by Willow Wilde
I glared out the windows into the dead of the night, cursing my luck. The weather was supposed to have been fine for this weekend, but the freak snowstorm had inexplicably come out of nowhere. Jenn and I had barely made it back from the trails in time.
“C'mon, Jess,” she told me. I hadn't heard her approach, and I whipped my head around to scowl at her. “You've been over here for, like, twenty minutes. Glaring at it isn't going to make it go away, you know.”
“I'm willing to try.” My sarcasm bitterly dripped from my voice as I crossed my arms, facing it again. Just my rotten, fucking luck. “I mean, the forecast said everything was fine! Where the hell did all of this come from?”
“I don't know,” she conceded. “We're lucky we got in when we did. I think we're pretty much the only ones here...besides our heroes, of course.”
“Did somebody call for me?” The burly man asked, suddenly appearing behind us. As he glanced upon us, there was a twinkle of a mischievous smile beneath his thick beard.
“Oh, nothing at all Ben, you've already done enough for us!” Jenn gushed, giggling nervously. “I mean, you already pulled us from the storm with your big, strong arms...”
I stifled a groan, but Ben briefly shared a knowing smile. Jenn liked to think that she was an expert player in the “hard to get” game, but that was only in some weird parallel world where “hard to get” meant “let's fuck on the first date.” For all of her attempts at being coy, in actuality she was about as hard to read as a freaking billboard.
Ben took the high road. “It was nothing,” he responded humbly. “And it wasn't just me, my brothers were with me out there...five of us...looking for anyone caught out in the storm.”
“Yeah, what happened out there?” I suddenly asked, glancing out the window again. “I mean, we checked the Weather Channel like our lives depended on it for the last week...it was supposed to be sunny skies all around.”
Ben stood closer to the window, following my gaze. Losing himself in thought, his fingers found their way into his beard, scratching softly against his hair. “I'm going to be completely honest, I have no idea,” he finally answered. “Up in the mountains, we sort of expect this weather sometimes...but there wasn't a cloud in the sky a couple of hours ago. Wonder if it has anything to do with the legend...”
“Legend?” Jenn and I asked in unison.
“Oh, it's silly,” Ben told us, shaking his head with a grin. “Just some old story.”
My gaze flew over the otherwise abandoned lobby. His brothers were upstairs, and we were the only other guests around. A cursory look out the window showed that the storm wasn't letting up anytime soon.
“I...think we have the time,” I slyly told him.
“Yeah,” Jenn answered quietly, a tinge of dejection in her voice. “This whole trip just became a big bust. Let's at least get a little fun out of it.”
“Well, alright then,” Ben conceded. “So, as recent as a century ago, these mountains were the lands of a very spiritual Native tribe. The word goes that they've been in these peaks for a thousand years. Very tied to the land. Nobody even knew they were here until this region was settled and scarce on unclaimed land.”
We both nodded as he continued.
“So, I don't know if it was the high altitudes fiddling with their brains, or all the herbal concoctions they were undoubtedly taking, but they got it into their heads that there was a man up in these mountains who could become a bear. This man apparently offered them protection in exchange for women, who he promptly returned...pregnant, every time. The women who pledged themselves to him would conceive normal boys, but around the age of puberty they would gain the power to become bears as well...and so it goes on.”
“But what does this have to do with the storm?” I asked.
“Right, the storm.” He glanced out the window at the harrowing snow for a moment, with a brief flicker of tenderness across his face. “The storm was a punishment. This bear-man was what translates roughly into a “shifter”. This shifter, the legend says, was very powerful. He was the god of the forest, and it bent to him – even the weather. When he came for women and the tribe didn't pay tribute, he would inflict a savage snowstorm on the peaks. It would come completely out of nowhere and thrash itself wildly across the land, a lot like this.” He indicated outside, and our gazes were pulled to the swirling madness just feet from us. “Not only did it trap them where they were, but something about the storm inspired a mating frenzy in the shifters among them. They would find their primal instincts overwhelming them, and the women...well, whether it was some sort of weird bear pheromone or not, they would willingly give into their needs. The bears would mate, and the storm would pass.”
“That's such crap,” I told him. Jenn turned to look at me while Ben tilted his bushy head. “Shifters? Native tribes? I'm guessing this resort is built right where their settlement was?”
“Not this resort, no,” he smiled. “More like this particular building.”
* * * *
One of Ben's brothers wandered into the room with a tray of hot chocolate and some sandwiches. We gratefully sipped at our drinks and chewed on the food while Ben wandered towards the counter for something.
“Did he tell you that damned Native story again? I swear, he should just write some damned books and get that out of his head,” his brother told us. He was just as burly as Ben, although a little shorter, with a thicker beard and a tuft of chest hair bursting from below his V-cut shirt.
“Aren't you cold in that?” Jenn asked him.
He glanced down at the shirt quizzically, then smiled warmly. “Nah, it's plenty warm in here. I've got all the insulation I need right here!” He heartily slapped his chest and let out a roar of laughter.
Jenn and I couldn't help but smile at each other.
“Alex, hush it!” Ben laughed as he came back over. “I don’t need you butting in about my shifter legends.”
But I noticed the way they were looking at each other out of the corners of their eyes…as if there was another layer to their banter that we weren’t getting. It was the look that people shared during an inside joke. Wonder what’s going on?
I was ripped from my thoughts as they wandered away, lost in conversation, leaving me with Jenn. We curled up in front of a television and put some cable. If we’re trapped up here, we might as well do SOMETHING, I thought to myself. And the boob tube sort of qualified.
The time started to fly by as we watched re-runs of old sitcoms, finishing our hot chocolates and trying to salvage the trip. At least the view was a little different.
* * * *
“I think I'm going to turn in for the night,” Jenn told me sheepishly after a couple of hours.
“Oh, come on! Isn't this just so exciting, though?” I asked sarcastically. My attention still wandered back to the storm – I knew it would be morning at the earliest before it broke, but I was still dedicated to dissolving it with the power of my icy stare.
“Jess, it's...it's already 11:30,” she mentioned to me, following my gaze. “I don't think there's anything that can be done about that mess tonight. Maybe we should just turn in early?”
“I would, probably, but I'm just not too tired,” I told her. Strangely, it was true. Normally, I'd be all tuckered out right about now, given the type of day we'd had. For some reason I was as awake as ever, and the idea of SLEEP? There was nothing really to do here this late, but I couldn't help but feel like I should stay up.
“I'll go to bed later. You go get your rest.” I got up to wander back to the window again, settling down in the chair.
“Alright,” she reluctantly told me. “Don't stay up too late. If this is gone by morning, I don't want you exhausted and bitchy all day.”
“I'll be bitchy whenever I damned well please. Now scram!” My devious smirk made her shake her head with a smile, and she disappeared around the corner and upstairs.
My gaze returned to the window. I couldn't help but think about Ben's story...I mean
, it was totally irrational. That kind of stuff, the whole “shifter”, “natives up in the mountains” thing...I'd stopped believing in crap like that when I grew up. The most spiritual experience I'd ever had was getting my hands on a vibrator. But I couldn't get the thought out of my head...how cool would it be if that was the case? An old tribe with a bunch of paranormal bear dudes around, fighting the mountain lions and lording over the peaks.
Well, it would also be a total pain in the ass to get out of this storm, I thought to myself. What did the natives need to break it again?
The answer pinged into my head. Oh, right. Women.
“Care for some company?” I heard the deep voice of a burly man behind me, and turned my head. Ben was standing close, a pair of tumblers in his fists. He extended one out to me, and after a brief moment of hesitation, I took it from him.
“I'm not 21,” I frowned, my eyes focused on the portion of dark, telltale fluid in my glass.
“So don't tell anyone,” he smiled warmly.
I flitted the tumbler beneath my nostrils. I didn't recognize the amber liquor, but it wafted a light, earthy scent that had a tinge of something sweet.
“Don't worry, it's fine. Just a little something I rummaged up from the basement. Among other important things, there's a stocked liquor cabinet down there...for times like this.” He sipped from his drink and took a seat in the armchair beside me.
“So, you guys aren't guests,” I noted.
Ben chuckled. “No, we aren't.” His warm smile spread beneath his beard, and he eyed me mischievously.
“So you work on the staff?”
“Not strictly,” he answered, watching for my reaction. “We sort of own this resort.”
“You're the owner!?” My jaw dropped. “No way!”
“All five of us, yes. Our family has owned this land for quite some time. It was our father who decided to build the resort.”
“Whoa...you guys must be loaded,” I wondered aloud.
“Actually, no. He wished to reinvest the vast majority of the profits into conservation, protecting these mountains and their forests. Seeing as we live primarily off the land and have no need for vast amounts of money, it wasn't even a discussion for us to keep that legacy strong.” He took another swig from his drink.
“You live off the land? What do you mean?” My curiosity deepened. “Are you guys like those weirdoes who drop civilized life and disappear into the woods?”
Ben let out a roar of laughter. As his large chest bounced, I spotted four others approaching from the direction of the stairs – undoubtedly his brothers. Peter was among them, and they all had grins on their faces.
“No, it's nothing like that,” Ben continued. “You see, although we don't look it, we have a certain...ancestry. My grandfather was native to these lands, and although the physical parts of it are primarily recessive in our genes...our shifter blood is strong.”
The other four had formed a semi-circle around him now, as he sat in his chair beside me. They were all clearly related: the same burly builds, thick beards, large chests, and broad shoulders. In the semi-darkness, they even seemed to share peculiarly sharp, green eyes. But as I noticed these highly attractive similarities, a small ping of recognition fired off inside my brain.
Shifter blood?
It dawned on me. “There's no way,” I told him. “That whole little spiel of yours earlier, about the natives and the bears...that can’t be true.”
“It is,” Peter piped up. “The storm is here because it's time for us to mate...for the next generation of us to arrive.”
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Enjoy!
-Willow Wilde
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