Shifter's Moon (Paranormal Shifter Romance) (5 page)

             
“I’m home!” Lia said, putting the bag of groceries down.

             
“Did you get those cinnamon buns I love?” came a croaking voice and Jake saw a hunched over old woman waddle into the entryway.  Her face had a profound wisdom to it, and he had to admit she had aged very gracefully.  There was a solemnity in her broad features and her hair was almost perfectly white and carefully corded into a wide braid that trailed down her back.  She had on a very simple floral print dress and an apron wrapped around the front. 

             
“This is Jake, he’s Winston’s grandson. He’s staying up there.  He gave me a ride home,” Lia said.

She waved a hand at the elderly woman. “And this is my grandmother, Lorelei.”

             
Jake nodded.

“What happened to your bike, dear?”

             
“Finally bit it,” Lia said.

             
“Well!  Come on in, I’ll put some tea on.  Do you like Earl Grey?  Good,” the old woman said without waiting for a reply. Lia rolled her eyes and motioned for him to sit in the living room. 

             
“It’s really… cozy,” he said, looking around the house while Lia emptied the bag of groceries into a pantry.  There were numerous relics on the walls, and a considerable amount of Native American art.  Jake was particularly drawn to an oil painting that showed a grisly looking black wolf on a ridge against a backdrop of stars. 

             
The dream from the night before hit him like a camera flash.  It was almost uncanny.  He half expected the wolf in the painting to open a pair of yellow eyes and move out of the canvas toward him.  He shivered and turned around. The old woman Lorelei stood quietly her hands behind her back.

             
“Do you like it?” she asked.

             
“It’s really good.  A little eerie, but…”

             
“There’s a legend round these parts,” Lorelei began.

             
“About a family, I remember.  Larry, at the gas station, he told me about it yesterday.  A family that could change into wolves or something like that.  It’s one of the more unique local legends I’ve ever heard, I’ll give him that.  Still, a little chilling,” he said, remembering the wolf he’d almost hit in the road.

             
“Well!  Wolves aren’t exactly the first thing that white folk tend to like waking up to,” she said, and there was an ominous portent in her voice. “You look like you just rolled out of bed.”

             
Lorelei motioned for him to sit in a chair while she poured him a cup of tea from a dented medieval looking tin teapot.  He noticed that Lia had disappeared.  Lorelei sat in a wicker chair opposite him and twiddled her fingers slowly over the clay mug in her lap. 

             
“I guess I sorta did,” he replied, “Lia actually woke me up.”

             
“Ah, Lia.  She can be a bit rough around the edges the first time she meets someone new.”

             
Jake smiled and noticed that Lorelei was waiting for him to acknowledge the well-known fact about her granddaughter.  “I suppose that’s certainly true, isn’t it?  Still, she’s… she’s straight forward.  I like that, it feels really honest,” Jake reflected.

             
“Oh!  She’s never had trouble being straight forward, let me tell you.  I think she was the bane of her parent’s existence,” Lorelei let out a low laugh, and then her features went dark. “After they died I took care of Lia.  She’s a strong girl, probably stronger than she ought to be.  I think she figured she had to prove she was stronger than all the rest of the kids her age.”

             
“That would be tough.”

             
“I think you get it, yeah.  As a result, she never really had that many friends.  Even now,” Lorelei said, and turned in her chair to make sure they weren’t overheard and then leaned toward him, “but between me and you, she’s never brought anyone here.  You’re the first.”

             
I wasn’t brought here so much as forced
, Jake thought bemusedly, but he raised his eyebrow and decided to play along with the old woman’s fiendish little
tête-à-tête.  “I think she puts up with me,” he laughed, “but beyond that…”

             
Lorelei shrugged and sipped at her tea and her voice became a whisper.  “She usually scares away most people.  That surface coldness tends to frighten people away, and it isolates her more and more.  She must see something in you, Jake.  Even if it’s just as a worthy adversary.”

             
Jake reciprocated and sipped at his tea.  The old woman kept her gaze leveled on him, and it reminded him of the way a cat looks at a mouse.  She was testing him.  There was the sound of a door closing and Lia suddenly rounded the corner.  She had changed out of the jumper and now had a loose-fitting black sleeveless T-shirt with an open neck, and Jake found himself bewitched by the outline of her clavicle that sloped below the smooth ridge of her neck like a bow pulled back and poised to let fly an arrow.  She had pulled on a tight pair of black jeans, and for the first time he saw how lithe she actually was.  There was an almost elfin semblance to her.  The thin brow of her waist curved into the angle of her hips and when she reached behind to refasten the elastic of her hair her slim mid-riff peeked out from under her shirt.  She caught him looking and bashfully lowered her arms again.

             
Lorelei picked up the conversation as if they’d been talking casually.  “So you’re up at Winston’s place?  What brought you back after all these years?”

             
Too many things,
he thought.  “I’m a writer.  I figured this might be a good place to try and find some inspiration.”

             
Lorelei sniffed.  She had the same piercing gaze as Lia, and it made Jake feel a little uncomfortable.  “There’s a lot of history in these forests, I’m sure if you’re open and receptive, you’ll find something to write about.”

             
“Or you’ll find even more reasons to have writer’s block,” Lia said wryly, “you aren’t filling his head with nonsense are you?”

             
Lorelei gave Lia a smile as the young girl came over and wrapped her arms around the older woman in a hug.  “What qualifies as nonsense?”

             
“If you thought
I
had a mouth, this is who I learned it from,” Lia said.

             
Lorelei gave Jake a wink and he took another sip of tea.  “By the way, dear, Henderson’s coming by this afternoon to pick up some hay bales. I thought you could give him a hand.”

             
Lia nodded. “I’ll go check what we have.”

             
“I should probably head out too,” Jake said, standing, “those novels aren’t going to write themselves.  Thank you again for the tea.”

             
“Oh, you’re most welcome.  Anytime.  Remember what I said,” Lorelei said, waddling forward and taking his hands in hers.  Her palms were heavily callused but there was a careful deliberation in the movement of her fingers. 

             
Outside Jake helped Lia pull the Triumph out of the back of the car and she set it on its kickstand as he climbed into the front seat.

             
“What did she mean by that?” Lia suddenly asked, and he looked up and saw her with her hands on her hips again.  “What did you two talk about?”

             
“Are you feeling a bit paranoid?” he joked, and Lia switched her weight onto her other leg.  The fabric of her jeans groaned.

             
“Around
her
, I’m always nervous.”

             
“She just talked about raising you.  After your parents-” he stopped when he saw a pained expression spread over her mouth.  “I’m sorry.”

             
Lia tried to shrug it off.  “It’s fine, it’s in the past.  Anyway, she likes to talk, she doesn’t get many visitors.  I think she was glad to meet you.  I’m sorry if it made you uncomfortable.”

             
“Not at all,” Jake said, waving it off, “what will be embarrassing is if I can’t get
this
started now.”  He turned the ignition and the car gradually brought its aching engine up to speed.  Jake mimed wiping his brow, and Lia smiled.

             
“Thanks again, for the ride,” she said awkwardly.

             
Jake gave her a salute and shifted into reverse.  “You can make it up to me by taking me for pie some time,” he hollered back through the open window, “you know where to find me.”

             
As he drove back down the road he was surprised at the lightness in his chest.  He had become so used to feeling a heaviness, as if the weather itself was somehow pressing down on him perpetually.  But as he rounded a bend and pulled back onto the main street of Barrelgrove he found himself switching on the radio and tapped his fingers to a grainy rendition of a Beatle’s song.  For so long he’d lived in a state of dreary non-committal apathy, training himself to be avoid any emotion because of how things like loneliness or sadness might overwhelm him.  He pushed his chest out and felt his sternum crack with the stretch.  In the process of turning himself off from the world, though, he’d also neglected things like happiness and joy. 

             
He still didn’t have the wherewithal to claim that what he was feeling now was happiness, but it did feel as though the chains with which he’d bound himself – both to work and to his domestic life – were beginning to slacken, just enough for him to take a deep breath for the first time in a long time.

Chapter Five

That night Jake had another dream.  He was alone in the woods sitting on a bed of moss.  The sounds of the trees creaking in the wind was followed by the sound of soft paws moving over pine needles, and when he turned he saw a shadow flit between the columns of trees.  He wasn’t afraid, which in retrospect seemed odd. 

             
He called out to the shadow but there was no reply, and he didn’t recognize his voice.  It was as if the cords in his throat had been shortened or lengthened, just enough to give the timbre of his voice a slight deviation.  He tried to call out again.

             
“Who’s there?” he shouted.

             
There was only more stillness, but out of the corner of his eye he saw the shadow slowly pull into view again.  He squinted and tried to discern its shape, but the shade of the forest canopy was playing tricks on his eyes.  As the figure stepped closer he saw it was the same black wolf from before, only this time she was far more vivid.  He noticed the elegant curve of her spine and the way it bent into strong powerful haunches, and the way the wolf moved was almost as if it were trapped underwater.  There was a fluidity and slow motion to it, as if each movement was indistinct from every other movement – it was like watching black flame curl over the moss toward him, and for the first time he felt a pang of fear, but it was a kind of latent fear, one which had a hard time forming any concrete threat in his mind.

             
“Who are you?” he shouted again, and the wolf figure stopped at the edge of the small clearing he was in and cocked its head, as if not understanding his language.

             
It lowered the slender barrel of its head and its yellow eyes blinked and he thought for a minute he caught a whiff of the warm smell of its fur.  There was something innately familiar about the wolf, and yet he couldn’t put his finger on it.

             
In the dream he remembered standing up and walking toward it, and then realizing how gigantic it was.  It was larger than a timber wolf, and its head was almost at his chest level.  As he approached the wolf took several steps back, as if cautiously calculating whether he was truly friend or foe.

             
He didn’t understand where he had acquired the confidence, but his footsteps were sure and deliberate, and soon he was standing right in front of the strange black animal, who raised its muzzle and sniffed the air at him. 

             
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, extending his hand slowly in friendship. 

             
The wolf sniffed at his fingertips, paused, and then tentatively licked at them.  What happened next was a blur.  The wolf suddenly seemed to stand up on two legs, and he remembered having to crane his neck to look up at it as it began to twist and change, its fur seeming to come loose and writhe as if it had a mind all of its own.

             
Fearfully Jake stumbled back, but his legs felt as if they were filled with molten lead, and he felt himself falling onto his elbows.  There was a sound like steam escaping from a tea kettle, only louder, as if it had been magnified by a jet engine, and when he stared back at the spot where the wolf had been there was only a curious lingering smoke that clung to the ground like a fog.  As it began to clear he could make out the dark naked form of a human girl, bent over in a fetal position.