Shifter Mountain: A BBW Paranormal Romance (6 page)

"I — I had a miscarriage recently," she confessed.

Jordan paused.  He really had no idea what to say about something like this.

"I'm sorry – are you really okay?  Maybe you should sit down?"

"No, I'm fine.  It's fine.  It...wasn't meant to be."

Jordan felt awkward. 

"D
inner's ready," Kay said to distract them both from the morbidity.  She began to order him about in a good-natured fashion.

"Refill the glasses with some more 'shine," she said, "and there's a pitcher you can fill with water and set on the table.  Silverware's in the drawers, plates in the cupboard."

"Yes, ma'am," Jordan said, happy to do her bidding.

And then Kay realized just that — she had this man actually doing her bidding!  For a moment — just for tonight — she was queen of her kitchen and had a willing man by her side.

Halfway through dinner, Jordan's mood turned inexplicably dark, although he tried to keep things upbeat.

Whoever Kay's husband was, he did not deserve this woman, and Jordan wasn't sure he'd be able to leave Scopes Mountain without settling that matter himself. He had never felt possessive about a woman, but he was starting to feel this way about Kay.  He wanted to protect her and love her, and he
was thinking he might be driven to do whatever it took to make her feel the same about him.

Jordan Lawless had no idea how sad his singing had made Kay feel earlier
that day back in the other cabin. As she listened to the lyrics of
High on a Mountain
, she saw the future years of her life fly by, assuming Cephas didn't put her in her grave before she turned 30. 

If she did indeed live, Kay
knew Cephas would never really let her go, even if he despised her.  And she would grow old, and sadder and sadder, stuck and alone on Scopes Mountain.  And she would remember the short time she spent with Jordan Lawless. 

As the second verse in the song went, so she in her old age would think back about this man:

Oh I wonder if you ever think of me
Or if time has blotted out your memory
As I listen to the breeze blow gently through the trees
I'll always cherish what you meant to me

Kay believed that her life was destined to end in one of two ways: In violence and destruction, or in a withering, empty and unavoidable loneliness.

Chapter 7

After dinner, Jordan walked back to the other cabin in the dark, flashlight in hand.  Kay seemed hesitant about it, but couldn't tell Jordan what she was really afraid of.  So she watched him from the window until he was out of sight, and then hoped beyond hope that Cephas still wouldn't be showing up anytime soon.

About halfway down the dirt path, Jordan's cellphone rang.  He was amazed that Scopes Mountain had cellphone service, this high up.

He looked at the caller ID and saw that it was his mother's friend Andrea.

"Hello?"

"Jordan, hey."

"Andrea, what's up?"

"Where are you at?"

"Well, actually, I am up on Scopes Mountain.  We got here this morning, found the perfect spot to shoot the video, and I'm staying here overnight.  A crew should be up here in a day or two."

Andrea was silent for a moment on the other end.

"That's, uh, that's great..." she said. "So everything's okay up there?"

"Why wouldn't it be?"

"Have you tracked down your kin yet?"

"Uh, no, there don't seem to be any Lawless folk around here anymore.  So I'm told, anyway."

"Where are you right now, exactly?"

"Well, I'm walking through the woods towar
d a cabin belonging to the woman who owns the property where we are filming."

"By yourself?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Silence.

"Andrea?"

"How are you feeling?"

"What do you mean, how am I feeling?  I guess it's a little weird to be here, but it's okay, really."

"Um, that's not what I meant.  I know...I know this sounds weird...but how are you feeling physically?  Have you felt sick at all?"

Jordan stopped in his tracks.

"Andrea, what's going on here? Why do you sound all weird?"

As Jordan talked, suddenly he thought he saw a shadow move out of the corner of his eye.  Must be the night playing tricks on him.  He wasn't used to being this far from the city at night.  The only light aside from his flashlight belonged to the moon and the stars.

"Jordan," Andrea said, "I'm at a real loss here.  Your mother swore me to secrecy.  And you'd think I was crazy if I told you everything.  Hell,  I thought your momma was crazy when
she
told
me
everything. You should not be on that mountain, Jordan.  Bad shit happens on that mountain."

"What kind of bad shit?"

"You know what the locals call it?  In the surrounding area?  They call it...they call it 'Shifter' Mountain."

"So I've heard. Like skinwalkers.  Maybe Native American, mythological type stuff.
"

Again, another shadow shot past Jordan.  This time, he started feeling
really uneasy.

"Look, my friend Jimmy is a state trooper," Jordan told Andrea. "He's the one who came up with me today.  He had a spot in mind.  And, yes, he warned me that this mountain had a bad reputation.  That hikers and campers won't come up here.  But he knew I was determined, so he helped me out."

"You still haven't answered my question," Andrea said.  "Has anything weird happened?"

Jordan thought again about the incident with the Hellbender, with his hand turning to stone.  But that was just in his mind.  He'd be smart NOT to tell Andrea about it.

"Look, quite frankly, some of these people seem like they might be criminals, Andrea.  Real backwards type people, from what I can see.  They sure don't treat their women too good, so now I get why my mother had to get the hell away from here.  But we've got a real beautiful spot for the video.  When we wrap it up in a few days, I'm done here."

Andrea sighed on the other end of the phone.

"Look," Jordan said, reaching the cabin. "I'm about to go inside and get some sleep.  Don't worry about me.  I'll be okay here. And about this skinwalker stuff, seriously, don't be so superstitious."

"Jordan —"

"I don't want to know, Andrea.  I need a good night's sleep, not a head full of creepy horror stories that aren't even true. I don't need to be up all night spooked out about nothing."

"Just be careful.  And if anything does happen, you call me right away."

"I will do exactly that," Jordan promised.

When the call ended, Jordan went to open the front door of the cabin, but found it locked when he and Kay had left it unlocked before.

Well this is a pain in the ass,
he thought.

He jiggled the doorknob in vain, hoping maybe it was just stuck.

That's when he heard the growl.  It was low, coming from nowhere and everywhere at once.  For the third time that day (now night) the hair on the back of his neck stood up.  He turned and scanned the surroundings with his flashlight.  On the second pass, he definitely caught some eyeshine.  There was a creature lurking not far away in the dark, watching his every move.  A second pass with the light caught a second pair of eyes.  Whatever was out there, there were two of them.

He turned to kick the door, to try to bust it open, but it still would budge.  He cou
ld break a window, but it wasn't always as easy to climb through shards of glass as it looked in the movies.  He scanned the porch for a heavy enough object to get the job done.

Then he heard a roar.

When turned back around, he saw two black creatures walking slowly toward him on all fours.  When they got close enough, by the light of the moon he realized these were two black panthers.

Jordan was totally at a loss for what to do.  A gun would have come in handy, but he had none.  And he had no idea what kind of advice a wildlife
expert might give someone who was confronted by two aggressive big cats.

At this point, he should have grabbed the rocking chair on the porch in order to hurl the whole thing through a window.  The panthers probably would follow him into the cabin, but he'd have a chance to find something — a gun, a knife,
anything
— that could be of use.

The panthers kept their
sights on him, but so far did not come any closer.  He had no idea what they wanted, other than maybe dinner, but if that was the case, shouldn't they have pounced on him by now. Something told him these panthers were not behaving normally, even though he had no knowledge or basis for making that kind of assessment.

The
n the two panthers looked past him and upward.  He realized they were looking up at the roof of the cabin.

S
o he, too, turned to look up.  But he didn't have the clear view that the panthers had.  What the hell was on the roof?  He didn't dare step down off the porch closer to the panthers to get a better look.

In a moment, it turned out he didn't have too.  He heard a third roar, coming from above, which made it clear there was a third panther on the roof.

Three friggin' panthers!

Talk about being outnumbered.  A surge of adrenaline course
d through Jordan, but instead of running for safety, finally busting the cabin window, he yelled at them.

"Whoever the fuck you are, come down off that roof!"

The two panthers on the ground froze, their ears perking up.  They took a couple of steps back away from Jordan.

Why did I just say that?
  he asked himself.
'Whoever the fuck you are?'  Why would I speak to an animal like it was a person?

Andrea had gotten to him
.  That talk about skinwalkers.  Did he subconsciously believe all that?

Without thinking the better of it, Jordan now found himself walking down the front steps, off the porch, toward the panthers, as they themselves started to slink backwards.  Jordan was giving off aggressive signals, and the panthers should be attacking him at this point. 

But instead, he had time enough to pick up a large rock, like he had done when he went after the salamander.  He had no idea that the rock he was lifting with one hand was about 70 pounds. To him, it merely felt like it was about 5 pounds, and it wasn't because he worked out at the gym (although he did).

Jordan's right hand again started turning solid. 

It was turning to stone. 

He could feel it, and even in the dark, he could see it.  But he was too interested in self-preservation to question the reality of what was happening. Now the panthers started slinking backwards at a faster pace, with Jordan feeling stronger and stronger.

He stopped in his tracks.  The third panther was above and behind him, he could feel it.

Jordan turned around and looked up at it.  It was crazy, but he knew who the panther was.

"Cephas Mandrell! Either get down here and fight me like a man, or get the fuck away from me!"

The panther on the roof stared at him for quite sometime, but it didn't budge.

"Yeah, I know it's you Cephas!" Jordan shouted. "And I know that you're beating your wife!  What kind of pathetic, shit-eating stink of a man hits a woman?!"

Then, with almost no effort, Jordan heaved the heavy rock in his hand up toward the roof. The rock sailed over the roof like a meteorite, barely missing the panther, which fled the roof, dropping to the ground on the right side of the cabin.

It was a Herculean move, and Jordan shocked himself by it.  How the hell had he done that?  How the hell had he
known
he could do that?

Then
Jordan's hand immediately began to gain feeling again, first tingly, then slowly but surely, it went all the way back to normal.  He wiggled his fingers and flexed them.  His hand had turned back to a normal flesh color, and there seemed to be no residual after-effect.

The panthers were gone.  They had fled, because they realized what th
ey were up against, even though Jordan himself didn't understand at all what had just happened.

Jordan
ended up breaking the window to get into the cabin, knowing that he would need to fix it for Kay before he left Scopes Mountain. 

He tried calling Andrea, because now he really did want to talk to her about what was happening up here in this strange place.  But her voicemail picked up, which meant she must have gone to sleep.  And Jordan couldn't exactly leave a detailed message about what happened without freaking Andrea out.

He was pretty much freaked out himself.

He lit the wood-burning stove in the living room, knowing he wouldn't be getting much sleep that night.
There had to be more moonshine around here somewhere, if Kay's stills were at this particular cabin.  He checked the pantry, thinking that Kay would store it there like she did at her own home.  Jordan was right.  He poured himself a full glass of
Sugar Fire
and downed half of it in one gulp.

Kay's husband had come for him, and he had not come alone.
Jordan could have died tonight. Somehow Cephas knew that Jordan was a real threat to him.  And apparently, Jordan was a threat in more ways than one, since miraculously he had managed to face down three shape-shifting panthers.

Jordan had just seen skinwalkers for the very first time. 
This would take a while to digest.  And, apparently, Jordan himself was capable of morphing into something else himself.  Only, he didn't seem inclined to shift into a panther.

Instead, Jordan
had a strange habit of turning into stone.