Cat Scratch Fever
Mystic Harbor
By
Scarlett Grove
***
Copyright © 2015 by Scarlett Grove
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Table Of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER ONE
Makayla Phillips had one hand on the steering wheel and one hand on her smartphone. She typed, "No Mom. I'm not on Dad's side. I'm on no one's side," and threw the phone into the passenger's seat.
The split second her eyes were away from the road, a massive mountain lion pranced across her path. The sleek blond creature stood and stared at the on-coming car with gleaming, yellow eyes, its breath foggy in the cold winter air. She swerved. Thoughts of her parent's impending divorce evaporated as her world moved in slow motion.
She twisted toward the other side of the road and the front wheels caught a patch of black ice. The car careened over the embankment. Her heart flew into her throat. They say your life flashes before your eyes when you're about to die, but all that Makayla saw in her mind was her gay assistant helping himself to her half-a-size-too-small-for-his-feet collection of designer shoes. Horror gripped her chest as the BMW sedan continued down a steep gravel hill, skidding sideways.
There was nothing she could do but hang on for dear life. Her driver's side door fast approached a stand of old growth Douglas fir. This trip had been nothing but one disaster after another. Gaining momentum, the car impacted. The air bags deployed, and she was out cold.
Makayla woke, drooling on an airbag. Sore, disoriented, she popped open her seatbelt lock. The driver's door was wedged against a massive tree. The entire car tilted at a forty-five degree angle, making it difficult for her to get her bearings.
She needed to call for help. Where was her phone? She scanned the car and found it against the back window. Hefting her ample frame through the front seats, Makayla went dizzy and was forced to stop moving. The world tilted around her and threatened to go black again. She put her hand to her temple and felt a massive bump forming on her skull. Reaching as far as her arm span would allow, she inched the phone toward her with her fingertips until she could grab it.
She turned it over and inspected the cracked screen. Shit, shit, shit. She pressed the power button. Nothing. Panic rose from the pit of her stomach and whooshed around her foggy head. She sucked back tears and pulled herself to an awkward sitting position in the passenger seat. Her fingers trembled as she pried off the back of the phone and replaced the battery before putting it together again. She took a deep breath and pressed the power button. Nothing.
"No!" Fuck.
She grabbed her coat from the floor, pulled it on, and shoved open the passenger side door. It took all her strength to push against the force of gravity pressing down on her. When she had the door open enough to climb through, she had to suck air into her chest in order to prevent passing out again. The dizziness subsided, and she climbed through the door. The gravel hillside that had so graciously carried her down the steep slope, was still several feet below her.
She'd worn jeans and tennis shoes while at her parent's house. No one went around in pencil skirts and pumps in that part of Oregon. Her addled brain congratulated itself for being so practical. She took a deep breath and dropped to the rocky ground below.
Makayla held on to the car as the gravel below her feet poured downward. She made it just beyond the car before she was carried in an avalanche of rock further into the forest where she was deposited, on her behind, into the dense undergrowth. The jagged stones cut into her jeans, and she had to pick them off as she stood. Once on solid ground, she looked back up the hill. She was several hundred feet down a steep slope with no way of getting back up and couldn't see any way out. To her right was another steep drop. To her left was a half frozen pond. The only direction she could go was straight into the forest.
She picked her way through the bare winter branches of bushes and young evergreen trees. The sharp lemon scent of fir needles filled her nose as she gripped the branches for support. She found a deer trail near the trunk of an old tree. Taking the path, she stumbled forward. Her head throbbed and her sense of direction whirled. Where was the car?
Stopping to catch her breath, Makayla leaned against a tree trunk for support. The cold air made it through the thick layers of her down parka and she shuddered. Her hands felt numb. She could see her panting breath.
She whimpered. Makayla was not accustomed to being so vulnerable. She was a take charge kind of woman who knew how to get things done. She'd been hiking before. Makayla was a Oregonian for God's sake. She'd just never done it with a mild concussion, in the middle of winter, in the middle of nowhere.
Her vision doubled, and she stumbled forward. It was like that one time she'd tried mushrooms in college but far worse. Her frozen feet hit the ground one after the other, sending shock waves of pain up her legs. She pulled the parka hood over her head and shoved her numb hands into her pockets.
A deer bolted in the wood, a branch broke, and a moaning cat growl cracked through the frigid air. Makayla's heart nearly stopped beating. She panted, trying to stay calm. Predators were hungry in winter. Her mind ran over the things she'd learned as a child. What do you do in case of mountain lions?
She yelled and flapped her arms. Dizziness blacked the edges of her vision and she felt herself wobble. She coughed from yelling, her lungs sore in the cold. There had been a light snow a few days ago that had mostly melted off, but the forecast had predicted a record storm.
With the strength of her determined will, she pressed herself onward into the forest, smacking sticks together to make aggressive sounds. The cracking of her sticks pierced her ears. All she wanted was a warm cup of cocoa and her favorite flannel pajamas. Another whimper escaped her lips.
Stopping for a moment, she pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and checked the power button again. Still nothing. There has to be civilization around here somewhere. Right?
She had gone to visit her parents who lived near Mary’s Peak and had taken the long road back to the highway. She was technically still in the national forest. The idea that no one would find her sent a shiver of dread up her spine. She should have stayed at the car. She turned around, trying to remember what direction she'd come from.
Which way was north? Moss grows on what side of a tree?
The sun was obscured by a thick layer of gray storm clouds. There was no way of knowing where she was going or where she had been. She screamed in frustration, making her head ache.
Makayla crossed her arms across her REI parka and wept. She kept walking, but she wept. One foot in front of the other. Just keep moving. She would get out of this. She just had to try harder.
As she came to a steep gully, she heard a crack in the forest behind her. Her already ragged breath grated in her chest. She looked around for signs of the predator. Flailing her arms around her head, she screamed. Her foot slipped under the momentum of her flailing and her arms wind-milled as she fell backward down the ravine.
CHAPTER TWO
The mountain lion sniffed the cool air. The sharp lemon scent of fir needles and deep loamy soil mingled with the scent of frigid river water and blood. His massive paws padded along the forest floor, nimbly pouncing through the undergrowth. His nose twitched in the wind. A storm was coming. A big one.
The source of the blood was along the ravine where dark earth plunged into a rocky riverbed. He pounced on a downed tree trunk and regarded the entrance of the ravine. He could smell the spray of a waterfall, the tang of a hawk, and the quivering fear of a rabbit in its den.
He dropped silently to the riverbed and stalked toward the source of the blood, human blood. There should be no humans, let alone bleeding ones, in this part of his forest. This was his territory. No hiking trails, no visitors.
Near the base of the waterfall, he saw the curvaceous figure of a woman. She lay on her side with her face buried in the ground. The acrid scent of hair chemicals and perfume bit his nose.
His lips curled in a snarl. He hated humans and their stinking chemical smell. No good ever came from them being in his forest. Humans: noisy, smelly beasts who trampled the earth and left destruction in their wake.
His ears twitched to listen for her heartbeat— thready but strong. He sniffed at the blood under her head. It had stopped flowing and was beginning to clot in her black hair. Licking at her cheek, he hope the damp contact of his tongue would be enough to wake her.
She didn't stir. He couldn't leave the woman bleeding into the riverbed. Even he had more compassion for humans than that. He sniffed the wind and sensed electricity in the air. There would be snow tonight, a lot of it, more than this part of Oregon had seen in decades.
He shifted. His body shimmered and contorted. Bones snapped and reformed in a hair's breadth of an instant. He stood tall and naked in the chill wind. His chiseled muscles twitched. The sensitive human flesh pricked from the cold, and the smooth river rocks poked into the bottoms of his bare feet.
He knelt beside the unconscious woman. Slipping his arms under her shoulders and the backs of her knees, he scooped her feminine body into his arms. Her head lulled back and he could see her face and smell the native scent of her body under the smell of blood and perfume.
Her plump red lips opened slightly, revealing her pink tongue and straight white teeth. He looked down at her form. Her round breasts rose like rolling hillsides and her wide hips tapered deliciously into her waist.
The smell of her at this proximity and the feel of her softness against his hard chest made his mouth water involuntarily. He lifted her neck to his nose and took a long, slow drag of her scent. Mmmm, intoxicating. It had been a long time since he'd smelled a woman this close, human or shifter.
He made a low groan and carried the unconscious woman down the riverbed. Carrying her all the way home would take too long in this form. In one deft movement, he wrapped her arms around his neck, flipped her on his back, and shifted into his massive lion form. Her legs fell around his back and he easily carried her down the flat riverbed.
When he reached the path toward home, he carefully pounced up the ridge. She began to slide from his back. He shifted into his Halfling form. With one hand, he held her arms around his chest and with the other, he held her legs around his waist. With powerful lion's hind legs, he charged through the wood.
He flew past the trees, moving deeper and deeper into the forest. The smell of snow pressed against his senses. A billowy flake blew in front of his path. By the time he made it to his cabin, there was already a thin coating of white over the ground.
He brought her inside and deposited her in his bed. He shifted human and placed his hand on her wrist to feel her heartbeat. She was cold. Too cold. Her red lips had turned purple, and blue circles had formed on the pale skin below her eyes.
After pulling her from her cold damp clothes, he tucked her under his blankets. His human body responded to the sight of the woman's plump fresh, and the beast inside him roared. He growled at himself and pulled on his buckskin trousers.
His cabin was equipped with both a fire place and a wood burning stove. He gathered logs from outside and built up the fires until the cabin was toasty warm.
Ronan looked at the woman in his bed. Revulsion and desire fought for dominance. He hated visitors. He didn't even like the other shifters to come to his cabin, let alone a bloody human stinking of perfume and laundry detergent.
He crossed his arms and scowled. She had a head injury.
His cabin was twenty miles from the nearest road and further from the other shifters who lived in Mystic Harbor on the coast. He wouldn't be able to count on them for help with his human problem.
Unlike many of the other shifters, Ronan Harding refused to use modern human technology. He felt it cheapened a shifter's very existence and he preferred to live off the land as much as possible. The human in him required a minimum of human comfort. The mountain lion in him just wanted to be left alone.
He didn't have any of those cellphone contraptions. He didn't even have electricity or running water. Ronan was happy to live as if the twentieth century never happened.
If he needed money for human goods, he took his animal pelts to the nearest town and hiked home his supplies. He didn't need much, a handful of rice, salt, knives to skin his pelts. That was it, and that was the way he liked it.
The woman groaned in the bed and turned to her side. He should clean the wound. Humans didn't heal like shifters, and the cut could fester. He sneered. He didn't want to touch her, no matter how good she smelled under all that chemical cologne, no matter how prettily her plump red lips puckered in her sleep.
He drew a handful of dried wild bergamot from a glass jar and threw it in a baked clay bowl. The tea kettle on the stove held hot water which he poured over the dried herbs. The bergamot infusion would fight infection and clean the wound.
Ronan covered the infusion with a plate and let it seep for several moments. When it was ready, he dipped a cloth into the green water and pressed it against the woman's skin.
Her temple was caked with dried brown blood. He rubbed against her hairline with the cloth until he could see the cut underneath. It was a long gash that ran over her ear for several inches. It was a clean cut, and it would heal well enough if looked after.
After the cut was clean, he soaked another handful of bergamot in hot water and piled it on the cut. Then he covered it with a clean cloth, and wrapped a soft strip of deer pelt around her head to keep the poultice attached.
Satisfied that he had done what he could for the woman, he turned to the window. Snow fell in huge clumps outside. Already the tree limbs were heavy with white. There would be several feet of packed snow on the ground before the sun rose.
He scratched his head. He should have taken her back to the road and left her there. She would be stuck in his cabin for who knows how long now. He wouldn't be able to get her through the snow in his human form, and revealing his true identity was out of the question.
His stomach grumbled. Following the scent of human blood had thrown him off his hunt, and he hadn't eaten. The woman would most likely be hungry when she woke as well. Damn. The snow would send most of his prey into hiding. It couldn't be helped.
He went outside and closed the door behind him. The temperature had dropped considerably since he'd gone inside. He dropped his trousers and shifted into his lion.
He sniffed the air and flicked his tail. He could smell the scent of a hare in the wood beyond h
is front yard. He trotted toward the forest, following the scent. If he was lucky, he could catch a hare or two before returning to the human with his catch.
He hunched into a prowl when his quick senses caught a glimpse of a creature moving in the underbrush. The scent of his meal ran down his nose like syrupy liquid. His mouth watered as he panted in the smell.
In one quick pounce, he caught the tiny creature in his massive paws. He held it still and snapped its neck so as not to ruin its soft pelt. Rabbit fur could be used for coats or hats. Some people even used them as decorations.
He wasn't always so careful with his kills. Often he would devour a small meal, but today he needed to bring it back to the woman. Might as well save the pelt.
His senses picked up the pungent sent of a buck not far from where he crouched. His ears pricked up to listen for the sound of branches breaking or the thudding of his prey's heart. He inhaled the buck's scent, sniffing the wind for direction.
He gently buried the rabbit to hide it from scavengers and pursued the deer. It stood in a clearing, scratching through the snow for shreds of green grass. Its massive antlers would impress his buyer when Ronan made his quarterly trek to town to sell his wares.
The deer's heartbeat thudded in Ronan’s ears. He licked his black lips and crouched downwind and out of view. He drew cold air into his chest, waiting like a statue to pounce. The buck looked up and sniffed the air with its twitching black nose. The creature lowered its thick neck and continued to rummage through the snow.
Ronan pounced, leaping on his powerful hind legs to fall directly on the deer's back. He sunk his massive sharp teeth into the animal's neck. The clamping of his jaw and the puncture of his teeth, brought the animal to its knees.
It let out a strangled cry but soon went still and fell to the ground. Ronan let go, panting through bloody lips and teeth at the sweet smell of his kill. The hunt, the greatest pleasure in life. The feeling of mastery over his prey as he brought his kill to its knees in supplication before him and the sense of its life force draining from its body, filling him up, was beyond human understanding.