Bulls Rush In Read Online Free PDF Page A

loud. “But don’t you want to find out what happened to the man who killed you? You do remember Samuel, don’t you? Isn’t that why you’re still here?”
    It was why I had told my story piece by piece, hoping Jim’s memories would come back to him gradually.
    Nothing else happened for a while. I didn’t move. The coffee was all over the floor, but Samuel’s coffee had been dirt cheap and stale anyhow, so I didn’t bother to get any more. There was a painting on the wall in front of me, one of the few in Samuel’s house. It showed a beautiful Latina-woman in a gossamer-looking bright orange gown, lying on the shore of a beach as if she’d just washed up on it, her long black hair spread around her in a nimbus that was wreathed with seaweed and shells. I didn’t recognize the artist, but I did recognize Jim Reedy’s reflection when it appeared in the transparent film covering the picture.
    Jim—or some fragment of the man—spoke from behind me. “Tell me.”
    *  *  *
    “Jimbo knew Luis,” Samuel’s voice was deeper, and it didn’t sound uncertain anymore. “He stayed at the house sometimes. He kept coming round after Luis died. He wanted to put me in some home.” Samuel’s feet emerged from the burning fragments of his shoes, only they weren’t feet any longer. They were large, thick hooves. Samuel stamped his right hoof, and the grass coverings I’d made for the punji pits dislodged as the earth around us shook violently.
    “Did he suspect something?” I asked. “When he saw the spray-painted word on your driveway, then saw the spray paint cans all around Ben and Colton’s bodies? Or was he just afraid you’d tell someone about him and Luis?”
    Vista Verde  was a small, conservative West Virginia town. Would a macho deputy sheriff have been able to be openly gay there? How in touch or at peace was this Jimbo with his relationship with Luis?
    “NO!” I didn’t know if Samuel was answering me or refusing to answer me. His horns, half formed, elongated into curving, sharp points. Muscles began to ripple and twine beneath Samuel’s slack skin, especially around his chest and shoulders and neck. His bodily hair continued to thicken into a black hide, and a tough, black, callused material began to form around the ridges of his hands. His nose became a snout, his mouth stretched wide, and small jets of flame shot out from his nostrils.
    I stepped back toward the tree, but it was too late for that. Samuel charged. I wasn’t in a ready stance, but I wasn’t exactly unready either. My right foot was in front, my left foot back with the heel slightly up, and I was holding my palms up in a placating gesture that put them close to the hilts of my blades. I surged into a fast draw, slipping my left thumb against the wakizashi’s hand guard and twisting the short sword and the sheath, positioning the cutting edge of the blade even while I drew it one-handed.
    The wakizashi deflected a strike from something that was half hand and half hoof and had a long reach either way, sparks and blood and bits of rock hard callus flying. My feet were slightly diagonal to him, and I moved into a sloppy hiraki-ashi sidestep. I almost slipped on the wet grass as I swiveled onto my back foot, but I still pivoted so that the angry mass that was Samuel surged past me. Both of my hands were on the hilt of my sword now, the bottom hand guiding as I went with the whirling motion and plunged the blade into Samuel’s back, between his left shoulder muscle and his neck.
    Samuel screamed and stumbled, his weight and momentum tearing the hilt out of my hands. He blundered forward into a kneeling position, squarely between me and the bucket of homemade liquid nitrogen.
    “It’s still not too late to stop this,” I told him. I didn’t sound particularly convincing, and I was no longer quite as conflicted now that my blood was up and the danger Samuel represented was undeniable.
    Samuel tried to reach backward where the