So he’d cursed her to this, to this lonely, nomadic existence as a diseased freak. The irony? She never even liked cats; she’d always been a dog person.

Her family claimed to want to “support” her, but clearly she made them nervous, and her mother started drinking again, and when she accidentally cut her finger on a paring knife, everyone acted like there had been a toxic waste spill and wouldn’t come near her. So she took the money that was in her college fund and simply moved on, hoping to start over in a larger city with a larger infected population, so she wouldn’t be considered such a freak. She intended to lose herself in the crowd, become just another damned leper amongst all the other damned lepers.

But San Francisco and New York were both too expensive, and she didn’t like Los Angeles. She’d heard there was a big group near Helena of all places (lots of wide open spaces - it almost made sense), but there was something about Montana that made her feel slightly agoraphobic. So finally she drifted here, near the Church of the Divine Transformation. She’d never been there, although she’d been encouraged to go since she was an infected and supposedly they helped all infecteds. But she couldn’t quite get over the fact that they were blasphemers.

Her mother would have been proud. Ashley had never been quite the radically devoted Christian her mother was, but some of those boring Sunday sermons from her childhood had obviously sunk in, and she couldn’t quite embrace the idea that this infection was somehow a “gift”, the actions of a god who favored them above all. She was alone with Goodwill furniture in a dingy apartment building, with barely enough to cover her rent and expenses , living on macaroni and cheese three days out of the week - she didn’t feel “blessed”. That’s where therapy kind of helped; the doctor told her she was “self-sabotaging” because she hated herself, hated her disease. He was trying to help her “come to terms” with it, and frankly she wished him luck, because she felt it was all bullshit. But she liked having someone to talk to, which was all the doctor was to her.

She let down the metal shutters over the dirt smeared windows, glad that the government at least made sure even the poorest infecteds had some protections (even if the rich always got the best stuff), and was surprised by a sharp knock on her front door. No one ever knocked on her door, unless it was the landlord inquiring about the rent check or a neighbor complaining about something. As she approached the door, she asked, “Who is it?” She didn’t like the way her voice went up half an octave. She was trying to sound mean, and she only sounded jittery.

“UPS ma’am,” a man replied, his voice almost robotically flat.

She peered out the door, and saw a sort of plain faced young man with curly almond brown hair tucked under a backwards turned baseball cap that was the same shit brown as his shirt, the unfortunate color of UPS uniforms everywhere. He held a box wrapped in brown paper, but she couldn’t see who it was from. Had he gotten the wrong address? Who would send her something? Who would know where to find her?

She undid the chain lock and deadbolt, and looked out the door curiously. His eyes were pale blue and had a sort of bored vacancy to them, as if he’d been working all day long and had already left it inside his own head, and he had the type of broad oval face that would keep him looking youthful until his mid-forties. He was a bit average looking, but not bad; better looking than your typical delivery guy.

He glanced down at the package, and asked, “Ashley Cryer?”

“Yes?” She looked down at the package, trying to see what the return address was.

He moved the package, pulling his hand out from underneath it, and it took her a moment to realize that he was now pointing a gun at her, and then another moment to actually grasp the reality of it. Why the hell would a UPS guy be aiming a gun at her?

It occurred to her that he wasn’t a delivery man just as the gun went off.

****

Roan pulled himself up to the chin up bar, and wondered which one this was. He’d forgotten the number. Forty? Fifty? Three? No, probably more than three - he could feel the sweat dripping down his back, running down his face, plastering his hair to his scalp. He switched to one arm, letting his right arm dangle as he pulled himself up with only one arm, did five reps, and then did the same with his other arm. His muscles were starting to burn, but it quickly faded away.

He dropped down to the floor and decided to go have a quick shower before making breakfast ahead of Paris getting up. Did he even know what the fuck he was doing? This was probably insanity, but so far he couldn’t stop. Rather than ease his anxiety, it just increased it.

He’d taken to sneaking out in the dead of night, leaving Paris sleeping peacefully and obliviously, just to see what he could do. Roan knew that Paris knew he was taking on cat traits - after all, what was that dinner all about?

He should have know it was a trap. Paris had made some great p ad Thai and found this hard to find pale ale microbrew that he absolutely loved, and as soon as he dug in, Paris just dropped it on him like a bomb: he knew he was keeping cat traits and manifesting other things, and he wanted to know why he wasn’t talking to him about it. That was a fun night. Denial became reluctant admittance became an argument, and he stormed out for a while. Roan had considered going to a bar, but found himself instead at this run down apartment building he used to visit quite a bit in his cop days (lots of domestics and the occasional incident of gang violence). Before he even realized what he was doing he climbed out on the forth floor fire escape, looked down at the garbage strewn alley below to make sure there were no homeless guys Dumpster diving, and then jumped off the edge.

He landed on his feet, and while he felt a pained shock up his legs on initial impact with the pavement, he was perfectly fine. He walked to the end of the alley, looked around, and then started running.

Four stories. He should have broken his ankles, his legs, both; four stories could even be a fatal distance, depending on how you landed. But he was fine; he had no problem landing on his feet at all. His legs didn’t hurt.

Four fucking stories.

He wondered how high he could jump from without hurting himself, how high he’d have to be before landing on his feet was impossible. Five? Six? A dozen? He almost wanted to know - he was terrified to find out. At what point did he cross the threshold permanently? When did “cat traits” become inhuman? If he had already crossed the line, when had it happened and why hadn‘t he noticed? How could he notice everybody else’s flaws but never see his own?

When he came home, he was flushed and shaking, so much that Par asked him if he’d been in a fight. He assured he hadn’t been, it was just colder than he thought. Whether Par believed him or not he had no idea, but they both apologized and had absolutely fantastic make up sex. Sometimes that was even better than angry sex.

He’d never mentioned the jump. Sometimes he could almost believe that he imagined the whole thing, that it was a delusion, but even he wasn’t that masochistic.

He’d been getting up in the dead of night, unable to sleep and happy to exploit the fact that there were fewer prying eyes out at three and four in the morning so he could experiment, see where his “abilities” could take him. So far he had determined that he didn’t pull muscles like a normal person, like he used to do; that if he could get his adrenaline up it increased his strength as much as getting angry did; that he could see quite sharply in very dim light; that even though he’d never been much of a runner and had a desk job, he could run three miles without getting tired or winded or sore. He didn’t time himself, but he figured he’d actually made really good time for a rank amateur. About the only thing left was to lock himself in the cage and see if he could force a change … but he wasn’t ready for that. He wasn’t sure he’d ever be ready.

He found himself wondering what else he could test himself on, and he was telling himself to stop. He didn’t want to know anymore; he was freaked out enough. He’d spent quiet times at work pouring over the results he got on his MedNet searches for virus children and unusual conditions. Most of the stories so far had been about kids like Michael Henstridge, ones with multiple illnesses and brain damage. He’d found none that mentioned anything about lingering cat traits. He didn’t want to believe he was somehow, through some bizarre fluke, alone, but … maybe others were reacting the same way as him, pretending their powers didn’t exist.

Once he got out of the downstairs shower and dried off, he put on his work clothes, which he’d taken to stashing downstairs beneath the sink. When he pulled on his pale green Arrow shirt, he noticed the sleeves seemed tight at the biceps. His testing was giving him more muscle mass? Apparently so. There was another reason to knock it off - he’d never be able to hide that from Paris.

He heard the shower go on upstairs, and busied himself heating up the croissants and making scrambled eggs, a dish even he couldn’t fuck up too much. He was just emptying the eggs into a huge salad bowl when Par came downstairs, looking crisp and frighteningly awake in a deep red shirt the color of old blood and black sharkskin pants that looked a bit like an oil slick. He was starting to grow his hair out longer, so now it fell softly to his shoulders and looked almost as shiny sleek as his pants. All he needed was a look of haughty distain, a slight pout, and a personality removal, and he could be a male model.

They ate in companionable silence, splitting the paper up without even thinking about it, and it was just another day of bland domesticity, piling the dirty dishes in the sink before heading out to the Mustang, Roan just naturally taking the driver’s seat as Par slid into the passenger seat and started fiddling with the radio as he drove. He’d left it on NPR, the voices kind of soothing as he trailed yet another cheating husband (he didn’t have a single mistress, just a penchant for a “massage parlor” near the airport), but Paris jumped between stations with obvious restlessness until finally settling on a station playing Green Day.

Traffic wasn’t too bad, and they got to the “office” with a couple minutes to spare. Oh joy, a day of background and credit checks. All day he got to stare at the computer and wait for a server elsewhere to spit out the past of these poor sods on his list. It never felt like proper work, but Vicuna Software and Edwards Financial paid well enough, so he couldn’t complain.

Paris sighed heavily and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Is there someone else?” He finally asked.

Roan looked at him so sharply he almost gave himself whiplash. “What? Are you shitting me? Hell no! Why would you ask me that?”

Paris met his gaze with the slightest frown, mimicked in the crease between his eyebrows. “Because I woke up at three thirty this morning and you were gone. It’s not the first time either. I figured you either had a bit on the side that worked the day shift, or you were out … testing yourself again. And frankly I preferred you fucking around over you not trusting me enough to tell me about it.”

Oh good - that was a nice boot in the ribs. He rubbed his eyes, buying himself time to think as well as giving him an excuse not to look at Par’s wounded expression. “It’s not you -”

“ - it’s me. Say that, and you’ll be sleeping in the garage.”

Fair enough. “It’s not a question of trust. I’m just … if I talk about it, it’s real. If I don’t, there’s still a possibility I’m just making it up or dreaming; it could all be a figment of my imagination. But saying it aloud … I’ll have to deal with it. I’m not sure I’m ready for that.” He couldn’t look at Paris, not only because he wasn’t sure he could face his rightful indignation, but also because he had inexplicable tears in his eyes. He had to rub them away before he noticed, and he had no idea why they appeared in the first place. Because it was the awful chickenshit truth?

There was a long and painful silence, but then Par touched his shoulder, giving it a small squeeze. “Sweetheart, I know you think this is horrible, but I don’t think it is.”

“I’m inhuman.”

“No.” Paris grabbed his face firmly in his hands and made him look at him. He had his “wise beyond his ears” expression on his face, his eyes a peaceful, sympathetic blue. “You are Human, and you will always be Human no matter what. What you have are gifts. They don’t make you less Human.”

“Easy for you to say. You don’t have them.”

“No, but I wish I did. Just think how much I’d get laid after that.” He gave him a big, cheeky grin, eyes sparkling like sapphires in the sun.

Roan didn’t want to feel better, didn’t want to laugh, but he couldn’t help but crack a smile. Par was just trying to make him feel better, but this wouldn’t be laughed away - how could it? “Can you ever not think with your dick ?”

“I’m a man - of course not,” Paris claimed, then pulled him in for a kiss, dropping one of his warm hands to his thigh. It was nice, so nice he was kind of sorry they had to go to work. He kissed him hard in response, tangling his hand in his soft hair, and when Roan pulled away, he said, “We should go home for lunch.”

“Now who’s thinking with his dick?” Paris gave him a wink and got out of the car.

He sighed, blindly reaching for the door handle. The morning was overcast, the sky a layer of dirty cotton, but all it was doing was holding in the humidity. It felt like a storm was on the way, the ozone giving the air a sharp tang he could feel in his sinuses. “Bastard, you did that on purpose.”

Paris was already half way across the parking lot, but he looked back at him with the kind of seductive smile that always cut him - and every other breathing humanoid member of the planet - off at the knees. “Did I? Oh, but I’m so harmless and cute.”

Roan shook his head, unable to keep from genuinely smiling now. “Cocktease,” he accused, just as one of the lawyers over at the small Gorman and Singh firm came out his unit door. He stopped as if shocked with a cattle prod, looked between the pair of them in goggle eyed shock, and quickly turned and went back inside his office.

Paris tried to stifle a laugh but failed, and that startled a laugh out of him as well. Poor guy. Maybe they should send him a fruit basket or something as an apology.

Okay, no, fruit might not be appropriate in this context, and muffins might be pushing it. Something manly was called for - a basket of power tools and motor oil. But he was a lawyer; a basket of Scotch and Pepcid AC would probably be most appropriate.

Once inside the office of MK Investigations, the phone on Paris’s front desk was already ringing, so he went into professional mode right away, and Roan put on the coffee before retreating to his office and getting down to the boring job of running computer checks. This was certainly the job for someone who worried they were losing what little humanity they had. Did anything make you feel more Human than being a bored corporate drone? Inhuman was starting to look better and better.

He’d killed about forty minutes and two and a half people on his lists when he heard a tonal change in Paris’s voice out in the front office. He couldn’t make out the words precisely, not over the rattle and hum of the air conditioner, but Paris always had this smoothly professional but wonderfully friendly “assistant voice” he used on clients that always seemed to relax them and make them like him immediately. (Paris was the perpetual good cop, and he was the perpetual bad cop. Playing to strengths, as it were.) This was more his normal voice, with an added edge of hardness.

He got up and opened his office door, not sure what he expected to see, but fairly certain it wasn’t what he did see.

Paris was standing up behind his desk, his arms crossed over his chest in a posture of barely contained anger. On the other side of the desk, out of lunging distance, was the last person he ever expected to see in his office: Eli Winters.

Eli had managed to get off his assault and unrestrained charges with nothing more than community service, proving that as odious and ugly a person as Guy Stovak was, he had some redemptive value as a weasel-y shit slick lawyer. So that’s how he excused his own existence - Roan had always wondered.

Eli gave him a smile meant to be friendly, but it didn’t reach his eyes and looked like a rictus, a final muscular spasm of a dying body. Eli had a new haircut, fashionably short with the bangs swept up like a sea wall and highlighted sunny blond, a two hundred dollar haircut he probably spent five hundred for, and - oh, he was dying to tell him - extremely gay. All he needed was a skin tight white t-shirt and jeans that were slung just below the waist, showing a few centimeters of taut, tan flesh, and he could have been every other guy in any gay bar in this city. Was Eli aware he had a gay cut? Maybe it was trendy … but wasn’t “metrosexuality” out now?

Eli’s outfit seemed to tell him metrosexuality was still in, as he was wearing tailored Armani slacks and a needlessly expensive silk button down shirt of bright green, blue, and red vertical stripes, the shirt open at the collar so you could see the silver necklace with the small cat pendant. Was it supposed to be a leopard? It was a detail free silhouette, a drop of liquid mercury; it could have been any cat. “Roan,” Eli said, his voice both flat and slightly edged with sarcasm. “It seems your … assistant thinks I’m here to cause trouble.”

Roan leaned against the doorjamb, fixing him with a caustic glare that he hoped would scare him off. “You don’t cause much else.”

Eli attempted to chuckle, but it sounded forced and false. “People say the same thing about you.”

“In my case it’s true. And if you don’t want some, turn around and leave.”

Half of his mouth quirked up in what might have been a genuine smile. “I like that, that’s good. You should be an action hero.”

“Five seconds, then I physically throw you out.”

He raised his hands in a warding off gesture, as if he was physically advancing on him right now. Filtered sunlight coming through the blinds glinted off his platinum Rolex and a chunky gold and ruby pinky ring he always inexplicably wore. Roan thought it made him look like a mafia don’s kept boy. “Look, I know you don’t like me, but this is no way to treat a client, is it?”

Roan straightened up, feeling muscles tense across his shoulders. “I told you to get out.”

“This isn’t a joke,” Eli continued, ignoring him. “It’s time to do something for your community, Roan.” He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a check, which he held up like a shield. “I want to hire you.”

If this was a joke, it was a really poor one.

With the waiting game begun, he went back to his clients, the Nakamuras, and sat with them a while. Danny was still out cold, but his vitals were starting to look better, so the doctor figured he’d be conscious in another couple of hours. She didn’t think there’d be any permanent physical damage.

Gordo found him eventually, and told him no one had found Henstridge yet; no one seemed to know where he was. Gordo still wasn’t sure about his theory, but he told him - in a hushed voice, in case someone wandered by - that he’d make sure Henstridge would be brought in, and when he was, he’d make sure he was there. “We both know the reason I put up with you is because you do have the sharpest instincts of anyone I’ve ever met. So … if you say you think Henstridge is the guy … okay. We’ll look at him hard.”

This was clearly a painful admission from Gordo, and he supposed he should have been touched, but Roan was too tired to muster it. “Are you hittin’ on me?”

Gordo scowled at him, shaking his head. “You just can’t keep from being a smart ass, can you?”

“Snarky is my default setting.”

He sighed heavily, a fatally put upon man. “So I’ve noticed.”

Although there were some questions about trespassing and excessive use of force, he was essentially let go; after all, as Seb so helpfully pointed out, according to the law, anything short of death was permissible in self-defense - and death was acceptable in some cases. Hatch was hardly dead, just hurting (although probably not nearly enough).

He’d left the Mustang on Hatch’s block, but Gordo and Seb offered him a lift home, and he figured he’d take it. He and Paris could head out tomorrow on the bike and pick up the Mustang - maybe they’d encounter a local “action news team” , and they could say something unconscionably filthy on the air. It was always fun to piss off someone with plastic hair and nothing better to do.

It was odd riding in the back of an unmarked police car, but at least Gordo gave him his gun back so he didn’t feel totally like he was being run in. He mostly nodded off in the back, vaguely listening to Seb and Gordo talk to Em at dispatch, and was looking forward to simply crawling into bed with Paris and sleeping for three days. Except Paris wouldn’t be there yet, would he? The sun was starting to come up, the sky’s fragile blue giving way to a pale blush dotted with thin, blue-grey clouds, and he figured Paris had just changed back or was soon going to. He’d be happy he solved his cases, although then that meant they had to start worrying about the bills again.

His eyes were half-open as they turned the corner down his quiet, rural street, and he saw, parked on the soft shoulder of the road across from his house, a silver Subaru Outback. “What the fuck?” he exclaimed, sitting up, totally awake now.

Seb was driving, and while this exclamation did not make his driving suffer in any way, he glanced at him in the rearview mirror as he pulled the car smoothly into the driveway. “What’s wrong?” His voice almost had an inflection; that was near panic for Seb.

“That Outback,” he said, hastily getting out of the car. “It belonged to a suspicious guy that was here the other day,”

“Suspicious how?” Gordo asked. “Nutball?”

“I don’t -” The replied died in his throat as he took a step towards the house, and caught the scent of blood. He had the instant mental image of Paris laying on the floor of the cage, his head punched in one side, collapsed due to the force of a bullet pulverizing part of his skull, in a pool of blood like a collapsed shadow. His heart was trip-hammering, and he knew he should approach with caution …but it all disappeared in a sudden flush of rage, his vision tinting red as the muscles knotted inside his skin, and as he ran for the house he shouted, “Paris!” Only later, when his throat hurt, did he realize that the scream turned into a roar.

He didn’t open his door even though he could have; he was too enraged to think clearly, the beast surging out on a wave of desperate emotion. He slammed a flattened palm against the deadbolt and it shot out through the door, cracking like spun glass, the metal bouncing across the floor as he kicked the door open, braced to pounce on the first thing that wasn’t Paris. He could almost feel the hot blood of the intruder in his mouth already.

He was smashed across the face with the rank, meaty smell of blood, and he saw that the basement door had been ripped off its hinges and was partially covering the body of a man sprawled out on the floor at the foot of the stairs. It wasn’t Paris; he knew that from the smell of his blood before he was even able to rein back the beast enough to focus on the body.

He was dead; he smelled like shit and decay already. His throat had been torn out, his skull punctured and face scarred by teeth marks. His right arm, extended away from his body, was held on only by the bone and a few straggly bits of sinew. There was a gun just beyond his curled fingers, and dark blood had pooled around him like a fallen shroud. He felt a dark sense of triumphant that the stupid fucker had encountered the tiger and not Paris, the prey suddenly rendered predator in front of a man not prepared for it.

Anger mingling with relief and panic, he felt a bit more in control of himself, and looking around the room spotted Paris curled up by the back door, blood so completely slicked down his naked back and torso that it looked like he was wearing a red shirt. He scrambled to him as Gordo and Seb came in the door, and one of them - he honestly didn’t know which, and didn’t care - exclaimed, “Jesus Christ!”

He grabbed Paris in his arms and curled himself around his upper body, fighting back tears as his nose confirmed that the blood wasn’t his; none of it was Paris’s. His pulse, thready and rapid in the aftermath of the change, pounded away in a steady rhythm, and Roan felt almost dizzy with relief. For a second there he thought he was gone; he thought he was dead. He tried to swallow back the lump in his throat and realized he was trembling now, partially out of adrenaline overload and partially out of the fact that he just realized that he had been more than ready, willing, and able to kill someone with his bare hands. It never even occurred to him to draw his weapon.

He was aware that someone was standing nearby, just far enough away to give them some semblance of privacy, and just by the scent of his cologne - it was faint and he didn’t recognize it at all; it smelled of wood smoke and pine, with a hint of cigar - he knew it was Seb. “Is he all right?”

“He’s okay. He‘s only out due to the change,” he replied, his eyes tightly shut, his voice gravelly. He stroked Paris’s sweat soaked hair, and was glad he wasn’t conscious yet. How would he explain this? The last time Paris woke up in someone else’s blood, he had a nervous breakdown.

“Oh my god,” Gordo gasped. He heard the rustle of Seb turning towards his partner, and Roan risked opening his eyes to look. A couple errant tears spilled out, but they stopped. Gordo was crouched next to the body, just beyond the penumbra of blood, and he was holding two driver’s licenses that he must have pulled out of the coat of the victim. Gordo looked up at them, blue eyes weary with the general horrors of humanity, and said, “It’s Mitchell Henstridge.”

Roan wiped the tears away with the back of his hand, and tried to figure out how he had become a loose end that needed tying up. Had Henstridge known he was investigating him? He must have. He must have worried he was getting close, and what the fuck was two more murders on top of the five he’d already committed? Once you killed at least two people, it was unofficially a “spree” anyways.

He laid Paris down carefully on the floor and grabbed the throw off the couch, covering him, as Seb called in for a meat wagon and the rest of the “cat” investigative unit. Roan had intended to go to the ground floor bathroom and get Paris some fentanyl (he didn’t give a fuck that they were here; Paris was really going to need it), but he stopped as his nose got so accustomed to the smell of blood and death that he could now smell something else: a cat. A cat he’d never smelled before, one that didn’t belong. “Fucking hell, his son’s still here,” he snapped, heading for the stairs.

Gordo stood up, drawing his service weapon, and asked, “You can smell him?”

“Yeah, upstairs.”

As he started up the steps, Gordo moved to follow, but he looked back down at him and shook his head. “I can get this.”

“If he’s the cat that’s been killing people …”

“Remember what happened at the station? If he’s a cat, I can handle him.”

Gordo frowned, but his eyes seemed to darken with newfound knowledge as he thought back to what happened at the cat containment unit, and he understood now what Roan only was starting to understand: the cats were afraid of him. He smelled half-cat, half-human, and they just didn’t know what to make of him. He was the alpha male by default, because he was a strange mutation that couldn’t fit into their limited frame of reference. Gordo nodded reluctantly, but kept his weapon out, pointed at the ceiling. “You need help, shout.”

Roan nodded and went up the stairs quickly and quietly, unconsciously shifting his weight to the balls of his feet. He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath, following the scent trail to the room besides the bedroom that they sarcastically referred to as “the library”. It was just a storage room for random crap that they hadn’t found a place for yet, but mainly it was full of Roan’s books; boxes and boxes of books. He knew of this great used bookshop on Pike Street that he could spend hours in, just perusing the stacks and finding hidden gems. He always went in there intending to buy only one or two books, and invariably left with a bag full of them. Paris used to joke that he should just open his own damn used book shop in the house, if only to free up the room.

He slipped into the bedroom and then the connected bathroom, taking out a medical kit and loading up a hypodermic with painkillers, so practiced at it by now he could do it faster than Dee ever could. He hesitated, filled a second needle, and tucked them both in his pocket before returning to the library.

There was a window on the far wall, across from the door, and as he shoved the ajar door all the way open he was greeted by the smell of fresh air stirring around the scent of slowly moldering books. Mitchell’s son had jumped out, perhaps because it didn’t want to face a tiger. It had cut itself on the glass, he could smell a faint trace of blood, and that was enough for him to track it.

He went to the pane and looked out, but the backyard was clear. Glass sparkled below like water, and before he realized what he was doing, he’d jumped out the window and landed easily on his feet in the grass. The boy’s scent was easy to pick up, and he followed the faint smell of blood towards the copse of trees at the back of the property.

(Had he just jumped out the fucking window?!)

When he’d found this place, the copse was the second reason he wanted to buy it. Being far from Human neighbors was the main attraction, but this copse, full of towering pines and thick underbrush, huge ferns that were almost waist high and tangles of blackberry bushes as tall as a man, was an attractive cat hideaway. It was full of small animals that development had chased out of their old homes, and it could - in theory - provide enough distraction for any big cat that might have broken out of the house. It was small hope that they’d be distracted enough by a possum to forget about hunting Human prey, but he had odd moments of living in hope.

But he found Henstridge’s son Michael by the dried up creek, laying underneath the hollow of a blackberry bush, his injured leg still sticking out from under the shrub. He was still in cat form, and as Roan knelt down and pulled a hypo out of his pocket, he saw why no one had been able to identify his bite pattern.

Michael Henstridge was like no cat he had ever seen in his life. His fur was short and camel colored, but he had an awkward, lanky body, almost more like a cheetah’s than any anything else. But his head had the broader, flatter shape of a panther, and considering his age, he was a lot larger than he would have expected, almost the size of your average panther. But he wasn’t an average anything; he almost looked like some kind of cat hybrid. Although one of the most bizarre and troubling things was the black nylon collar around his neck - it looked like a shock collar, the kind you might use on an obsessively barking dog.

He stabbed the hypodermic in a vein in its leg, and Michael looked up at him, ears flattening, but Roan aborted his growl with one of his own. “It’s over, boy,” he snarled. “Stay down.”

For a long moment he stared into uncomprehending yellow eyes, and then the cat laid back down, the drugs taking hold of its system as powerfully as for any human.

Or at least that’s what he told himself. He hated to think that, on some level, Michael understood him.

According to Dennis Caldera, a criminal lawyer that Roan worked cases for occasionally, Henstridge’s death wasn’t so much self-defense as it was a classic “asking for it” scenario: he broke into a house with a gun and a dangerous cat, clearly intending harm. The fact that he was partially eaten by the resident cat only meant the possibility that karma existed was better than ever. In fact, Henstridge’s death was basically classified as “death by misadventure” - no one even considered pressing charges against him.

Maybe he didn’t feel bad about it because the bastard was coming to kill him and Roan. And because god knew what a fucked up job he did on his own son.

Michael Henstridge was an infected, and a pretty odd one. A little digging found that Anita Henstridge had been infected by tainted blood given to her in a transfusion after a car accident in her first trimester of pregnancy, when the two of them were living in Chicago. The hospital had ended up infecting several patients in a similar manner; there was a huge class action lawsuit that was settled out of court, and by the time the lawyers got their cut of the money, all the survivors blew through their meager leftovers quite quickly. By the time the Henstridges’ had relocated here, their money was gone.

Michael Henstridge had several problems, beyond just being infected and having polycythemia vera. He was something of a flip side to most infecteds, meaning he was more often cat than Human, reverting to Human form for only about a week out of every month. And when he was in Human form, he still acted like a cat. He walked on all fours - it was difficult to get him to stand unless he was trying to reach for something - and growled, yowled, and snarled; he didn’t speak. He did understand some commands, though, mainly stay, down, no, and sic. Clearly he had some serious brain damage, but there was some question has to how much of it was made worse by Henstridge “conditioning” his own son. Michael was in a special hospital upstate, where they were trying to figure out what they could “fix” and what was permanent. He hadn’t been charged with his role in the murders, because he was a minor, because he was brain damaged and because he was going to spend the rest of his days locked up in an institution anyways. How did you convict a boy who was mainly a cat ?

Henstridge had a second identity established, Peter French, under which he’d been renting a ramshackle house not far from Tweaks on the East Side. There was a small pond on a neighboring property, and a search of it turned up a machete that was assumed to be the murder weapon used to kill the kids at Tweaks’s place. Roan had said there were some things left at the house that indicated that Mitchell honestly thought he was “protecting” his son, that he was taking care of him in some way, but Paris couldn’t quite wrap his mind around that psychotic reasoning. He trained his son to a leash - how was that doing the best for him exactly? How was training him to kill on command beneficial? Bizarrely, he thought Roan may have actually felt a bit sorry for Mitch, although he was still glad the fucker was dead.

And Roan. He wondered how and if he should try and get him to talk about what was happening to him. He heard from Diego what he’d done to Hatch, just as he saw for himself what he’d done to the deadbolt on the door. Paris worked on doors, he knew how hard deadbolts were to break, and Roan had punched it out - in one single piece. There was a break in the door where the lock had been engaged and forced out. The strength needed to do something like that was supernatural, and if you combined that with how he broke Hatch’s arm, it added up to an interesting picture. Namely the cat was bleeding into him more and more - but did want to acknowledge that in any way? No, he was keeping it to himself, as if denial could somehow keep it from happening. Paris just went along with him, pretended he didn’t know, but he wasn’t sure how long he could keep doing it. Yes, he was an excellent liar if he didn’t say so himself, but he was sure not talking about it was slowly killing Roan. He’d found him up some nights, pacing or staring out at nothing, once even trying to see if he could read a book in the dark (did that work? He was kind of curious), but he had a variety of lame excuses, from too much caffeine to insomnia. Roan had to know he knew too, but he hadn’t banked up the courage to say it. How funny was that? The bravest man he knew afraid of talking about what was happening to him.

Paris had already decided what he was going to do. He was going to make him a nice dinner one night, and then simply tell him he knew. Yeah, that was a hell of a way to ruin a nice dinner, but that was how they did it in the Lehane family, damn it - it’s what always made Christmas so interesting. Recriminations and presents.

Sikorski had come around shortly after the entire incident, once they had scrubbed all the blood out of the carpet and rehung the basement door, and brought them a bottle of wine, saying he’d never brought Roan a housewarming present. Sikorski tried very hard to be nice to him, which made Paris instantly suspicious, and even Roan hadn’t known what to make of it, but Paris was relatively sure he eventually figured it out. He felt bad for doubting Roan or using him (half dozen of one, twelve of the other), and also it got through his thick, straight head that he and Roan genuinely loved each other. It was probably a weird thing for the terminally straight to get, but hey, his boyfriend punched out a deadbolt for him and almost became a lion on demand - would Sikorski’s wife have done that for him? (Assuming she could.)

Sikorski also brought up a point that awed him somewhat, and that was if Hank had grabbed his Remington before going outside - instead of his sawed off shotgun - Roan might have never taken an interest in the case, and Ro had to admit that was probably true. It just struck him as an odd weapon for a cop to have, and Paris couldn’t help but feel a little bit of pride. That was what Roan was great at - finding the one little flaw, the one little thing that didn’t quite fit, and blowing cases wide open.

He still didn’t trust Sikorski; he still used Roan. But maybe he judged him too harshly otherwise. At least he was trying.

The money remained a question mark, the answer to which had probably died with DeSilvo, Henstridge, and Tweaks. Randi had confirmed that Tweaks was in debt up to his eyeballs and wasn’t getting the Cayman Island gift baskets like Hank and Mitch, but since Metropol had disappeared as mysteriously as it had showed up, leads had dried up quickly. Roan had two theories, both of which were plausible enough: during the bust of the house in Edgewood, DeSilvo and Henstridge found a whole bunch of money (perhaps Tweaks, desperate to keep another more serious charge off his lengthy record, lead them to it, or was simply present when they found it) that was clearly ill gotten gains, and took it for themselves. Unsure how to best launder it and wanting to keep suspicion off of them, the account was set up in the Cayman Islands, and they pulled out small amounts on a monthly basis, just enough not to garner attention. Or conversely they found something incredibly illegal at the Edgewood house, and knowing that Edgar Rodriguez had the cash or the capabilities of getting it, blackmailed him into paying them hush money. Rodriguez denied any knowledge of the cops or a Cayman Island account, but the cops in Miami were still investigating him. Roan had told him if it was Rodriguez, he’d covered his tracks extraordinarily well. They would probably never know what precisely happened at the Edgewood house. That ate at Roan a lot - he hated mysteries even he couldn’t solve - but he was learning to let go.

The Nakamuras were so pleased by the job had Roan had done for them that they gave him a five thousand dollar bonus. Roan had actually tried to refuse it (!), but the Nakamuras insisted he keep it, so he did. It went very far in home repairs, so they were able to get the house secure again in no time. Danny was okay, although he’d seemingly suffered amnesia possibly due to constant exposure to ketamine (or because he didn’t want to deal with it), meaning he didn’t remember exactly what had happened to him. But the hard drives had an awful lot of incriminating evidence; in fact, it seemed Hatch was trying to get into the online porn business, and he’d had a couple of more underage victims on film that the police were having a hard time identifying (mainly because Hatch didn’t film too many faces). But between child pornography , kidnapping, rape, and ketamine possession charges, Hatch wasn’t going to see the light of day for a long time. And Roan hinted rather darkly at what other convicts did to pedophiles in prison, so it wasn’t a huge shock that Hatch’s lawyer was trying to get him sentenced to a special sex offender’s treatment center, although the state was resisting so far.

The Hatch case had gotten MK Investigations a lot of publicity, even though Roan had made it clear he didn’t talk to reporters and wouldn’t, and once when Paris did it just for the sheer lark of it, Ro got really pissed off. He didn’t want to be a “sideshow”, the infected detective, and Paris couldn’t help but wonder if the new thing he was going through - the changes, the cat traits lingering behind longer now - had made him want to retreat even further from the world. Was he afraid he’d end up like Michael Henstridge, more cat than Human? That wasn’t going to happen.

Okay, no, he had no basis for saying it, no proof he could give Roan, but Ro wasn’t brain damaged, and if he was going to change into a cat permanently wouldn’t he have done so by now? He honestly thought Roan was simply growing into his abilities, which he’d never bothered to explore before. He bet he could do a lot of things if he wasn’t so afraid of himself and what he could do. Sometimes he just didn’t get Roan at all; if he was him and he found out he could have super strength and shit like that, by god he’d be out there using it. He’d be ripping off bank vault doors and juggling Volkswagens and just really impressing the hell out of extremely attractive people as well as trying to swing a movie or t.v. deal. Just call him Super ManWhore.

At least business was really good now; everybody wanted to hire them. They had cases backed up into next month, although Roan was very careful about weeding out clients who simply wanted to hire them for the novelty factor. He once angrily tossed out a guy who turned out to be a reporter, just trying to be sneaky.

Paris weeded through the newspaper, finding the only section he bothered to read - the lifestyle section - before heading to the basement. He was supposed to go out with Randi tonight, but he decided he wanted to spend the night at home. Randi and him usually went out to clubs, and Roan knew about it, but he didn’t mind, because he trusted him.

Okay, maybe he didn’t, he just knew that if Paris cheated on him he could smell the man or woman on him, no matter how well he showered. That was the problem with being with someone with super smelling, although it least it kept him honest. (Of course the fact that he would probably kill anyone else he slept with kept him monogamous as well; was any sex safe enough when the tiger strain was like playing Russian roulette with a fully armed semi-automatic?) Besides, he had a good thing going here; he wasn’t going to screw it up by fucking around. He had a feeling his fucking around days were long past gone.

When Roan was in the high part of his cycle, he and Randi would hit the town, mainly going to gay clubs (which Roan hated) and the occasional straight clubs, generally just to dance and drink and have a good time. Also there was a continuing attempt to get Randi laid, but so far it hadn’t really paid off, to the point that she preferred going to the gay clubs with him. While she hated being a “cock blocker”, she’d made a whole bunch of new gay male friends, although she claimed that most were just friendly with her in hopes of eventually getting to nail him. He didn’t know if that was true or not, but they were generally nice guys, although not necessarily his type. (Which was funny, because pre-infection, almost everyone was his type if he was high or drunk enough.)

Randi sounded a little disappointed when he called to cancel, but she said it was okay; Lost was on, and she could stay home and watch it. Besides, she wasn’t sure she was in the mood to watch him get hit on by gorgeous guys she had no hope in hell of nailing unless she got a sex change. Maybe tomorrow night (for going out, not getting her a sex change. That seemed more like a weekend thing).

Paris left the new basement door open, so the CD he put on the stereo could be clearly heard. It was Death From Above 1979’s “You’re A Woman, I’m A Machine”, which was a recent album that Ro liked a lot in spite of its “flaming heterosexuality” (ah, he never did stop being a smart ass). Paris went down the steps and sat in the center of them, a good distance away from the repaired cage, but still within the general eye line of the lion inside.

Roan in cat form always looked spectacularly regal. He was laying down in the pose of library stone lions everywhere, his deep green eyes a striking counterpart to his ochre fur and his large, luxurious mane, partially shot through with the dark reddish brown hair that Roan’s mother had named him after. (It took him a stupid amount of time to realize that Roan’s mother had named him after his hair color; roan just wasn’t used much as a descriptive term anymore, except in relation to the color of horses. It made him wonder about Roan’s mother, what she was like to know that name, to give it to her son.)

“Just so you know, I changed your ringtone again,” Paris told the lion conversationally. “It’s a Pete Yorn song that makes me think of you, so of course you’re going to absolutely hate it. And I’ll be the first to admit that that “sister” line is not only gender inappropriate, but even in correct context just totally creepy. I have no idea what possessed him to write that, unless he was just desperate for a rhyme. I mean, it’s icky.”

The lion just stared at him, oozing the lazy, arrogant disdain that only lions seemed capable of, its tail flicking with impatience. Sometimes he wondered if Roan was actually semi-aware in there; sometimes he liked to annoy him just in an attempt to prove it. If Roan, after changing back, went and deleted his ringtone, it’d be proof positive that he retained some kind of awareness. Paris unfolded the “lifestyle” section, and glanced at the day’s scintillating headline. “Gray Is The New Black. Seriously, who comes up with this shit? And who cares? Good lord, there’s so many wrong things about this I don’t even know where to start. And if you were here, I know you’d say “Why do you read that stuff if it pisses you off?” and I’d say “Because sometimes I like to complain about things that have no consequence whatsoever. Sometimes I like to think about silly things that aren’t life and death.” You know what my favorite part about these imaginary conversations between us is? I always win the argument. I’m ten for ten, baby!” He pumped his fist in the air in triumph.

The lion continued to stare at him with Roan’s green eyes, its tail flicking once more. The oddest thing? Roan rarely growled at him. Oh he supposed he would if he went right up to the cage, he might make a lunge at him, but as long as he kept his distance he just regarded him with what seemed to be haughty indifference. It was almost a ’We both know I can kick your ass, so why go through the motions’ kind of deal. And that kind of attitude seemed more human than cat, although he supposed that was debatable.

Paris opened the newspaper and looked inside, looking for something new to complain about, and maybe a movie they could go see on the weekend when his transitional phase was over. He glanced up at the cat to see it continuing to watch him in a way that could have been annoyed, or one that was almost - dare he even think it? - somewhat affectionate. “Isn’t it nice to spend a cozy evening at home?” Paris asked , flashing the cat a big, slightly sarcastic smile.

The lion’s tail twitched once more, and he figured that as answers went, that was good enough.

The End

I anticipate a sequel, if only to see how far Roan’s cat abilities go. That’s just too good to pass up.

He moved around to the window that was improperly covered with black paint, and pressed his eye against the narrow strip of clean glass on the far right side. It took him a moment to focus, but there were low spot lights on inside the shed, illuminating shapes that only came to life when the figure moving around the shed kept turning on more lights. They looked like floor lamps, the kind you could pick up for a song at Ikea, although some of them had brighter than average bulbs. As he - Hatch? - lit the place up, Roan could make out what appeared to be hard drives on shelves (which would explain the electric hum he was hearing through the glass), and metal poles … no, a type of makeshift headboard, wasn’t it? As more lights came up in the small room, he saw there was indeed a bed in there, and silver metal glinted against the black iron. Handcuffs? The way the sliver of clear glass was angled and the way that he was turning on lights, it was hard to get a good look, but then the camera flash went off again. It caught him off guard, and he had to blink away afterimages that nearly blinded him. But in that short window between overexposure and blinding, he caught a glimpse of a face: a young man in profile, his black hair a mess and nearly obscuring his eyes, which were closed. He was Japanese and looked unconscious, his wrists handcuffed to the bedposts.

Oh holy shit.

He felt the rage rising, and he let it come as he darted around to the door, and as he hit it with his shoulder, he could feel the change wanting to happen, he could feel his muscles going hard; they were humming like live wires as the door exploded open, and Hatch jumped in shock, dropping his digital camera. “What the fuck -” he exclaimed angrily.

The smell of the place overwhelmed Roan, and in its way it was as stunning as a punch to the gut. It was the smell of body odor, fear sweat, piss, semen, adrenaline, vomit, blood, and ozone, all confined in a small space and baked in heat and static electricity. Roan saw Hatch coming for him, swinging something he’d grabbed up from the corner (baseball bat?), and even though he knew he could have grabbed it out of the air - his arm twitched, the knotting muscles responding without him - he let it come down, only bringing up his arm to keep the blow from landing on his face.

He needed an injury, a mark, a bruise, to legally excuse what he was going to do to this man.

The bat hit hard, possibly fracturing a bone, but Roan hardly even felt the pain as he then yanked the bat out of Hatch’s hand and threw it away, hitting something with a solid thud. Hatch’s eyes darted towards the hit object, but Roan never bothered to look.

Hatch tried to land a punch then, throwing a wild right, but Roan easily caught his hand and twisted the arm with a sharp, savage motion, snapping the bone clean. At the same moment, he kicked out, stamping a foot flat against Hatch’s left knee with excessive force. The leg bent as it was not suppose to, and the crack of his leg breaking was as loud as a rifle blast in the tiny shed.

He tried to scream, but he had no breath; the noise that came out of him as he toppled to the floor was a high pitched squeal, like some kind of bizarre tea kettle whistle. But as soon as he hit the floorboards it jarred his broken leg, and he managed a surprised, agonized yelp, grabbing for his leg with his one good arm as tears of pain streamed from his eyes. “Do not try me,” Roan grated. “You will lose.” Only belatedly did he realize he was growling as he spoke.

Swallowing back his rage, reining in the beast, he went over to check Danny. He was still breathing, but his breaths were slow and shallow, and even when Roan called his name he didn’t move. He appeared naked to the waist, but that’s when a tattered green blanket covered him; it was probably safe to assume he was completely naked. The handcuffs looked like old regulation issue, before plastic ties came into wide use, and the skin of Danny’s wrists looked abraded, like he’d been in them for some time. “Where are the fucking keys?”

Hatch was still curled up on the floor on his side, his broken arm hanging down uselessly, and when he looked up at him his slate grey eyes were wild and showing too much white. He was a soft looking man, of above average height, but middle age was catching up to him rapidly, making his bark colored hair lank and thin, and his middle looked like a pillow of slowly swelling dough. “Who the fuck are you?”

“I’m a detective hired by Danny’s parents to find him, you sick son of a bitch.” He saw that his good hand was scrambling to pull out something beneath a lower shelf, and just because he felt like playing with his prey he let Hatch pull out the gun - a little Smith & Wesson 9 mm - before he put his foot down on the gun and let him take a good, long look up the barrel of his HK. “Mine’s bigger.” He kicked the gun behind him, and Hatch didn’t try to fight. From the sharp new scent in the shed, he’d just pissed himself. “Now keys, or I’ll take your other arm.”

It took him a moment to form the words, all the blood had drained from his face, and he wondered if Hatch was starting to go into shock. Like he gave a fuck if he was. “C-coffee can, to your right.”

There was an old Folger’s can on the largest shelf, roughly waist high, and inside it were the little silver keys to the cuffs. He plucked them out and holstered his gun - like Hatch was capable of making a sudden move right now - before freeing Danny’s hands. It was then he noticed small needle holes in Danny’s bicep, ones that looked fairly fresh. “What the fuck did you shoot him up with?” When Hatch didn’t answer promptly, he snapped, “You have more bones I could break. Wanna see?”

“Special K,” he replied, his voice weak and defeated. Part shock, and part realization that he was powerless. He bet he was in a lot of fucking pain now that the initial numbness had worn off. “He wanted it; I wasn’t doing anything he didn’t want.”

“Oh fuck you, asshat. If he was so willing, why did you keep dosing him with special k? Why are his wrists raw?” He pulled out his cell phone, and hit the number for Sikorski.

He picked up on the third ring. “This better be good,” Sikorski replied crossly. Roan thought he could hear a lot of noise in the background.

“I need you to get your ass down here ASAP and send ambulances to 125 Lake Court South. I got a kid dosed on ketamine, a probable victim of sexual assault, and the perp’s been injured.”

“Whoa, whoa - what? What the hell are you involved in, McKichan?”

It was funny how he called him by his last name only when he was angry at him, or about to get angry. “I found my clients’ kid. He’s not in good shape.”

That news - a good answer - seem to short circuit his temper tantrum. “Oh shit. You hurt?”

“Do I sound hurt?” Actually, his arm was aching a little where he took the blow (not from a baseball bat - he could see now that it was an axe handle), but the fact that Hatch was hurting so much more made him feel better.

“What’d you do to the perp?”

“Nothing,” he replied blandly, couching his sarcasm in a dark, funereal tone. “He fell down the stairs.” He hung up the phone before Sikorski could comment on that.

Sikorski must have been worried that he was going to go psycho on the guy before he got there, because a patrol car came screaming into the cul-de-sac barely three minutes later. Still, Roan had time to look around the shed, a miniature and very cheap shit version of a sadomasochist’s lair, layered with cheap soundproofing, small internet and digital video cams set up to capture the action, although none appeared to be on yet. But those hard drives - all of them - were active and humming. He’d probably interrupted just before the show could start.

The blue boys (actually one was female) had to deal with Hatch’s wife, whom he could hear shouting epithets and abuse at the cops until they had no choice but to cuff her and stash her in the back of their prowler. It made Roan fairly certain she knew what her husband’s hobby was; perhaps she participated from time to time. Although most sex predators were men, you did find the odd woman or two.

The ambulances and Gordo and Seb arrived at about the same time, with the two of the detectives who usually got the sex crimes beat (Foster and Blanchard) close behind, and he was glad to see a friendly face among the EMT crews, Diego Cole. Diego was actually an ex-boyfriend of his, but unlike him and Con, their break up had been mutual and free of drama and hard feelings. They just knew they weren’t a good match, and there was no point trying to pretend they were. Roan’s idea of relaxing after a hard day was reading a book, maybe watching a movie; Diego preferred playing X-Box until three in the goddamn morning. He liked to say it kept his reflexes sharp, but somehow Roan doubted that.

Gordo and Seb took it all in, and seeing Hatch on the floor in a small pool of his own piss, they both stared at him as the two EMT teams split up, the strangers going to Danny, while Diego and his rig partner, Steve Tsuro, got the fun task of working on Hatch. “His right arm’s broken, as is his left leg,” he told them.

Diego, who was crouched beside Hatch, looked up at him rather coolly. “Anything else we should know, Dirty Harry?”

He scowled at him, but decided to save the evil remark for a more private moment. “He’s a total prick.”

There was some fear that Danny had been mildly overdosed on ketamine - mild being he wasn’t dying, but he was barely alive. His respiration rate was incredibly low, and they couldn’t even get a reflex response from him. The rest of them had to clear the shed so the EMTs could work, and Seb kept an eye on things from the doorway, but there was hardly any need: Hatch was too hurt to try anything, and knowing Diego and Steve, they’d just smash him over the head with their kits if he did. Foster remained in the shed, looking over the crime scene, while Blanchard stood near the back of the house, barking into her cell phone that she needed Judge Shapiro to get her a warrant now.

He gave Gordo his gun, still in its holster. Since he hadn’t fired it he’d give it back to him as soon as statements were taken and everything was judged kosher. To make it all easier, Roan lied about what had led him to the shed, namely he said he said smelled blood and fear, and recognized Danny’s scent from the Nakamura home. Complete bullshit, but everybody was so in the dark about his smelling ability that they wouldn’t be able to disprove it, and they wouldn’t know that the Nakamuras kept their home so surgically clean that they had all but scrubbed out ever trace of Danny’s scent, and that the dog shit around here was so pungent it was overwhelming his sense of smell. It was all more legally plausible than simply saying he had a hunch. In the shed, Foster had recovered Hatch’s gun.

Hatch, clearly shocky and immobilized on a portable gurney, complained that he just broke in and attacked him, and then repeated that he didn’t do anything Danny didn’t want. That’s when Roan showed the cops the bruise on his right forearm, and even he had to admit it was impressive. A deep, angry red already becoming blue-black at edges, it was in the exact shape of the segment of the axe handle that hit him. “He hit me first,” he pointed out. “I simply defended myself.” And that was the truth, even though it was a deliberately calculated truth on his part. He could have prevented the hit, but he didn’t. Again, it was something that couldn’t be proven.

Diego, done with Hatch, came over and looked at his arm. “This looks bad. You’d better come to the hospital with us.”

He stared at him in surprise, almost feeling betrayed by Dee. “What? It’s a bruise.”

“Which could be a fracture. Look, you can see the imprint of the damn thing in your skin. And don’t you even think about arguing with me.” Dee gave him that look, the kind of look you could only get from an ex who knew you so well that it was borderline mortifying, and he knew arguing was pointless.

Didn’t matter. He could give his statement at the hospital as easily as he could here.

****

By the time they got to County General, the waiting room was swamped with an unusual amount of people. Apparently there had been problems at the police station involving some angry cultists, who turned over cars in the parking lot and got their fool asses hurt. (Paris was right - he should have been there with the video camera.)

He was lucky, if you could call it that. Being an infected, he was to be handled a bit differently than everyone else, and therefore got processed pretty quickly, people wearing latex gloves as thick as oven mitts handling him gingerly as they x-rayed his arm, as if he was somehow wildly contagious even though he was not bleeding. It did turn out he had some blood on his hands, but it was Danny’s; he must have gotten it while taking the cuffs off of him.

Afterwards he called the Nakamuras, and when he told Sara he’d found Danny she actually shouted with joy, an emotional response that surprised him. It also made him feel worse when he had to tell her Danny was in the hospital.

Danny was expected to make it, but right now there were many questions about the condition he would be in when he regained consciousness. The problem with ketamine was it could fuck people up as much as a bad acid trip: it could give you a psychosis you never had before using it, and some people who abused it a lot could find it as psychologically addictive as heroin. The fact that Hatch was pumping him full of so much of the stuff and not saying how much he’d dosed him with and for how long meant they wouldn’t know how profoundly Danny had been effected until he woke up. The only good news in that was if Danny was riding high on special K through most of his ordeal, he might not remember any of it.

His injuries were essentially superficial, although there was basic confirmation he’d been raped, or at least subjected to rather rough sex (and if he was on ketamine, it was considered rape regardless - it was a date rape drug after all, a disassociative anesthetic, and no one on it could make any kind of decision or consent). Hatch had stopped complaining and started demanding a lawyer, but he was totally fucked. Not only were they confiscating his hard drives, but a rather large stock of ketamine had been found in the shed, and that shit was so illegal to have he was guaranteed to spend a buttload of time in prison just for possession of it alone.

Although things weren’t perfectly clear at the moment, Roan had figured out a workable scenario. LadyLeopard, the not-so-secret secret admirer on Danny’s MySpace page? It was either Hatch or Hatch’s wife, using infection and the Church of the Divine Transformation as a lure to meet impressionable, lonely kids in their general vicinity, and fuck them up royal. Hatch was nothing more than a bargain basement predator, who simply adapted tactics to use the taboo “thrill” of infection to lead them to victims who would inadvertently help them. After all, if you were running away to get infected, you’d hardly announce it to your parents would you?

And the kicker? He wasn’t infected; neither was his wife. Presumably Danny got lucky, but he was being tested anyways, because it was unclear if Danny had been “shared” by other people.

When the Nakamuras arrived, he was prepared to break the news to them, but in an odd act of sympathy Gordo came over and helped him do it. Although horrified by what had happened to Danny, they seemed glad the cops had the perpetrators in custody (although for the moment one was in surgery; he had apparently did a real number on Hatch’s leg), and Sara had hugged him for “rescuing” their son. Maybe they were a bit hard on him, but they loved Danny, and that was probably what counted the most.

He went and sat in a currently unused exam room afterwards, feeling like he wanted to be alone. He didn’t know why exactly, technically this had to count as a good resolution - he’d found Danny, he was still alive, he’d gotten at least one predator off the street (and fucked him up pretty good) - but in an ideal world, Danny never would have been hurt in the first place. In an ideal world, he’d have just been crashing on a friend’s couch and smoking pot all day. But this world was not ideal and he didn’t know why he suddenly wanted it to be.

Diego tracked him down, coming to join him sitting on the edge of the exam table. Dee was his height but much more slender in frame, almost willowy (although he would object to that description), a light skinned black man with male model cheekbones and sleepy but expressive dark eyes. He was, as he liked to say “half black, half Mexican, all man”. He was good looking, funny, smart, but they just didn’t work as a couple, which was kind of a shame. They were, sadly, better friends.

Dee squeezed his bicep as he sat down, and Roan scowled at him. “What are you doing?”

“Seeing how strong you are now, macho man. Jesus, have you been working out?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He scoffed. “It means what it means. Did you see how you fucked up that perv’s arm? To get a complete spiral fracture like that you must be in the bodybuilder category now. How much do you bench?”

That made no sense, except in retrospect he remembered how liquid his muscles felt when he got mad, when he let the beast peek out, and suddenly he wondered if the shift made him stronger. It must have. Hadn’t he always been aware that he was at his strongest when he was mad or hurt? The transformation from human to cat did change your body - why wouldn’t it effect your strength levels? “I dunno. I’ve just been borrowing Paris’s weight set from time to time.”

“Time to time? Somebody’s being modest. Have you been replaced by a pod person?” Roan glared at him, but it only made him grin, flashing blinding white teeth. “How’s Paris?”

Dee was one of the few exes that Paris knew about; in fact, they’d met. They got on so well it made him wonder if he really was attracted to a certain type of guy. If asked, he would have claimed he had no type, but he was no longer sure. “He’s good. He’s going in for his routine check up next week.” Tiger strain people always needed to go in for check ups after the high point in the viral cycle, just to make sure there weren’t any aneurysms waiting to explode or that their hearts weren’t damaged. The older they got, the more vital this became.

“Good. And let me say, on behalf of the entire gay male community, we hate your fucking guts ‘cause you landed him. Share, you selfish bastard.”

Roan chuckled although he really hadn’t wanted to. Dee and Par had that in common: they could always make him laugh. “Let me officially say, to the entire community, tough titties.”

“I just knew you’d say something like that. Creep.” He sighed dramatically, but then changed the subject. “By the way, your arm isn’t fractured; you just have some tissue damage.”

“I figured.” His fingers on his right arm tingled a bit, but mostly his arm just ached. He’d get over it.

“Why didn’t someone get you an ice pack? I’ll go get you one -”

“No, it’s okay. I don’t need it, really.”

“Being macho again?”

“No. I’ve just had worse. I’ll live.” He felt his suspicious glare, but didn’t turn to acknowledge it. “Can I ask you a bizarre question?”

“Do you ask any others?”

He ignored that. “Do you know anything about polycythemia vera, a blood cell disorder?”

Dee thought about that a moment, staring down at the foam green tiled floor and frowning. “Specifically? No, I‘d have to look it up. Why?”

“Do you have any idea why a thirteen year old boy would get a blood disorder specific to middle aged men?”

He gave him a suspicious look, one that seemed to say What are you up to now, freak-o? but he did give him a serious answer. “Well, if the kid had an immune system disorder, he could be susceptible to almost anything. Age would be irrelevant.”

“What kind of immune system disorders are we talking about? AIDS?”

“That would be the most devastating, sure; people with that have been known to die from diseases that humans aren’t supposed to be susceptible to.” After a pause, he added, “Being infected can do that to people sometimes too.”

That was news to him. “Since when?”

“Well, some infectees systems don’t take the major infections quite well, mostly tiger. But mainly it’s the virus children. You’re a bit of a miracle, Roan, although I’m sure you’ll roll your eyes at that. You’re a fully functional virus child - that’s about as rare as surviving a tiger infection. Most viral kids are damaged on the genetic level; they get diseases that come out of nowhere within their respective families, like progeria, Tay-Sachs -”

“ - and maybe something like polycythemia vera?” he interrupted, feeling his skin prickle as the answer seemed to explode in his mind. Oh shit. It all made sense now. He didn’t have all the answers, but damn if he couldn’t see the through line, the connecting thread between it all, the bits and pieces falling into a shattered picture. He jumped off the exam table, no longer aware of how much his arm hurt or how bad he felt for not finding Danny sooner. “Oh god, I know who killed Hank DeSilvo.” He grabbed Dee’s face in his hands and planted a quick, friendly kiss on his lips. “Thank you. Remind me to buy you a drink sometime.”

As he left the exam room, wondering where the hell Sikorski was now, Dee called out, sounding flustered, “What the hell did I say?”

He found Seb first, nursing a cup of the toxic swill that passed for coffee in the hospital, and Gordo wasn’t far away - he was talking on his cell to someone down at the station. As soon as Gordo saw him, he told the person on the end of the line to hold on, and gave him a piercing look. “What now? I really hate that look on your face, Roan.”

“You need to bring Mitch Henstridge in now.”

The stare didn’t waver. In fact, now Seb joined in, although his look was more deadpan. “Did they give you pain medication? Are you having a reaction?”

“I’m not asking for an APB; just bring him in for questioning, that’s all I ask. Do it now before he skips town … if he hasn’t already. If he was at all smart he’d have already run, but I don’t know if he has any further loose ends to tie up or not.”

Gordo’s look was one of stark disbelief. “What the fuck are you on about?”

“Henstridge killed DeSilvo, and probably Tweaks as well.”

Now he looked downright hostile. “You telling me he’s a killer cat, is that it?”

Roan felt his stomach start to burn. It felt like damning, outing, and he wasn’t sure how it worked precisely, but it was the only thing that made sense. The Nakamuras instinct had been right about Danny’s disappearance: although he left voluntarily, he didn’t end up where he expected to. His instinct was right that Hatch was hiding something. Now it was Sikorski’s turn to be right about a virus child mutation. “No. His son is.”

*****

The tiger paced in its cage restlessly, not understanding the bars but enraged with them all the same. Biting them didn’t work, and swiping them with its claws did no good either. Sometimes if he threw his body against it he would hear a rattle, feel a shift, but nothing else happened.

It stunk of humans here, but there was another scent, one that nearly drove him into a frenzy: another cat. It was faint though, tangled with a human scent, enough to confuse it. Was the cat here, or had it once been here? He thought if it was here it would be more tangible, that he would be able to smell its blood as well as its musk, hear its heartbeat. But all was silence and cold, and not even the human scent was strong anymore.

It had laid down on the hard floor, giving up, when it heard a noise.

It was a strange noise somewhere above its head, he could see nothing but the same pale orb of light that was always there, but the noises - strange, unidentifiable, far - continued. A faint scent eventually came with it, a new human scent, and …

… a cat.

This was a new cat. A new musk, and better yet, new blood, a new heartbeat. On his territory. It was above his head somewhere, above the glowing orb, and there was no containing its frenzy now. This was his territory, his, and no other cat was allowed.

The tiger began throwing itself against the bars of the cage, the pain only making it that much more determined to escape and rip the other cat’s throat out.

*****

The plywood plank had been nailed to the back door far more expertly than he had thought. Mitch had had to go back to his car and get his tire iron to pry up a corner of it, and he was glad that McKichan lived so far from his neighbors. He had to break the panel to get a big enough opening, but it would do. Whoever had put that up had done a damn good job, though.

In all honesty, he hadn’t wanted to do this; he didn’t want to be here. This was all Hank’s fault.

If he hadn’t been a cop, he’d have been a thief - Hank even told him that once. But he hadn’t really believed him until the money, and that’s when his ugly true colors started bleeding through. He was going to fuck him and he knew it. He needed the money, Hank knew that, and yet he intended to fuck him out of it anyways. Hank had even made vague noises about the truth about his son getting out, and that was the last straw. Fuck him over? Fine. But no one fucked over his son.

Mikey was getting harder and harder to control, possibly due to puberty. He strained at the leash, so Mitch let him go, detaching the lead from his shock collar, and whispered, “Go upstairs boy. Go get the man.”

Even in the dimness, he could see the living room he was in was astonishingly ordinary, a living room like any other. He had expected different, although he didn’t know what. He supposed that a gay guy would have a more flamboyant place, something a bit more extravagant.

He had absolutely nothing against McKichen at all; he didn’t know him, and frankly he didn’t want to know him. A kitty fag? Great - the worst of both worlds. But he’d heard from his buddies in the department that he was digging around, that he started investigating Hank, and for some reason had turned his sights on him. That was intolerable; he was getting too close.

And he wasn’t even on the fucking force anymore! Why wasn’t someone reining him in? Why was someone letting him investigate cops? In a way, this was his fault. If he’d just minded his own business, he’d have gotten to live.

But he felt somewhat bad about his boyfriend. He probably had no idea what McKichan was up to, and yet he was sending Mikey up to kill him. He was shocked by his own feelings, because gay guys usually made his skin crawl a bit. Who’d want to fuck a man? Seriously. A naked man wasn’t an attractive thing. The sheer size of the boyfriend had surprised him; he had the shoulders of a linebacker. He didn’t think they made gay guys that big … but there was that transvestite he arrested that one time, wasn’t there? That guy had been six six and nearly three hundred pounds if he’d been an ounce. Scary.

The problem was those kids. He hadn’t been able to sleep since he had to take out those kids at Tweaks. But he didn’t have a choice, much like with McKichan’s boyfriend. The kids could have identified him, and god knew who Tweaks had talked to. They had to go, much like the boyfriend had to go. He had to protect Mikey.

He was a special boy, with special needs. If he didn’t take care of him, who would? They’d probably throw him in a fucking zoo or something. He had to stay out of prison to take care of him, especially now.

Mikey made a strange noise, a growling whimper, and seemed reluctant to approach the stairs. He pulled out the collar control and gave him a little shock, adding insistently, “Go.” The cat that he was twitched its tail in annoyance, but after a moment’s further hesitation, Mikey loped upstairs, as quietly as a … cat, which figured.

He knew McKichan was gone, and he had no idea when he’d be back, but he was prepared to wait. He’d had to wait for Tweaks too, and that fucking space brain never even noticed that everyone was dead. Supposedly McKichan would be more on the ball - no pun intended - but he’d get him a soon as he came in the door. He might be armed, and gunfire might get attention before he got out of here.

He waited at the base of the stairs, stomach knotting as he braced himself for the aborted scream of someone waking up to find a cat ripping out their throat, when he heard a strange noise. It was like a muffled, metallic clang, but very faint. He looked down at the carpet, and wondered if it had come from beneath the house. Did they have a basement? Was the boyfriend down there at this time of night?

Now there was another noise, one that was growing louder. It was a repetitive thudding, almost a gallop, and as he turned he saw a door on his immediate left. He thought it was a closet, but now he wondered if it was the basement door, and pulled out his revolver.

Hardly in time. The basement door didn’t open more than it exploded off its hinges, and it slammed into him, knocking him to the floor. The door pinned his legs down with a tremendous weight, and he saw why the door was so heavy - there was a big fucking tiger on it.

The cat was huge, its head almost twice as big as his, and it roared at him, its fetid breath washing over him, saliva dripping down from its large ivory teeth. Its amber eyes were almost lambent in the dark, and he finally understood why Mikey hadn’t wanted to come in here.

He hadn’t considered the fact that maybe the boyfriend was infected too. But even if he had, he was sure he never would have entertained the possibility that he was a fucking tiger.