Black Bear Fall: A BWWM Paranormal Romance (Black Bear Saga Book 2)

F
or Jo
. Your open heart and endless cups of coffee helped me reach the finish line.

T
he woman had been sleeping lightly
when she heard the men approaching from across the fields. It was the noise of a potato plant stalk being crushed under someones boot. Three years in a row the crops had been failing and every plant that survived was a precious commodity. Now they were being trampled underfoot by men who only cared about one thing, to hurt the woman and her child while her husband was away.

The woman grabbed her baby in her arms and held its soft warm body against the pale skin of her naked breasts. She glanced out the window, keeping low so as not to be seen. Four men were approaching all holding varnished clubs attached to their wrists by leather loops. They were unhurried in their approach, safe in the knowledge that they only had a weak woman to deal with. Their boots crunched in the layer of frost on the tilled land as they continued to approach. Four men reeking of cheap beer and full of dark energy that could be only released in one way.

The woman grabbed a thin covering made from sack cloth and wrapped it around her like a shawl. She didn’t feel the cold like a human but she would need it if she was forced to approach a settlement without raising too much suspicion. The door to the root cellar creaked as she swung it open and peered into the gloom. She could hear the crunch of the mens boots as they crossed the area that the chickens spent their days on, pecking and clawing at the earth. They were close and if she wasn’t quick they might see the cellar door closing.

The woman closed the door above her just as the first heavy footfalls stomped on the bare boards at the front of the cabin. She waited on the wooden ladder and listened. One man was standing on the porch and she could hear the others circle around the house with no concern of alerting her. She was an easy target for these drunk men, a woman all alone and miles from any kind of help. As the first man entered the cabin the woman stepped down from the ladder and her feet sunk into the damp earth of the cellar floor. A thin crack of light seeped in from the ceiling above and the woman stood in this weak beam of light and stared up at the hatch above her. The smells of the cellar filled her nostrils and her stomach made an involuntary growl as she sniffed the rich scent of the drying meat hanging from a hook in the ceiling. A week ago she had stalked and hunted the cut of meat now air drying in the dark.

Her prey had been no more than sixteen years old, a boy from a nearby village. He had been gathering water at sunrise from a stream that ran close to the village and snaked down from the snowcapped mountains, a days walk away. The woman had hid her baby in a hollow in a tree when she had first caught the scent of the boy. She had watched him from the cover of the tree line as he filled up a wooden pail with cool mountain spring water. He was filling up the second one when she stepped out from her cover. She knew she was striking to humans. Her skin was a pale milky white and her lips where full and red looking almost bruised. She had delicate features, offset by waist length hair, that looked almost silver in bright sunlight. Her eyes where the colour of salmon flesh, a light pink that drew you in when you first set eyes on her. She had full pert breasts and a thin angular frame. Her clothes were modest and handmade with a plunging neckline that drew mens eyes down to the soft curves of her pillowy breasts.

Sometimes the woman found it too easy to draw her prey to her, men were the most simple. They would be easily fooled by her small tremulous voice, their eyes already drifting down to her visible cleavage. Men of all types lusted after her, the timid bookish man from the farm across the valley. She only had to say a few whispered words to him and he willingly followed her into the forest. The acne scarred owner of the general store who made it clear she could have this years seeds at a discount if she came to the backroom with him. The kind old man who had offered to help her at harvest time and who always looked away in shame when caught looking down her top as she bent over to pull the first batch of carrots from the earth. They had all been too easy for her to seduce with a few words, a downcast look of her eyes and the faint promise that they could get between her legs. The flesh never tasted as good when there was no hunt involved, fear seemed to inject the flesh with a sharp tang that the woman found alluring.

Even before she had awoken to the men sneaking up on her cabin she had known that her time in this sleepy valley was coming to an end. Too many people had gone missing in the year she had spent here and suspicion always turned to the outsiders. It didn’t matter what country she travelled to and tested out the life of someone living among the humans. Things always repeated in the same fashion. Rising fear as more men disappeared, until eventually fingers started to point to her and then the late night visit by the town drunks to see her off while getting a taste of her before she was banished.

It was the death of the boy that had ramped up the fear in the town and surrounding community leading to her current predicament. The woman had stepped out from behind a tree and almost immediately the boy had caught her movement and looked over in her direction. He had waved across at her and the woman had raised her arm in a slow gesture as if she was under water. The boy had looked at the woman, her hair blowing back in a silvery mane as she approached. Crossing the meadow her legs seeming to barely move, making it look like she was gliding across ice. The woman could feel the urge build inside her, like the slowly tightening rope of a snare trap. She liked to get in close to her prey and watch her reflections in their eyes as the realised it was all too late and something terrible was about to happen.

As she approached the riverbank opposite to the boy he dropped the wooden bucket he was holding and it plopped into the river and began to float down stream. He didn’t notice. “What’s your name,” the woman said as she got closer.

Something changed in an instant and the boy turned and started running in the direction of the village. If he crested the hills at the end of the meadow he would be in plain sight of the first farmhouse. The woman hissed and leapt across the river bank and landed on all fours already transforming.

The boy glanced back once and all colour drained out of him as he saw a huge bear with a black coat charging after him. His leg muscles burned as he started to run up the hill. He was half way up the hill when the bear swept his legs out from under him. A thin spray of bright red blood misted the grass, the boy fell to his knees and began to crawl as the wound in the back of his leg bled out. The bear watched him as he crawled getting ever closer to the crest of the hill and the possibility of safety. The boy continued on for a couple of fear filled seconds until the bear snapped down on the back of his neck and shook the life out of the boy. The bear dropped his body into the grass and perked up its ears, other people where approaching from the direction of the village. The bear grabbed the boy by the neck and dragged him back into the forest and then home. That had been a week ago and every day the woman knew she was on borrowed time in her current home. She could feel it in the air like a high pressure storm building.

In Salem she had been called a witch, her time in Germany and central Europe had lead to people starting to believe that a character from a fictional book was among them and drinking their blood, and now after a year in Ireland she had started to hear stories about a banshee howling right before her prey went missing. The woman knew it made it easier for some people to deal out harsh punishment to her if they thought she was a witch or an evil spirit. No one had ever seen what she truly was and no stories were ever told of her.

Another set of boots clomped noisily above her and then they were joined by the other two men. The cabin above was small and it would not take them long to search it. The woman threw the key to her locked bedroom door onto the dirt floor and listened. One of the men said something and someone knocked over a jar that shattered on the ground. The baby stirred against her and the woman kissed the warm crown of his head and he relaxed against her. The woman knew she could easily destroy the four men searching her house. She couldn’t leave another place with a scene of total carnage again. She had promised him it would be different this time. The woman knew if she didn’t live up to her side of the bargain she would lose her baby and any chance of reconciliation with the tribe.

Someone turned the doorknob to the bedroom and when it didn’t open he shouted, “Oishin, come out. We don’t want to hurt you we are here to talk. Make this easy on yourself and come out. You and your baby wont be hurt.”

The woman could hear the lies in his voice. He was drunk and geared up for more than talking to a woman. Him and his men were here to do serious harm. The world would be a better place if I went upstairs and ripped out the throats of every last one of them she thought.

“Break it down,” the man said to the others.

The woman crossed the cellar and put her hand against the door that opened out into the small vegetable garden. When the first man crashed into the locked door upstairs she swung open the cellar door and was off and running as she heard a second crash. She knew that the door would not take much more before it splintered open revealing her empty room. If I can just make it across the meadow and into the trees I can escape she thought as she ran across the field.

The moon hung low in the sky and the womans silvery hair glowed in the light. Her feet glided across the wet grass as she sprinted for safety. This way of life, she thought as she ran, it is not to be, I was a fool for ever thinking that a shifter can live in such close proximity to its prey. She could smell the forest as she got closer, the forest meant true safety. She could follow it to the mountains and easily cross them in a couple of days. After that she knew it was time to leave Ireland behind and head for America. It was time that she returned to her real home. The country had changed so much since the famous witch trials and the burning of innocent women. She needed to be somewhere bigger, where she could blend in more easily. Ireland was too small of a country, the people too superstitious and hanging onto the old ways and legends. America was a land of opportunity a place where she imagined she might be able to eventually lead the kind of life she envisioned for her and her son. No more hiding on the outskirts of humanity. She would integrate, learn to live among them. Teach her son how to control his animal side and to hunt only the weak and dying. To hunt only people who would not be missed, that was possible in the sprawling cities where no one knew your name and everyone was in a hurry. I need that again she thought as she got close to the trees.

“There she is,” one of the men called from back at the cabin.

The woman spun around and looked as three men ran out of the house and joined their friend who was pointing in her direction. They all began to run towards her, crashing through the vegetable garden and crushing everything underfoot.

The woman turned and increased her speed as she broke through the tree line and moved into the forest. She ran at full speed her feet gliding over the soft floor of the woods as she could hear the men rapidly approaching. If I make it past the stream and cross the clearing before they catch me I should be able to make it to the mountains the woman thought as she tightened her grip on the sleeping baby.

She moved sure footed through the undergrowth, her feet finding purchase on the soft mulch of the forest floor as she fled at speed. As she went she made very little sound, moving further into the depths of the forest. Ravens began to caw from some place behind her and she could hear the heavy crashing and stomping of the men as they entered the tree line. The woman breathed slow and steady as she pushed through a thicket of low bushes covered in scraping thorns. They scraped and pulled at her flesh and she barely noticed the wounds. The clearing was up ahead and bathed in silvery moonlight.

The men behind her didn’t seem to be slowing down. I’ve met men like this before she thought as she ran across the damp grass of the clearing. They were the kind of men driven by something greater than their humble human concerns, they believed a force greater then themselves was driving them and in the womans experience these were the most dangerous of foes. Men like these could rationalise any deed if it was in the pursuit of their goal. She had seen the same fervour in the men of Salem, the council of elders in deepest Bavaria and in her fraught escape from the practitioners of the one true faith in Northern Spain over three hundred years ago. She knew that the men chasing her were no ordinary drunks looking for a night of illicit fun like so many before them that had appeared on her doorstep at a late hour, stinking drunk and ready to cause a ruckus. The men chasing her now were different, they not only had a bloodlust, they had a bloodlust augmented by religious fervour. They saw themselves in a pure white light and ready to dispatch the evil that had crept in under the cover of darkness and was the blame for all the ills and misfortunes of this small rural settlement. The woman knew if she dispatched them there would be more behind them, more fervent and just in their destruction of her and her baby.

She crossed the clearing and stood at the edge of the forest looking and listening for her attackers progress. She could see the dim lights of lanterns bouncing like fireflies at dusk approaching at a steady pace behind her. The men had slowed down their initial head long rush fearing for catching a foot on a branch and falling and breaking a bone. The womans absolute comfort in the dark forest was what had saved her on countless occasions. She always tried to set up her lodgings close to the protective covering of a dark wood, always with one eye on the beckoning safety of the trees even during times when humans seemed to have accepted her as one of their own.

As the sun rose the following morning and life began to stir in the forest the woman stretched and kissed the top of her babies sleeping head. She had found an overturned oak tree with its roots ripped out of the ground and exposing a hollow space for her to sleep in. The woman had easily lost the men once she got deeper into the forest and she imagined that they soon gave up after a while. There was something about a dark forest that tended to spook even the bravest of men. The woman had seen it happen again and again as the suspicions of humans repeated itself forcing her to flee from her home.