible.
The twins kept a hold of her bare skin, and though they were silent their presence didn't seem threatening. Instead, Valentina felt herself becoming calmer and less nervous, felt the tension draining out of her muscles. It was the first time she'd felt that at ease in days. She imagined if there was a bed present she might even be able to catch more than a few minutes of sleep.
Though she hadn't spoken, she'd thought too soon. The twins piloted her through a metal door, which opened almost silently at their approach except for a slightly pressurized noise. They entered a sterile room where everything gleamed. Not a mote of dust filtered through the air. If they were going to amputate her limbs from her body or run alien experiments on her like in the low budget sci fi movies her brother had been into, this was the place it would happen in.
Part of her brain screamed at her in warning, "Don't let them put you down like a dog!" However, her body wouldn't respond to that very sensible admonishment. She was just so relaxed. Her heavy extremities weren't capable of putting up much of a fight.
"Please lay on the table," one of the twins said.
Valentina fought against herself, against whatever was compelling her to feel so comfortable in the presence of these two beings, to say, "won't..."
"Of course you will," the twin on the left said, "you wouldn't want us to have to call a battler in here to subdue you, would you? No, our connection is strong. You want to listen to me."
"Why..." she asked even as her body obeyed, meekly climbing atop the hard surface of the table, despite her brain registering the restraints that hung down.
"We are a rare species that were incorporated into The Demesne hundreds of years ago and encouraged to breed. We two are even rarer, third generation purebloods. We, like all of our kind, cause those in our company to produce sudden and overpowering amounts of oxytocin. That tends to make men aggressive, though more likely to mate. It also tends to make females experience strong feelings of bonding, an almost indisputable biological maternal instinct," the twin to the left explained melodiously as she gently strapped the restraints onto Valentina's arms, legs, and across her torso.
She wanted to scream as one of the twins plunged an odd looking syringe into Valentina's side. She couldn't. She could barely clench her teeth in protest. The syringe needle gleamed white and cut through her skin without any force, as easily as a warm knife cleaved through butter. She wished her doctors had had this sort of tech while she'd been growing up. Her stick arms would have been less bruised from all the boosters and inoculations that had made every trip to the doctor tear inducing.
Her thoughts, like her sight, were becoming quite fuzzy. What had she been thinking about? The doctor? Which one? The team doctor, the one who'd told her the promising career, the one she'd worked her whole life to achieve, resulting in a run at the Olympics gymnastics team had to come to an end over a torn labrum in her shoulder? The specialist that told her even surgery wouldn't allow for the joint to ever be at full strength again? No, no. Doctor. Twins. Table. Get out.
The twins faces swam in her vision, and she realized they held her immobile hands.
"That's right," one cooed to her, "just let go."
"You'll either make the change or you won't. There's nothing you can do to help it along," the other said smoothly, her voice drawing Valentina down even further into the drug like ether.
"I think she'll make it," one said to the other, although Valentina couldn't tell which. Her sight was completely opaque. She couldn't tell if her eyes were open or closed.
"I'm not sure," the other answered, "it's so hard to tell whose physiology takes to the change and whose will reject it. She seems strong, but she seems meek as well. Even if she makes it through the change she'll have to survive the sands." Their voices had taken on an odd echoic quality that resounded in Valentina's head.
"Who is to be her trainer?" a twin asked a twin.
"Ward," answered her mirror image, and Valentina clung on to her blind consciousness with all of her being.
"Ah, that's..." and that was all Valentina could remember. The blackness blanketed her completely.
Her head throbbed. Pain pulsated behind her eyes, blooming, lessening, and then coming back at full strength. Deep breaths hurt. Valentina knew she needed to open her eyes, but the thought of even that much movement was unbearable. Something tasted coppery over her mouth, and it took her much longer than it should have to realize her nose was bleeding and dripping onto her lips. She tried to raise a hand to wipe it away and remembered by the tug on her wrists that she was bound to the table.
It seemed that they hadn't taken her apart after all. She could feel her feet, her ankles, her legs, her stomach, her still bare chest, arms, fingers, and she was pretty sure she could even detect the follicles of her hair. Each one hurt like a needle stabbing into her skull.
She laid there and imagined her pain radiating off of her in a halo. It would glow red, she thought, like a mist of blood suspended in the air around her. She pictured herself like a typhoid Mary, infecting anyone who came near with the strength of it. Maybe it was good she was tied down. S
he imagined if she wasn't she'd be peeling the skin from her hide as a reprieve.
Time passed, and she couldn't judge if it passed quickly or slowly. Nothing in the room moved, no one came to check on her, and the only accomplishment she made was deducing that her nose had stopped bleeding. The sticky fluid dried and crusted on her face, cracking apart as she tried to cause it to flake off with her lips. Each time she tested one of her restraints the pain came back in full force, flooding from her very bones. Valentina wondered grimly what they had done to her. If she was expected to live each day in this kind of pain, she'd find a way to end herself. There'd be no living like this.
She knew the direction of her thoughts wasn't healthy. She needed to worry about surviving and had to focus on something outside of the pain. She let her mind wander until it sank into a habit from the past. Laying motionless on the table, she went over the steps of the Amanar Vault. She had accomplished this difficult task on her first day trying. She'd thought her coach would pee his pants. The memory would have made her smile if the muscles around her mouth weren't on fire.
Step one- round off to board, speed must be perfectly timed. Step two- back handspring onto the horse, control the momentum of the arm swing, too much will make you lose your balance. Step three- two and a half rotation layout, concentrate on the balls of your feet since they'll be the first to make contact with the mat. Land. Breathe. Smile for applause. Look to coach. Is he smiling? If he's smiling it'll be an extra round of conditioning tomorrow because you must have royally fucked something up in execution.
She was pulled from her reminiscing by the noise, recalled from the fuzz of her memory, of the door whooshing open. Her eyelids sprang open, and it took a moment for her vision to come fully into focus. However, it wasn't exactly how it used to be. She saw the man that strode so confidently into her torture chamber perfectly, as if he were in higher than high definition. She saw the weave of the fabric of his clothing, saw the pores on his skin. He was beautiful. Valentina instantly hated him.
His air of assurance crossed the line into pretension. Though his clothes and accessories were odd, they clearly screamed the signs of flaunted wealth. What he wore around his wrist, a seamless band, gleamed. His hair was longish and tied back without looking slick. His shoulders were rounded with muscle and the outline of his enormous pecs was visible through the thin armor like plate of his shirt. His face looked like it always held an expression between bored and sneering. His eyes looked her over and assessed her worth without shame. He examined her like a breeder would examine an old racehorse in an effort to decide if it was more economical to kill it or to let its genes live on. She wanted to hit him. She'd never really wanted to hit someone else in her life.
"You hurt?" he asked, although he seemed to know the answer to his question. Even his voice grated on her nerves, too irritatingly perfect. Masculine and rich. If a voice could have smelled like overly expensive French perfume his would have.
She wasn't going to answer him. Why she, someone who had never really rebelled, picked this moment to decide to dig in her heels was a mystery to even her. She continued to look at him, silent.
He strode over to her, his face unchanged by her open disdain, and poked a thick finger into her bicep. She couldn't help but moan at the renewed flood of agony.
Aside from her pained cry she said nothing.
He dug that finger in a little deeper, his face constant. He knew what he was doing, and it didn't disagree with his disposition at all. Causing another living thing distress, adding to it, was another day at the office for him if she was reading the situation correctly. She knew she was. She had always been an uncannily good judge of character. Someone purging in the bathroom, aiming for that perfectly unattainably svelt gymnast musculature? Called it. Someone sleeping with their forty year old coach under his wife's nose? No surprise. Valentina had seen those stories written on their faces and in their actions long before anyone else had. She was reading the man in front of her just as easily. He was bad, he knew he was bad, and he glorified in his reputation of badness spreading as fast as the plague.
"Ah, a stubborn one. Fake it however you want, but I remember the torment of the change. I don't have to keep provoking you. The pain doesn't lessen. It only grows. I alone will be available to tell you how to make it better. I'll just sit over there, watch as your eyes well up with tears, and wait until you ask nicely for me to explain the cure," his polished radio announcer's voice drew out each word.
"Go fuck yourself," she told him, shocking herself more than anything. Her mother would have been appalled to hear such vulgarity from her. Her brother, on the other hand, would have giggled like a schoolgirl. Anytime she'd said anything of that nature to him he'd crack up and tell her she was the least threatening person he'd ever see.
He laughed. The bastard actually chuckled in her face.
He smiled a smile that could have stopped traffic in Manhattan. It was the kind of smile a man gives a woman in a restaurant that somehow all the other women see and feel, the kind of smile that drew women in like flies to something dead and smelly. Gross.
"I give you two minutes more. Two minutes and you'll be begging me to tell you how to end the pain. You may think you're tough but you're two things you just can't change. You're soft and you're a woman," he taunted her.
"I thought alien invaders were supposed be smarter than we unenlightened humans. You know, technologically advanced and all that bullshit. Not ageist. Not sexist. Way to clear up stereotypes for me," she returned the rancor although talking was as arduous as any injury she'd ever experienced.
He settled into one of the corners, leaning against a sterile counter like a teen with a cigarette dangling from his lips. She hadn't given in to the draw of those adolescent thugs, and she wasn't giving in to him. He could have been lying. He hadn't stated what he wanted.
She went to take a deep breath and stopped herself. Deep breathing would hurt. She stuck with slow, shallow puffs that didn't expand her chest. The simple act of breathing had never taken so much thought before.
She didn't know how long it took, but eventually she blessedly started to slip in and out of consciousness. Whenever her body would force her into cognizance she would see him still leaning there in the corner, a look of indifference on his face. He didn't touch her, so as far as she was concerned he could take his cold apathy and shove it. Let him look.
She realized once as she woke that her time aware was becoming shorter and shorter. She was slipping farther into the blackouts, not caring if she woke up or not. The effort to produce something as energy consuming as willpower was just too much. Soon the pain would diffuse, be gone completely. Soon whatever within that made her who she was would slip away. She looked forward to the numbness.
"Up! Stop this now!" she heard a voice drifting to her on her sea of paralysis.
"Uhhh..." she managed to say, clearly on the list for an eloquence award.
"Your body temperature is plummeting. You're going into shock. You will not die! You will not!" raged the man that she found so irritating.
Valentina's vision swam, but he had managed to capture her illusive attention. He took off the plated shirt, stripped away his augmented leather leggings and boots, and finally peeled away the thin bands of defensive guards he'd been wearing underneath that hugged his immense, muscled chest. His stark nakedness didn't look at all like what being bare should. He stood with no embarrassment, didn't appear vulnerable in the slightest, and seemed instead of shrinking to expand. He emanated threat from where he stood, his legs planted to the floor like trunks of longstanding trees.
Even more startling, he stood there naked and unleashed a raw, bloodcurdling howl that brought Valentina instantly back into her own skin. It felt like it was peeling from her bones the way old paint would curl back in strips from a weathered house. Something in her reacted instantly, jerked to the call and the hidden meaning in that predatory sound. She would not be afraid. She'd been through too much in t
hese past few days to be afraid of him.
Slowly, as if he were an actor drawing out a tragic performance for an enraptured audience, the man started to change. His weight merged in the center, bulking and condensing. His face morphed as though it was made of hot wax and sculpted by a starving artist's hand. Instead of those full, severe lips he sported a muzzle full of carnivorous teeth. He became covered in a course, black fur.
Standing in the room, lips pulled back in a canine snarl, stood a wolf that was easily 250 pounds, bigger than he had any right to be.
Valentina's brain flooded with something. Whatever it was was primal and instinctive. It shut out her human, linear thoughts and became an aggregate of her senses. Her nose smelled him, detecting the earthy permeating scent that spelled dog to her. The restraints were no longer holding her back, and she launched off the table with an intensity she wouldn't have been able to imagine just moments ago. Her eyesight sharpened even further, as did her hearing. The moment she touched the cool floor she distinctly heard the clicking of her own sharp claws against the tiling.
Her rage, sudden and born out of that startling howl of his, propelled her narrow, spotted body forward. Though she stumbled, unused to moving on four limbs instead of two legs, she nearly flew at him. Her body was faster than ever, stronger, made for hunting. She was going to take him down and make him pay for watching so callously as she hurt. Outside of her target, her claws, and her fury nothing else existed.
He stood there, unmoving, barely reacting to her threat which pissed her off further. His teeth were bared, his head was down, his hackles stood on end. He didn't circle her, didn't engage in the way that felt natural to her fighting instincts. She lunged at his side, aiming to run her sharp talons down toward his soft belly. He waited until the last second and backed away, causing her pass to fall on empty air. As her paws were coming down and her head whipped up in a snarl, he used her momentum against her. His teeth closed on the back of her neck and he applied pressure, his weight pushing her belly and chest to the floor. He hadn't bitten through, and she didn't know why. If the tables were turned she would have sliced his thick fur already.
Bad, Very Bad Shifters- The Complete Mega Bundle Page 61
