“Go in there and beat the shit out of Eli. He shares lawyers with Microsoft; he can have you sued back to the Stone Age.”

“I don’t care. It’d be worth it if I put him in a body cast for six months.”

“No it won’t. I know you want to get this guy, but this isn’t the way you do it.”

He scowled at him, feeling the rage building up in him, desperately wanting out. And the horrible shame of it was he wasn’t really angry at Paris but Eli, and yet Paris was here, blocking his way, straight in the path of his pent up rage. “There isn’t a way to do it, Par. I can never get him - he has lawyers, power, and money on his side. I bet he could stab his girlfriend to death in front of a bus full of nuns, and I wouldn’t be able to get him convicted. He’s fucking bulletproof.”

“No he’s not. Even Ken Lay eventually got arrested.”

“When it seemed like the public needed a sacrifice to take the heat off of bigger people. Eli’s the top dog of his circle; I don’t see him going down like that. Now would you get out of my fucking way?”

Paris crossed his arms over his chest, unconsciously flexing his impressive muscles, and looked down at him almost imperiously, which he could do easily since he had almost six inches on him. “No. I’m not going to let you throw away your career and your life because of this prick. We’ll figure out something -”

“No we won’t. This fucker is gonna keep exploiting kids and hiding behind his wealth, and we’re all totally fucked until he screws with the kid of someone richer and more powerful than him. Now get out of my fucking way.”

Paris didn’t move, and his eyes narrowed dangerously. “What if I don’t? Are you willing to hurt me?”

Paris was certainly more fit than he was, more muscular, but Roan knew he had it on him in both experience and technique. Paris hadn’t been in many fights in his life - in fact to his knowledge, he’d never been in one - because he never needed to be. He was always the attractive, popular jock, charming as hell, and no one would have dared challenge him about anything. But Roan had grown up the diseased freak, and he had learned to fight early and fight hard even before he joined the police force. He knew he could take down guys bigger and stronger than him, because he had before; hell, the redneck he roughed up was almost Paris’s size. Paris had to know that in a straight fight, Roan would have no trouble winning, no matter how much stronger he was.

And that was probably the point - he was trying to shock him out of it. It only partially worked - he knew what he was doing, so he wasn’t shocked. In fact, he was a bit resentful over the manipulation, but he wrestled the black beast of his anger back. He didn’t like being manipulated, but he would never consciously hurt anyone he didn’t feel deserved it, and Paris didn’t. (Eli still did; oh hell yeah.) “How the hell can you ask that? Better yet, how can you not want to beat the shit out of him?”

“Because I don’t see violence as an answer. Now, what you said about the public needing a sacrifice … that has me intrigued. Maybe we can work that angle.”

Whatever residual anger was festering in his gut started draining away as he studied Paris in confusion. “What?” Paris might not have believed in physical violence, but he could be frighteningly cunning, enough so that Roan sometimes thought he missed his calling as a lawyer or a super villain.

But before he could tell him, they both heard the front door open and turned towards the noise. “I thought I heard voices out here,” a woman’s voice said, and even though they couldn’t see her until she stepped out on the porch, Roan knew by the almost overwhelming sandalwood scent that it was Rainbow.

As soon as she saw Paris, her cornflower eyes widened and she gasped. “Paris! It’s been so long! I thought you’d forgotten us!”

“Forget you? Never!” He replied, giving her a thousand watt smile and cranking up the charm.

Witnessing Paris turn on his charm and its subsequent effects on people was a scary thing. Rainbow had already forgotten he was here - she was focused solely on Paris as he came up the steps, his voice light but pitched low and vaguely mesmerizing, and he took her hand as soon as possible, pretty much cementing her captive status. Sometimes it was like watching a cobra hypnotize a bird.

Rainbow was Rainbow Grunwalt (yes, her actual name, the poor thing), a woman in her mid-thirties who was the oldest and most senior amongst the church’s female residents. She was a plain woman with the soft, slightly empty eyes of a rabbit, her chin almost absent and her cheeks puffed out to make up for it. Her hair was long and curly, so much so that if it was short she’d have had a natural perm, but as it was she kept it so long it fell to the center of the back, and she usually kept it in a long ponytail held together by an ornate clip or ribbon - today it was a rhinestone butterfly clip that glimmered like fool’s gold in the curly dun brown waves of her hair. She wore an ankle length, gauzy skirt striped like the colors of the rainbow (this somehow reinforced her status as a sad Human being - dressing to fit her name), and a tie dyed peasant blouse that was mostly pink, white, and blue. She looked a bit like a hippie, and often acted like one too, but when it came down to it, she was simply a pathetic true believer; she honestly believed all the religious shit she spouted, with all her heart. Eli was mostly a con artist, spouting shit to ream other people, but Rainbow was one of those who honestly believed this all somehow made sense. Roan actually felt bad for her, and he hated feeling bad for anyone involved in this shit, but Rainbow was as much an innocent as the kids Eli was suckering. She was one of those who would willingly drink the Kool-Aid.

Paris continued to schmooze Rainbow, and she looked at him with slightly glassy eyes, head cocked to one side like a parakeet, and Roan wondered if he could step on the porch without stepping in the brains that must have oozed out of Rainbow’s ears. Did everyone Paris charmed look that goofy? Did he ever look that goofy? If he did, he hoped there were no witnesses.

He waited for a pause in the conversation, and then held up the photo of Danny that he’d gotten from his parents. “Rainbow, it’s vital that we find this boy. Do you recognize him?”

She didn’t immediately look at the photo, even though he was holding it up into her line of sight. (Paris’s charisma was a potentially lethal drug - it was shit like this that convinced him of that.) Finally her eyes tracked over to the photo, and she studied it for a moment, her brow furrowing and making her look very much her age. “I … don’t think so, no.”

“You don’t know?” Roan repeated flatly. He didn’t think she was lying, she was a bit of a ditz, he just didn’t like how tentative she sounded.

She smiled faintly, although it collapsed into a grimace. “I’m not very good with faces.”

“You remember me,” Paris offered, smiling.

She gave him a playful slap on the shoulder. “Well, of course I remember you! Who wouldn’t?”

Indeed; Paris was one of those super memorable types, but then again, people generally remembered people they were attracted to, their desires given form and faces. At least it spoke well of Rainbow that she wasn’t into kids.

Paris caught her attention again, hypnotizing her with his flashing eyes and sexy voice, and she paid no attention to Roan as he slipped behind her and entered the church.

The interior was just a bland corridor, a house like any and all others, with blond wood paneling and the occasional knickknack on small side tables. The differences began to kick in once you passed through the “waiting area” (living room), where framed art depicting various cats - all big; no domestic housecats here - hung on all the stucco walls, over velvet sofas and a fireplace too clean to have ever in its life been used. Someone was burning incense - a cloying, perfume-y dirt scent, like patchouli - and he couldn’t help but sneeze. The bass of the music throbbed through his feet, made him feel like an open wound, and he knew he could track it by vibrations alone.

“I don’t recall inviting any fags,” a familiar male voice said archly, trying hard to offend and wound.

When he was done sneezing (the incense totally fucked up his sense of smell, and somehow he didn’t think it was coincidence), he wiped his nose on the back of his hand, and looked at the man with a nasty little grin. “Hello, Smithers. I see the surgery to dislodge your lips from Eli’s ass went well.”

Stovak just stared at him, confused by him calling him Smithers. Guy Stovak was an odious little man, a whippet thin, almost sepulchral Human being with gaunt, pasty flesh stretched over a skeleton a little too close to the surface, like it was trying to burst through his skin and run away. Everything about him seemed narrow and excessively angular, from his thinning sandy blond hair to his knife blade of a face, to the pipe cleaners that other people might call legs. His eyes seemed porcine, too small and too close, glittering like wet glass beneath the shadow of his brows. He was the church’s main lawyer, Eli’s faithful “lieutenant”, and a fairly rancid homophobe who seemed to have a special hatred for him, although Roan had never figured out why. Paris had suggested ”maybe he’s secretly attracted to you” which was a thought so nauseating it could make him wake up in a cold, dry heaving sweat.

Finally the Smithers reference clicked - he saw it behind his tiny little eyes - and he sneered, his thin upper lip curling up enough that Roan thought for one crazy moment he was about to bust out an Elvis impersonation. “Very funny. What the hell are you doing here, McKitchen?” A deliberate mispronunciation of his last name, delivered with such catty venom he briefly felt like responding, as camp as possible, ”Girlfriend, pul-lease!” He was not a flaming gay stereotype; he was not feminine, nor did he lisp. But something about Stovak’s obvious revulsion at him having the temerity to be gay made him want to camp it up, becoming a flaming stereotype nightmare, just so he’d run screaming from the room.

But for the moment, Roan manage to squelch the urge, and showed Stovak the picture of Danny. “I have reason to believe this minor may be on the premises. I don’t need to tell you what a shitstorm of trouble your boss could be in if he’s sheltering runaway minors. Or worse.”

Stovak barely even glanced at the picture, his face seemingly puckering in his distaste. He had one of those kind of faces that looked like he was always smelling something bad anyways, so now he looked really disgusted. “I don’t like your implication, detective. We are law abiding citizens, and as a place of worship, we are open to all, regardless of age.”

Slimy little uptight weasel. But at least he said something he could use. “You’re right. Excuse me while I go worship.” He spun on his heels and went deeper inside the “church”, following the thudding bass down a couple of hallways, until it lead to the double doors leading into the “auditorium”. Really it was just a large room with a high roof, but hey, close enough.

Stovak followed him all the way, blustering and spluttering, saying something about “invasion of privacy”, but if he wanted to try and sue him for something, he was free to. After all, what the fuck did he have? A toaster named Terry, an obsolete computer, and a house with a shattered back door. Fuck yeah, he was rolling in shit! Eli would certainly want it.

He shoved open the auditorium doors, and found himself looking at a seething mass of dancing kids, as gel lights swirled and gothic-industrial dance music pounded and thrummed from an undeniably expensive sound system he couldn’t see in this unevenly lit, cavernous room. It didn’t matter that raves were passé; this was probably very close to one, and it had an almost full capacity.

And while the participants were mostly young, some were older than you’d think a crowd like this would attract.

“What the fuck is this?” he growled at Stovak, turning to face him so sharply that the skeletal lawyer actually backed up a couple steps. What, was he afraid of getting some gay on his Prada suit? “Some kind of infected mixer?”

Skeletor’s look was equal parts scolding and arrogant. “I have no idea what you’re implying -”

“Yes, you do. You can light all the fucking incense you want, but I smelled infecteds on my way in here, and I still smell them all over this crowd. If one kid gets infected in this pedophile mash up of yours -”

“That’s slander!” Stovak snapped, recovering his tattered dignity in indignation. Roan had been aware that Paris had been standing in the auditorium doorway for the last thirty seconds, not so much watching the crowd as watching them. Stovak was unaware of him, or he would have freaked out at having been roughly between two gay men. “And if you persist in bad mouthing my client you will find yourself served with a restraining order -”

“Yeah, bring this to court, asshole! I can’t wait to talk to a judge about this place.”

Paris suddenly let out an exuberant whoop on his way to the dance floor, grabbing the arm of a pretty girl standing near the wall and pulling her out with him onto the floor. Stovak jumped slightly, in spite of the fact that Front Line Assembly had almost completely drowned Paris out. And in spite of the generally crowded floor, Paris was an instant star within less than a minute.

Paris wasn’t the world’s best dancer, but he was graceful, physical, and fearless - in other words, he made up for what he lacked in actual technique with raw passion, and that was more than enough. A small circle of women began forming around him, with him as the eye of the hurricane, and some of the less confident or gifted dancers started to drift off to the sidelines, including men who had been abandoned in favor of Paris. Many teenage boys suddenly remembered to be totally self-conscious.

Stovak sneered at the spectacle. “Your … friend’s the equal opportunity whore, isn’t he?”

One girl snaked her arms under Paris’s shirt as she grabbed him tight enough to mimic his moves as he made them, and he didn’t automatically discourage her. Roan felt the slightest twinge of jealousy, and remembered what they said about the pheromone load being at its peak when the virus was in its transitional phase - the virus wanted so badly to propagate itself it made you more sexually appealing than ever.

And then the genius of what Paris was doing suddenly dawned on him. Paris had come to distract, and that was what he was doing … and there were loads of teenage boys now off the dance floor, looking on from the sidelines in a wide swath of emotions ranging from relief to open, seething hate as Paris danced with and captivated their girlfriends. Roan smiled, almost laughing. He had to remember to give Paris a big kiss for this later.

Roan faced Stovak, and said, with just a hint of a lisp, “He’s just flamboyant. You know how we are.” Stovak recoiled in disgust, and this time Roan did allow himself to laugh at this petty little man.

Leaving a horrified Stovak behind, he headed for the crowd now ringing the side walls, searching for Danny.

He chuckled faintly. “You’re such a blast of sunshine up the ass, Roan. That’s why I miss you.”

“You coming on to me?”

“Ha. I was wondering what you knew about the virus child mutations theory.”

Roan found himself wondering where the hell that came from. “What? You mean that Weekly World News bullshit?”

“So you don’t believe it’s possible.”

“That new strains of cat can arise from virus children? Fuck no. They’ve never proved it, and I don’t see how it could be done anyways. Our DNA incorporates the virus, but no one’s altered into some weird half cat - half Human thing. How would that even be possible? Most virus children are lucky not to be deformed or developmentally disabled in some way.” Their odds of being productive, functional citizens wasn’t as slim as surviving a tiger strain infection, but the odds still weren’t great. Sikorski had to know this. “Why are you even asking?”

He sighed, and paused long enough that Roan knew that Sikorski was considering whether or not to tell him. Ultimately, he did. “The coroner was able to recover a partial bite mark from the body, and it doesn’t match any known cat teeth formation. Combined with the partial paw print - which also doesn’t match with anything known - the conclusion seems obvious.”

“Chupacabra.” Relief washed through him, with such intensity it was like he’d been holding his breath for hours. Paris was cleared; Paris hadn’t done this. But he was careful not to let it come out in his voice, because then Sikorski would have known he’d been hiding something. At least it wasn’t hard for him to compartmentalize his emotions - growing up as a ward of the state had given him very early training on how to do that.

“I can’t believe it. I think you’ve become more of a smart ass since you left the force. I didn’t think that was possible.”

“No one has ever proven that alternate cat strains exist. All that anyone’s proven is there’s some cats out there with malformed teeth. Or worse yet, wannabes who pay dentists to grind their teeth into fangs.” Sadly there were many of those, more than he ever would have guessed.

Sikorski sighed impatiently. “But we know that no wannabe with budget fangs ripped out DeSilvo’s throat and ate the dog.”

“Granted. So why do you jump to mutant hell beast when the answer is more likely to be a cat with poor dental work?”

Roan could hear Sikorski’s chair creak as he shifted his weight, and as the silence dragged on, he could hear fingers clicking on a keyboard, people talking in the background (including a perp angrily and profanely denying some charges), and the normal hum of a busy police station. He didn’t miss it; honestly, he wasn’t even sure why he became a cop, except it pissed an awful lot of people off. Yes, he was apparently so angry he liked to piss other people off. He was sure a therapist would have a field day with him and all his issues, but he just didn’t have the time or the money to bitch to a professional. What else was a boyfriend for anyways? Finally, Sikorski said, “This is all just so fucked up, Roan. And this was a cop. No matter his reputation, no one is happy about it.”

“His reputation?”

“Apparently there were some … issues before he retired. He and his partner were accused by a suspect of taking money from a crime scene, and IA never found anything substantial, but the perp was pretty insistent, as was his girlfriend. But hey, drug dealers - you gotta expect ‘em to try shit like that now and again.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, but suddenly something nagged at him. What? Wait a minute - the sawed off shotgun. While the “ganstas” and gangbangers preferred Glocks and other handguns, the methheads generally liked things that were nastier, with more stopping power … like a sawed off shotgun. “What about the gun?”

“What gun?”

“The sawed off. Where had that come from?”

He scoffed. “Hell if I know. Hank had lots of guns.”

“And not all of them registered? How illegal of him.” Honestly, he had no idea why, but Roan felt this was important somehow. At the very least, it said something about him as a man.

“Are you implying something?”

“No, of course not,” he said, in a manner that would convince no one. “I just hate cases that turn out to be more complicated than they should be.”

“Who doesn‘t ?” Sikorski replied wearily. “Look, if you could just ask around … the community, see if there’s someone who knows of any cats with especially odd teeth, or maybe a hybrid -”

‘The Community‘? What a nice euphemism, especially since there really wasn’t such a thing as a “kitty community” (except online), although a lot of normals erroneously believed that. There were just bars and nightclubs where you could go, and they kept things low key, much like gay culture in the very early days. “I’ll see what I can find out,” he said, and hung up.

The first thing you did in any murder investigation was look into the background of the victim. In some crimes, especially ones that appeared perfectly random, it was all you had to go on; the victim’s life could lead you to the point where they intersected with their killer, and point the way to them. It didn’t always work that way, of course, especially in the random murders done by strangers. There were too many intersections, too many places where they could have crossed paths with their killer and never even realized it; there was even a chance that the killer didn’t encounter the victim at all until the second of the crime. Such was the case in drive bys where bullets were flying randomly, kitty killings (cats had no ability to premeditate), and the rare but shockingly popular sniper killings, where victims were picked simply by time, place, and circumstance.

What if there was more to this killing than random circumstance? A retired cop with a perfectly illegal sawed off shotgun and rumors of being crooked, killed by a cat who couldn’t be identified in any standard way. Wasn’t that a curious coincidence?

And that’s all it could be - coincidence. So why didn’t he think it was?

Paris came up behind him and put his arms around his chest. “Ooh, that was a heavy phone call, wasn’t it?” He rested his chin on his shoulder, pressing his cheek up against his, letting Roan feel the scrape of his stubble against his skin.

He sighed, relaxing into his embrace, so goddamn happy he didn’t have to keep lying to him he almost felt like laughing. “It was Sikorski,” he admitted, seeing no harm in telling him now. “It seems the declaration of it being a cougar was premature - the teeth marks and paw print don’t match any known cat. They’re thinking hybrid.”

“Hybrid? Has anyone proved they exist?”

“Not to my knowledge, no.” This close, Paris’s skin had an interesting smell, something like sand or bark, the hint of the exotic beneath the Human. He could tell people were infected by smell, but he couldn’t tell their strain, although Paris seemed to be living proof that tigers smelled different. Maybe it had to do with the alterations done to a body that managed to survive the strain of a tiger transformation, he really didn’t know for sure. But at least he was confident he’d know another tiger by smell alone.

“So they’re looking for a mythological creature?”

“Of course not - this is the police we’re talking about. They’re probably just looking for someone to frame.”

Paris sighed in an obviously amused way. “You’re like the gay Mike Hammer, aren’t you?”

“I preferred Sam Spade,” he deadpanned, moving his shoulders just enough so that Paris knew to let him go. He did and stepped back, looking at him with that wonderfully endearing lopsided half smile of his, the one that made everyone want to ruffle his hair before throwing him down and ripping his clothes off. Paris knew he was sexy, as he used to be quite a player back in his college days, but that’s how he got himself infected (by a woman, actually - oh, the irony). He claimed he was arrogant about his looks then, but that wasn’t true anymore - having a bit of a mental breakdown seemed to bring humility with it, as well as monogamy. Well, so far anyways.

Roan looked at him and raised his eyebrow, the question tacit. Paris had changed into worn, tight jeans, and a sleeveless apple green t-shirt that was so tight it looked painted on; you could see every muscle in his chest, how flat his stomach was. He still kept himself in good shape, although he wasn’t one of those grotesque gym rats who spent ten hours a day working out. He had regained some sense of vanity, but he hadn’t gone crazy with it. (No pun intended.) “What? I said I was going along to distract Rainbow.”

“Distract, not drive into a frenzy of lust.”

That made him grin. “I think someone’s projecting.”

The fact that he was probably right didn’t make it any more tolerable. “Get in the fucking car.”

“Yes sir, Mister crabby,” he replied, with a sarcastic little smirk. On their way out the door, he added, “Paging Doctor Feud. Doctor Freud to the white courtesy telephone please.” Smart ass.

The drive to the church was relatively quiet, with Paris simply fiddling with the radio, sometimes every three minutes. The drawback with these older muscle cars was if you wanted a proper stereo, you had to sink a lot of money into it, and they had sunk enough money into rebuilding these cars as it was. The additional problem was radio pretty much sucked.

Paris was being kind by giving him room and quiet to think, but after about ten minutes, he stared at the side of his face, brow furrowing in concentration. “This Sikorski thing is really bugging you, isn’t it?”

He shrugged, faintly shaking his head, trying to deny it to himself more than Paris. “I’m not a cop anymore, and I can’t interfere in a police investigation. Whatever he wants to pursue he’s free to do so. Why the fuck do I care?”

Paris reached across and lightly stroked the nape of his neck. Roan knew it was a weird erogenous zone to have, but Paris had found it immediately, and knew how to make him weak in the knees without even trying. He knew he was doing it right now to make him relax - and it was working - but he wished he wouldn’t. He felt like being tense right now. “Because you think he’s overlooking something. Maybe I didn’t know you back then, but I think you must have been one hell of a cop, Ro. “

“I wasn’t. I was the freak no one wanted to patrol with, and I got in trouble for cursing an out a redneck idiot who couldn‘t quite grasp the concept that you don‘t hit your wife and kids with a coffee table, so I quit. I have no idea what I was thinking joining the force. Me, dealing with the public? Can you imagine it?”

“You were - and still are - one of the best investigators I’ve ever seen. Okay, so your people skills are …”

“Shitty?”

“I was going to say lacking. But that’s what I’m here for, right?” He flashed him a smile that could have blinded the entire block, and in spite of himself, Roan smiled. Yes that was what he was here for - he had the ability to charm and schmooze, to flatter and network, skills that Roan had neither acquired nor cultivated. Paris could play the game, and the irony was Roan knew that he’d never been invited to play. Essentially, Paris was everything he wasn’t. After a moment, Paris asked, “You just cursed him out?”

Reluctantly, he shrugged. “Guy was drunk. Kinda clumsy.”

Paris stopped massaging the back of his neck, and gave him a mock stern look. “Clumsy how?”

“He may have walked into a wall while I was trying to handcuff him.”

“Just the once?”

“Repeatedly. But he honestly did fall down the stairs all by himself.”

“Repeatedly walking into walls can do that to a person.”

“So I hear.”

Well, he never claimed to be a saint, did he? He’d never been a crooked cop, but he’d be the first to admit he’d been a poor one. The more he thought about the DeSilvo case, the more he wondered if it did actually take one to know one.

The “church” was actually at the end of a residential block, as Eli had started it in a Victorian style home he’d inherited from a Great Aunt. This was a nice neighborhood, and people grew uneasy at sharing their space with a cult, so Eli generously bought up the surrounding houses and tore them down so he could build additions to the church on the new land. You could see the ghost of the old Victorian house at the front of the church - the peaked roof, the wide porch with the ornate but useless pillars at either end - but now it was a sprawling affair covering three parcels of land where homes used to be, all of it painted a calming blue-grey color that Paris informed him was “slate”. Part of one parcel had been paved to become a parking lot, but it was oddly full; in fact, there were cars parked all up and down the street, so much so that they had to park at the end of the opposite block and walk in. What was going on?

The closer they got to the church, the more they could hear the faint but obvious pounding of a bass line, music coming from the complex. An elderly woman with a nimbus of curly white hair and wearing a totally unseasonable turtleneck was walking a Pomeranian on a bright pink leash, and as they approached her, the dog started yipping and growling in a high pitched, annoying way. “You know what’s going on?” Roan asked her, nodding his head towards church. She smelled of bad perfume and talcum powder.

Her pale blue eyes took him and Paris in warily, then she glanced towards the church and sniffed, her expression hardening into disgust. “I never know what those freaks do.”

Although he agreed that those church people were freaky, he had a sense she was referring to cats, not just the cultists. The dog continued to snarl and yip, and finally Roan looked down at the pathetic little furball with a pink ribbon clipped to the top of its head, and growled at it. It came from deep in his throat, and while it was unintentional, it wasn’t precisely a Human noise. He could feel it in his throat, vibrating his vocal chords, and the dog’s ears rotated briefly in as much alarm as a dog could express, and then it whimpered and cringed, pissing the sidewalk in submission.

The woman took a couple steps backwards, eyes wide and horrified, and dragged her dog past them as she hurried off, the Pom more than happy to leave.

Paris looked at him, an eyebrow raised and the corner of his mouth quirked up in a half smile. “I love it when you get defensive.”

“I’m the king of the jungle. I’m not taking any shit from a living dust mop.” He glanced both ways down the otherwise quiet residential street before crossing it and approaching the weird church, scanning the cars parked in the lot up the way and the ones on the street, noting that many of the cars had stickers for bands and local radio stations the likes of which Danny Nakamura probably listened to. These were kids’ cars, or at least the cars of people young enough not to be as cynical as he was. They were headed down the stone path to the porch when he stopped in horror.

Paris had gone ahead a couple of steps, but paused and turned back. “Something wrong?”

He took a deep breath, parsing the scents, and his initial impression was correct. He was smelling normals all right, probably all those kids with all those cars, but he was also smelling infecteds mixed in with them … several of them. That tightness in his stomach, the one he’d felt when he discovered the kitty porn in Danny’s room, came back more savage than before. What the fuck was going on here?! If it was what he thought it was, he might as well go back and get his tire iron now.

Paris came up to him, all the humor in his expression gone and replaced with concern. “Ro, you’re growling again.”

Roan knew exactly where he had to go, but his stomach growled very loudly, objecting to all the coffee and bad feelings he’d had up to this point, and he decided to grab a bite to eat on the way back home.

Stopping at a fast food place was such a risky proposition that he could only use the drive through windows, if that. The smell was too much for him; there was just too many people in and out, too much rancid cooking grease, too much smell of processed foods and cleaning supplies. It made him vaguely nauseous and sometimes gave him a headache. Of course, reading “Fast Food Nation” had much the same effect, but that was just happy coincidence.

At the drive through window, he decided to order extra food on the chance that Paris was up and about. Technically the drugs should have kept him down until next Thursday, but the change had pretty wacky effects on your metabolism. For instance, he felt like doing so much desk work was making him soft and pudgy, but it’d be gone after his next change. You could be twenty five pounds overweight, but after your time, you’d be ten pounds underweight. He was shocked that no one had advertised being infected as a weight loss plan … but come to think of it, someone probably already had. People were just so fucked up it was incredible.

He hated people who talked on their phones, did their hair, texted their friends and ate a four course meal while they were supposed to be driving, but he was so hungry he went ahead and ate his chicken sandwich while driving home. He never took his eyes off the road, though, so he didn’t feel like too much of a hypocrite. The landscape slid by in an almost featureless blur, slowly transforming from concrete grey to grass green as he moved out of the city and deeper into the surrounding countryside.

Everything seemed unchanged at home, the engineless GTO still parked in the drive, the lawn still slightly overgrown and weedy (they didn’t use herbicides or pesticides, mainly because the smell killed him, no matter how minor the concentration), but as soon as he killed the engine, he heard a faint, rhythmic banging coming from around back. He was glad he got the extra food, but he was also unaccountably nervous, as he had to figure out how much Paris knew before deciding on how to lie to him. That was always the toughest part about bullshit - deciding what people were willing to buy. Everyone had a limit, a level that they could accept, but if it was crossed you were screwed. There really wasn’t much of a talent to lying; it was simply figuring out what people wanted to believe and giving it to them.

The front door was unlocked, so he walked in and wasn’t surprised to see a large plank of plywood where the shattered sliding glass door was. He waited for a break in the hammering before yelling, “Honey, I’m home.”

Paris stuck his head around the plywood after moving it slightly. It seemed to be only nailed to the side of the doorframe at the moment. Paris had knocked any remaining jagged shards of glass out of the frame, and vacuumed up what had fallen on the carpet. Thank the hardware gods for Shop-Vacs. “Ooh, do I smell food?”

“Yeah yeah, come on chowhound,” Roan said, shaking his head.

Paris was dressed at least, in khaki cargo shorts (he had his hammer in one of the loops on the right side leg) and a plain blue t-shirt, looking remarkably bright eyed and alert considering he’d been in a drug coma when he left him.

Paris looked good; far too good than should have been allowable without plastic surgery and extensive air brushing. He had clear blue eyes in a face too finely featured to be rugged, but too masculine to be called pretty. His hair was deep black and seemingly always glossy, like a pelt, although when he’d first met him his hair was lank and dull, and his face mostly hidden by a scraggly beard. But even then he’d found his eyes slightly mesmerizing, glowing with a bit more than simply madness. He oozed charisma like some people oozed sweat, and sometimes he seemed so alive it was almost overpowering, almost frightening.

Since he was originally Human and not born infected, not a virus child, there was no way the cat could have any influence on the person (or vice versa), but Roan sometimes wondered if tigers were different. Something about Paris seemed too powerful to be merely Human. But maybe it was just his imagination.

Everyone found Paris attractive; he was a secret weapon in getting people to talk. People who would never talk to him would be relaxed around Paris, be charmed, and suddenly they’d start telling him things they wouldn’t tell anyone else. While it was true women were best at ferreting out information like that - it was a psychological thing - apparently a handsome bisexual was the next best thing.

Paris was also five years younger than him, although sometimes he felt like he had twenty years on him. There was no way a guy like Paris would be with a guy like him if he hadn’t met Paris when he was at a personal nadir; Roan didn’t fool himself there. He also figured he would leave him eventually, find someone more good looking (man or woman) and a bit less jaded, but Roan decided to enjoy things while he could.

Roan had sat on a stool at the breakfast bar, and Paris came over and joined him, taking the stool beside him. Roan shoved two of the brown paper bags over towards him, because most of the food was for him. (The change gave you a huge appetite on either side of it; that was part of the metabolism wonkiness.) “So where’ve you been?” Paris wondered, pulling out wrapped cheeseburgers and noshing on a fry. “Was there an appointment I missed?”

“It was last minute,” he lied. “Thanks for fixing the window.”

“Oh, shit man, I did that. I should fix it.” He ate a couple more fries, then said nervously, “While I was getting ready to go to the hardware store, I heard there was a … an incident a couple miles from here, and -”

“It was a cougar.”

“What?” His tone of voice was split between disbelief and hope. This would be an easy sell.

“Sikorski called me in to see if I could help, but it didn’t matter too much. The print guy got a pretty solid paw, and it was a cougar.”

Paris sighed in obvious relief, his shoulders sagging as the tension fled. “Oh thank god. I thought I killed somebody.”

“Nope.” Paris bit into his cheeseburger with gusto, even though Roan caught a faint scent of slightly overdone toast, and he saw the bottle of ginger pills on the counter near the toaster. Both the drugs and the change could leave you feeling nauseous, so that’s why he always had a bottle of ginger pills in the kitchen - it was a vital part of his (and Paris’s) recovery kit.

There used to be an acupuncturist with a clinic across the way from the office, and he became good friends with the main practitioner, Mei Ling, who told him that ginger pills would cure nausea faster than anything on the market. He thought that was homeopathic bullshit, but he was actually desperate enough to try it once, and he was shocked to discover she was right; it worked better than Dramamine. Just because of that, he gave acupuncture a shot when his headaches came back, and it actually seemed to help. Mei Ling had to close up shop a couple months ago and move to San Francisco to take care of her aging Aunt, which he was sorry about, as he liked her. Sure, her English was a bit broken, but she seemed extremely tolerant, and knew lots of obscure things. He liked people who knew weird things, just because it seemed to hint at some odd inner life.

Before Paris could ask more about the dead man, Roan told him about the Nakamura case. Paris listened intently, although he never stopped eating, and at one point got up to get a soda from the fridge. Paris tossed him an iced tea, and Roan wondered if the fact that he’d had too much caffeine was obvious.

As soon as he was done, Paris took his seat, cracked open his soda, and decided to play devil’s advocate. “This is all supposition, you know. Maybe he was a bit obsessed with infecteds, but ran off to join the Hare Krishnas.”

“Or the Jehovah’s Witnesses,” he replied, playing along.

“The Evangelicals.”

“The Mormons.”

“The Shakers,” Paris insisted, raising his eyebrows in a comic manner.

Oh no, he wasn‘t laughing now. “The Scientologists.”

“Oh shit, you win. I can’t top that.”

Roan pumped his fist in sarcastic triumph. “Mock holy Xenu if you want, but you won’t believe how much claiming you’re a Scientologist gets you out of conversations.”

Paris snorted a laugh in remembrance, and almost choked on a fry. “I remember when you told that guy that, as a Scientologist, you celebrated Christmas differently. I thought he was gonna have you arrested.”

“Which one was this?”

“The one where you claimed to dance naked around a pyre where you burned the remains of a sacrificial chicken.”

“Oh, right, and ate the still beating heart of a baby goat under a gibbous moon. Right. I thought I was particularly inspired that night.”

Paris chuckled, shaking his head. “You just have contempt for every one and every thing, don’t you?”

“Not every thing,” he protested. “I have no problem with Terry. Well, today.”

Terry was the name of the toaster. All their appliances had “Hello, My Name Is” adhesive nametags slapped on them, with the appliance “names” scrawled in the boxes in Magic Marker. The toaster was Terry, the blender was Bob, the stove was Frank, the microwave Chiquita, the refrigerator Steve. This was all due to the fact that he loathed nametags.

Roan had a friend, Phil, who was in charge of a large detective/private security firm in Springfield, and a client wanted Phil to provide security for a big software expo. But Phil didn’t have as many people as he wanted to cover the floor, so he hired him and Paris as “floaters”, incognito security that circulated with the crowd. All the crowd wore stupid ass nametags, though, and as they were supposed to be just like everyone else, they wore tags. Roan hated it, and when he got a chance he pocketed a whole bunch of blank nametags, although to what end he wasn’t sure. But one night, slightly drunk and insanely bored, he slapped them on their appliances. If people ever asked about it, they claimed that since they couldn’t have pets (they might accidentally kill and eat them - there was no therapy to cover a trauma like that), they kept the appliances. Paris would often get in the spirit of it, baby talking to the toaster and stroking it like a cat. ”Would snookems like an English Muffin?” It was times like that that he worried he had warped Paris in some way, but a sense of humor was never a bad thing.

He idly wondered if Paris had kept any of the numbers he got at the software expo. Although he was working and not actively flirting, over the course of the two day conference he ended up with eight phone numbers, mostly men. Paris could be dangerous if he aimed his charm square at you.

After a moment, Paris stopped laughing, and got strangely sober. He knew what was coming, and didn’t look forward to it. “If you think this kid really did run off to get infected, you know where you hafta go.”

Roan sighed, painfully aware of where and who he was referring to. “I know. I was trying to work up to it. You know I have the insatiable urge to beat that bastard’s face in with a tire iron; it takes me a while to rein in my homicidal impulses.”

“Ro, come on. I know you hate him -”

“Hate? That’s too mild a word. I despise the drunken episode that led to his goddamn conception, and I despise his brother for not bashing his head in with a fucking shovel when he had the chance.”

Paris sat back and stared at him, bemusement clearly visible in his expression. “And you don’t think that’s a bit … dramatic?”

He knew he was just trying to be teasing, but he wasn’t in the mood. “You’re not gonna tell me you can actually stand that fucker, are you?”

Paris frowned at him, like he should have known better. “Of course not. I’m not sure anyone sane likes Eli. I mean, how could you? He’s like a television evangelist without a show.”

He wasn’t sure he completely followed that metaphor, but okay. Eli was Elijah Prophet, a/k/a Eli Winters, leader of the cult that called itself the “Church of the Divine Transformation”, the premiere kitty cult. (Roan thought that was a perfect name; it sounded great in the sentence ”The FBI raided the Church of the Divine Transformation today…”)

It was well known, and it was more blatant than any other kitty cult, mainly because Eli was an heir to the rather large Winters real estate development fortune, which he split with his more respectable and notably embarrassed brother Tom. Anyone who said there was no such things as class distinction in America was living in a dream world, and Eli was living proof - not only were the rich different, they apparently had different laws applied to them. Eli had a taste for underage girls, everybody knew this, and his cult seemed to attract quite a few of them. But oddly enough, in spite of rumors and a police investigation, he’d never been charged with a damn thing. Roan had always wanted to nail that smug fucker with something - anything - but had never been able to do so.

Until now?

Paris slid off his stool, and said, “Why don’t I go change? I’ll come with you.”

“No, it’s fine. I can handle this myself.”

“I’m sure you can, but I think I’d better come along, if only to keep Rainbow distracted.” He then leaned in close over his shoulder and smiled, turning on the full wattage of his charm. This close it was almost palpable. “Besides, if it comes down to it, I can always say he threw the first punch.” Paris then gave him a kiss on the forehead and walked away, so confident in his ability to sway him that he didn’t even look back.

Roan sighed and shook his head at his own pathetic reaction. He should go by himself, but he already knew he wasn’t going to. He idly wondered if things would have been any easier if he’d been heterosexual.

His cell phone buzzed impatiently in his pocket, and he dug it out and checked the number to decide if he should answer it or not. Son of a bitch: Sikorksi.

Maybe it was good news; maybe forensics turned up something that pointed definitively away from a tiger. And maybe Eli really was a divine messenger.