Given (4 page)

“I've thought for quite some time that you're fit only for a lunatic asylum,” she said in fierce, low tones. “You have now confirmed it.” She balled her fingers into her palms to prevent them from wringing his neck when that ridiculous grin appeared on his face. Rolling her eyes in disgust, she glanced over her shoulder at the doorway to the hidden room. The runaways hadn't come out, but she could hear them moving around. She had to get them out, but… “Does your father know?”

“Of course,” he said, as if the question were superfluous. “He agreed with me that I should go.”

Mary Katherine closed her eyes. The most aggravating man ever, but she still didn't want to send him to a certain death. She took a deep breath and opened her eyes. “You have to get word to me that you're safe or otherwise.”

His brows shot up. “Or otherwise? You know as well as I do that if I'm captured, I won't contact anyone.”

“Jacob, this is no time to be stubborn.”

“If I'm safe, I'll let you know. The other, I'll decide at the time. Now get my cargo. I've got a long ride ahead of me.”

In total violation of protocol and years of training, Mary Katherine opened her mouth to ask where he was going, then closed it again when he directed a fierce scowl at her. Without another word, she walked over to the stack of barrels, triggered the mechanism, and entered the secret room. She'd given her charges some food, and they had placed it and their spare clothing in a rucksack. Ben pulled the bag over his shoulder as Sarah rose from her seat on the bed. Just a few days of regular meals had put some flesh on their rawboned frames, and they looked much better than they had when they arrived.

They exchanged brief hugs as they thanked her over and over again; then she brought them out of their hideaway to hand them over to Jacob. He greeted them brusquely and turned to walk out the cellar door, but she grabbed his arm again. “Remember, you promised me.” With a quick distracted nod, he agreed, and then they vanished into the darkness.

* * *

Jacob led Ben and Sarah out into the alley directly behind the boardinghouse. Gist Settlement had an intricate network of such alleyways, which greatly aided the secret network. They couldn't be more beneficial if they'd been planned that way, and Jacob suspected that they had. On the other hand, the slave catchers knew many of them as well. At this hour of the night, the only people out and about were the underground and the pursuing slave catchers.

They played an elaborate cat-and-mouse game, which, considering the stakes, really wasn't a game at all. Jacob paused at the sound of a window opening. The buildings on this block were all shops with living accommodations on the second floor. Apparently someone's bedroom window faced the alley directly above them. The window was being opened, perhaps to capture a stray breeze. Considering the lingering heat and humidity of the day, it wasn't unusual to sleep with the windows open, but Jacob wasn't taking any chances. He stopped, flattening his body in a doorway. Ben and Sarah did likewise. As they stood there, his mind wandered to the subject on which it spent almost all his waking hours.

Sweet Kate
. He hadn't planned to kiss her the other night. He'd had a hard enough time resisting her when she was in her usual prim-and-proper, high-necked dresses. But there she was in her bedclothes and with her hair hanging loose down her back, and he'd succumbed like a drowning man. He hadn't been able to think of anything else but that she was warm and soft with sleep and that she'd just got out of bed. It should have been his bed. Shaking his head, he forced his thoughts away from Mary Katherine before his physical response embarrassed him in front of Ben and Sarah. He listened closely for a few more moments, but hearing no sound, he gestured for them to follow him.

They hadn't gone very far when he was forced to pause again as someone strolled down the street that ran perpendicular to the alley. Their presence was more than a bit suspicious at this hour, but before long he recognized the staggering gait and tuneless whistling of the town drunk. He waved for the couple to continue following as he moved stealthily from shadow to shadow. He'd perfected the technique of melting into the darkness long ago, but it was usually very difficult to do when he had cargo. This couple, though, was obviously skilled in subterfuge, and they had no problem keeping up with him. More quickly than he had expected, they made it to the old, abandoned barn on the outskirts of town, where he'd concealed his wagon. Ben and Sarah climbed into the back of the wagon, and he covered them with a tarpaulin he kept for that purpose. Ideally he wouldn't be stopped and searched, though his cover story that he was out to see a woman of the adventuress sort should hold.

His horse was an old hand at this type of work, and it easily kept the wagon at a slow, steady pace until they were well out into the countryside. Then he sped up, but only marginally. All too aware that this trip was in all likelihood a trap, he kept his shotgun at the ready. He listened and watched closely but couldn't detect anyone following him. Either they were very good—and there was really no reason for a slave catcher to bother, when they could simply pull him over and search his wagon at any time—or they weren't run-of-the-mill slave catchers. The greatest risk to him, of course, was the distinct possibility that he might be taken to the South as a slave himself. That had been happening more and more to free blacks, even when they weren't part of the underground.

Jacob urged his horse to greater speed. He now sensed that he was being pursued. And there was a strange smell floating through the air. He'd catch brief hints of it, but then, just as suddenly as it had come, it would disappear again. He flicked the reins once more, wanting the horse to move even faster. He felt a panic he'd never felt before on the line, or anywhere else for that matter, and it took all his willpower not to Become and attack. What he would attack, he didn't know, but the urge was there, and it grew increasingly stronger every time that unidentified scent wafted close. Was it coming from the slave catchers?

His hands tightened on the reins, and his body tensed as he fought his very natural urge. “Now is not the time, man,” he muttered to himself. He took several deep, even breaths, minute tremors moving through his body as he fought to control himself. Eyes trained between the horse's ears, he continued to breathe deeply and tried to concentrate only on the job at hand—getting Sarah and Ben to their next stop. The ploy seemed to be working.

And then he noticed that the strange smell was gone. And gradually his desire to attack was gone as well. He shook his head in confusion. “What in all that is holy is going on?” he said softly.

He pushed it from his mind and continued his journey. It had occurred to him that there was one reason the slave catchers hadn't apprehended him yet: they were waiting until he made contact with the next conductor. And that conductor would be a prize too: he was the sheriff of Fayette County. Jacob grinned broadly as he thought of the trick he had in store for his pursuers. If he could pull it off, he could leave them as befuddled as Kate always left him.

He continued through the nearly moonless night. So, in the dark, he was almost on the covered bridge before he saw it. He pulled back on the reins to slow the horse to a walk. He then stamped his feet three times to alert his passengers. He slowed even more once they were inside the covered bridge, and came to a complete halt midway through. The wagon shook sharply as the trapdoor opened, and then there was a loud
thump
as someone banged on the undercarriage. At that agreed-upon signal, Jacob clucked his tongue, snapped the reins, and continued on across the bridge.

He glanced back over his shoulder down at the river below to see the next conductor waving at him from a small boat. At that particular signal, he snapped the reins again sharply and picked up his pace considerably. Before long he reached a fork in the road. He took the right branch and continued on to a house with a large barn that he'd used before. He jumped down from the seat to open the barn door and then drove the wagon into the barn.

From the wagon, he grabbed a lantern that he lit. He quickly unharnessed his horse from the wagon and led it into a stall. After giving the animal some feed and water, he looked at the horse he'd left in an adjacent stall on a previous trip. His thoughts turning back to the unseen slave catchers and the disquieting scent, he decided to forgo his earlier plan of riding the second horseback the way he'd come. The urge to investigate was too strong to ignore. And the best way to do that was to Become.

There was a roar of excitement in his head and the thrill of the hunt coursing through his veins, and he denied neither. It was time for the hunt. Slowly he began to undress, folding each garment neatly as he took it off. Each movement was deliberate as he tried to control the excitement. If he failed to control it, he would murder someone, and that was not his purpose. He only wanted to explore. And if he had an opportunity to do more than that, well, then he'd probably take it.

Completely nude now, he made his way outside and to the back of the barn, away from the slim possibility of prying eyes. He thought about Mary Katherine again and wondered if a woman like her could understand and accept Eshu. She was just so prim and proper, and he'd noticed that she was oftentimes rigid in her thinking.

Can't worry about that tonight, though
. He winced and brought all his attention back to the present situation. Closing his eyes, he focused inward. The growl began low in his throat as he concentrated on Becoming the other one, the one that defined who he was as much as the human did. It was what marked him as Eshu, and he was as comfortable being one as he was being the other.

He bent at the waist so that his hands touched the ground, and then he watched as, slowly, one of those hands turned into a massive, shaggy paw with claws lethal enough to cut a man clean to the bone. His arm soon began to change, thick black fur sprouting out to completely cover his skin, while burgeoning muscles took root beneath. As he completed one side, he began to concentrate on his torso and stomach, roaring in anger as internal organs and bones were painfully displaced and rearranged to accommodate the thing he was becoming.

Last to go were the human head and feet, the sections of his body that were the least painful to change. More claws distended, canine teeth lengthened to dangerous, steely points, and Jacob the Man became Jacob the Beast. Once finished, he stood to his full height, one that was awesome to behold. Uncaring who heard, he let out a triumphant roar, his muzzle opened wide and shaking with the effort as large deposits of drool pooled and stretched to drop to the ground. As always, Becoming made him heady with a sense of freedom that he knew he could never feel as a man.

All right, Jacob, enough showing off
. And with that, he went down to all fours and loped back toward the woods in search of his prey. The bear, every fierce inch of him, was on the hunt.

Jacob knew that what he was about to do was dangerous, but if at all possible, he needed to see who had been following him. If, as he suspected, new slave catchers had entered the area, he needed to let other underground members know. He backtracked over the way he had come only minutes before. Reaching the cover of the woods, he slowed his pace and tried to move with as little noise as possible toward where he'd last sensed them when he was a man.

He snorted.
I love Becoming bear
. Cheetah didn't appeal to him as it did Grace, and he wasn't one to vary his choices like his father and Matthew did.

But of course, as bear,
stealth
was completely out of the question. It was all he could do not to go crashing madly through the woods like the animal he was. And with paws as big as platters, a backside that never met a branch it didn't love to brush up against, and a grace that was, well, nonexistent, as little noise as possible was the best he could manage.

Suddenly he stopped, every instinct he had shouting out a warning. Nose lifted to the air, he scented his prey. There were three of them. He could smell their separate odors, yet they also smelled the same. He lifted his muzzle higher, taking deeper breaths. Yes, he'd been correct. It was the same odor he'd smelled earlier, the same one that had had such a curious effect on him. He sniffed again. The men smelled of sulfur and—another sniff—and yes, that was it: brimstone. They smelled of sulfur and brimstone. After moving toward the scents, he stopped at a point where he could see them, but one at which he could not be detected. Angry and panicked now, he took a long look at them. The words
kill or be killed
burst into his head and quickly—terrifyingly—became a deadly chant he could not cast out.