CHANGED—Book 2 The Made Ones Saga

“Changed was a fantastic second book. The world is now more familiar which helped but, for me, the best part was Bree's attitude.

The interweaving between Kit's book and Bree's is wonderfully done (and) Bree and Gato are supported by an amazing cast. A fantastic addition to the series.” —Archaeolibrarian

“Changed is complex, captivating, dangerous and heartwarming.  So if you are looking for fantasy, scifi, and/or romance you might want to check this one out.” —Whiskey with My Book

Chapter 1

Boadicea Balážová pushed up from the scratchy bed of leaves and spat out the dirt in her mouth.
Well, this sucks. Where the hell am I?
“Sybi! Kitlyn!”
Birds twittered, but her sisters remained silent.
A tendril of hair slithered from her shoulder to dangle in her face. She went to swipe it away and… “What. The. Fuck?”
She pushed to a sitting position. Everything ached. And she was hot. Then cold. Then dizzy.
Screw that. Bree grabbed a plait of hair and held it in front of her. Red. Fire-engine red, a horrible color. Her natural color. Which was ridiculous. Her hair hadn’t been natural since she’d first dyed it black at fifteen.
Her nails, too? She curled her fingers. No polish, nails cut short and squared. Last week, she’d chosen blood red for her manicure.
“Kit! Sybi!” Where had they gone off to?
Bree was having some kind of out-of-body experience.
They’d been hiking in Maine’s Acadia National Park, and then they’d fallen, the ledge where they’d stood giving way. No, not exactly. The ledge had vanished. She could still hear Sybi’s screams.
With precision and deliberation, she took the monster Fear and tucked him into the box she’d crafted eons ago for her trapeze work. Good.
That done, she pushed to her feet and stumbled, her legs tangled in some weird fabric. She plucked at the hideous thing, an unbecoming sack of blue. The damned dress covered her from ankle to neck, shoulder to wrist.
The sun blazed high above rows of dead corn stalks, and she lifted her hand to her forehead to see where she was. Nowhere she recognized, and she began to walk, stumbling at first. Once she got her legs under her, she began to run up and down the vast sea of dead corn shouting her sisters’ names. Time and again, she’d stop and listen. Only the squawk of crows answered.
Slumping to the ground, it took minutes for her breath to ease and her head to clear. They weren’t here. A burning thirst got her moving again, and she strode across the field toward a distant pond, wincing at the small cuts and bruises her bare feet endured. She could still be in Maine. But she wasn’t, that much was obvious.
If she’d been abducted, then where were her abductors?
More important, where were Sybi and Kit? Were they okay? They had to be. Period.
The air smelled clean and fresh, the small pond reflecting the crystalline blue sky. At the pond’s edge, Bree found a spot clear of grasses and knelt, the water making her salivate. She leaned forward to scoop up a handful. And screamed, startling a murder of crows into flight.
Digging her fingers into the mud, Bree leaned above the still water.
The Breena who stared back at her wasn’t her at all. At least not 56-year-old her. She turned her face left, then right, the reflection echoing her movements, then slumped back on her haunches. Her trembling hands traced the contours of her face and throat. No extra chin. No puffy jowls. Not possible.
She leapt to her feet, checked that no one was around, and pulled up her dress. Her body. Her body.
The lines and curves of her twenties flowed across her flesh. She touched her taut arms, her flat belly, her curved hips. All smooth and with the firmness of her youth. Gone were the middle-aged pooch, the saggy neck, the drooping ass. Now, muscular thighs from her aerialist days flowed to strong calves and high-arched feet. Except her legs were hairy! Her hands cupped her breasts. Oh, no. They were pre-implant, pert but small, the flowers tattooed across them, gone. She pushed down the dumb dress so it covered her.
Her nails, her hair, her breasts… Her armor was gone. Whatever had happened, whatever had dragged her back to her pre-makeover body, whatever was going on, it was weird and horrible. She was like a turtle without its shell. She needed her armor.
A welcome breeze played along her body and swayed the scrim of trees edging the pond.
“Kit! Sybi!”
The silence made her heart ache and her eyes burn.
None of that, now.
A forest of conifers rimmed the large field, and beyond the forest’s distant edge, smoke curled into the blazing blue sky. If she were in luck, she’d find a cabin, with people who would explain.
After a few more sips of water, Bree strode toward the smoke. Once she figured out what the hell was going on, she’d find her sisters.
Her sisters… She smiled. In the same predicament, Kit would give orders and Sybi would ponder. If they were around, she could bitch about how messed up this all was.
Nearing the smoke’s source, her eyes snagged on some vertical wooden posts just inside the forest where a dirt path began. To a house, she hoped. She paused, allowing the dead stalks to screen her from view. All remained silent, and she moved forward at a trot. Soon, a yellow adobe cottage came into view, surrounded by cacti and other succulents, smoke rising from the cabin’s chimney.
Shit, Toto, I’m definitely not in Maine anymore.
A flagstone path led her to the front door, and she pressed the buzzer.
Long minutes later, she swore, then began to circle the home where in the rear, she found a glass door. She cupped her hands to see inside.
A huge tan cougar slapped its dinner-plate paws onto the glass. Fuck! She jumped back and fell on her ass. Good thing the cat was on the inside and she was on the outside. The cougar pressed its pink nose to the window and chirped, its breath fogging the glass. It blinked, its golden eyes. A pet? Who kept a mountain lion as a pet?
She froze and peered around. The cat might be inside, but something equally deadly could be outside. Exhaling a stuttering breath, she scrambled to her feet and took two steps toward the door.
The cougar stared at her, and she stared back.
It was the size of a tiger—immense, with golden eyes that appeared curious, rather than hostile. Oh, she had to be imagining things. But she pressed a hand to the glass where one of the cougar’s paws rested.
A shiver arced down her spine, and she’d swear the animal laughed.
Oh, fuck.
She backed away from the door. What had she been thinking? That cat looked big enough to break through the glass. And laughing? Another step back, and something brushed against her head and she whirled.
A clothesline. They’d strung it from the house to a tree, and it held a dozen pants, tunics, underwear, and skirts that snapped in the breeze.
She bit her lip. She shouldn’t steal. But the damned dress made her feel like she was wearing a boa constrictor. A pair of loose pants and a sleeveless tunic proved too tempting to ignore, but when she reached for the undies—no—borrowing someone else’s underwear was gross.
The pants were too baggy, the sleeveless tunic too small, but both were better than the dress, which she hung on the line as a sort of apology for taking the owner’s clothes.
With one eye on the cat, whose chirps had escalated, she continued around the cabin’s perimeter. That capricious Lady Luck, who in recent years had abandoned her, shined once more when she spotted a toolshed. Inside, amidst the hardware and potting soil, she discovered a pair of gardening boots. She pulled them on, wishing they were a size larger, but thankful for favors. As she left, Bree plucked a pair of pointy shears from the wall. Every girl needed a weapon, especially with that giant cat pressed against the door, drool now dripping from its open mouth.
You’d like to eat me, would you, buddy? Not today.
She still got the feeling it was laughing at her.
Cool shade enveloped Bree as she crept deeper into the forest. Ferns grew beneath massive trees so tall she could barely see their tops. Kit had visited the trees of Big Sur and Muir Woods, and these giants resembled her descriptions and the photos Bree had seen. Redwoods. Her rational mind told her she couldn’t be in California. They’d been in Maine when they’d fallen.
Her rational mind… She touched her abdomen. Still taut and firm, with a hint of abs. Oh, boy. Though her fear was demanding release, she clamped that internal box tight. Not yet. She couldn’t freak out. Yet.
Instead, she made wide circles around the cabin, farther and deeper into the wood, calling, looking for her sisters.
She came upon a grove where sun dappled through the trees and small clusters of purple asters bloomed. Perhaps she had been enchanted. Sybi had told her how long ago peoples believed the flowers magical. But that was ancient times. Nowadays asters symbolized love and patience. Ha. Her patience was as thin as tissue. Her breath hitched. A pair of orange butterflies lit on the flowers. Monarchs. Kit’s favorite. And asters were one of Sybi’s.
Her breath hitched again, and she slapped a hand across her mouth. Put it away. For now, put them away, her dear ones, and find a place to hide. To think. To plan.
Her muscles ached and her eyes were scratchy with exhaustion. She climbed over a huge tree trunk that lay in her path and spotted a hollowed-out tree, its edges burnt, probably from a lightning strike. Perfect.
She plucked half-a-dozen ferns from the base of another living giant, then slipped inside. The hollow had to be at least twelve feet in diameter, and though the air felt closer, it was still fresh. She sat on earth littered with dead leaves and uncoiled her legs, letting them sprawl, then pressed her back against its trunk. She lay the ferns atop her for camouflage. Safe. Sort of. It would have to do.
The shaking began at her toes, creeping up her legs and torso until her entire body trembled. Fear had squirmed out of its prison, and its grip felt lethal.
“Unproductive,” Sybi would say.
“Control it,” Kit would encourage.
Pulling her fear tight, she once again bound it. The next hour, the next minute, the next second didn’t matter. She needed to sleep.
And so she did.

Fark! Gato was disgusted after his vidcon with Fukkes as he clicked off the Alchemic feed to his den’s vidscreen. The Made One Kitlyn had almost gotten herself killed by two traitors who illegally control-chipped two of their cats. Now the shoting Alchemic, Fukkes, said another Made One was in his territory, and he, Gato, was to retrieve her.
Where? he’d asked.
In your territory, he’d replied.
CatHome is near a million acres!
Find her, was all Fukkes’ said.
With the male-female birth ratios having reached eighty-to-twenty, Eleutia had grown desperate. The Made Ones helped stave off civilization’s demise with their predilection to birth females. Yet this missing one was not the first the Alchemics had lost, but the second. Something was seriously wrong with their scientists. Made Ones always arrived in luxurious surroundings, yet the Alchemics had pulled two Essences from the parallel world of Earth only to lose both—Kitlyn and now this Breena, her sister.
Gato would find the lost Made One. Naturally, he would, though the arrival of each new Made One only increased his feelings of the wrongness of stealing a woman from her home world, leaving the dead flesh, and pulling her Essence to Eleutia. The Alchemics never asked, they took, and even if those taken were near death or dying, few questioned the process. When had Eleutian ethics gone missing? When had his?
He knew, down to the exact minute, and it sickened him.
The Made One Kitlyn could not know that her sister was the “missing” Made One. As if he needed this, with The Challenge to win Kitlyn beginning in a few days. A Challenge he had to win, by orders of the Alchemics.
He’d find the lost Made One and hand her off to her makers, to Fukkes. Two Made Ones at CatHome were one too many.

Voices startled Bree awake. They spoke English, which was good, though their accents were none she’d heard before, almost Spanish, but not quite.
She froze, holding her breath, as the two men walked right past her hidey-hole inside the tree. When their voices trailed off, she loosened her death grip on the garden shears.
Once they were gone, she would find a town, a safer alternative. She relaxed back against the trunk.
Which was when a giant black puma shoved its head into her space, its frosty blue eyes gleaming like stars, its sniffing loud.
Shit. What was this place, catland? She was prey, and that big cat would eat her.
She scrunched tight against the farthest wall from the opening, wrestling her toxic fear, and stretched out her arms, the points of the shears aimed at the cat’s face. She swallowed. “Go away. Leave me alone. I don’t want to hurt you, but I will.”
The panther tilted its head as if actually listening.
It stalked forward across the ground separating them until it stood less than two feet away. Another step, one foot. They were eyeball to eyeball.
Her hands shook holding the shears. She could kill it, stab it. The beast was close enough. Her breath stuttered. But she didn’t want to kill the immense cat. Fuck.
The cat kept staring at her, and then its huge tongue snaked out and licked her bare arm.
“Ow!” Sandpaper was softer.
She made herself smaller, tucking her legs beneath her. “Leave.”
The panther shook its head.
Oh, goody, she was talking to a cat who seemed to understand her.
A man’s voice came from outside. “Bartholomew, do not frighten her!”
“Bartholomew?” she said.
The cat nodded.
She bit her cheek, the fear pressing for release. Yep, the cat had answered her.
Tears spilled down her cheeks. Not what she needed, dammit.
“Back up, Barth,” said a deep voice outside the tree. “Let us talk with her.”
The cat didn’t move.
“Now, Barth,” the man said.
The cat stayed put.
“Am I supposed to say something?” Bree said.
The nodding cat raised its muzzle, as if to smile or eat her. Hard to tell.
“Okay, um, I’ll talk to them.”
The cat tilted his head. He didn’t wink, but it sure looked like he wanted to before he backed out of the tree.
A leather-clad man with a mop of blond hair poked his head and shoulders inside the tree. He had a hook nose and warm eyes. “Hello.”
Bree gathered her big-top persona—the regal one with attitude that had charmed crowds—squared her shoulders and raised her chin. She nodded. “Hi there.”
“That was Bartholomew, one of Catamount’s CatGuard.”
“Oh, I see.” She hadn’t a clue.
“Clever, hiding out here. Without Barth, we would never have found you.”
Swell. “Why are you looking for me?”
He dragged a hand across his stubbled chin. “We, ah…”
The jingling of horse equipage and, “Move!” was shouted from outside.
Relief surged across the man’s face, and he backed out of the opening. With all these people arriving, not to mention the huge panther, Bree started to feel silly hunkered at the rear of the hollowed-out tree.
Her hands had grown sweaty from gripping the shears, which probably were useless at this point. Not giving them up yet, though.
Another man crouched low and entered her hidey hole, and once inside, he uncurled his hand to reveal a ball of light. Dressed in black leather, he scooched on his haunches, his emerald stare slicing through her. “I am Alpha of the Cat Clan, Náshdóítsoh.”
“Nachodos… Ouch. I made it sound like nachos. Sorry about that.” She kept her chin lifted, her spine straight.
“What are nachos?”
She squeezed her eyes tight, trying to shut out the man, the conversation, the tree. Reality wouldn’t be held at bay, so she opened them.
“Call me Gato,” he said with a lip twitch. “My birth name is a mouthful. How are you feeling?”
The strange light gave his stark features a malevolent cast. “Feeling? Not anything good.”
“And…?”
“Hungry. Thirsty.” Terrified.
“You arrived precipitously.”
“Well, ex-cuse me.”
He swept a hand across his chiseled face, with its prominent chin and lush mouth. “Your arrival was unexpected. I would like to help you, to take you to Catamount, and to explain. Will you come with me?” He held out a hand.
She raised the shears. “And I should trust you because…?”
“I mean you no harm.”
That’s what he said.
Gato’s face tightened, then he said with a sigh, “Because you have no other option.”
The shears glinted in the light and she held them up, widening her eyes and forcing a demonic smile to her lips. “I have these. They’re an option.” As much as she’d love to go to someplace safe where she could learn what was going on and how the hell to find her sisters, she couldn’t. Whoever these people were, they might sell her or rape her or something equally horrible. Though why they’d want some broken-down fifty-something eluded her. Except… Her body was different. And she’d seen enough to know something very strange had happened to her.
His hand shot out, and her shears vanished. She stared at her empty hands. “How dare you? They’re mine!”
“True. But I wished to show you they are not an option.”
A low-pitched hiss came from outside.
“Bartholomew is getting annoyed. We must go before the cat loses patience. As I said, my name is Gato. You are Breena, yes?”
“How did you know my name?”
“Come,” he said. “At Catamount, you will know all.”
Did she have a choice? Not with three men and a panther awaiting her. Fuck. “You may call me Bree for short. My sisters were with me when… I must find them now.”
“I am afraid that is impossible.” He again held out his hand.
“Why?”
His hand scraped his chin and he sighed. “Very soon. Rest assured.”
Not only was he demanding she go with him, but he wasn’t going to help her look for her sisters. Her limbs felt heavy, her head, muzzy, and it was increasingly difficult keeping her shoulders back and her head high. “You go first.”
“All right.” He handed her back the shears. “For trust.” And he scooted outside.
Shears clutched in one hand, she crawled out of the tree. Oh, my.