He sensed warmth beside him and looked over to see Paris sprawled on the other side of the bed, so deeply asleep it looked like he was barely breathing at all (those were the drugs for you). Sunlight was bleeding through the edges of the curtains, a plague of light, but the air conditioner was on and it was almost chilly.

As he got up, he noticed Paris had written something at the bottom of the legal p ad on the nightstand: Don’t worry about Eli. Really? Why not? He wanted to shake him awake and ask him what he’d done, but it wasn’t like Paris had gone out and killed him, so it wasn’t that urgent. But he was curious – what had he done?

He hopped in the shower and went downstairs to get some breakfast – okay, now it was technically lunch – before knuckling down to work.

Although Sikorski was one of the few higher ups who would talk to him on a regular basis, he had other friends in the police department, including one who let him peek at files he maybe shouldn’t have had access to. While he was searching DeSilvo’s personnel records, he also started searching the database for all the names Rainbow had given him, as well as for Eli’s name. John Hatch had nothing on his record but a DUI and a speeding ticket, both of which gave his address as that of a subdivision in Harrison Park; Andrew Freeman had a juvenile record that included vandalism, assault, misdemeanor pot possession, and resisting arrest; but Timothy Nelson was the real troublesome one. Although his record was clean here, there was a notation in his file: sex offender. Apparently he was convicted of molesting one of his friend’s sons – twelve at the time – with an Alford plea (which was a guilt free way of pleading guilty – it meant you were not guilty, but were pleading guilty because a jury or judge would most likely find you guilty) but for some reason he only did four and a half years before being released and moving from Maryland to here. There was no information pertaining to whether he finished counseling or had simply cut a deal with the prosecutors for the plea; just that “sex offender” notation. It either meant that he had been red flagged by the Feds or Maryland police as a high risk, or someone on the staff had a bug up their ass about all sex offenders. He lived alone about a mile away from the church, suggesting that his wife must not have believed his Alford plea, divorced him, and left with the kids.

Roan made a mental list in his head, the ones he would visit in order: Timothy Nelson (of course), John Hatch, and then Andrew Freeman if those two hit dead ends (all Freeman’s troubles were juvenile ones; his adult record was clean).

DeSilvo, meanwhile, was a bit of a troubled man himself. Allegations of thefts from busts dogged him over the years, and he was investigated by Internal Affairs a couple years back, although they found no evidence to substantiate the charges. It wasn’t above felons to make unsubstantiated allegations against cops, that pretty much came with the territory, but all this smoke? There must have been fire somewhere. Roan was now positive that sawed off shotgun he had was ill gotten booty, a meth head’s prize. Yet this didn’t actually explain anything. So he was mildly dirty – so what?

DeSilvo’s first partner, Curtis McAvoy, died eight years ago in an off duty car crash. His partner until early retirement was Mitchell Henstridge, a man ten years his junior, a man who – oddly enough – had taken a lot of medical leave in the last couple of years. There was no reason given, and he recently left the force. There was a reference in his file to the family medical leave act, so presumably all that medical leave he took wasn’t necessarily for him. He too was investigated by IA, and came up clean.

Speaking of clean, Eli was. But Roan knew the old police captain around here, McClarty, was a Winters’ family friend. If his trouble making son got busted, he’d have been happy to sweep it all under the carpet and keep it off the books. He had no way to prove it, though.

While he was writing down the last known address of Mitch Henstridge, a forwarded call from the office came in. Technically the doors were closed today, but he was still taking calls.

It was a woman on the phone who introduced herself as Susan Heffernan, and wanted to hire him to investigate her husband Ryan. He sighed and grabbed a notepad by the phone, so he could take her information. Infidelity cases were the bread and butter of detectives nowadays, and they were usually pretty simple to prove or disprove. A couple days work, and not hard work at all.

But as she kept talking, he realized this wasn’t typical. “Wait, let me get this straight,” he repeated, in a bit of disbelief. “You want me to find out if your husband is gay?”

“I know that sounds funny,” she admitted nervously. “But he spends so much time with Cooper, he talks about him all the time, he invited him to come with us on what was supposed to be our eighth anniversary trip. And when we were in Vegas they supposedly spent all their time in the casino and I never saw either of them. Ever since that movie, y’know, I’m wondering …”

“Movie?”

“Brokeback Mountain.”

“Ah.” He rubbed his eyes, and briefly wondered if someone was playing a practical joke on him. It was possible, but she sounded awkwardly sincere. “Look, Mrs. Heffernan, I think hiring me would be a huge waste of your money. Just talk to your husband. Just tell him you feel uncomfortable how close he is to his friend, and how you’d prefer if there was some space there.”

She let out a tiny little laugh. “You don’t think I’ve tried? It’s not an easy topic …”

“And you think spending hundreds of dollars to confirm his sexuality is easier?”

“ Well … hundreds?”

“Do you have any other reason to doubt his sexuality or his faithfulness, Mrs. Heffernan?” Sometimes he felt like a marriage counselor, and that was definitely not what he signed up for.

“Actually … um, yes. Lately he’s started dressing nicer.”

Roan almost dropped the phone, but instead he put her on hold and laughed. If he redecorated or tidied up, that would have been the end of him for sure. As soon as he got a hold of himself and calmed to his neutral, professional tone, he picked up the receiver once more. “If you really want to pursue this, I suggest you come by the office tomorrow. We’ll be open by ten.”

“Can’t we just set this up now? I’d rather just know as soon as possible.”

“I’m afraid there’s contracts to be signed, and we’re not open today. I’d suggest you talk to your husband if you want to get this over with sooner rather than later.”

It was a last ditch attempt, and he hoped he’d finally gotten through, but after a long moment she sighed, and said, “Fine. Ten o’clock tomorrow. I’ll be there.”

After he hung up, he wrote down her name and the time, with the added notation of Ryan Heffernan and Cooper Godwin. He’d never “outed” anyone before, and he really didn’t want to start, but his was not to cast moral judgments, just see his clients’ cases through to the end. Besides, if this guy was actually in denial or in the closet, it wasn’t fair to his wife.

Also he made a note to drop her a card of Melanie’s. Melanie was a divorce lawyer he worked for on a semi-regular basis, and even if Ryan and Cooper were as straight as Henry the Eighth – just a bit too close and male bonded – that marriage was done. If you couldn’t straight up ask your partner if they were fucking around and get an answer you felt you could accept, then why were you together? If communication had broken down to the point where you felt you had to hire a complete stranger to trail them with a digital camera, stick a fork in the damn thing and move on. It was over in all but name.

It made him think of Connor, which he didn’t like, so he grabbed up the addresses of Nelson, Hatch, Freeman, and Henstridge, and headed out the door.

But Connor lingered like a bad taste in his mouth. Roan had two whole relationships in his life, or at least ones he counted as genuine relationships: Connor Monaghan and Paris. So far the one with Paris had been running a lot smoother.

Connor had been married once to a woman. His parents were staunch Catholics and he tried to pretend to be straight to please them, but he called the marriage the biggest mistake of his life. His wife was “cool” about it when he told her the truth (the marriage was annulled), but his parents didn’t see why he didn’t just stay married to her and try to “be normal”.

He met Connor when he was a rookie cop, and he met him literally on the job. A drunken college football celebration turned into a small riot near a downtown bar, and Connor was one of the few who was willing to and could actually identify who beat a bystander half to death. (The man ended up in a coma and eventually died. A star college football player went down for his senseless beating, although that was very controversial.) He remembered Connor standing there with blood all over his white t-shirt – he’d tried to help the beating victim – clear eyed, sober, and perfectly indignant. He was handsome with a voice that he could have listened to for hours (he was an immigrant from Dublin; his Irish lilt was nothing like the grotesque stereotypical Irish accent), and eyes that seemed to vary between green and hazel. There was nothing stereotypical about Connor, and most thought he was joking when he said he was gay.

He knew where Connor lived due to his witness status, so he made sure he went out of his way to be at a café in Connor’s neighborhood when he was off duty, so when Connor ran into him, it was as a civilian. Luckily, Connor found him attractive too, so it wasn’t too awkward, and he didn’t accuse him of stalking him. (He wasn’t really; there was just something about Connor he found unforgettable and magnetic.)

The first warning flag should have been the fact that he was a writer. Mostly novels and short stories, although he wrote a short play that was an entrant into a local playwrights’ competition. He was extremely intelligent, extremely talented … and tortured really didn’t cover it. He was an alcoholic and knew it; alcohol was a “demon” he said he’d lived with all his life, and when he was drunk, he could get pretty ugly. Roan let him know immediately that he wouldn’t stand for it; he’d had enough drunks in his childhood and on the job that he didn’t want to put up with one at home. They lived together for three months, and for those three months he managed to stay sober, and won the competition, and everything seemed good. But Connor seemed to have a gift for self-sabotage; any time things went well for him, he seemed to go right out and shoot himself in the foot. Connor got incredibly, stinking drunk on his prize money , and Roan took him into the station on a drunk and disorderly. He spent the night in the drunk tank, while Roan moved out. By the time he was sober and out, he was gone.

He made it clear he loved him, he just wasn’t going to do this drama. He’d given him the choice: booze or him. As far as he was concerned, Connor made his choice.

Connor was all apologies and self-pity, and while he decided to give him another tentative shot, Con couldn’t even last a week without getting drunk. So he broke it off completely. He wished him well – and honestly it killed him – but he couldn’t do this.

Connor committed suicide two weeks later. Always dramatic, he walked out on some train tracks as drunk as hell, in front of the Amtrak headed to Coeur D’Alene. He left a suicide note that simply said he was tired, and Roan found that Con had left a message on his answering machine. It wasn’t much, but the words still haunted him: “I’m sorry. I loved you, you know.” Roan wasn’t perfectly certain, but he thought he heard a train whistle in the background.

He had pretty much written off relationships at that point. He was never good at them anyways, and Con’s death seemed to be a big universal flashing sign: You suck at this. So he fought getting into a relationship with Paris, at least with himself. These things were always fraught with peril, and he had enough drama in his life. But at least Paris wasn’t an alcoholic or suicidal; in fact, he couldn’t even imagine Paris deliberately sabotaging himself, not the Paris he knew anyways. He was like the polar opposite of Con. No worries there.

But he had never told him about him. He didn’t talk about Con at all. Even when the paper ran a little feature on suicides in the local creative community and he was gobsmacked to find Connor staring out at him from his morning newspaper, he never said a word. Why? He knew logically he wasn’t responsible for Con’s suicide; it wasn’t even his first attempt – he had faint scars on his arm from when he’d tried to kill himself as a teenager, razor blade marks that ran the length of his forearm. He varied from angry to hideously self-piteous when drunk, and declarations to “finish it” were part of his drunken script. You couldn’t blame another person for someone else’s suicide, (unless they crammed pills down their throat or forced the noose around their neck) as that was a personal choice. And yet he still felt so unbelievably guilty he couldn’t bear to speak his name. Could he have kept Con from doing it? Did he push him over the edge? Would Con be alive today if he hadn’t left him?

Some tough guy he was. Pathetic.

Nelson lived in a relatively clean but bland apartment building known as the Hampstead Arms, which proved the odd law that the “fancier” a name for a place the more low rent it was. No one answered the door, and Roan was pretty sure he didn’t hear anyone inside (hard to tell; someone the next floor up was really cranking up the Jay-Z). A Hispanic woman carrying a laundry basket walked past as he was at his door, and paused to ask if he was a “friend of Tim’s”. He played along and said yes, just to see what would happen.

As it turned out, nothing. She said he was gone most of the day and usually didn’t get home ‘til around six or so. He thanked her and left, adding that note to his small list of name. At least if Nelson had a job, it limited his time for hanging around the church.

Hatch lived in a pretty nice place, a pre-fab suburban house not unlike DeSilvo’s, but newer, and with more trees lining the streets and the yards. A woman answered the door of the house after he knocked, a slightly chubby brunette with a pale, round face, her make up barely covering a smattering of acne that decorated her forehead like a scatter of buckshot. (Did Dick Cheney live around here?) John wasn’t home either, although she didn’t offer up when he’d be home. Her expression was pinched, suggesting she didn’t like him a bit; she didn’t know him, but she didn’t like him. Maybe they didn’t like strangers around these parts.

He showed her his photo of Danny and asked if she’d seen him. She barely even glanced at it before saying no. He had a feeling he could have held up a photo of Hatch and she would have denied seeing him; she just gave off a hostile vibe. It could have been simply that she didn’t like his face, she didn’t like (vague) redheads, she didn’t like guys wearing olive drab t-shirts – it could have been any piddling thing. But this reaction was simply too suspicious for him to dismiss so easily. After leaving, he did a brief tour of the property, but the back yard was cut off by chain link fencing, and a dog that looked like a cross between a German Shepherd and a wombat snipped and growled at him as he looked over the fence at a large outbuilding that was probably a shed, but was large enough to have been someone’s workshop … or something else. The yard stank so badly of dog shit it made his eyes water. Again, he made a note to come back, and bring binoculars.

He got lucky with Andrew Freeman. He was home, as he was laid up with a broken leg and was on disability from the quarry where he usually worked. He was a guy with dirty blond hair and an honest to god mullet, as well as a mustache that was a quarter inch short of a Fu Manchu. To top off his general redneck/stoner look, he was wearing homemade cut offs and a sleeveless black t-shirt depicting an eagle fighting a snake. He smelled of sweat, cigarettes, and pot smoke.

His watery blue eyes had the glaze of someone who was high, but that also made him very friendly and slightly gregarious. He admitted that he liked going to the church because they had some “hot bitches” there and the guy he liked to buy his weed from usually hung out there, but he hadn’t been there since he got his leg broken a week and a half ago. He admitted that he didn’t go anywhere anymore since he could barely get around on his crutches in the house, but his brother, roommate Chuck, and “on and off” girlfriend Mindy brought him supplies, and he had satellite t.v., so he was good. He admitted he may have seen Danny around the church but wasn’t sure because he didn’t pay too much attention to the guys. He invited him in for a beer, but he politely turned him down and wished him luck. Only when he was back at the car did he realize he’d never identified himself to Freeman, and he had never asked who he was. He scratched Freeman off the suspect list.

On a whim, he drove past Henstridge’s place, but found the quaint little clapboard house had a “For Sale” sign in the yard, and a quick glance in the living room window proved that the house had been cleaned out; Henstridge had moved on. He called the real estate agency handling the sale of the house, and told them he was a private detective who needed quite badly to find Mitch Henstridge. The real estate agent was a rather hyper sounding woman named Sabina, and after looking for several minutes she finally gave him an address that he took without comment. He knew that address quite well; it had been a favorite of transients or people who didn’t want to reveal their actual place of residence when arrested – it was a vacant lot at the end of dead end street downtown. Fifteen years ago there was an apartment building there, but it was condemned and then burned down, and the city, which owned the land, had done absolutely nothing with it. But the address still technically existed on city maps, and would register as valid to anyone who checked in any way but personally.

So Henstridge had turned rabbit? According to Sabina, the house had only gone up for sale two days ago, and he was “highly motivated to sell”, although she couldn’t exactly say why. Well, this didn’t make sense at all. It was possible it was just coincidence – maybe the family member who was sick had died. Then why give a fake address?

He was running and hiding. But from who and why? Curiouser and curiouser.

He sat in his car and called Sikorski. As soon as he answered, he asked, “What do you know about a former cop named Mitchell Henstridge?”

Sikorski sighed heavily. “Don’t you believe in foreplay?”

“I’m Scottish. My idea of foreplay is “roll over Margaret”. So what do you know?”

He snickered. “Wouldn’t it be Angus in your case?”

“Don’t ruin a classic joke, Gordo.”

He heard him settle back in his chair, which creaked like doors in a haunted house. “The name sounds vaguely familiar, but I can’t place it. When did he leave the force?”

“Three months ago. He was DeSilvo’s partner.”

“Oh. Why are you checking out DeSilvo?”

“I’m checking out Henstridge now. I’m finding some oddities in his current behavior that could use a bit of explaining.”

“Like what?” He challenged, almost belligerently.

“Like giving 1520 Oakview as his home address.”

“Oakview? The dead drop?” That’s what cops called that area: “dead drop lane”. Mainly because it would be a perfect place for a money exchange with kidnappers, but also because dead people had a tendency to show up there with great regularity. Many were just o.d.’s and transients who died in the cold, but sometimes they were people killed on the spot, or killed elsewhere and then dumped in the vacant lot. It was a really fun part of the city. “That is weird. Is he escaping creditors?”

“You tell me.”

“Huh.” He heard the click of his fingers on his keyboard as he went to work. “Here I thought you were calling to gloat.”

“Gloat? Over what?”

“Coupla things. Eli Winters showed up with that hard ass lawyer of his – what’s his name, Stovik?”

“Stovak. Why’d he show up?”

“Apparently he’s infected and doesn’t have any restraints; he was out last night apparently. He thought somebody told us already and was doing damage control. Who woulda known and not told us?”

“It’s a big church, Gordo.” What had Paris said to him? Oh, now he had to know how he could have scared Eli into a confession at the police department. Again, Paris had the makings of an excellent super villain, which really should have scared the shit out of everyone, but he was so disarmingly pretty you couldn’t help but think he was honestly harmless. And that just made him that much more dangerous. “What’s the other thing?”

“Oh, the coroner’s report came back on the kids at Tweaks place. You were right.”

His stomach burned, and he suddenly felt more awake than he had all day. “What? How?”

“The kids were killed by a bladed weapon, probably a machete, hours before Tweaks was killed. The cat gnawed on them, but there’s some indications they were killed at different times and repositioned afterwards. Why we don’t know. Tweaks was definitely killed by the cat, though.”

He went back to his car and pulled out his HK P2000 SK from beneath the seat, clipping the holster to the waist of his jeans and putting on his jacket so it concealed the weapon from view. He wasn’t worried about a cat seeing it – they could smell it anyways, and wouldn’t care – but about people catching a glimpse of a strange guy with a gun and calling the cops on him. Nothing sent a cat fleeing like screaming sirens and flashing lights. He made sure the safety was off and he had a full clip before snugging the gun in the holster.

He took a good, long look up and down the street, hoping for some sign of where Eli might have gone. If he’d changed around the same time as Paris (and since the transformation was based on viral cycles, that was the poorest bet you could make), he’d had two and a quarter hours on him; over two hours in which he could have struck out and hunted. He probably wasn’t anywhere near here anymore.

Or, he could have been just around the corner. Cats were inherently unpredictable, especially the Human transformed variety. The one thing you could count on was they always came home to their territory before the virus cycle ebbed and they became Human again. The general assumption was they started to feel bad, and retreated to where they felt safest, and for whatever reason, that was where they first found themselves. So he could stake out the church and simply wait for Eli the cat to come back, but he just knew he’d fall asleep due to boredom before he did. Truth be told, he was exhausted – the lack of sleep yesterday was catching up to him, and his forty minute nap gave him a brief second wind that had already petered out. He was just too old for all nighters, especially two days in a row.

But he wasn’t giving up yet. He just picked a direction and started walking, hoping he’d find some sign that a big cat had been that way. If it marked its territory along the way he’d catch a scent, but otherwise olfactory cues wouldn’t help him now. Out in the open, in a (mostly) residential neighborhood close to a busy street, there were too many competing scents for one to stand out. Well, maybe car exhaust, but that was no help at all, and too much of it gave him a headache.

He tried to give off a “fresh meat on the hoof” vibe, but that was hard to judge. The night was quiet, save for its usual noises – the strangely arrhythmic thuds of a bass heavy car stereo in the distance, the faint barks of dogs, the noise of a television bleeding through the walls of a house he walked past, the blue light almost strobing in the darkened window. He was catching no hint of big cat, seeing nothing helpful, and while he was trying to radiate a “tasty victim” aura, he really didn’t know if he could. He slowed by big hedgerows and beneath overhanging tree branches, places where a big cat could lurk and hide. “Come on big boy, come and get me,” he muttered, no longer one hundred percent sure what block he was on.

Oh wow – had he just said that? There wasn’t a gayer thing to say on Earth … well, besides “You know what this room needs? Chintz!” And frankly he wasn’t gay enough to say that under any circumstance, unless he was being a smart ass.

Eli wasn’t anywhere near here. He had run off, possibly out towards Tweak’s place – and could he be responsible for that? It was possible, but frankly anything was possible there. He would insist to his dying day that that crime scene didn’t make sense, no matter what the medical examiner concluded.

He knew he could stake out the church, wait for Eli the cat to come back, and simply shoot him in the head. While it wasn’t legal for police officers to shoot “transformed Humans” without attempting humane capture first, civilians could shoot a transformed in an open, public area without any penalties. It was considered a manner of public safety – the public couldn’t be expected to have the major league tranquilizers and stunning equipment that the cops had access to, and they had a right to defend themselves and other people. It was controversial, especially since rednecks put together posses that did nothing but drive around all night and look for cats to shoot, but Roan knew he could use it to his own advantage; he could murder Eli, and he wouldn’t even get a slap on the wrist. It was a thought he mulled over as he walked back towards his car.

He knew he could kill a person – a cat – if he had to. He joined the police force however briefly, and if you couldn’t pull the trigger, you never got through training. It could be boiled down to Star Trek crap, mainly “the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few”. He also knew, thanks to his illustrious childhood, that there were simply some people who honestly deserved to die; there were some people who had no raison d’etre besides causing misery and pain to others. Oh, he knew the arguments – who was he to judge a worth or a life of a person, blah blah blah – but he also knew, from his own experiences, that there were some people that life would simply be better off without. It was cold, cruel, possibly psychopathic, but it was how he felt, what he sensed to be true. If life was made up of many kinds of people, there would be some in this vast ocean who were simply predators or parasites, remoras who existed only to drain the life from others. All they could do was destroy.

Not that he would ever back wholesale murder, or even the death penalty when it came to that, but he knew of at least a couple of people it would have been worth going to jail for. They were probably still alive, unless someone else got them, but he knew if he ever ran into those people again they’d better hope he wasn’t armed.

He walked back to his car without being followed or stalked, and as he got in, he took off his holster and tossed it into the passenger seat. He had a free pass to get rid of Eli once and for all, a get out of jail free card plopped in his lap. Would he use it? Would Paris forgive him? That was the big one, the killer – Paris would know it was cold blooded; he’d know he staked him out to exterminate him.

He had some time to think about it; if Eli was new to transforming, he could have four to six more active days before the virus went back into dormancy. It would give him time to consider whether he wanted to add murderer to his résumé or not.

******

Coming back from a transformation was akin to regaining consciousness after being hit and dragged by a train. Or at least Paris imagined it to be so – he’d never been hit or dragged by a train. But it seemed appropriate somehow.

He had to lay there for five minutes after he came to, feeling his muscles spasm and tasting coppery blood in his mouth, before he thought he could bear the pain enough to move. He wasn’t strong enough to stand, so he had to crawl to the cage door, and after two tries managed to unlock it. There was no way to describe the pain; he felt like he had been pulverized, tenderized to within an inch of his life by the biggest meat hammer in existence. His muscles were probably as tender as veal.

Ro had left a first aid kit just outside the cage door, out of swiping distance. It was one of their medical kits, though, which meant instead of band aids and gauze it was full of painkillers and hypodermic needles – Paris liked to call it the Courtney Love edition. He had to rest between opening the case, fishing out needle, and loading one up, all actions that shouldn’t have been exhausting and yet somehow were, especially when you were in so much pain your hands couldn’t stop shaking and your eyes couldn’t stop tearing up, and your muscles decided to have spasms that made your whole body tremble like you were an unstable fault line.

Paris reflected on the general irony of him being such an expert at shooting up as he stabbed the needle into his thigh and depressed the plunger. He used to hate needles, and he still did really, when he wasn’t in so much pain, but at times like these he loved the needle. The needle was his friend now; the needle made it all stop. He lay on the cool concrete floor of the basement as he waited for the drugs to fully take effect, waited for that slow, warm wave to engulf him and carry him away to a tropical, forgiving sea.

He just laid staring up at the ceiling, feeling fantastic – maybe that’s why Courtney was such a big fan of drugs – and finally pulled himself up slowly, using the base of the stairs to help him climb up to his feet. He still felt strangely loose, like all his joints had been dislocated and his bones replaced with rubber, but the good thing about the drugs was he didn’t care.

He went straight to the downstairs bathroom and took a shower. The sense of smell was always strongest for about an hour afterwards, and he could never stand the rank, musky smell of himself. Ro always said he didn’t smell that bad, but he was just being kind, because for a little bit he had a near feline sense of smell, and he couldn’t believe Ro could stand to be in the same room with him.

He felt lightly buzzed, relaxed, like he could go lay down or maybe just go out drinking, maybe go listen to some singer songwriter who’s having problems with her boyfriend. But his stomach didn’t so much growl as roar, and he had to go have a bite before his stomach started digesting itself.

Paris turned the t.v. on for some welcome noise, and he got the BBC world news, which was always infinitely depressing, but that Dhaljit Dhaliwal was a hottie – if someone had to tell him there was another war in Eritrea, she was the easiest on the eyes, and that voice was like liquid silk. She could announce the end of the world, and he’d still get a boner.

Ro was home – the Mustang was in the driveway, and his bike was still in the garage – but since he heard nothing upstairs, he figured he was sleeping. Sunlight glowed like radiation beyond the curtains, and it was already incredibly warm; it’d probably be in the 90’s again. He hated heat waves, but there was nothing he could do about it but whine and turn on the air conditioner.

He ate two frozen croissant breakfast sandwiches he nuked in Chiquita the microwave, a breakfast burrito, an Australian toaster biscuit, and a slice of cold pizza with a can of cold, overly sweet coffee. He reminded himself of a pig in a trough, but it wasn’t his fault he was always left ravenous after a transformation. He did wonder how many preservatives and grams of fat, salt, and sugar he just ingested, but did it matter? The virus would kill him long before his arteries would clog.

He went upstairs to get some clothes, and he discovered Roan sacked out on the bed, laying on his back with half of the tan suede like comforter on the floor, the other half tangled around his legs. He was so deeply asleep that even turning on the A.C. didn’t wake him up, so Paris figured he must have only gotten to bed a couple of hours ago.

Ro had left a yellow legal p ad on the nightstand on his side of the bed, and Paris glanced at it. Sometimes Ro left him notes if there were developments in a case, and he was hopeful, because maybe if he solved one case, he could concentrate on the other. The note was only partly for him, though – the rest of it was Ro clearly making notes for himself, things to do or keep in mind when he was awake:

Connection: Eli to Tweaks? Eli to DeSilvo? Eli to both?

Follow up: Did DeSilvo steal from drug busts? Is this significant to his death?

Eli was rumored to have a drug problem in college. Coincidence? Something else?

Who infected Eli? How much of the church is now infected? (Rainbow clear – Guy missing. Significant?)

Need: Migraine strength Excedrin, microwave popcorn, AA batteries, paper towels, pineapple orange juice

There was something a little jarring about finding a shopping list beneath all these names of suspects. Roan could really multitask, he had to give him that.

But the most startling thing was the first. Not Eli being infected – really that was only a matter of time if he was at all serious about the “holiness” of transformation – it was what Ro had written after that: Haven’t done anything yet – weighing options. What options were there? Calling the cops and reporting him as an unrestrained infected in a transformation cycle, or … what? Shooting him?

Oh holy shit.

This was Roan thinking out loud, and as a consequence drawing him into the debate. If Ro had honestly wanted to kill Eli, he could have done it and just claimed that he was menaced or something (although he found it personally a bit hard to believe that there were any cats out there with the balls to menace Roan), and Paris would have believed him simply because he would want to believe him. But the thing he really admired about Ro was his brutal honesty with himself; he could lie as much as the next person, but he never believed his own bullshit for a minute. The fact that he even bothered to mention it pretty much meant he wasn’t going to … probably. Still, he now knew what he was going to do today.

He picked up the comforter and draped it over Roan, pausing briefly to look down at his scar. Since he wasn’t wearing a shirt and was laying on his back, it was quite visible. Even though most transformed lost their scars during transformation, Ro still managed to hold on to three which he called “ghost scars”: they were all so pale they looked white, slightly raised as if in relief. The two most visible were the smallest ones, one on the back of his hand and the other on his face, slightly subsumed by his eyebrow, while the most often hidden scar was the largest, a white line that started at his left shoulder and snaked along beneath his collarbone, tracing an irregular line towards the hollow of his throat. Paris tried to imagine what could cause a scar like that, and all he could think of was a knife, but Ro had denied that was the cause. But he never said what the cause was, and only by precision wheedling did Paris ever get him to admit the one on his hand was due to an iron. He didn’t talk about his scars any more than he talked about his childhood, although he’d picked up enough bits and pieces to figure out it was hellish. The thought that someone did this to him as a child infuriated him – he wanted Ro to name names so he could go and kick their ass, even though Ro was more than capable of doing the ass kicking now. He pulled the blanket up to the scar, and then kissed him gently on the forehead, trying hard not to wake him up. His eyes didn’t stopping moving beneath his eyelids, so he took that as a good sign.

Paris finished getting dressed, grabbed his keys for the Mustang, and left the house, happy to have a mission no matter how grim it was.

He probably shouldn’t have been driving considering he was on twice the maximum dose of an illegal painkiller, but he felt oddly sober – probably because he was still in an incredible amount of pain. Pain was a great equalizer. He drove carefully anyways.

The thing about Eli – the thing he never told Roan – was that Paris felt that he was his own evil twin. He was a reasonably good looking guy with lots of charisma (well, Paris knew he was better looking, but why kick a man when he was down); but whereas Paris devoted himself to hedonism, Eli had actual ambition, and devoted himself to building a cult. He got people to worship both him and his own beliefs, no matter the fact that his beliefs were quite openly nuts. Perhaps this is what would have happened to Tom Cruise if he didn’t go into acting.

Anyway, Paris knew that his charisma – what his own grandmother called “the charm”; she claimed it ran in the family, although it skipped a person here and there – was a weapon of sorts. He never had problems getting dates, getting laid, and he had no idea what other guys complained about. He could get anyone he set his mind to, and he used to think he was quite special, but then he met Eli, and he realized he was just in a small minority of people who contained enough charm to be dangerous. And the more they believed they were special, the more they bought their own bullshit, the more dangerous they were. Eli had hit a special level, a plateau that few could reach; he was a cult of personality now, insulated in his own greatness, confident in his near godhood, and now that he had gotten himself infected, his people were probably going to worship him directly and forget about the rest of it. It was all pretty fucked up; actually, it used to be fucked up. Now it was so fucked up there was no adequate phrase to cover it. And none of this would be so bad if it was a small thing, even regional, but thanks to the web he had an internet empire, and he was head of the biggest kitty cult around. He was power, and he was trouble from several different angles. Even if Ro legally killed Eli in his kitty form, Ro would probably be assassinated by an angry follower.

By the time he reached the church it was pretty quiet, and he found a place to park right out front. Getting out of the car, he noticed he’d accidentally put on one of Ro’s t-shirts, his Clash one. Normally Ro’s shirts were a bit small for him, but his Clash shirt was oversized, so it was just about a perfect fit for him. He still couldn’t quite get over that – a cop into punk. It seemed wrong somehow, but he bet he could chalk up some of it to Ro’s contrariness. He never liked to be what anyone would expect.

Rainbow was sitting on a wicker chair on the far right side of the porch, working on her laptop, enjoying the early morning heat. She looked up as he came up the stairs, and she gave him a brilliant smile, which he returned, cranking up his charm. She had dark crescent moons under her eyes, suggesting she was sleep deprived. “Paris! How good to see you.”

He heard the ‘without your damn boyfriend’ in that, and he had to swallow a laugh. It was unfair of him to use the charm on Rainbow, but he really did think of himself as Roan’s “guy Friday”. What Ro couldn’t get by smarts or muscle he could get by guile or charm. He couldn’t actually pay Ro back for saving his life, but maybe he could make a small contribution when possible. “Good morning to you too. I was wondering I it was possible for me to get a private conference with someone.”

She put her laptop aside and stood up, and he pretended not to notice the hopeful gleam in her eyes. A “private conference” was just talking one on one with a “counselor” here; it was the first step in indoctrination, in joining this wondrous cult. And he bet Rainbow would have loved to get him in a private conference. “Oh really? That’s fantastic! I know you’re quite special, Paris, and we’d be honored to have you.”

Quite special? Oh yes, he was tiger strain – also known as the “suicide cat”. No one knew why a tiger strain was worse than any of the others, but it was, and as far as he knew, he was the only living tiger in the tri-state area. What an honor; he felt like he should have a sash and perhaps a tiara, waving to bystanders from the back of a convertible. “I just have a request, if you’d indulge me.”

“If I can.”

“I want the consultation with Elijah.”

Her thrilled little smile faltered, cracked slightly, and she made strange motions with her hands, like they were fluttering birds trying to escape. Finally she just wrung them tightly together. “I … um, that’s perhaps not …”

“Oh, so Mr. Lehane wants to talk to me, does he?” Eli said, appearing at the door. He was wearing a button down robin’s egg blue shirt, sleeves rolled up and buttons open at the collar, and loose khakis that were quite baggy at the knees and probably only held up by the thin alligator skin belt around his waist. Paris could understand – you were never quite prepare for the drastic weight loss the first transformation caused. That’s why some people trumpeted infection as a “weight loss miracle”.

Eli was lean anyways, so he couldn’t afford to lose too much more weight. He had the fake bake tan that was probably airbrushed on him daily, giving him a healthy – if oddly artificial – glow, and neatly swept back blondish brown hair that looked effortlessly styled in a way that probably cost him about two hundred dollars. His eyes were a watery pale blue in a high cheekboned face that was a bit too severe to be classically handsome, but he was good looking in an icy, slightly Eurotrash way. He claimed to be six feet tall on his website bio, but he was actually only five ten; Paris looked down at him easily, and in more ways than one.

Although a wicked smile curved Eli’s bloodless lips, he never broke challenging eye contact with Paris, even as he came out on the porch and said, “Why don’t you give us a minute, Rainbow?”

She hesitated, looking between them nervously. “A-are you sure, sir? I’m not sure -”

“I’m fine, Rainbow. It’s okay.”

She seemed doubtful, but she did go inside the church, closing the door behind her so they had some privacy. Once she was gone, Eli said, with fake casualness, “So Roan sent you out, huh? Odd choice.”

“He didn’t send me out here, Eli, I came on my own. Thought I’d welcome you to the club. And give you a warning.”

Eli tried to raise an eyebrow at him, but he couldn’t quite do it. It was tricky. “A warning? You?” he snickered derisively. “It doesn’t work when you’re known to be the guy who hates confrontations.”

“Ah. See, that’s what I love: generalizations. They do give me such an edge. Here’s the thing, Eli – I do hate violence, as a general rule. Physical.” He gave him a cold smile that never hit his eyes, and felt so false he was surprised it actually held. “But emotional violence, psychic violence? Love it. Bruises heal, bones set, but that kind of injury could last forever. When I wanted to hurt someone, I simply slept with their girlfriend, boyfriend, sister, brother, mother … hell, father even, possibly all, depending on the person and circumstances, and then I let them know about it. See, what you and other people seem to forget is I’m a completely manipulative bastard; there isn’t an angle that I can’t play. And I’m not going to let a good man go down for you.”

Eli was still eyeing him with humor, but something unsettled was starting to creep into his expression. Paris was being honest, and Eli must have recognized that, also being a manipulative bastard. They were evil twins and all, at least is spirit. “What’s that supposed to mean? Is that some kind of threat?”

“That wasn’t, no. But this is: tonight, turn yourself over to the cops. Tell them you’re infected and in the high part of the cycle, and you have no cage. They’ll have to put you up in a cell as a public service, and you’ll be safe for the night. Oh sure, they may question whether you have an alibi for yesterday and the day before, but even if you did nosh on all those people, we both know you’ll be down in Florida golfing with O.J. within the week. You’re too rich and too well armed with lawyers to go down for any crime but white collar; you have a pass. You’re good. And it’s better than the alternative.”

He looked deliberately bored and hostile, crossing his arms over his chest. His pupils were a bit too wide, suggesting that he too was high on painkillers. “Oh, here’s the threat. I was starting to nod off.”

Paris walked towards him slowly, staring him down, putting his size advantage to good use. “Roan and I will come back here about five-ish, and you’d better be gone, Eli, or we’re coming to take you home with us. See, my idea is you share my cage with me.”

He looked like he was about to make a smart ass remark, probably based on sexuality, when the reality of what he was saying – and who was saying it – sunk in. He tried to beat back the horror in his eyes, but the drugs were slowing his reaction time. “You – you can’t be serious. That’s murder -”

“No it’s not. It’s law of the jungle, survival of the fittest. Do you think your cat can beat a tiger?” A rhetorical question: the tiger strain was the most deadly, but the tiger itself was the most deadly of the cats. Now he was so close to Eli he was invading his space; he couldn’t just reach out and touch him, he could pick his fucking pocket. Eli was forced to look up to keep eye contact, and he was fighting his own body posture so he didn’t seem like he was cringing. “Perhaps I’m overestimating the appetite of a tiger, but I can’t imagine there’d be much of you left, and once we dump the assorted kitty parts left, there’s a very good chance that the cops will simply assume you were an unrestrained cat who got bested by another, and won’t even attempt a DNA match. You’ll probably become a legend, a mystical figure – dropping off the face of the world like Aimee Semple-McPherson. You’ll probably convince them you really were the second coming of Jesus or whoever the fuck it is you’re claiming to be. You’d become more in death than you ever were in life. Which is a bit of a pisser, but at least you won’t be here to enjoy it.”

Eli had paled, even beneath his spray on tan. It took him a moment to find his voice. “Y-you’d never do that. It’s still premeditated -”

“No, it’s not; legally, it’s not even manslaughter, because neither of us are technically men once transformed. You know cops don’t care if one cat kills another. It’ll come down to Roan’s word, and do you really think they’ll disbelieve him if he says I broke out of my cage in tiger form and got into yours? Face it, Eli, you’re fucked. If you don’t want me crapping you out for the next week and a half, then turn yourself over to the cops and take your lumps like an actual Human being for once.” He was staring down at him, his chest almost touching his, with Eli backed against the wall. He had nowhere to go, and he had such a size and experience advantage that even if Eli attempted to shove him back it wouldn’t do any good; he’d never succeed. “Where’s your faith, Eli? Don’t you think the best cat’ll win?”

Eli took a last hopeless jab at dignity. He looked him square in the eye, setting his jaw, and said, “You couldn’t live with that.”

“Oh, you’d be surprised at what I could live with.” If it was Eli or Roan, Eli just didn’t have a chance, no matter what he had to do. Just to have a dramatic exit, he growled, but it didn’t come off how he anticipated. Namely, there were still some lingering aftereffects of the cat; the growl that came out of his throat wasn’t even remotely Human. It was deeper than even Roan’s growl, not so much inhuman as monstrous, something that vibrated through his bones and seemed to rattle his brain. Eli’s eyes seemed to pop out of his face; he was just as startled as he was, too much to even attempt to hide the fear. Paris was freaked too, but the drugs made him so lethargic it never got through.

He turned and walked away, confident that Eli had gotten the message. Yes, he could buy and sell the lot of them, he could sue them into indentured servitude, but even he wasn’t willing to face off with a tiger. Man, talk about a ball-less wonder. Some evil twin he was.

Halfway down the front walk he turned to see Eli glowering at him, but when Paris caught his eye, it seemed to startle Eli out of his hateful reverie. What, was he afraid of him now that he remembered what strain he was? Pussy. “You didn’t just think I was a pretty face, did you?” He tossed his car keys up in the air, and without looking, snatched them out of the air as they came down, a sudden movement that made Eli twitch nervously. Paris gave him a big, insincere smile, and turned away for good.

Some people just needed to learn the hard way that there were limits to his good graces.

Normally he had little trouble bullshitting about anything – he liked to think that was part of the job of being a detective – but those people he hated in a reflexive, belligerent sort of way, kind of like Fox News commentators or televangelists (who were often sex predators, so maybe that was a chicken and egg sort of thing). Any predator was bad enough, but the ones who preyed on kids were the ones he wanted to flay alive and nail to barn doors with an industrial staple gun. He was sure some psychiatrist would have a field day with that, say it was related to his miserable childhood (and was there something he wasn’t mentioning?) but at the end of the day he could give a shit. People who preyed on those weaker than them – and why would anyone prey on someone stronger than them? – needed an ass kicking of galactic proportions.

This was when he really missed Paris. Paris was an award winning actor that the Academy would never notice. He could pretend to be whatever he needed to be to get the job done. He said he’d been training all his life, pretending to be a perfectly straight lady’s man, and something else entirely at other times; he could shift identities as he slid between worlds, so much so that it became second nature for him to put on a mask. Being honest was difficult as a result – Paris said that even now, when he was generally too exhausted to pretend to be anyone else for long, he said he fought the impulse to lie when he didn’t have to, to adapt to whatever people wanted from him. Roan found it astounding, as Paris made lying an art, made deception a beautiful dance. Him? It felt like he was pulling his own teeth out with ice tongs, and everybody knew it; he felt like people could see through him so easily that they only went along with the charade to humor him.

Still, Marley was clearly buying him as a scumbag (now that was an ego blow). He mentioned the rave thing that was going on right now, and she admitted she never got out there during the weekdays because of work and school. She mainly went on the weekends. She implied that there were some great parties at the church, and “they” met a lot of friends there. Some schoolmates even, people they didn’t even know were into the whole “kitty thing”. He wanted to ask her for names, but her trust was fragile, and he didn’t know how to do it without breaking the spell. Besides, it didn’t matter; that wasn’t what he was actually after.

He asked if Danny ever went during the weekdays, which reminded her that he was also a detective looking for her best friend (whom she surely knew was running away – she had probably helped, probably knew where he was) , and she cooled off a bit, becoming deliberately vague. Her boss finally did come over and reminded her this was work, not a coffee shop. Roan looked at her directly and said, “Sorry Ma’am,” secretly enjoying the way her eyes grew hard at being called “Ma’am” – no one with a nose ring ever expected to be called “Ma’am”. Marley enjoyed it too, she turned away smirking so her boss didn’t catch her.

He bought the homocore CD, and they discussed seeing each other at the church sometime. Apparently she must have thought a straight man would enjoy a CD such as this. Well, it was possible – he enjoyed straight people’s music from time to time too.

Roan wandered down towards the exit, which cut through the food court, and he passed an A&W stand. They still existed? Wow. Was there anything more sickly sweet and disgusting than root beer? He was hard pressed to think of anything. So he went and bought a root beer, then sat down at a table in an empty corner of the food court. (Wasn’t hard to find, since the food court was rather empty at this time of night). He took out his cell and called Sikorski.

It rang three times before a female voice answered. “Hello?”

“Hi Connie, it’s Roan.”

“Roan!” Oddly enough, she sounded happy to hear from him. “How are you?”

He had to kill a minute with small talk. Connie was Gordo’s wife, whom he met at a funeral for another police officer. She was a rather matronly woman, slightly plump in that soft older middle aged way, crow’s feet starting to make a crease of her lead colored eyes, her straw blonde hair showing streaks of gray and framing her apple pie face like a designer scarf. She looked like she smelled of lavender and baby powder and made her own oatmeal raisin cookies (which were both true). She seemed like she was too good for Gordo, and too delicate to be a cop’s wife, but he suspected that only the latter was false.

After some pointless chatter where he lied and said everything was just hunky dory, she put Sikorski on the phone. “This isn’t a social call, is it?” he asked sarcastically.

“I just wanted to make sure you rode the coroner hard, make sure he doesn’t just superficially glance at the bodies of the kids.”

Sikorski groaned. “And why would you think he’d be so unprofessional, Roan?”

“That crime scene was fucked up. You know that, right?”

“Of course it was. We had four bodies.”

“No, I mean beyond badly mangled people. It’s fucked up. How could the kids be killed in that way while Tweaks was chewed on like an old bone? Why did it chew on Tweaks but kill the others quickly? How was one segment of the house unaware of what was going on in another segment?”

“Huh?”

“The milk on the floor. Tweaks was surprised getting milk from the fridge. One kid was in the bathroom and two were in a bedroom, and this is a split level. Someone being killed would have screamed, would have altered the others, but it looks like they were all surprised. How did that work?”

“Roan-”

“And the grass outside the window. You saw how overgrown the back yard was, right? So how come there’s no path in it? A big cat would have broken the grass, it would have left a trail. There wasn’t one. How does that make sense?”

“Roan!” He snapped. “You aren’t on the force anymore. This isn’t your investigation. You weren’t even supposed to be at the scene.”

“No, but I was, and I’m telling you this stinks to high heaven.”

He sighed heavily, and started to lecture him on this being his case and Roan technically being a civilian now. Roan had heard it before, so he didn’t really listen, he just sipped his too sweet soda and read the back of his CD. No Pansy Division?! Sacrilege. But why he cared when he had all their CDs he had no idea. Maybe it was the principal of the thing.

Finally, when he could get a word in edgewise, he said, “Just promise me you’ll look into it, Gordo, that’s all I ask. Don’t let this get dismissed as a routine kitty kill.”

“There’s nothing routine about a cat kill, and you know it.”

“Tell that to the boys downtown,” he replied, and then his phone obliged his little snit by losing the connection just then. Fine. He could have called him back but he just didn’t feel like it.

If Paris was here he’d probably be lecturing him too – not your case, not your case – but he began to wonder what possible connection there could be between Tweaks and DeSilvo, if any. Seemed like the sort of thing worth investigating.

But that was for later. He finished his sickly sweet root beer and toss the cup in the trash. He needed to get to the church – he needed to confront Eli.

And without Paris trying to hold him back, he might be able to beat something useful out of him.

*****

By the time he arrived, he could actually find a place on the street to park. There were still too many cars there, and he thought he could hear the strains of AFI leaking from the area near the auditorium as he approached the church. In the dark, with the wan light from streetlamps and porch lights, and the homey glow of yellow lights bleeding from curtained windows, this place looked harmless, almost welcoming, a harbor in the darkness. Maybe that’s why it was so attractive to kids.

The path to the porch was dim, but the house itself was fairly well lit on the inside. By the time he reached the porch, he was torn on whether he should just storm in or knock. It was technically a church, but right now it seemed like a house. Luckily they had some closed circuit cameras watching the front, and Rainbow opened the door as he neared it. “Roan, you’re back.” She pasted on a weak, phony little smile that seemed to strain her in some mysterious fashion. She didn’t seem that happy to see him.

“I’m not here to cause trouble,” he told her, pushing the door open gently and forcing his way inside as she looked over his shoulder, searching for Paris. “I’ve just confirmed that Danny, the boy I’m looking for, was here on several occasions, including quite recently. “

She backed up into the foyer, her innocent little doe’s eyes looking blurry and confused. “We don’t do anything illegal.”

“I’m not saying you have. But you know there are some members who are more inclined to help kids who may be in trouble, maybe unhappy at home … especially if they’re young boys.”

She started shaking her head half way through his sentence.. “We don’t -”

“He could be in serious danger, “ he interrupted, fixing her with a stern look that had made a few weak willed suspects fold in its time. “Look, we all know I don’t like Eli and he doesn’t like me, but I have no interest in nailing the church with anything right now, no matter what Guy thinks. I just want to find Danny before he turns up dead.”

The use of the word “dead” visibly shocked her. “Dead? What are you implying?”

“Have you heard what happened at Tweaks’? Did that make the evening news?”

He’d been subtly advancing down the hall as they talked, forcing Rainbow to keep backing up, and letting him deeper inside the church. The music had lowered until it was barely a thrum, and he could still smell a rather large amount of people, but elsewhere. The incense had faded to a background irritant, and it was because of it he picked up the faint but undeniable scent of a cat. It was diluted, but quite recent. “I don’t watch the news,” she admitted. “It’s never good.”

He had to give her that. “Tweaks was killed, Rainbow, and so were three kids staying at his place.”

She gasped hard, bringing a hand to her throat as tears welled in her eyes. It could have been a magnificent bit of fakery, but he didn’t think so; Rainbow just wasn’t that good an actress. “What? How? What happened?”

“I don’t think you want the details. But Danny was supposed to be there, and I have a horrible feeling that someone’s after him. I’d like to get to him before the killer does. So I need those names, Rainbow.” Okay, he was bullshitting her, but he knew Danny was probably camped out at the house of one of these oh so helpful church visitors, who was as kind as could be to those with young, firm bodies.

She looked torn, her bottom lip quivering slightly as she squeezed her eyes shut in sorrow and doubt, but she let out a little sigh. “I don’t know -”

“This could be life or death. I’m serious.” And he was, if not precisely honest. He could see the thought process going on behind her eyes as soon as she opened them, the flicker and fade of emotions, doubt, and loyalty to the church. But Rainbow didn’t just look like an old hippie, she kind of was one too, and that’s how he knew she’d cave and give him what he wanted. She’d be more concerned about the welfare of the kids’ than her boss’s approval. “I may know some people who can help you. Wait here,” she said, disappearing through a side door.

But Roan had no intention of waiting. He decided to see if he could follow the scent of the cat who had passed through here recently, although that was far from easy. In fact, it was damn near impossible in a place where lots of people – especially infecteds – passed through, but with the incense extinguished he figured he had a good shot at it if he concentrated. He closed his eyes to concentrate on smell, and carefully worked his way through the lobby and its pictures of big cats, and turned into the corridor beyond. He thought the scent headed towards the auditorium, but no, it headed the opposite way down the hall, where it seemed to get stronger by the simple virtue of so few people coming this way and the air conditioner being absent from this end of the hall. He opened his eyes as he banged into an end table, and he quickly snatched a vase of dried flowers out of the air before it hit the carpet. The scent trail seemed to lead upstairs, which was strange. Only a few select church “members” lived on the upper levels, and as far as he knew, none of them were actually infected. Had that changed? Or had someone decided to sneak their bit of jailbait upstairs? Perhaps both. Oh boy, he couldn’t wait to see.

He started up the stairs, which were narrow and creaky, probably the original stairs of the house that had never been upgraded. There was a wall sconce that looked tarnished with age – another holdover – but it was sadly dark, so he couldn’t enjoy the feeling of being in a Victorian mystery, however fleeting.

“Roan,” Rainbow cried from below, and even though he didn’t answer her, she heard the creak of the stairs and looked up towards him. “What are you doing?” she hissed, lowering her voice to a strained whisper. She quickly came up the stairs after him, a small piece of paper gathered in one bony fist.

She was too late, of course. He was in the upstairs corridor, which was narrow and unlit, so much so that he could barely make out the braided carpet runner or the separate doorways down the corridor. One was ajar, but it was simply a bathroom; he could smell the 1,000 Flushes from here. He’d just started down the hall when Rainbow did something unusually bold for her – she grabbed his arm. It was pure reflex, he didn’t mean to, but he yanked his arm clear of her grip more forcefully than necessary; he was concentrating on the scent trail and he didn’t like another of his sense (touch) being engaged. She took a step back, giving him some room. “What are you doing up here?” she whispered fiercely. “Guy won’t like this.”

“Guy can go fuck himself,” he snarled. “In fact, he’d best do so, ‘cause I can’t imagine who else would.”

“You shouldn’t be up here.”

“I smell a cat.” The scent went straight down the hall; he was sure of it. The hall ended with a white painted door, the largest one on the floor.

He sensed Rainbow stiffen behind him; it was like the charge in the air jumped a thousand fold. “Why – you can’t – I mean, there’s no cats -”

“You’re lying.” She was. And more to the point, she was nervous, scared. Who the fuck was behind that door?

He just went ahead and tried the doorknob. It was locked, so he slammed his shoulder up against the door, once, twice, three times. Finally the door frame began to splinter as he put his weight behind it and got angrier and angrier, and finally it slammed opened.

What it revealed was a fairly spacious bedroom showing signs of damage – broken mirrors and a shredded chair were strewn across the wheat colored carpet, the bed listed to the side in a broken wooden frame – but what caught his eye was the movement of the curtain. The color of eggshells, it bellowed and flapped in the breeze coming from the broken window like a trapped and frantic ghost.

The smell of cat was strong as this one had clearly marked its territory, but there was something else. The faint smell of Ferragamo after shave permeated the room beneath the cat scent, and he knew of only one person in this place who wore Ferragamo : Eli.

Rainbow walked into the broken room, squeezing past him, and looked around with genuine shock. “He … he said he wasn’t feeling well …”

Eli was now an infected. Worse yet, he was on the loose in his cat form.