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 gophers, 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