Given

by Riley, Lisa G.

  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.

  The instinct to protect his people and kill indiscriminately, shredding throats and ripping out entrails, warred viciously with his common sense instinct. Killing three white men would only bring trouble for the people of his town and for the underground’s cause—not to mention
that he feared it would do something irreversible to his soul. With flaring nostrils and short, angry breaths, he watched them—watched the three men who he sensed were nothing but masses of evil covered with skin. Their malevolence was palpable, reaching out and touching him as if with a large hand. His big body shuddered in revulsion, his mind automatically rejecting the contact.

  The three men had dismounted from their horses and were searching the area just off the side of the road. Jacob recognized none of them, which told him they were new to the area. He deliberately stepped on a branch, making it crack loudly in the stillness. His eyes glowed with satisfaction when all three men spun around, trying to figure out where the sound had come from.

  “You hear that?” one of the men asked the other two in an almost fearful whisper. Jacob surmised that he was the one most easily frightened, therefore, probably the one with the least amount of say, if he had any at all.

  “Obviously we did, Tom. We’re not deaf. The sound came from over there.” This was said with bravado by the man Jacob assumed to be the leader, as he pointed in the general direction of the woods where Jacob was hidden. “Whoever is in there, you come on out. Now!”

  Jacob froze, going as still and as silent as the night.

  “You hear me, you damned niggers?” the presumed leader demanded. “We know all about your plan to escape, so you just come on out peaceably. If you don’t, we’ll be forced to come in after you, and you won’t like that.”

  The third man said nothing. Just cocked his gun and fired.

  And he’d be the most dangerous one. Jacob had all the evidence he needed for that conclusion. All action, no talk. The bullet had come nowhere near him, but it was still his signal to leave. He’d gotten what he’d come for, but in preparing to go back to the barn, he couldn’t resist enlightening them. Throwing his large head back on his neck, he let out a roar loud enough to reverberate through the woods and to the town. He watched the slave catchers as they, with wide eyes and frantic, clumsy motions, scrambled, hurrying to get to their horses.

  Jacob turned to go, then paused as he heard one of the slave catchers say urgently, “No! Don’t shoot blindly, you idiot! You’ll just make it madder.”

  “What does it matter? We can take care of any animal that—”

  “Shut up! Now is not the time.”

  Jacob was still in the woods as he heard the three gallop away. As he continued on his journey back to the barn, he thought about sharing this particular tale with his father and brother. He wouldn’t even object if his sister insisted on sitting in (as she usually did) for this one. He needed to let them all know that they had some new slave catchers in town who were good enough to track him for miles, mostly undetected. The desire to smile quickly returned when he thought about whom he would notify first. A quick dunk in the creek should rid him of the smell, an odor he knew would tempt Mary Katherine to speak aloud the accusation of beast he was sure she’d been calling him in her head. After that, he’d take the short trip to see the lovely lady, Miss Day. She’d be happy to know he hadn’t been caught in the trap. Now the question was who had set it.

  Chapter Three

  After everyone left, Mary Katherine took her time tidying the simply furnished hidden room. It held only an iron bedstead, a chest of drawers, and a washbasin. The plain, whitewashed walls glowed from the light of the lantern, giving the room a coziness it would otherwise have lacked, though the colorful quilt on the bed did brighten its stark confines somewhat. She changed the linen in a practiced motion and emptied the chamber pot. Finally, realizing that she was shaking like a leaf, she sat down on the edge of the bed.

  She didn’t probe too deeply as to why she was so worried about a man who did nothing but aggravate her. She’d be equally concerned about any of her brethren of the underground. At least that was what she told herself. After all, she was even worried about Cameron, and she didn’t really know the man. She stretched out on the newly made bed, intending only to take a short nap.

  *

  Instead she was awakened near dawn by the sound of someone tapping out the new code on the cellar door. Trembling in her eagerness, she sprang from the bed and rushed over to open the door and found Jacob standing there.

  “Well, you told me to let you know if I came out whole,” he drawled when she just stared at him.

  Mary Katherine resisted the urge to hug him, but it was a near thing. She gestured for him to enter the room, then secured the door. “What happened? Was it a trap?”

  He nodded. “But I was able to get away.”

  She barely dared to ask. “And the cargo?”

  That grin broke out over his face again. “Safe as can be. So what is my reward for my cleverness in not only escaping a trap but for saving our cargo as well?”

  Mary Katherine had been about to say something, but at that moment Jacob simply lowered his head and fastened his mouth on hers. Any other thoughts she might have had went out of her head the moment their lips met. This was not like their first kiss. Then Jacob had been playing, teasing her. Now there was a physical urgency and force to his kiss and the way his arms quivered, even though he wasn’t holding her tightly. Oddly enough, his restraint was even more arousing.

  From the way his body shuddered against hers, she could tell that his restraint was costing him. This knowledge compelled her to press closer; one arm went around his neck, and the other around his heavily muscled back. Apparently he took this as a signal to pursue his suit, because his right hand slipped down from its place around her waist to her hips. Before she knew it, he was stroking and squeezing her buttocks—and pulling her closer. Even through the layers of her gown and petticoat, she could feel his large hands as though he were touching her bare flesh. His engorged penis pressed against her, and the evidence of his desire heightened hers further.

  Mary Katherine couldn’t hold back her groans as excitement coursed through her. She began to grind against him, instinctively trying to press his erection against the center of her arousal. But he was too tall, and despite her frenzied efforts, she couldn’t get close enough to the ecstasy his thick penis offered. It seemed then that Jacob was sexually experienced enough to know what she needed, for he slipped his thigh between her legs. She clung tighter to him, grinding her throbbing cleft against his thigh. Harder and harder, she pressed herself against his thigh, desperate for something.

  Pleasure surged through her, winding her nerves tighter and tighter, until she thought she’d die if she didn’t stop—and knew for certain that she’d die if she did. The muscles of her stomach clenched as she rode him. Closer and closer, the feeling came, until suddenly it broke free. Ecstasy swept through her body in waves so intense that Mary Katherine thought she would lose consciousness, and she screamed out her pleasure in shock and fear.

  She stood in his embrace for long moments afterward, her head resting against his chest, too embarrassed to look up at him. She felt the laughter rumbling up through his massive chest before she heard it.

  “Mary Katherine, you’ve nothing to be embarrassed about, but you do realize you have to marry me now.”

  She raised her head abruptly from his chest and moved out of his arms. She couldn’t look at him as she hurriedly straightened her clothes. “I-I know no such thing, Mr. Adams. Thank you for letting me know that you’re safe. Now I have a busy day ahead of me tomorrow. Good night.”

  He stared at her for a long moment, as though he meant to argue. Then he shook his head and walked over to the cellar door. “You are going to marry me,” he told her resolutely. He turned and walked out the door before she had a chance to rebut his comment.

  This was a good thing, because she didn’t have a clue as to what she would say. She had behaved scandalously, and she was frankly surprised that he was still asking her to marry him. Maybe it was just out of habit—after all, he’d been doing it for months. Mary Katherine yawned, feeling a pleasant lassitude of a sort that she’d never felt before.

  She’d sleep well f
or what little remained of the night, and she was not going to spend another second of it thinking about Jacob Adams.

  *

  Jacob sat, his elbows resting on the well-worn maple table that was in the middle of their kitchen. The coffee he sipped from an enamelware mug was strong and bitter, just as he liked it. He hoped his sister had some milk in the icebox. She always complained that his coffee was undrinkable without it. The kitchen was the only family living space on the first floor of the building that housed their carpentry shop. The bedrooms and living room were on the second floor. He traced one finger along the grain of the tabletop. They’d had the table for as long as he could remember, and his father had talked about replacing it for nearly as long. Jacob looked up as his father entered the kitchen. “Good morning, Papa,” he said as he took another sip of coffee.

  His father, Caleb, stared at him for a moment and then walked over to the stove to pour a cup of coffee. He raised the pot to offer more to Jacob, who nodded his acceptance.

  “You’re up early this morning, Son. How did it go last night?” Caleb asked as he poured coffee into Jacob’s cup.

  Jacob rubbed his forehead wearily. “Actually I haven’t been to bed yet.”