Shifter's Moon (Paranormal Shifter Romance) (10 page)

             
“I’ll drive this time, just tell me how to get to the hospital,” he said, slamming the door and cranking the old monster of a truck into reverse.  It made a horrible grinding sound and he winced.

             
“No hospital,” Lia said, and Jake took it to mean as there wasn’t a hospital nearby, but realized after seeing the fear in her face that she meant
we aren’t going to a hospital
.  He’d only seen that look once before on her face, during the fight with the biker.  He combed the hair back out of his eyes with one hand and felt the soot of the fire clinging to the pores of his skin.

             
“What do you mean ‘no hospital’?” he turned angrily, “we need to get her help
now
!”

             
Lia turned at him, her face reciprocating his anger, but strained with an emotion that was stronger than his, and nameless.  “Don’t argue with me.  Just drive.  Take us to your place, now,” Lia said calmly, and strapped the seatbelt in.  He noticed that there was a thin gash down the outside of her arm that already had a thin band of dried blood running down it.

             
Jake swore under his breath and peeled out.  The old Ford bumped viciously over the gravel, its suspension long since exhausted or rusted out. Lorelei made a groaning sound, her eyes closed and mouth muttering something undecipherable.  She clutched her wounded arm across the singed front of her dress, and he felt a writhing nausea work its way through him.  He rolled the window all the way down and tried to get a fresh breath of air, but all he could smell was the blunt reel of smoke. 

             
He glanced once in the flimsy rear view mirror before they rounded the corner but what he saw had to have been a trick of the smoke or his own mind playing tricks on him.  Lia was too concerned with Lorelei, one hand stretched out to grip the dash, and the other wrapped around her grandmother’s shoulder, to notice, and he sealed his mouth. 
It had to be my own paranoia
, he thought, but somehow he couldn’t shake it off.

             
In the mirror, he was certain, he’d seen four wolves emerge from the timberline, their lean forms gigantic and silhouetted by the dying blaze.  And their eyes, like flakes of topaz, following the Ford pickup as it burned down the road. 
I must have been imagining it
, he repeated to himself, but he could scarcely keep his hands on the pickup’s leather steering wheel.

Chapter Nine

Jake pushed the old Ford as hard as the engine could take it, and by the time they reached his cabin he was certain he’d need some dental treatment to replace all his fillings from the bumpy road.  The truck lurched to a stop behind his car and he heard a violent pop as the beast backfired, and he could smell the burning of oil and metal.

             
He and Lia managed to make a sling by holding their arms together and having Lorelei sit on them, and as they set her down on the old couch in front of the fireplace he was surprised to see that the arm didn’t look quite as bad as he’d remembered.  There was still a lot of dried blood on the sleeve, but at least it wasn’t crooked any longer.  He had to give it to the old gal, she hadn’t screamed or complained once, just closed her eyes and disappeared into a self-induced trance. 

             
“We need a doctor, Lia.  That arm doesn’t look good, and besides that, we don’t know how much smoke she inhaled,” he tried to press her again.

             
“I’ll take care of it,” she said, heading to the old landline and dialing in a number that Jake couldn’t see, but it was more than three digits.

             
“I think we should call the cops, too,” he said, pacing back and forth.

             
“No cops,”

             
“Geezus, no cops, no doctors, no hospitals!  Lia what’s going on?” he half-shouted, and he saw Lorelei stir on the couch and give her granddaughter a puzzled look.

             
Lia held up her hand and said a few short words to someone on the other end and hung up before facing him.  She had that calmness in her features that reminded Jake of military training, the kind that let you forget your emotions, or at least put them on hold, until you were ready to deal with them.

             
“Irma’s on her way,” she announced.

             
“The baker? You called a pie baker instead of an ambulance or the cops!” Jake exclaimed.

             
“Sit down,” Lia said, indicating for him to take a seat beside Lorelei, who was already trying to sit up on her own.

             
“I deserve an explanation,” Jake said, and he saw another glance pass between the two women, “whatever it is, I don’t care.  Just tell me what’s going on.”

             
“He’s gonna figure it out when Irma arrives,” Lorelei shrugged, “might as well spill the beans now.”

             
Jake looked to Lia, and saw her hunched over, her elbows on her knees and face buried between her hands.  She was shaking again, and the tendons of her forearms were taut.  Finally she collected herself, but she still refused to look Jake directly in the eyes, even though he kept inviting her to. 

             
“I’m not normal, Jake,” she said.

             
“That’s an understatement.”

             
“I mean, I’m not… I’m barely human.  You know those stories, the legend about the family that settled here who could transform into wolves?  Everything… the history… even the constellation.”

             
“The girl who was bitten and transformed so she could feed her village.”

             
“There’s a grain of truth in every mythology,” Lorelei interjected, “most folks think of them as parables, you know, stories told to children to instill morals.  But sometimes, those legends are real.  Putting them into the form of a fable just let us keep telling the stories without having to worry about revealing ourselves.”

             
Jake felt his eyebrow lift uncontrollably, and his hands tightened into fists.  “What do you mean ‘revealing’?” he asked very slowly, dreading what the answer might be.

             
“We’re wolves, Jake,” Lia said and raised her face. “Shapeshifters to be more exact.”  Her eyes had suddenly taken on a gold hue, as if she were staring out through a lens of frozen amber.

             
Jake gulped.

             
“My grandmother was a woman named Eliza,” Lorelei said, “when she was a child she lived in the east with her parents.  Her parents were a number of exiles who had once belonged to the main tribe.  Unhappy with some of the policies that the leadership had begun to exercise, her parents and others had decided to disband and live peacefully in seclusion.”

             
“You expect me to believe this?  That you’re… what, werewolves?”

             
Lorelei’s eyes narrowed under her large eyebrows.  “Again, that’s a misnomer, dear.  Please listen.  Eliza’s parents were hunted down by the tribe.  A new power shift had taken place, and the decision had been made to eliminate all the exiles… they came in the middle of the night.  Eliza was able to escape down river in a canoe, but her parents were slaughtered by soldiers of the main tribe. Eliza successfully escaped, but it didn’t mean she was out of danger.  Eventually she found other exiles who were being hunted too and together they headed west, hoping to outrun the tribe’s executioners.  Many of them, including Eliza, eventually settled here, a place where they could live peacefully.  And yet, we’ve always lived under the banner of fear, never certain when or if the tribe will find us.”

             
“This is crazy, you realize?” Jake snapped.

             
“Oh, yes,” Lorelei replied without hesitation, “but the fact of the matter is, you’re now involved.  And it looks like the tribe has somehow found us.”  She waited for Jake’s to light up as he recalled the wolfish shapes that had come out of the trees when they’d fled the acreage.

             
“The bikers,” he said, putting the pieces together.

             
Lia nodded.  “I think… I think they were looking for me.  I’m always so careful… and yet it was me. I was the one that led them to you,” she said, facing Lorelei and lowering her head in shame.

             
Lorelei shook her head and put a hand on the young girl’s shoulder.  “It’s not your fault, my precious.  Not in the least.  You’ve always been good at hiding, and I know how much that’s cost you.  No, they were probably mapping us out long before this happened.”

             
“This is too much to take in,” Jake said standing up and began to pace again.  “If you’re not… werewolves… then what are you?”

             
“Lycanthropes.  Shapeshifters.  Cultures have all sorts of names for us, but we ourselves don’t have a name.  We’re just like you, except occasionally we aren’t.  For us, it’s not practical or useful to have to refer to ourselves like that,” Lia said.

             
“But you
are
different,” Jake pointed out, and suddenly realized how prejudiced a comment that sounded. 
What does it matter if Lia’s different?  It doesn’t change who she is, it doesn’t change how I feel about her or the times we’ve shared
.  Still, the thought that such creatures actually existed was a blow to his grip on reality.

             
“Am I really that different, now that you know?” Lia asked, and there was a pang of hurt in her voice. 

             
Jake scratched his head and let out a chuckle and walked towards her.  She seemed to stiffen, unsure of how he was going to react, but he gave her a gentle smile and reached to touch her cheek again.  “I suppose not.  I’m sorry, it’s just… even for a writer, it’s a bit much to take in,” he said, “the wolf I almost hit on the road, when I first came here… that was you, wasn’t it?”

             
Lia blushed and nodded.  “I’m sorry,”

             
“Lorelei’s right, you got nothing to be sorry for.  And now that I know, you’re right, I am involved.  But what do we do?”

             
“They won’t stop,” Lorelei said diffidently, “not until they’re sure all exiles and their descendants are eliminated.”

             
“But why?”

             
The old woman shrugged.  “They see us a threat to their sovereignty.  Old hatreds die hard, Jake.”

             
Lia’s head suddenly perked up and her eyes widened.  Second later Jake heard the sound of a car engine and raced to the window.  A small blue pickup was cutting corners and b-lining for the cottage, but when Lia saw it she recognized it as Irma’s vehicle.

             
Irma hopped out and was up the stairs in a sprint, and nodded once at Jake as she burst into the cottage and headed toward Lorelei, who greeted her with a smile and a wave.  Jake pulled Lia aside and motioned toward the portly baker who had brought a small red First Aid kit with her and was administering something to the older lady.

             
“I take it Irma knows, too?”

             
Lia nodded.  “There are some families in Barrelgrove that know, families that have been here just as long as mine.  They accepted us, regardless.  And some, like Irma, have carried the secret down through the generations.  They’re our allies, which are few and far between these days.”

             
“I see,”

             
“C’mon, you’ll see,” Lia said, pulling him by the arm.

             
Irma had unzipped the medical kit, but instead of bandages and the usual instruments, it was filled with a number of differently colored vials, a syringe, and what looked like home-made tinctures.  She selected one that had a worn and faded label on the side, squinted at it, and nodded to herself with some satisfaction.  She reached into the kit and pulled out a hypodermic needle and filled the syringe with the dark amber fluid.  Jake gave an unsettled look to Lia, who merely pointed back to the operation with her eyes.

             
“Guess you got more than you bargained for with your visit, huh?” Irma said, eyeing Jake.

             
“Guess you could say that,”

             
“When Lia called I came as soon as I could.  I didn’t see anyone on the way here, but I can’t be certain I wasn’t followed.  If they knew where to find you, Lorelei, then they might’ve scouted out the whole town, for all we know.”

             
“It’s a risk,” Lorelei agreed, and pulled up the sleeve on her injured arm.  There wasn’t any breakage of the skin, but Jake could see that the bone had definitely broken and there was a massive contusion around the impact.  Once again he was amazed at the endurance of the woman – here she was carrying on a calm and collected conversation when she must have been in agonizing pain.