Jumping the Bull Read online

  “What happened to your parents?”

  “They didn’t like that I was gay.”

  “Jesus.”

  “It’s okay,” Oliver rushed on. “I’m okay. I reconnected with some of my other family years ago, people who accept me as me. But if Edith hadn’t been around to help…” He swallowed and his throat clicked. “It could have been me in a truck like that.”

  “They talked about ‘product’ at lunch today. I thought it was guns. Not people. Never people.”

  “When I saw the cages in the barn, I knew it was going to be bad. We need to call it in.”

  Oliver retrieved the cell phone Jeremy had smuggled to them the night before and opened a text to the number he’d memorized. He tried to think of a clever code-worded way of saying what he needed to say, but in the end, he just went for the truth.

  “Product” is captured shifters waiting for “new homes.” Please advise.

  It took only a minute to get a response. Timeline to move them?

  Unknown. But he’s asked O to teach them to dance.

  Understood. We’ll move tomorrow night. Stay in place until then.

  “Oh, hey, give them a name for me. Rylee Rashad.” Ben briefly explained the meeting and the encounter with the human fan who inadvertently identified Paul’s contact.

  B says Paul met with Rylee Rashad this afternoon. She’s the supplier.

  Interesting intel. Good job. Stay in touch through the day tomorrow and let us know if anything changes.

  Will do.

  Oliver erased the text thread, hid the phone back in a pair of socks in the drawer, and sighed. Instantly, Ben was there, rubbing his arm. “What is it?”

  “I want to get them out of there now.”

  Ben kissed Oliver’s neck, a gentle, barely there touch, but it reverberated through Oliver’s system like someone had struck a gong inside of him.

  “I know,” Ben murmured. “But FUC will bring in a team of experienced agents. I don’t know about you, but I’m about at my limit, you know? Don’t get me wrong. I feel like we’re making a difference. I just…”

  “Feel like you’ve been tossed overboard with a slowly deflating raft?”

  Ben chuckled. “Something like that, yeah.” He kissed Oliver again. “Come to bed. We can’t do anything tonight.”

  Oliver smiled. “We can do each other.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  Oliver jumped his bull. “I’ll show you terrible.”

  Ben gazed at him, heat and something more in his eyes. “Never.”

  11

  Ben kissed Oliver and watched him leave through the French doors off the kitchen, one of the exterior guards trailing him as he made his way over to the rec room. They’d watched the ten shifters be herded over to it a few minutes ago, but the guards wouldn’t let Oliver out until they were all back behind closed, and Ben assumed locked, doors.

  God, he hoped FUC moved quickly. He hoped none of the captive shifters got hurt. He hoped none of the FUC agents did, either. He hoped—

  “Mother fucker!”

  Ben almost dropped his coffee cup at Paul’s shout. He left it on the counter, ignoring the bit of java that spilled, and raced into Paul’s study. Regan and two other guards had beat him there. Paul looked agitated, pacing behind his giant desk, his hair showing evidence of a hand having been run through it quickly.

  “Boss?” Regan ventured.

  “Rylee’s place was raided by the human cops this morning,” Paul snarled. He paused in his pacing to grab a glass paperweight from his desk and throw it at the wall as hard as he could.

  It shattered on impact, splinters flying everywhere. Regan hissed and brushed his hand against his cheek. It came away smeared with blood, but Paul didn’t notice.

  “The human cops are supposed to be oblivious. I pay them enough to be oblivious.”

  Regan swiped at his cheek one last time. “We’ll find out who—”

  “Yeah, we will. But for right now…” Paul shook his head. “Get rid of them.”

  “Boss?”

  “We’ll move locations in the next few weeks, once I get something lined up. But in the meantime, I don’t want any evidence of anything here. In case they raid us. Got it? Everything goes.”

  “On it.” Regan turned on his heel to carry out Paul’s order, but shock kept Ben rooted to the spot.

  “Get rid of them how?” he blurted out.

  “We’re going to set them free in the forest.” Regan smacked the back of Ben’s head. “How do you think, idiot?”

  Kill them? They were going to kill them?

  Well, yeah. What did you do when your “product” became inconvenient?

  You liquidated it.

  Ben nodded slowly, like he was processing Regan’s words, and let Regan and the other two guards precede him out of Paul’s study. When they reached the kitchen, he acted.

  He shoved Regan from behind into the counter, feeling a distant satisfaction when his head cracked against the granite. Regan dropped like a stone, and Ben turned his attention to the two guards. He kicked one in the balls—as hard as he could—and tried not to wince in sympathy as the guy crumpled in on himself. The other pulled out his gun, but Ben grabbed his wrist and put him in an arm bar until something gave with a snap. The guy howled and fell to his knees. Regan struggled back to his feet, blinking and blurry eyed. Ben spun and nailed him in the head with a reverse kick. It connected and Regan dropped again. Yes! He wouldn’t have been able to do that move a month ago, without Oliver’s flexibility training. But he didn’t have time to celebrate.

  He had to get the shifters out. He had to save Oliver.

  A bullet whizzed by his ear as he reached the building where Oliver and the other shifters were for dance lessons. Low bass notes reverberated through the walls. Another bullet hit the wood beside his head. He yanked at the handles of the double doors, but the doors wouldn’t budge. Locked. Fuck! A third bullet struck the wall and something bit Ben’s cheek—probably a splinter. He couldn’t waste any more time trying to get in.

  He shifted.

  He was big for a bull bison—nearly seven feet tall and close to three tons, bigger than most of his non-shifter cousins. It made him an easier target to shoot at, but it was a risk he had to take to get to Oliver and the other shifters. He let out a loud bellow and rammed his head against the double doors leading into the rec room. The wood split but didn’t give, so he backed up and rammed them again.

  This time he burst through.

  Screams and shouts greeted him, along with loud dance music. It took a few seconds for him to be able to spot Oliver through the dust and debris, but when he did, Oliver’s eyes were wide and disbelieving. “Ben?” he shouted over the ruckus.

  Ben shifted back to his human self and dove sideways as more gunfire erupted.

  “Holy shit!” Oliver hit the ground and belly-crawled over to Ben. “What the hell is going on?”

  “It’s gone to shit. Paul ordered the shifters killed.”

  “What? Why?”

  “His partner’s place was raided by the human police. He wants no evidence hanging around.”

  Oliver lifted his head slightly to eye the wrecked doorway and the bullets that continued to fly into the wall. “Uh huh.”

  “We’ve got to get them out of here.”

  “To where?”

  “I don’t know—the woods?” They were prey animals—which meant they could blend in and get lost in the forest for a little while, right? “It’s all I’ve got!”

  Oliver bit his lip. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to get them to shift and run.”

  Ben glanced at the other occupants of the room. “I don’t think that will be a problem.”

  The shifters had all taken their animal forms, driven by instinct and fear. They were huddled in one corner of the room, but they were all eying the hole Ben had made in the doors. The occasional bullet hitting the wood kept them where they were, though. There was a deer, a gazelle, two g
ophers, a rabbit with giant back legs and ears, a…a fucking zebra, a chinchilla, and…

  A tiny, guinea-pig sized hippo.

  Ben blinked. “Is that a house hippo?”

  Oliver squinted at him because yeah, okay, not the time to debate the existence of what Ben had thought was a fictional creature. “How hard is your head?”

  Pretty hard, as it turned out.

  There was another set of double doors on the opposite end of the rec room. This time, when Ben rammed them, they popped off their hinges, making a nice ramp over the two flattened guards who had been about to open them. Ben bellowed at the other shifters to follow, and Oliver, still in human form, shouted at them. Given an escape route, the prey shifters let their instincts take over, and they ran.

  As a whooping crane, Oliver would make an even more tempting target than Ben, with no cover in the sky. So he stayed in human form, and Ben ran behind him, shielding him with his bulk. Luckily the guards only seemed to have pistols—their range and accuracy were terrible. Still, Ben felt a couple of bites to his behind, and one to the hump of his shoulder, but they didn’t slow him down. The other shifters ran ahead of them, straight for the tree line, and one by one, they slipped into cover.

  Ben barrelled into it. Tall, skinny pine trees bowed under his bulk, snapping back behind him. This wasn’t going to work—his giant body had been an asset out in the open, but in the thick of the forest, it only gave away their progress. Once they were deep enough in the forest that the sunlight was muted, Ben shifted back into his human form.

  And hissed in pain.

  Oliver skidded to a stop. “What is it?”

  “I’m good.” A little fib. Ben reached around to touch his wounded butt.

  “Then why are you grimacing—” Oliver’s eyes widened as he spotted the glistening red liquid staining Ben’s fingers. “Oh my god, did you get hit?”

  “A little.”

  “How can you be a little shot?” Oliver darted around to check Ben’s back. “Wait…these don’t look too bad.” Gently he poked at one of the wounds, and Ben hissed again. “Sorry.”

  “The bullets didn’t penetrate my hide much and when I shifted, they were forced out of my skin. Only superficial damage, I promise.”

  “For real?”

  “If they’d been at closer range, or if they were using rifles, it’d be a different story.” Ben offered a shaky smile. “Seriously, I’m okay.”

  Oliver inhaled. “You’d better stay that way.”

  They caught up to the chinchilla a few minutes later and Oliver scooped her up into his arms. She barked but settled quickly, and they continued on. As Ben had suspected—hoped?—the prey shifters had blended into the forest. Mostly. They found the gazelle with his antlers tangled in some low-hanging branches. Ben untangled him and they moved on, gathering up other creatures as they made their way through the forest. None of them were ready to shift back yet—completely understandable—and Ben had to bite back a squeal of delight as he picked up the house hippo.

  “You are so cool,” he gushed at her.

  He felt a little like Snow White as they continued on with all of the shifters surrounding them. He had no idea where they were going—just away from the horrors of Paul’s ranch. They tromped through the woods and slowly, Ben became aware of a sound other than the crunch of forest debris beneath their feet and the prey shifters’ harsh breaths.

  Rushing water.

  They pushed through a barrier of ferns and spotted the source of the noise—a river. Well, okay, maybe it was a little small to be called a river, but it was definitely wider than a creek. Water sped past rocks and under a fallen log a short distance downriver, frothing and generally looking threatening.

  “What do you think?” Ben asked Oliver.

  “I’d say it’s a good opportunity to mask our scent trail, but I’m not sure everyone can ford it.”

  “Can you fly some of the smaller shifters across?” Ben eyed the house hippo in his arms and the chinchilla in Oliver’s.

  Oliver wrinkled his nose. “Not safely. I’d have to hold them in my beak, and it’s not meant for gripping and carrying.”

  All right. Okay. They could plan their way through this. “Can anyone shift back?”

  The gazelle, the deer, and the zebra managed—which was awesome, since Ben was pretty sure carrying any of them in their animal form would have been awkward at best. If he even had the strength to do it.

  He gave them a thumb’s up. “Good job. Anyone else?”

  The gophers, the jackrabbit, the house hippo and the chinchilla shook with nerves.

  “It’s cool,” Ben assured them. “I can carry you.”

  Oliver bit his lip as he regarded the fast-moving river with its quasi-rapids. “You sure, Ben? The water looks rough.”

  Ben bent down to let the gophers climb his arms, and scooped up the jackrabbit. Her long back legs made carrying her and the house hippo challenging…but he could do it, dammit. “I’m going to walk across the log.”

  At that proclamation, Oliver’s expression grew even more worried. “Really? Maybe I should—”

  “Ol…I’m good. I promise. I’ve got the bulk to carry them. You just worry about yourself and the other shifters, okay? Make sure they get across.”

  For a moment, Ben thought Oliver was going to argue some more, but he gave a quick nod. “You got this.”

  Ben waited until Oliver and the deer, gazelle, and zebra shifter darted across the log, displaying the innate grace of their animal forms in their surefooted steps. His passengers remained still, far more still than their full-animal counterparts could ever have been. When Oliver and his charges were safe on the other side of the river, Ben took a deep breath.

  Showtime.

  He stepped onto the log. It didn’t creak—thank god—but it was slipperier than he expected, what with the moss and mist covering the wood. He took one step, then another, until he was standing directly over the water. The rushing water, racing under his feet, and giving him vertigo—

  He jerked his eyes up and corrected his balance, adjusting the weight distribution of the tiny hippo and giant jackrabbit in his arms. They stayed silent, probably terrified that if they made a noise, they’d all fall in and get swept away. Okay, so, looking down is not a good plan. Noted. He edged forward, sliding his feet along instead of taking full steps.

  They’d reached the middle of the log when he felt it shift. He didn’t have time to wonder why—he had to act. Now. He ran, automatically compensating when his foot slipped, or when he felt his balance tipping. Finally he leaped off the end and managed to stay upright even when he encountered the slick grass at the top of the riverbank.

  He took a knee—presumably to let his passengers get off, but really, he needed a minute to catch his breath.

  “The dismount was a little rough, but I give you ten on the landing,” Oliver said, clapping Ben’s shoulder. “You okay?”

  Ben rose and shook all over, like a bison bull rearranging his hump. “Yep.”

  Their party ventured forth once again. They’d been walking for less than half an hour when the jackrabbit’s nose began to twitch. She started in a new direction before pausing to make sure they were behind her.

  “Follow?” Ben asked Oliver.

  Oliver shrugged. “I don’t think she’d wait for us if it wasn’t important we go with her.”

  Before long, Ben spotted a large, dark shape through the trees. A cabin—one that had seen better days. It was ancient and mostly reclaimed by the forest. Vines crisscrossed the wood that was still intact. The roof was partially collapsed and none of the windows were intact. It was the least inviting place Ben had ever seen—and at the same time, it was the best sight ever.

  “Perfect,” he said. “Thanks, Ms. Jackrabbit.”

  She shifted into her human form and promptly sat down. “It’s Janelle, actually.”

  Oliver tugged on Ben’s arm, guiding him out of earshot. “I think we should keep moving.”
r />   “To where?” Ben countered softly. “Even if I knew exactly where we were, it would be a lot of walking to get anywhere we could get help. And look at them, Ol.” He nodded at the group of shifters, some of whom had returned to human form, clearly unused to staying in animal form for extended periods. “They’re already tapped out.”

  “So what do you think we should do?”

  “We hole up here. You go for help.”

  “Ben, I’m not—”

  “You’re the only one of us who can fly,” Ben pointed out.

  “I still think you should keep moving. What if Paul’s thugs find you?”

  “Then we’ll hunker down.”

  “So you can be shot?”

  “Or we’ll run again.” Ben put his hands on Oliver’s shoulders. “We’ll figure it out. But if you don’t tell FUC what happened, we’ll be in even more danger.”

  Oliver bit his lip, and Ben resisted the urge to free it with his own teeth and tongue. “I don’t want to leave you,” Oliver finally admitted.

  Ben leaned his forehead against Oliver’s, so glad that Ol was almost the same height as him. “I don’t want you to leave either. If it was just you and me, I’d say yeah, fuck it, let’s keep walking. But they can’t do it.”

  “Okay.” Oliver huffed out a breath, and said in a stronger voice, “Okay. I’ll bring the cavalry as fast as I can.”

  “And I’ll keep them safe.”

  “And you. You have to promise to keep yourself safe too.”

  Ben leaned back slightly, just enough that he could swipe his thumb across Oliver’s cheek. “I promise I’ll do my best.”

  “Ben, I—”

  Ben put a finger over Oliver’s lips. “Not yet. When we’re out of crisis mode, okay?”

  Swallowing, Oliver nodded. “You’d better keep your promise.”

  Then he shifted, and flew off.

  12