A Different Kind of Animal

Chapter Ten

But he was faster and had the door open before she could even press her finger down.

“Oh my God! Leo, don’t!” she yelled, and he looked back over his shoulder to stare at her, his eyes filled with nothing but a fiery determination.

“I knew you’d try that,” he said rationally. “It wouldn’t help me very much if I got injured from jumping out of the car at this speed. If you could slow down, I’d appreciate it.”

“You are crazy!” she screamed as she slammed on the brake, causing them both to lurch forward and making Leo nearly fall out his open door.

The huge scary Jeep behind them had been following too closely and was forced to swerve into the other lane to avoid back-ending them. She got a quick glance of the driver making angry faces as he flew back into their lane and then drove into the ditch.

Oh my God, that guy’s getting out!

From beside her, Leo whispered urgently, “Be safe,” and then he was sprinting up into the cow field beside them.

“Leo!” she yelled after him, but he was absurdly fast and was already too far away for her to be sure he’d heard her.

The enormous man who’d been driving the Jeep was now pursuing Leo up over the hill, carrying what looked like a large hunting rifle. Arabelle could only stare in mute horror for a minute before gritting her teeth and quickly maneuvering her own car into the ditch and then jumping out and following after them.

No way was she letting Leo get all torn up again—or worse. He wasn’t going to fight his own battles as long as she was around.

*     *     *

Leo felt badly for how upset Arabelle must have been when he’d left her, but there was no way he was going to allow anything bad to happen to her. And the only way he could think of how to do that was to lead Big Ben as far away from her as possible. He could only hope that she’d at least stayed in the car, though he doubted that she’d driven away like he’d asked her to.

The cow field he was in was enormous, and the edge of the forest was still a hundred yards away. The whole time he was running he was an easy target, with no cover to shield him from Big Ben’s gun. At any moment, he expected to feel the bite of a tranq needle in his back, but one never came.

When he chanced a glance behind him, he could see that he had a good lead on the brute, who seemed weighed down by the sheer bulk of his muscles. While strong, Big Ben was definitely not agile or fast. But when you had a rifle, neither of those attributes were important, anyway, so Leo couldn’t feel safe until he had the woods around him.

He covered the remaining hundred yards quickly, hurdling over the wooden fence and dashing through the tree line, tugging off his gloves under the first tree he came to. He flexed his fingers and ran again, gracefully dodging trees in his path as he sprinted deeper and deeper into the forest, looking for a good tree to climb.

He finally found it, a large, burly oak with long, fat boughs that spread up and outward. Without slowing down, he lunged at the first branch and dug his claws in, flipping his legs over so that he could perch on top of it. Then he uncoiled like a spring to land on the next branch up, where he peered through the cover of leaves.

From there, he waited.

*     *     *

Big Ben paced himself, not wanting to run out of stamina before he even reached the kid. His chest wounds ached with each breath, reminding him of what the boy was capable of. He gritted his teeth and moved past the pain, focusing on the rage that pulsated throughout him.