by Jane Jamison
Mountain Men of Montana 1
Shay’s Shifters
Free-spirited, voluptuous Shay Mathews isn’t afraid to strut her stuff and live life on the edge. But when she crashes her car then wakes up slung over the back of a hot, naked man, she thinks she’s either hallucinating or dead.
Werewolves Rosh and Renkon McClain and Walker Ramirez fall for the feisty Shay and want her to stay with them in a mystical world for supernatural beings, but she’s set her mind on getting back to the real world outside the secluded paradise of The Hidden. Not heeding her lovers’ warnings, Shay is abducted by the leader of the wretched creatures called The Cursed to become his mate.
Can they find her before she’s changed by The Cursed? If they’re too late, will they be forced to kill her, thus saving her from a life of misery?
Note: There is no sexual relationship or touching for titillation between or among cousins.
Genre: Ménage a Trois/Quatre, Vampires/Werewolves
Length: 53,433 words
SHAY’S SHIFTERS
Mountain Men of Montana 1
Jane Jamison
MENAGE EVERLASTING
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
IMPRINT: Ménage Everlasting
SHAY’S SHIFTERS
Copyright © 2012 by Jane Jamison
E-book ISBN: 978-1-62242-028-5
First E-book Publication: December 2012
Cover design by Les Byerley
All art and logo copyright © 2012 by Siren Publishing, Inc.
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SHAY’S SHIFTERS
Mountain Men of Montana 1
JANE JAMISON
Copyright © 2012
Chapter One
Shaylyn Mathews knocked on the front door of her friend’s home. The quick trip from California to Montana and then up the treacherous road that wound around the mountain to Willa Schutte’s cabin had left her dazed and weary. But she’d had no choice. After getting Willa’s frantic, garbled cell phone message begging her to come, she’d rushed to her aide. Her friend had needed her, and that’s all she’d needed to know.
Everything outside the home appeared peaceful. Willa’s SUV as well as Bill’s Jeep sat in the driveway. Holiday lights were strung along the porch railing as they were for most of the year. She smiled, remembering the discussions she’d had trying to convince Bill to take them down after the holiday season.
She knocked again and wondered if she should see if they were around the back of the home. If Willa and Bill were outside, they might not hear her knocking. For the hundredth time, she wondered why Willa had begged her to come. It wasn’t like her friend to act that way.
She was about to head toward the back when Willa, her mousy brown hair clinging to her face, cracked open the door. Her glassy eyes looked at Shay as though she didn’t recognize her. She was unkempt, dressed in a soiled nightgown, and, judging from the grime on her skin as well as the body odor, Shay assumed that her friend hadn’t bathed recently.
“Willa, are you all right? Can I come in?”
Her friend’s gaze darted around the yard, making Shay look again to see if she’d overlooked something. But she couldn’t find anything out of the ordinary. Or at least in terms of how it had looked the last time she’d visited.
“Sweetie, let me in.” She kept her voice low, her tone soft. “You have to let me inside, okay?”
Willa shook her head. “No. Go away.”
“But you told me to come.”
“Go away.” For a second, she saw her friend in the glassy eyes sunken in the haggard-looking face. “Please, Shay.”
What had happened to her? Was she pleading for her to leave or to help her? She was shocked when Willa made a small cry and slammed the door.
What the hell?
The small knot in her stomach that had started with the phone call tightened. If she didn’t get to the bottom of things soon, it would grow to softball size.
“Willa, what’s wrong? Bill? Are you there, Bill? Will one of you please open the door?”
After several attempts to get them to open the door, Shay couldn’t stand it any longer. “I’m coming inside.” She turned the doorknob and was surprised to find it unlocked.
Pushing the door wide, she stepped over the threshold of what she’d once declared the tidiest home in America and into a nightmare.
The house looked like a hurricane had whipped its mighty tail around the interior. Furniture lay strewn and broken everywhere, along with leftover food and broken dishes. Torn curtains clung to their rods by strips of cloth. In their place, aluminum foil was layered over the windows, blocking the sun’s rays and giving off a shiny, eerie glow.
Neither Willa nor Bill was in sight. “Willa? Where are you?”
Red slashes on the walls brought her attention away from the chaos of the room. At first, she didn’t understand that the scribbles were words. But as she continued to stare at them, she finally made out the scrawled messages.
Stay away
Leave us alone
Evil
Die Die Die Die
A crash to her left startled her and she let out a yelp, pivoting quickly to face the dining room that led into the adjoining kitchen. Shards of a broken plate lay at Willa’s feet. Blood trickled down the front of her legs and spread outward from cuts on the tops of her feet.
“Shit, sweetie.” She moved toward her friend then stopped as Willa shuffled away from her, putting the table between them.
Oh, my God. She’s terrified of me. But why? I have to help her, but how?
She edged around the table, but Willa kept moving, dodging first one way then the other. Shay faked her out, caught her, and latched on to her arm. Willa struggled a moment, then dropped her chin and stared at the floor.
She led her into the living room and forced her to sit on the sofa next to her. A ragged, nasty scratch ran down her arm, but at least it didn’t look like it was infected. She pulled off the scarf she wore and dotted the wounds on her friend’s legs and feet.
“Willa, please tell me what’s wrong.” Shay took another quick look around, still not believing her eyes. Had they suffered a home invasion? Had they contracted a horrible disease? Even if the latter was true, she still couldn’t help but take her friend’s hands.
Willa shook her head before lifting it to give her another blank stare. “I don’t know.”
She breathed a sigh of relief. At least Willa seemed more coherent now.
“Did someone hurt you?” When Willa didn’t answer, she readied herself for the worst possible answer to her next question. “Is Bill okay? Is he here?”
With the mention of her husband’s name, Willa glanced toward the hallway that led to the large master suite. “He’s in bed.”
She’d check on Bill once she was sure Willa was all right. “What happened to the house? To you?”
Again, Willa shook her head. “I’m not sure. The last thing I remember is walking in the woods with Bill.”
“Did something happen in the woods?”
The diminutive woman squeezed Shay’s hands so hard that she had to bite back a cry. Willa let out a fearful and horrifying whine.
“Some thing jumped us. Bill cried out, and when I turned toward him…” She yanked her hands away and dug her fingers into her hair. “Nooo. I don’t want to think about it.”
A knot closed around Shay’s heart. Despite her size, Willa was a strong, independent woman. She was a woman who had faced hardships in her life and had come out on top. Whatever had happened had to be more than Shay could imagine and obviously more than Willa could handle.
She pulled her friend into her arms then stroked her hair, trying to soothe the agonized woman. “It’s okay. I’m here now. Nothing’s going to hurt you. I promise everything’s going to be fine.”
Willa’s thin arms wrapped around her and hugged her, clinging to Shay like a lifeline. “I can’t remember what it looked like. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.”
“Shh. You don’t have to.”
They sat on the sofa for several minutes. Shay comforted her as best she could, saying reassuring words like she would to a frightened child who’d screamed in the middle of the night about monsters in the closet.
At last, Willa calmed down enough to turn her loose. Shay stood and, still gripping her hand, took Willa along with her. Hoping she’d find Bill alive, Shay pulled Willa down the hall and into the master bedroom.
Bill lay on the bed, his chest heaving as he struggled to breathe. She pried Willa’s hand from hers and rushed to his side. His eyes were closed, and his shirt and hair were soaked with sweat and plastered against his skin. Three deep scratches ran down his cheek. The jeans he wore looked like they were two sizes too large, and yet she knew Bill would never wear baggy clothes. Had he lost so much weight in the months since she’d last seen him?
“Bill, can you open your eyes? It’s Shay Mathews.”
She held her breath, waiting for a response, a reaction, even the twitch of a finger, but received none. Seeing Willa in her horrible condition was bad enough, but seeing strong, virile Bill sent a chill down her spine. Whatever had happened wasn’t anything she could solve. She pulled out her phone and dialed 9-1-1.
The emergency operator answered on the second ring. Shay took a second to thank her lucky stars since she knew cell phone reception was hit-and-miss in the mountains. But at least it had hit this time.
“I need an ambulance at 529 Amber Lane. Yes, it’s up in the mountains. It’s a right turn off Ridge Road. Can you please hurry? My friends are very ill. No, I don’t know what’s wrong with them. Just hurry.”
The operator suggested she stay on the line, so she held on to the phone and turned back to find Willa standing in front of the large ceiling-to-floor picture window overlooking the backyard and the forest beyond. Willa’s back was ramrod straight, and, for one wonderful moment, she thought her friend had snapped out of whatever awful thing possessed her.
“Hold on, Willa. Help’s coming.”
She heard the operator’s voice and brought the phone back to her ear. “Yeah. I’m still here. But I need to do more than wait. Yes, I’ll hang on.”
She pulled the bedspread rumpled at Bill’s feet up to his chin then laid her palm against his clammy cheek.
Bill had swept Willa off her feet two years earlier, and although Shay had never liked him much, she’d seen how happy he’d made her friend. For that reason alone, she cared about him.
She brought the phone back to her ear. “I don’t know what happened. Their names are Bill and Willa Schutte. I think they’re ill, but I’m not sure. They may have had an intruder in the home. What? No, there’s no one else here.” At least she didn’t think so. Maybe she should’ve checked before assuming that.
She walked over to Willa’s side, putting the phone against her chest. “Sweetie, is anyone else in the house? Did someone break in and do this to you?” But even if an intruder had broken in, would that explain Willa’s odd behavior?
Willa didn’t answer. Instead, she placed a hand against the windowpane. A tear slid down her cheek. “I used to love it here.”
“You’ll love it again. You’ll get past this. I know you will. And when you do, you’ll love it again.”
The forest outside was as beautiful as she remembered. The blanket of snow made the peaceful scene surreal, giving it a fairy-tale quality that a snowfall in a city could never match.
She sighed and wondered if her hometown of Passion, Colorado, had gotten its first big snowfall yet. She’d told her friend Tatum Griffin that she was coming home soon to meet the three Shelton men she lived with. After taking several months exploring California for a new home, she’d given up and had decided to return to Passion and her roots. Willa’s call, however, had delayed her trip, or she would’ve been home by now.
“What are you looking at?”
Willa didn’t answer immediately, and when she did, her voice changed, growing dark and ominous. “The woods are so beautiful.”
How can she say it’s beautiful yet sound so grave? Maybe she’s not thinking straight yet. Please let help come soon.
“Yeah. It’s pretty cool out here, especially when it snows.”
“Don’t let it fool you. The blackness hides within it.”
Shay couldn’t help but shiver. When had the perpetually effervescent Willa ever sounded so grim? “What do you mean?”
Willa turned to her, her usually dancing eyes solemn and sad. “Be careful. Don’t let it get you.”
It? “Don’t let what get me?”
Bill moaned, turning both of them toward him. Willa scurried over to the bed, climbed on top of it, and molded her body to his.
Shay moved toward the door, telling herself that she needed to watch for the paramedics. Yet as soon as she stepped outside the bedroom and closed the door behind her, she couldn’t hide from the fact that she’d needed to get away from her friends. It was almost as though they contained the darkness Willa spoke of and could somehow infect her.
* * * *
Shay had followed her friends to the local hospital and had given the doctors as much information as she could. Uncomfortable staying at her friend’s home while they weren’t there, she’d rented a room at a small family-run motel a few miles down the road.
The next day, she went back to Willa’s home and changed the bedding, washing it in hot water then deciding at the last moment to throw it in the trash and replace it with different bedding. She scoured the kitchen as well as the three bathrooms and sprayed disinfectant everywhere. After hauling the broken furniture to the backyard, she made a list of items they’d need to replace. But she’d let Willa and Bill do that part if and when they wanted to. Yet, even after putting the home in order, she sensed that the horror that had befallen her friends didn’t reside in the house. Instead, she found herself gazing at the woods, searching as hard as she could for…something.
She returned to the hospital the second night, hoping for good news, but the doctors still didn’t understand what was wrong. In place of a real answer, they assured Shay that they’d continue to do the best they could. Shay contacted their families and, at their insistence, agreed to stay on until they could arrive the next day.
On the third day, an hour before Willa’s brother and Bill’s sister arrived, Willa and Bill suddenly awakened as though from a bad dream. They even seemed like their old selves.
Except for the fact that they couldn’t remember what had happened.
Shay hugged her friends good-bye and, leaving them to their relieved relatives, hurried back to the motel. Although a part of her wanted to stay until they were discharged from the hospital, another part of her wanted nothing more than to get away. She’d explained as much to her friends, who had thanked her and had assured her that they were fine.
