Shifter Mountain: A BBW Paranormal Romance (11 page)

"He's right," Kay said.  "I hear something.  So be quiet."

At first, there was a slight crack.  Then a rumble.  Then the ground beneath them began to shake like a mild, low-level earthquake.

Dust started rising around the
stony profile of Jordan's father.  A rockslide began, boulder-by-boulder.

"It's crumbling!" Jordan exclaimed.  "Should we get out of here?"

He looked up nervously and realized that the area they were standing in also was vulnerable to a landslide.

"No, we're fine," Old Man Cowell said. "Just wait."

The rumbling continued, and rocks continued to split off and fall away from the profile of the Man-in-the-Mountain.  Then after a few minutes, everything went quite again.  The dust began to settle and the air cleared around the profile.

"Oh my God," Kay said.  She turned to stare up at Jordan,
standing close next to her, clutching her hand.  Then she looked back toward the side of the mountain.

"Oh my God is right," Jordan whispered.

Old Man Cowell simply smiled to himself in satisfaction.

The image of the
Man-in-the-Mountain remained, but now the profile it displayed was distinctly that of Jordan Lawless.

Chapter 12

The film crew packed up and left the next day.  Jordan sent Bob off, telling him he would be back in Nashville in a day or two.

Jordan was in his cabin, while Kay was off picking up supplies and ingredients for a new batch of moonshine.  She was still making it, knowing that Cephas was collecting the money from buyers. She thought that if she held up her end of the moonshine business, this might not add fuel to the fire in terms of his coming around again.

Cephas would figure out quickly that Jordan's film crew had left and that he was on his own.  But also, he knew
that Jordan was the Man-in-the-Mountain, so he was holding back.  Jordan felt that Cephas was just plotting.  He didn't sound like the logical type who knew when to quit.

Knowing that he could not leave Scopes Mountain anytime s
oon, Jordan dialed the Grand Ole Opry planning to ask them if he could reschedule.  But, then Andrea beeped in via call waiting, and so he hung up on the Opry before anyone answered in order to take her call.

"I'm so sorry, Jordan," Andrea said.  "For some reason, my voicemail hasn't been working right, and I just realized now that your number came up.  Did you leave a message?  Because for some reason I'm not getting my messages."

"No," Jordan said.  "I didn't actually leave a message."

"Is everything okay?  Are you still up there?"

"Yeah, we finished up shooting the video, but I'm staying behind for now."

Andrea paused on the end of the line.

"Did something happen?"

Jordan cleared his throat, and then let out a frustrated laugh.

"Lots of things have been happening up here.  I'm thinking maybe now is about the time you should come clean with me and tell me everything you know about my mother and her life up here."

"I'm not sure where to begin."

"Begin at the beginning."

"Well, I don't really know the beginning," Andrea said.  "What I do know is this.  Your mother was terrified for her life.
She told me stories about skinwalkers.  At first I thought she was superstitions and maybe a little bit touched.  But then I babysat you once when you were about four years old, and something really weird happened."

"Weird how?"

"I left you playing with some toys while I ran out to my car to get something.  When I came back, you were missing.  I ran all over the house looking for you, but I couldn't find you.  Then suddenly this little sparrow came flying out of nowhere."

"A bird — in the house?"

"Yes.  It freaked me out!  And then the sparrow flew into the bathroom, and when I followed it in, suddenly it was gone.  Like it had disappeared into thin air. But there you were, sitting on bathroom rug, happy as could be."

"Are you saying that I
shifted
?  I don't remember this at all!"

"I told your mother about it, and she got upset.  But she said she knew this day would come.  Then not long after that, she got word that your father had died.  And there were no more weird incidents with you."

"My mother never told me about this at all."

"Well, she did say something else," Andrea added.  "She told me she was sure that she was safe, because your father couldn't leave Scopes Mountain. At first I thought she meant he was, like, under some kind of house arrest.  But then after your father died, she said everything had changed, and that you could NEVER go back to the mountain.  Because then
you'd
never be able to leave."

"Was that why you tried to stop me from coming up here?"

"Yeah, but how could I tell you all this without you're thinking I'm crazy? That your mother was crazy?"

"But you're telling me now."

"Well, obviously it sounds like you have seen something up there that makes you a little more open minded."

"This place does have some serious secrets," Jordan said.

"Can you tell me one?"

"Maybe when I get back to Nashville."

"When are you coming home?"

"I don't know," Jordan said. "Like my mother said, it seems I can't leave the mountain."

"You can't leave...how so?  You really can't leave?"

"It seems like something bad might happen if I do."

"Jordan, what the hell is going on?"

"It's weirder than basic skinwalking," Jordan said. "If skinwalking could ever be called
basic
, that is. I promise I will tell you when I can.  I'm just not ready yet.  I just needed you to fill me in on some things."

Jordan ended the call and tossed his cellphone onto the bed.

He looked at the clock on the wall and realized that Kay was taking longer than she should.  She told him she would be gone about an hour, and now two hours had gone by.

Something didn't feel right.

He tried calling her on her cell, but she didn't pick up.  He texted her, but she didn't text back.

Now the hairs on his neck were standing up again, and he felt like something was really, really wrong.  He reasoned that he couldn't
just go jump in his car and drive all over the place looking for her.  That would be totally unproductive.  He thought of calling Jimmy.  Even though missing persons reports for adults can't be filed until 24 or 48 hours, Jimmy would still help him out.  But then realized he couldn't get Jimmy involved in all this weirdness.

If he was the Man-in-the-
Mountain, and if Kay was in trouble somewhere on Scopes Mountain, shouldn't he instinctively know?  Or, at the very least, shouldn't he be able to find out?

With this in mind, he went outside and looked around.  He noticed a small stone outcropping and headed for it. First, he put his hand on it.  Predictably, his hand started turning to stone, but this was getting to be a little old hat. He needed more than this.

He took his hand off the stone and waited for the blood to return to it.  He decided to try something different.  He had nothing to lose.  He stared at the stone outcrop for a second, looking around for a crack.

There.  Something now looked inviting
.  Beneath some moss, he could see a nice long split in the stone.  He had no idea why the idea occurred to him, but he reached out, with the goal of reaching into the rock, through the crack.

Technically, by the Laws of Physics, this should be impossible.  But the general Laws of Physics didn't seem to apply to him.

Jordan's instinct was right on the money.  His hand slipped through the stone, right through the crack.  When he touched the beginning of the crack, the stone actually softened and seemingly turned to clay around it.  Jordan shoved his whole hand in.

When the stone hardened up, effectively trapping his hand, he felt a moment of panic.  But he calmed himself down.  He was the mountain, after all, and he had command of it.  With his hand now effectively inside the mountain, he tried to feel something.  Anything.  It was a weird concept, but it felt like it made sense to him.

Within a minute or so, after he cleared his mind and tried to concentrate, he knew exactly where Kay was.  And it wasn't good.

Cephas had abducted her.  She was being held at his brother Daryl's cabin on the
north face of the mountain. 

Rage surged through Jordan's veins. He ripped his hand from the stone.  At his slightest move, the stone turned to clay again and released him.  He turned to head for his truck, but then he realized there was a faster way to get to Kay.

He turned back to the stone outcropping, and to the mossy crack.  He reached out with both hands and into the crack.  He pried the stone open at the crack before it could turn fully to clay.  With Jordan having split open a rather large entryway, the whole outcrop started softening up.  He took a deep breath, and then pushed his whole way into the clay, into the outcrop.

In a matter of seconds, Jordan managed to travel through the mountain, stepping out of anot
her outcrop on the north face of the mountain. 

He didn't have time to assimilate the shock of what he had just been able to do.  Because he heard a woman's scream coming from a distance, and he knew it was Kay.

Before Jordan could find his way to Daryl's cabin, Cephas sensed that he was in the immediate vicinity.  Cephas had deliberately lured him there.  He dragged Kay with him out into the dark, on the hunt for the Man-in-the-Mountain.

"You can't fight him!" Kay yelled. "Let me go before he destroys you!"

"Old Man Cowell's been telling you bullshit," Cephas spat. "I don't care who he is.  We haven't had
the Man
around here for three decades.  I'm not about to start bowing down to him now."

Cephas dragged Kay a bit further, when Jordan stepped out from the darkness.

"Let her go," Jordan said.

Cephas had lured Jordan to the north face for a reason. Cephas' father had killed Jordan's father here on this very spot. An old wives tale had turned
out to be true: That the Man-in-the-Mountain loses his authority here.  There was a 6X6 patch of rock that technically was not part of Scopes.  Millennia ago, when the Appalachians pushed their way up toward the sky, as tectonic plates heaved and collided, a blast of lava spurted from a volcano that partially created Harper's Peak, one of the three peaks opposite Scopes on the opposite side of Lake Surepa. 

A lava hole had redirected molten rock that was meant to be part of Harper's Peak. 
Which meant that this very spot technically was not part of Scopes Mountain, but was rooted in the structure of Harper's Peak, and thus was not under Jordan's authority.

And if Cephas could trick Jordan into stepping onto that rock, then Cephas could kill him.

Cephas threw Kay down at his feet, just in front of the target spot.

"Jordan! I don't know what he's doing, but he tricked yo
u to get you here on purpose!"  She coughed, and spit up some blood.

Jordan saw that Cephas had punched her in the jaw.

"You fucking bastard, I will skin you alive before this night is through!"

Jordan rushed toward Kay to help her out, and he stepped on the target spot.

Cephas shifted into his panther form in a flash, intending to leap upon Jordan. Jordan shielded Kay with one arm, while he reached down to touch the rock underneath him with the other.

Nothing was happening!

Cephas sprang upon Jordan, who scrambled back, away from the target spot.

"Run, Kay!"

"I'm not leaving you!" she shouted, trying to stand up.

Cephas
leapt to circle around Jordan and force him to head back to the target spot.  This is what had worked for his own father.

The difference between Jordan and
his own father, the former Man-in-the-Mountain, was that Jordan was neither a burnout drunk nor was he stupid. 

The definition of insanity is attempting to do the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.  Jordan's father had let himself stayed hemmed in by
Cephas' father, because he couldn't believe that touching the stone underneath his feet wasn't producing the expected results.  He kept trying to jam his hand into the rock, like a frustrated chimp that wasn't smart enough to realize that you can't shove a square object through a round hole.

Jordan had recognized immediately that his power failed him on the spot where Kay had been thrown down.  And he was smart enough to realize that
Cephas was trying to keep him right on that spot.

Kay recognized that something was wrong, too.  She had
seen Jordan grab for the rock with no result.  She scrambled around, ignoring the fact that she was pretty sure her arm was broken.  She found a small rock nearby and picked it up with her left hand.

"Jordan! Catch!"

She tossed him the stone.

As soon as Jordan caught it, the length of his arm petrified.  He hurled it
at Cephas, clipping his back leg.  It was a bad shot, but better than nothing. 

Pissed off
more than ever, Cephas growled and roared, loud enough that it seemed to shake the tree branches.

Once he had thrown the stone, Jordan's arm turned back to normal, and he was vulnerable again. But Cephas in his fury had left an opening as he paced, and Jordan made a run for it.  He ran back for the outcropping he had just emerged from.  On one side there was an opening, and Jordan realized that it was actually a small grotto, just big enough for a man his size to slip into.

Cephas chased after him.

Jordan reached the grotto,
and then turned to face Cephas.  He reached up and braced himself, by pressing his palms at chest level into the stone on either side of him.  His arms started petrifying.  He pushed his hands further into the rock.

Cephas had
leapt fully into the air at this point, his jaws wide open and fangs dripping. He was gunning right for Jordan's neck.

As Cephas sailed toward him, Jordan's whole body suddenly petrified.