The sound washed over him as he stumbled blearily into the living room, and found Roan sprawled on the sofa, swigging directly from a bottle of rum. That was shocking for several reasons. Roan didn’t like rum (the bottle was a Christmas gift from a totally clueless passing acquaintance); Roan drank very sparingly, and when he did, he had a preference for microbrews; and, perhaps most shockingly of all, it was just after seven in the fucking morning! Since when did he drink in the morning?

“Ro?” he asked, padding around the sofa.

Roan looked up at him slowly, his bottle glass green eyes glazed, red rimmed, and strangely unfocused. “Oh, sorry hon,” he slurred, his syllables an almost inaudible mush. “I didn’t think I’d wake ya.”

“You’re drunk.” Yes, it was an idiotic thing to say, but it was startling to see him this way; he couldn’t help but be stupid.

Roan shrugged in a strangely defeated way. “Con always liked it, so I thought now was as good a time as any to give it a serious shot.”

“Con?” he repeated, puzzled. Or had he said Vaughn? Either way, he had no idea who that was.

“I guess I get the appeal of drunkenness, but fentanyl’s easier.” He took a swig from the rum bottle, then grimaced as if it was the worst thing he’d ever tasted. “God, this is horrible. It’s like drinking hairspray.”

“Then why drink it?”

“It’s the only hard liquor we have in the house.” He sighed heavily, and let the bottle thunk onto the carpet, where it still managed to remain upright. His voice was scratchy, hoarse, and Paris wondered if he was coming down with something. (Which would be about time, really. The whole time he‘d known him, Roan had never gotten a single cold.) “I didn’t want to think anymore; I wanna stop thinking. I wanna shut off my head.” He dry washed his face, and that’s when he saw that the knuckles on Roan’s right hand were red and slightly swollen, filaments of blood marking the back of his hand like a henna tattoo.

He reached out and grabbed his hand, examining the injury close up. “Holy shit, Ro, did you get in a fight?”

Roan yanked his hand away violently before he could get a cursory glance. “Naw, I … I broke the bathroom mirror. Sorry; I’ll replace it.”

“How’d you break it? Are you all right?” But even as he asked that, he realized that the injuries on Roan’s hand could only have come if he’d punched the mirror, possibly more than once.

He shook his hand in the air as if it did actually ache, but then he let it fall casually to his lap. “I’m fine; I’m so fine I’m golden,” he replied, but with a derisive, sarcastic snicker, and he got a pained look in his eye. “I’m the king of the fucking cats. I’m the alpha male.”

Paris sat on the couch beside him, and it was a fight to catch Roan’s eyes, as he seemed to be looking everywhere but at him. “Sweetheart, you’re not making sense.”

Roan’s eyes started to turn liquid as tears welled in them, and once again he was quietly amazed at how perfectly, richly green they were. When he first met him, he thought he was wearing colored contact lens. “They knew I could kill all of them. How’d they know that when I didn’t know that?”

Paris shook his head, trying hard to make sense of this. Well, drunken rambling wasn’t new, it was just new for Ro.

He sniffed and wiped the tears away with the back of his hand. “There was this social worker once, her name was Allison, Rainbow reminds me of her in a way; very hippie-ish, kinda mousy. Allison was the only one who would touch me; she’d take my hand or give me awkward hugs. She would always tell me at the end of our sessions “You are not your disease”. She’d look me in the eye and say that, and I didn’t know why she was telling me that; it was other people who needed that info, not me. But I’m starting to think she was smarter than everyone else. I’m more my disease than I’ve ever wanted to admit.”

Paris reached out and touched his face, cupping his cheek and turning him towards him. “That’s nonsense -”

Roan pushed his hand away and shoved himself farther into the corner of the couch, like he was in one of his moods where he didn’t want to be touched. They were rare, but every now and then he’d get in these dark places inside his own head where he wanted no one near him, where a casual touch, no matter how gentle or affectionate, would make him nearly jump out of his skin. Roan never wanted to talk about it, and Paris respected him enough not to ask. He could imagine what it meant, though, and it made him a little sick to think about it. “It’s not. I wish it was. I’ve known for some time that too much of the cat is bleeding into me, but I liked to pretend it didn’t mean anything. But it does. What d’ya think’ll happen one day? Do you think I’ll change and never change back?”

What in the fucking hell was he talking about?! Was he serious? “That doesn’t happen. Infecteds don’t become cats and stay that way. You know that.”

“Infecteds like you. Functional virus children … the medical profession still doesn’t know what to make of us. We’re the freaks of freaks.” he continued wiping away snot and tears, as he wasn’t crying, but tears were still streaming from his eyes as he stared resolutely down at the carpet. “And I’ve just gotten confirmation that I’m King Freak. I suppose I should be glad. If I gotta be a freak, at least I’m the biggest one.”

He wanted to tell him that was total bullshit, he was not a freak and he was not his disease - what kind of thing was that to say anyways? - but Roan was not in a mood to listen right now. He reached out tentatively, letting him see his hand in the corner of his eye before gently touching his face, feeling if his forehead was hot. His skin did seem abnormally warm, but that could have just been the booze; he’d been to enough keggers to know that. “Come on, let’s get you upstairs. You need to get some sleep.”

Paris stood and took his arm, and Roan reluctantly let him help him up to his feet, not so much stumbling as taking a moment to find his balance. He leaned against him, and buried his face in the side of his neck. “You smell good,” he said, his breath hot against his neck.

Oh joy. You had to love these drunken mood swings. “No I don’t, I haven’t had a shower yet.”

“Doesn’t matter. Tigers smell good.” He scraped his teeth along his neck, not quite a love bite but very much in the same spirit.

“Are you serious? Have you ever been to the zoo?” He held Roan back by the shoulders, and said, “I’m on a supposedly lethal dose of illegal painkillers, and you’re falling down drunk. Do you actually think we’re capable of doing anything at the moment?”

Roan stared back at him in glazed, bemused defiance. “Nobody likes a quitter.”

Pariis frowned, trying not to laugh. At least Roan was still in there, beneath all the self-pity and alcohol, still being a smart ass. “Come on, horndog, let’s go.”

“Shouldn’t that be horncat?” He suggested, but not very seriously.

He helped him up the stairs in an odd reversal of their usual roles, chewing over everything Roan had said. It didn’t make any more sense in retrospect, and he wondered what the hell had happened to drive him this far to the edge. Roan was one of the toughest guys he’d ever known, in just about every sense of the word; he had a contrarian’s soul, so the more you tried to push him down, the more he fought back. You could beat him black and blue and dump him by the side of the road, but he would just spit out teeth and go right back to where he had been (once quite literally). It was either tenacity or insanity, depending on who you asked. It wasn’t that he wasn’t afraid, it was just that his fears had a tendency to be more esoteric and obscure - a gun in the face would just make him roll his eyes, but an EEG appointment would keep him up all night.

Obviously something was bothering him about himself, about his strain, but what? Yes, Roan had several aspects of the cat that never quite left him in his human form. The most obvious was his sense of smell, but his eyesight was equally acute, and he had a tendency to move with a feline grace that occasionally verged on eerie. People couldn’t actually move without making a noise, but Roan seemingly could; if he wanted to, he could be in a room with you and you’d never know it unless you somehow saw him out of the corner of your eye. He could stand in the shadows, move in them, and you’d never know it (that’s why he got so many great pictures of cheating spouses, and could tail people so successfully). He also had lightning fast reflexes that allowed him to catch insects in mid-air and grab people’s fists even when they attempted an out of nowhere sucker punch; according to him, the police recruiters were especially impressed with his reflexes. (That Matrix shit, ducking bullets? He bet Roan could do that in real life, although he hoped that never actually had to be proved.) But none of that seemed especially “inhuman”, although he had to admit his “super smelling” was a bit creepy at times.

Oh, and he did growl a bit. Usually when he was really angry - he always seemed to be startled to find himself doing it, like it was an unconscious reflex - but sometimes when he was aroused too, although that was a different kind of growl. It was much softer, lower in the throat, almost a kind of purr. Did he know he did that? It never occurred to him to ask, but now it did, although there was no way in hell he was bringing it up while he was drunk. Paris always found it kind of flattering, that he could make someone want him enough to growl; a weird kind of ego boost.

His eyes were always the same. Did Roan know that? He never told him because he didn’t know how he’d process the news. But even when he was in his lion form, his preternaturally green eyes remained, almost like there was just a little bit of Roan still in there (the eyes changed shape, of course - it was just the irises didn’t change color). Did he find out and freak? No, he didn’t see how he could find out, and even if he did, that would hardly send him careening towards a self-pity drunk. He was having a hard time imagining any scenario that could shake Roan so badly.

Although he tried to help him down onto the bed gently, Roan just kind of collapsed on it, but he didn’t seem to notice or mind. He took off Roan’s shoes and put them aside, pulling the blanket over him as Roan stared up at the ceiling, tears still leaking from the corners of his eyes, tears like fragile diamonds getting suspended in the stubble staining his jaw. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” He knelt down beside the bed so he could be more or less at eye level with him, and stroked the hair off his forehead. He did feel a little feverish - maybe he was simply sick and reacted weirdly to it.

“For this, for everything. I’ve just wanted to believe I was more than a virus, but I don’t think I can deny it anymore. I am my disease; I’m not sure I’m all that human.”

“What bullshit is this?” He turned his face towards him, and this time he seemed too weary to resist it. “You aren’t your disease. You are Roan Christopher McKichan, and don’t even try and insult me by implying I love a walking virus. Got it?”

He smiled weakly, but it almost looked like a grimace. “Yes dear.”

“Don’t you “ yes dear” me,” he said in mock outrage, before giving him a kiss. He was right, the rum kind of did taste like hair spray.

He held him close, putting an arm around his chest and burying his face in his neck, and before he nodded off, Roan said the weirdest thing. “I wonder if I wanted you, or if it wanted the tiger.”

Paris was a little surprised to find out he was dozing off as well - Roan’s voice made him start a little - but when he looked at him his eyes were closed, and his breathing had the deep, slow rhythm of sleep. Had he dreamed Roan said that? He must have. What a weird thing to think you heard. What did that even mean? Oh well - dreams, right? They weren’t supposed to make sense.

He shoved himself up from where he’d been kneeling beside the bed, and he figured he’d be aching from being in such a strange position if it hadn’t been for the fact that he was so full of painkillers his insides felt like jelly, and his joints were so loose they could have been greased with WD-40.

Paris went and took a shower, and since the mirror in the bathroom was intact, he figured Roan must have broken the mirror in the downstairs bathroom. That reminded him of Roan’s hand, and as soon as he got out, he found the actual first aid kit - not one of their Courtney Love variations - and returned to work on his hand.

Roan slept through everything: the antiseptic spray, the wrapping of his hand in gauze, even the last minute slapping on of the “cool patch”, the ones they kept in the medicine cabinet for Roan’s migraines - Paris was hoping it would bring the swelling in his knuckles down. He couldn’t have punched the mirror hard enough to break them, could he? What would upset him that much?

He went downstairs and shut off the stereo before going into the bathroom to clean up the shards of bloody glass. Roan had done an excellent job of shattering it in its frame; in fact, there was a fist shaped indent in the wall behind the mirror. He’d hit it incredibly hard, so hard he must have broken his hand. But you’d think, even as drunk as he was, he’d have felt a great deal of pain. You’d think he wouldn’t have been able to use it to hold a bottle of rum. Maybe that was another gift of the cat; maybe he could do things like this and not be hurt as much.

A bizarre thought, especially since Roan was hardly immune to injury, but since that was what Ro seemed so upset about, his cat aspects, he wondered if that was somewhere in the neighborhood of what was bothering him. God, he hoped he was willing to talk once he was sober. Ro shut down so often, he kept things so bottled up, he felt privileged to pry little bits of information out of him. That thing he said about the social worker? Paris had no idea he even used to meet with a social worker, but if he was a kid in the state foster care system, that would make sense.

He thought about calling Sikorksi just to see if he knew what was the hell had happened to Ro last night, but Sikorski barely knew who the hell he was - he met him briefly at the funeral for that cop friend of Ro’s a couple months back - and he could still remember the look the old man gave him, like he was thinking “So you’re the guy Roan fucks”, a look both dismissive and disdainful yet tempered with an obvious splash of amusement. Paris loathed him on first sight, but played nice because it was a funeral, and because he was an acquaintance of Roan’s. But he also hated him because he so obviously used Roan, he used Roan’s compulsion to solve puzzles and his ability to look at a scene, at a pile of evidence, and see the tiny little flaw that would bring the whole thing crashing down. Roan was a born investigator, he was almost supernaturally good at it, and Sikorski knew it; Sikorski knew the force had lost a major asset when Ro was bounced. Worst of all, Ro had to know Sikorski was using him, but he so loved to do this, he so loved what he did, that he let him. Mundane private detective work was never going to completely satisfy him; he needed meatier puzzles, he needed challenges to make him feel useful.

And that’s all this came down to. Roan, cynical and tough as he was, just wanted to help people. He did, and it was so obvious Paris didn’t understand why Ro pretended that wasn’t it. He felt totally abandoned by people, by society, and yet he wanted to help them, because maybe that would allow him to be a part of them in some way. If he couldn’t be “normal”, if he couldn’t be un-infected, then maybe he could be valued for what he could do. And if society was at all smart, they would have. It was a terrible cliché, but even Roan just wanted to be loved, even though he’d never admit such a thing, even under the threat of death.

Thinking of mundane detective work reminded him that Ro was supposed to be in at the office today to meet a potential client. He’d mentioned it last night before he had to go in the cage, something about a woman worrying her husband was on the down low with his best friend. Roan was a little queasy about possibly “outing” some closet case, but Paris pointed out it was just a cheating spouse case, just like any other, with the possibility that he’s fucking a guy as opposed to his secretary. After all, they did have one case that accidentally turned into an outing: the Patterson case. That was just last year. A guy showed up and wanted his wife followed, as he was pretty certain she was having an affair with a guy named Grassow, a neighbor, but as Roan soon discovered, Mrs. Patterson was actually having an affair with Mrs. Grassow. The husband was utterly flabbergasted, and apparently wasn’t sure what he was going to do with this information. In the end, it probably didn’t matter; the two women ran off together, and last Roan heard they were living in Rhode Island.

Paris found the notebook Roan left by the phone, and found all the information he needed to know. Ro was rather eccentric in that he liked to keep handwritten notes, usually meaning half of Paris’s “job” at MK Investigations was scanning or transcribing his copious handwritten case notes and entering them into the computer files for the various cases. Paris always left out Ro’s occasional conversations with himself on the paper (“Coincidence? Follow up. This guy is so disgusting I’d cheat on him too”) although he hated to do it, because they were often the most entertaining things.

Paris hated to put on a long sleeved shirt on a day that was already promising to be as miserable as yesterday, but Ro tried to look “casually professional” on the job, meaning he’d only wear a “cubicle noose” (a tie) if he was absolutely forced to, but otherwise he tried to look professional and presentable. So Paris followed his lead since he’d be filling in for him, playing “detective”.

He didn’t do it often, but he did like to do it. He felt like putting on a fedora and one of Ro’s long coats (bless him, he had trench coats and dusters, giving in to the stereotype stylishly), maybe stick a cigarette between his lips (he hadn’t smoked since he was infected, but it seemed to go with the image), and not so much walk as swagger. Again, he knew none of this was true - he knew most detective work was rather dull and somewhat voyeuristic - but it was such a good stereotype, how could you not want to be a part of it?

Still, it was hot enough that he eschewed the trench coats, and rolled up the sleeves of his button down shirt as he went out to the Mustang and drove out to the office, stopping along the way to grab some fast food to calm his roaring stomach.

It was stuffy and slightly stale in the office from being closed yesterday, so he opened the blinds and turned on the rattling air conditioner, and although he thought caffeine had absolutely no chance against the painkillers in his system, he put the coffee on to get a pleasant aroma in the office. He almost sat down behind his desk out front, then remembered he really should be in Ro’s office. He felt odd walking in and not seeing him there behind his cheerfully weather-beaten wooden desk, which was relatively neat, with a cup of gel and ballpoint pens (Ro preferred gel pens; he felt they were smoother and easier to write with) and an appointment book on one side, and his computer on the other. Paris booted it up, feel a little like he was prying where he shouldn’t, and wondered again what was in that locked bottom drawer.

It was on the bottom right, and it was the only drawer that was actually locked (the left bottom one could lock, but it never was). Roan said the lock was stuck on that drawer and there was nothing in it, but Paris suspected he was lying. Why he had no idea, and he supposed if he pushed Roan would tell him eventually, but in a strange way he almost didn’t want to know. He feared he’d find artifacts of old lovers or something, things Roan didn’t actually want to share and things that Paris would not feel better off knowing.

Roan didn’t talk much about his romantic past at all. He said he had “one or two” relationships which never worked out, but he mostly stuck to casual relationships because he wasn’t good at serious ones. Paris suspected he had gotten his heart not so much broken as minced, sautéed, and served to him in a light Béarnaise sauce, but if that was too painful for him to talk about that was okay. Everybody had a hard luck relationship story … well, okay, not him, not unless you counted the one night stand with Darlene that got him infected with the tiger strain. All in all, that could probably top a lot of people’s stories.

He sat in Ro’s chair, an old leather seat that looked battered but was incredibly comfortable (no wonder he never got a new chair), and tried to pretend he was him for a minute. He was pretty sure he could mimic the attitude - be a smart ass? Check! - but he couldn’t actually think like Roan. He wished he could. In fact, he’d decided a while ago that while he was initially attracted to Roan’s gorgeous, intense eyes, the slinky way he moved, and his great ass, what he fell in love with was his kindness and his fascinating, almost inscrutable mind. Paris knew he wasn’t the most intellectual guy around - hell, he spent most of his life as a dedicated hedonist, only focused on getting laid as much as humanly possible (check!) - but he knew there was something different about the way Ro thought, the way he could find those little flaws, take obscure leaps of logic that miraculously panned out, find the threads that everyone else missed. He wished he could think that way; he wished he could feel out leads like they were tangible objects, something he could hold in his hands and examine at his leisure. But he felt more comfortable in his male “femme fatale” role. He didn’t know things, but he knew people; he knew what they wanted, he knew their desires, and he knew how to make almost anyone beg. That was good enough.

He heard the office door open, and he jumped to his feet and went out to greet the client. Susan Heffernan was a Clairol sun-kissed blonde with muddy roots, average height and average weight, with relatively large breasts and a small bulge of a gut in a pink top that was a bit too tight for her form, and a pair of denim capris that didn’t quite work with her clunky sandals. As she adjusted her suede hobo bag, she stared at him in what must have been shock. “You’re Roan McKichan?” She said it like someone might say “You’re my daughter?!”

“No,” he replied with a small, professional smile, and wondered if she knew how lucky she was. She’d just pronounced his last name “McKitchen”. “I’m afraid Mr. McKichan - “ he pronounced it correctly, with some emphasis. “ - is ill today. I’m his partner, Paris Lehane.”

“Oh.” She shook his hand, but held on a bit too long, and he knew she was taking a mental snapshot of him for later. Oh well - it happened too much for him to be bothered by it now. “Named after the city?”

Most people guessed that; Roan had impressed him by asking, “City or myth?” His mother was a teacher of classical mythology; he was named after the guy who supposedly started the Trojan War by kidnapping (or eloping with, depending on interpretation) Helen. Of all the kids, he’d probably got the best end of the name game - his sisters were named Antigone and Deianira.

It was a pretty much a straightforward transaction: he gave her the standard forms, told her their rates, and he got the basic information about her husband (where he worked, what his shift was, where he liked to go after work), and she also provided a photo of Ryan and his “best friend” Cooper. They were both blandly good looking and not screaming queens, so it was impossible to say if she had a reason to be worried or not. What an easy case to solve; just give him five minutes alone in a room with Ryan, and he’d know if he was gay or bi or not.

It didn’t seem perfectly ethical somehow, but they were one payment closer to getting the sliding glass door replaced, so that eased his conscience a bit. He was happy to put the down payment receipt in his wallet (so she paid by credit card; it was better than a check) and decided to close up before Braunbeck came over with a sack of gorp and an offer for a free “rolfing”. He couldn’t help but worry about Roan, although he knew the last person in the world he ever needed to worry about was Roan. But whatever happened to him last night must have been … heavy.

While he was locking up, Randi came over, buzzing on coffee, and handed him a manila envelope as she talked in a Starbucks fueled mania (it wasn’t her lunch hour, so she must have been taking a break). She’d emailed Ro all the stuff, but she thought he might want to have some hard copies to look at. Apparently DeSilvo and Henstridge both had been receiving money from something called “Metropol Limited”, which was as far as she could tell a dummy corporation and a very lame tax shelter based in the Cayman Islands. It no longer existed - it shut down after a huge donation was made to Henstridge’s account two days ago - and she was sure it was probably a person just trying to hide some cash. Her guess was they were trying to hide money from the IRS, but the amounts were “dribs and drabs”, so she wasn’t sure. But she thought Ro would be really interested in it, and so did he. It was suspicious, but he had no idea what it could possibly mean; Roan would undoubtedly know what it meant, and would stare at the two of them like the complete morons they apparently were.

On the drive back home he kept running over scenarios where Roan would freak out over being infected, but he kept drawing a blank. Ro wasn’t like him; he wouldn’t wake up one day and find himself covered in someone else’s blood, aching like he’d just been shoved off the roof of a twenty story building and run over by the ambulance that was supposed to pick him up, and take a minute to figure out that the weird … things on him, the things that looked like random pieces of shredded plastic, were actually flesh cut so thin it was almost translucent. Paris shuddered at the memory, his gut churning, but he felt a certain healthy distance from it now, which was probably good. That would make anyone lose their mind for a while, right? Well, maybe Ro could deal with it; maybe anyone would deal with it better than he did.

Pulling up to the house, he saw a silver Subaru Outback parked across the street, and a man standing at the base of their driveway. Paris recognized neither the SUV or the man, and he suddenly had a really bad feeling about this. It didn’t help that the man turned around suddenly, as if surprised. The gun was under the seat, right?

He got out of the car, and the man came up to him with a friendly enough “Hi”, with an additional, “Do you live here?”

Ro was a bit paranoid, but there was always some logic to it. For instance, he always advised to be careful in giving away information no matter how seemingly harmless if you didn’t trust someone. Paris didn’t trust this guy enough to confirm even that. “Can I help you with something?” he replied, meeting a question with a question.

The guy was six foot even, probably mid-thirties, reasonably broad across the shoulders but slender, face square jawed and ruggedly “all American”, his eyes hidden behind slender, pitch black sunglasses, his ash brown hair short and slightly spiky in the front, like he combed mousse through his bangs with his fingers. He wore a loose vintage t-shirt, dun brown with the “Twister!” logo on it, and oversized Levis that were baggy enough to hide his legs (and surely his ass as well … and maybe a gun). Paris figured he could take the guy if he tried anything, unless he was a martial art expert or a character from a Tarantino film or something.

The guy claimed to have been driving by when he saw the GTO. He claimed to be a classic car collector (in a Subaru Outback?!), and it had happened to Paris before, when he was painting the GTO, so he could almost buy it. The guy did seem to know something about muscle cars, but Paris couldn’t shake his suspicion that that wasn’t why he was here, that if he hadn’t drove up, this guy would have … what? Was he casing the joint? Was he looking for Roan?

For some reason, that made him feel slightly queasy. Looking for Roan.

The guy said his name was Mark, and he made him an offer for the GTO, a thousand in cash and another thousand in check form to buy the car as is - with the engine out - but Paris turned it down. Restoring cars like the Mustang and the GTO was a hobby, one that allowed him to turn off his mind and pretend for a while he was normal, like he was back in high school working in his Uncle Mick’s garage - not infected, not doomed to a grisly fate. Also, he didn’t believe “Mark”. He had no real reason to disbelieve him, but something about this was all wrong. Paris couldn’t completely shake the feeling that he had interrupted “Mark”, but in the course of what he had no idea.

He watched the Outback drive off, but not overtly. It was a new car apparently; it had no license plate, and the temporary one in the back was so obscured by the tinted windows he couldn’t read it. You’d think the cops would hate that.

Once inside, he went straight upstairs, and was relieved to find Roan still asleep and perfectly fine. He didn’t know why he was seized by the sudden fear that he’d find him hurt … or worse. It was stupid; he wasn’t a nervous nelly, and Roan wasn’t helpless (although currently he was as close as he ever came). There was absolutely no reason for him to be worried about this.

Right?

So what did they have? A bunch of dead bodies, three killed one way, one another away, all in the same house, and all chewed on by the same cat, who presumably jumped out the back window and yet didn’t leave a path in the backyard. A magical cat, and a magical killer. He hit the steering wheel in frustration and started the car, just to get the hell out of here.

He stopped by a Starbucks, which he shouldn’t have done because he couldn’t see how anyone could justify charging so much for coffee or tea … but those green tea lattes were so good; goddamn the Starbucks corporation! They were in it with Microsoft, some kind of Seattle hegemony determined to wring every cent out of you. (He liked to entertain wild conspiracy theories from time to time, solely for their entertainment value. Paris had once thought up a great one involving grunge music, flannel shirts, and sexually frustrated loggers, but he couldn’t remember how it went now.)

By the time he got home he called “fag hag” Randi Kim and asked her if she could check out all known financial records for DeSilvo and Henstridge, and if she went extra legal that was fine, she just wasn’t to tell him. Randi not only had connections across all financial institutions, but she had a cousin who worked for the IMF - well connected didn’t even begin to describe Randi. But of course she wanted something for the info, so he had to promise she could come over to dinner one night. Why she wanted to come over to dinner at their place he had no idea - why was that a prize? So she could stare at Paris while he ate his mashed potatoes?

Oh - come to think of it, yes, staring at Paris was always a prize.

Speaking of which, Par was up and working on the plywood reinforcement to broken sliding door. He’d called some people he knew to get an estimate on replacing the glass, but apparently the cheapest estimate was in the thousands. So he was shoring up the plywood for now, until they could save up for that additional expense. Because it was so hot, Paris was wearing nothing but his cargo shorts, and the hammer he wore through one of the loops was pulling his shorts down until they were just barely covering his firm little ass. Roan watched a bead of sweat trickle down his lovely long spine, and thought he should really throw him in the shower and get in with him.

Pheromones - all it was. He could ignore it. He could, seriously, honestly. (As long as Paris stopped parading around him all sweaty and half naked and muscular and … oh shit, he hated this part of the viral cycle.)

He went upstairs so he’d stop looking at Paris, and got down to work on his computer background checking Tweaks. His real name was Anthony Andersen, and Roan couldn’t believe it when his birth certificate said he was thirty two. He looked like he was in his mid-forties at least; he looked like fucking hell for his age. But drugs could do that to some people.

Another shocking thing was he had been married and divorced, and had two kids, the youngest being four years old. Tweaks was a college dropout who used to work for a software company until he apparently discovered the waning edge of the rave scene, and first experienced ecstasy and meth. It was all downhill for Tweaks from there, as he lost his job and his wife in subsequent order, as well as his expensive condo in Lakeside, trading it in for that dilapidated house right by the railroad tracks in the middle of bumfuck nowhere. Tweaks had a spotty employment record after that, usually just doing odd jobs, most at minimum wage, all well below his experience level. With his resume he could have done a hell of a lot better, but that meant actually putting effort into it, and actually agreeing to show up to work on a regular schedule. He owed child support into the double digit thousands at the time of his death.

He was arrested several times for disorderly conduct as well as possession of drug paraphernalia, but somehow he never got nailed for drug possession itself, so he managed to keep some of his wits about him as far as that went - or he had the special luck of the intensely stupid, which Roan knew existed. His last arrest was six months ago, when he was run in for public intoxication after cops busted up a rave at a house in Edgewood (he was probably just stupidly high, but it was probably easier for the arresting officer to nail him on a public intoxication beef).

And that’s when Roan’s heart skipped a beat. The arresting officers? Hank DeSilvo and Mitchell Henstridge.

No fucking way.

He stared at the computer screen for a moment, willing the words to change back into what they were, not what he wanted to see, but they didn’t. DeSilvo and Henstridge were the last to arrest Tweaks; now two of them were dead by cat, and the third was presumably on the run. What the fuck ..?

Now he investigated the house in Edgewood. It was owned at the time of the party by a guy named Edgar Rodriguez, but had since been taken back by the bank that held the mortgage since he defaulted shortly after the rave. Rodriguez had moved out of state as well, relocating to Florida. Coincidence? Perhaps; his record was clean.

But now he had a connection between Tweaks, DeSilvo, and Henstridge. Still, it was what a prosecutor would say was circumstantial at best - so they arrested him, so what? Eight different cops had arrested Tweaks in his brief life as a junkie, and DeSilvo and Henstridge had arrested hundreds of people in their time as cops, DeSilvo alone possibly thousands.

Yet his gut, his detective “instinct” (as Par liked to call it) was absolutely screaming. This meant something; this had to. No way was this just coincidence. He had tied the three men together for a very brief period in time, and now death seemed to be tying them together again. That had to be something.

What the fuck had happened in that house in Edgewood? If he could find Henstridge, he could ask him. But oddly enough, he didn’t trust him to tell him the truth.

He had finished making a note of the rave house when Paris came upstairs, complaining, “Now I thought those lascivious looks you were giving me earlier were going to add up to something.”

“They weren’t lascivious, they were … distracted.”

“Don’t be a tease; it doesn’t suit you.” He ducked into the attached bathroom and came out toweling off the sweat. “You have that look on your face.”

“Lascivious, is it?”

“No, it’s your “I’ve-blown-the-case-wide-open” face. So what did you discover, Sherlock?”

“A connection between DeSilvo, Henstridge, and Tweaks.”

“Who’s Henstridge?” he asked, sitting on the end of the bed. It looked like he’d pseudo made the bed, which meant he just spread the blanket over the top and figured good enough.

“DeSilvo’s partner. Oh, and what did you do to Eli? He grabbed Guy and scampered to the police.”

Paris chuckled, a sly grin breaking across his face. “I told him he either threw himself on the mercy of the cops, or we were gonna be over there pre-sundown and drag him back here, so he could share a cage with me.”

Roan stared at him, hoping Paris was joking, but he clearly wasn’t; his clear blue eyes sparkled like diamonds. “You threatened to eat him?”

“Not in a good way.”

Roan rubbed his eyes, and wondered what kind of lecture he’d get from Guy next time he saw him. That was assuming Eli told him what happened - maybe he wouldn’t. Guy hated him openly, Eli treated him with smug contempt, but both of them seemed unsure how to feel about Paris. Did his beauty or charm - or both - make him hate proof? Or did Paris so kill them with (patently false - although they never quite caught on) kindness that they put him in the “okay” category? Maybe they just dismissed him; maybe he didn’t even register on their radar. (Although Roan was willing to bet that he did now.) “You think you know a guy, and then he does something like this.”

“Oh, come on. I knew it would work because I know exactly what Eli thinks of us. He thinks we’re a couple of weird and potentially dangerous gay boys who don’t deserve the “gift” of infection, and are living proof that his god occasionally makes no sense, especially since his god hates fags.“ He paused. “Wait - do the cat worshippers hate queers?”

“I don’t know, I can’t say I’ve read their entire playbook. But it’s a safe assumption, since nearly all religions do.”

“Yeah, figured. Doesn’t it just make you feel so special?”

“I’ve always felt special. Being handled like nuclear waste for most of your life can do that to a person.”

“Shall I go get the violin?”

Roan flipped him his middle finger and Paris just chuckled, the sly grin never leaving his face. Actually he appreciated Par never letting him slide down into self-pity, but telling him that would only encourage him. After a moment, Paris asked, “What about the case you’re actually being paid for?”

Again, he never let him get away with anything, but that was good. Annoying as shit, but necessary; much like medicine, it was good for him, no matter how bad it initially tasted. “I may be close to him. That woman at the Hatch house acted way too hostile, and Nelson wasn’t home, so I intend to go back tonight and see if I can get him after work. If neither of those leads pan out, I only have to wait until the weekend.”

“Why?”

“Marley has weekends off, and that’s when she usually joined Danny at the church.”

It took him a moment, but he got it. “You’re going to tail her.”

He nodded. “See if she leads me to him.”

Paris stood up and stretched, deliberately showing off his nicer than average torso, all lean muscle that he genuinely worked to get, as opposed to those strange people who spent huge chunks of their day in loud, depressing gyms. And he hated him all the more because he could work in a steel mill for ten hours a day for a year and never look like that. It just wasn’t fair. But then again, Paris‘s odd mix of hard work and vanity had probably saved his life; all the doctors speculated that he only survived the tiger strain because he was in peak physical condition. Anything less, and the stress of the change would have killed him. “Isn’t that a bit weird, you tailing a teenage girl?”

“Tell me about it. I already feel like a stalker, and I haven’t done anything yet.”

The turns life took sometimes could give you whiplash.

******

Once he had Paris safely locked in his cage for the evening, he placed a call to the Nakamuras, but only got their home answering service. The message he left was honest, that he hadn’t found Danny yet, but he was confident he was still in the city and he was on the verge of finding him. He told them to call back if they wanted further details, but he honestly wasn’t sure how much he’d tell them if they did. Did he have the right to violate Danny’s privacy by telling them about his fascination with kitty culture and the church? Yes, his parents probably had the right to know, but Danny was on the verge of adulthood, and probably felt infringed upon by his parents enough. If he wanted to tell them , he could, and they should really hear it from him, not a private detective. He thought Danny’s obsession was idiotic and dangerous, and yet it felt almost like “outing” someone, and again that wasn’t something he was inclined to do.

He showered and changed into clean clothes, which made him feel marginally better, and then drove back out to the Hampstead Arms. The heat still rose off the pavement in shimmering waves even as the sky turned a deep blood orange beyond the inverted cracker box shape of the building, making it look more dingy and ominous than it actually had in unforgiving sunlight. A racially mixed group of kids played in the cracked parking lot, most of them in between seven and ten, and they all gave him dirty looks. He wanted to ask if it was his face, his clothes - what was with people giving him unaccountable dirty looks? His tattoo wasn’t visible, he wasn’t carrying his gun, and it certainly didn’t read “dirty fag” on his forehead, as he had checked before he left the house. Maybe it was just this part of town; maybe they equated a stranger with trouble.

He knocked on Nelson’s door, the surface marred with peeling paint, and he saw the glass peephole darken as Nelson looked out it. In a strangely quavering voice, he asked, “What do you want?”

“Mr. Nelson, I’m Roan McKichan, a private detective working on a missing persons case related to the Church of the Divine Transformation. May I speak with you a moment?”

There was no answer, and for a moment he thought he best step to the side so in case he was getting his shotgun the first shot would go wide, but after a long moment he opened the door a crack, the inner chain lock still securely fastened. “I haven’t done anything wrong,” he hissed, his voice an angry whisper. He was a slightly bloodshot brown eye staring out of a face yellowed slightly with nicotine and liver problems, his hair so short it was almost shaved to a nub, a stain of black hair like mold discoloring his scalp. He smelled ill; Roan could actually smell a certain sickly, vaguely rotten odor coming from him that was by no means a good sign.

“I’m not accusing you of anything, Mr. Nelson,” he said smoothly, producing the photo of Danny from his pocket. “I’m just wondering if you’ve seen this boy at the church lately.”

“Did you find out about me on that website, is that it?” he continued in angry, breathless whisper. “I don’t know what you people want from me, I served my time, I -”

“Sir, I’m not here to harass you. I simply want to know if you’ve seen this boy.” He kept his tone soothing and low, like he was talking to a spooked animal. By web site he assumed he meant ones of those that cheerfully listed the names and addresses of everyone declared a sex offender; there were so many he really had no idea which one he meant.

That one eye glared at him over the chain for several long seconds, and then he looked down at the photo, which he stared at for several seconds. “I dunno. I can’t tell the Asian kids apart.”

Charming. He had to keep his poker face on firmly to keep from grimacing, rolling his eyes, and asking how the weather was in 1952. Roan pocketed Danny’s photo and pulled out one of his business cards, which he held out towards the crack in the door. “If you see him, I’d appreciate a call.”

He reached through the crack and snatched the card away like it might come alive and bite him. “I didn’t do nothin’,” he protested. “I’m leavin’ the kids alone.”

Roan nodded, glad but not convinced that this was truly a decision made by him. “Is it cirrhosis of the liver?”

The eye seemed to get higher as he stiffened in shock. “What?”

“What you have. It’s a liver disease, right?”

Roan heard him swallow hard, a dry click in his throat, and that single accusing eye shined wetly with something akin to regret. “Liver cancer. H-how did you - ”

“I’m a detective, Mr. Nelson,” he replied blithely, turning and walking away. Chemotherapy would explain his unfortunate haircut.

In the car, he made a mental note to cross Nelson off the list. He was too ill to be a threat to anyone at this rate, although just barely. He was convicted of molesting a boy, and he lived in an apartment building full of kids in the same age range as his victim. And he was “reformed“, huh? Maybe that just meant he jacked off while watching them from the window; either way, if he had been in full health, he might have felt it was his civic duty to warn the parents to watch their kids more closely.

So, he could smell cancer. That was just fucking creepy. He decided he was never going to mention that to anyone and hope that this was a complete fluke, something that would never happen again.

Roan was only about to start the car when the opening chords of Pete Townsend’s “Rough Boys” started, startling the shit out of him and making him drop his keys. He quickly deduced it was his cell phone going off, as Paris had clearly fucked with his ring tone. He liked a plain, simple ring tone, something professional, but Paris lived to monkey around with it. Since Paris had put “Rough Boys” on his phone before, he had to ask him why, and Paris claimed the song reminded him of him. He was not rough trade! Okay, yeah, he was kind of butch, but he wasn’t a leather daddy. He decided he should just take it as a compliment - kind of - and let it go, but he had uninstalled it from his phone. Clearly Paris had reinstalled it. But it could have been worse. Paris’s ring tone varied lately between “Michael”, Franz Ferdinand’s ode to homosexual lust, and “Let The Wind Erase Me” by Assemblage 23, a bouncy piece of electro-beat-pop that wouldn’t have been out of place in a gay nightclub. The only gayer things he could have had were show tunes or something by Clay Aiken.

He was a little surprised to see that it was Sikorski calling him. “What’s up, Gordo?”

“You doing anything right now?”

What a weird reply. If it had come from anyone else, he might have suspected it was a bad come on. “Just work. Why?”

“We need you to come by the station and get a bite print from Winters’ for us. Vasquez is in Toronto.”

“What?” He put the phone down and leaned his head against the steering wheel, barely repressing the urge to head butt it until either his skull or the wheel broke. It was standard practice for all police department voluntarily (or involuntarily) restraining cats to get a “bite print” from them, since most were as unique as a Human bite print. The problem was usually only a certified handler could do it - the union wouldn’t let a cop do it - and as a rare “cat handler”, Annie Vasquez did all the “cat business” for every police department on this side of the state. Since she sometimes had her hands full, he was personally asked by Chief Matthews to become certified in case “filling in” needed to be done within the precinct. Much to his chagrin and horror, getting certified was sitting through a three hour class - it had been harder to get his detective license. “Why the fuck is she in Toronto?”

“Some kind of conference. It’d take us a couple of days to get someone from the university, ‘cause they seem to be all on vacations.”

How nice to know he was the last resort. “Fine. But I want Stovak gone; I ain’t dealing with that piece of shit right now.”

He grunted an agreement. “We already got him the fuck out of here. God, whatta piece of work. I just wanted to stomp on his head until it broke like a hollow chocolate Easter egg. “

“He seems to have that effect on people.” The Guy effect seemed to be direct opposite of the Paris effect: repulsion instead of attraction. He sighed and glanced at his watch, aware that he honestly had no timetable for visiting the Hatch house. “Fine, I’ll be right over. Oh, and there’s something you should know - DeSilvo and Henstridge were the last officers to arrest Tweaks, six months ago.”

Now Gordo sighed right back at him. It was almost a contest. “So? Do you know how many cops have arrested Tweaks in his lifetime?”

“Around here? Eight: Jones, Alvarez, Thun, Martinez, Scott, Jackson, DeSilvo, and Henstridge. I refuse to believe it’s mere coincidence when both DeSilvo and Tweaks were killed by the same unidentifiable cat.”

The pause on Gordo’s end was so long it threatened to stretch into eternity, and he could feel the disapproval coming in waves over the phone line. “How the hell do you know that?”

“I can’t reveal my sources. But look at it this way - I’m doing the work for you. All you have to do is reap the glory.”

“Reap the glory?” He repeated in disbelief. “God, you are so gay sometimes.”

“I’ll be right there. Hide the homophobes.” He shut off his phone - Pete Townsend was not startling him again - and started the car, which had heated up about twenty degrees while he’d been talking. While Gordo didn’t like that he clearly still had access to police files, he probably wasn’t going to make a big stink about it, because he honestly did like other people to do his work for him sometimes. He wasn’t lazy, he was just usually juggling a dozen active cases at once.

Roan was personally just sorry he wasn’t wearing his Pansy Division t-shirt. Whenever he had to turn up at the cop shop he liked to wear it or a similarly “gay” shirt, if just to make everyone uncomfortable and piss them off. He got almost more shit for being gay than for being an infected when he was on the force, and the sheer ignorance of it all made him want to start tasering officers at random. The more they sneered and made their little jokes, the more he fought back by being as blatant as possible. Deny who he was to make them feel more secure in their own masculinity? Fuck them. He had no intention of being like Robinson over in Vice.

Kevin Robinson was a good cop, and being on the vice squad was an unpleasant job, but he seemed unfailing sanguine about it all. He never went out of his way to harass Roan, which put him instantly in the minority, but he wasn’t overly friendly to him either … until after work. And then he was a kind of awkward friendly, always looking over his shoulder to make sure no one saw him with the gay guy. He invited him to a barbecue he was having at his place one weekend, it was just a “welcome to the neighborhood” kind of thing for some people who had moved in on his block, and Roan went out of sheer curiosity. No one had ever invited him to one of their do’s before, except the lesbian cop on the homicide squad.

There were no other cops there, just him and Kevin, which was pretty weird since cops generally socialized with other cops (who else was there to socialize with on their time schedules). As the thing wound down, they sat at a picnic table in Kevin’s back yard - he had a fairly sizable house for a man who lived all alone with two cats and a dog , but apparently he’d inherited it from his uncle - and Roan watched Kevin pick at the label on his beer bottle as he admitted he was gay and kind of wanted someone he could talk to that would understand. He said if he came out it would just kill his mother, and he knew the shit that Roan was taking at the precinct and didn’t want that to happen to him either. He claimed to not be “that brave”.

Roan pitied the guy that day, and still did. He lived alone in a big house with few genuine friends - no one who knew the truth about him at any rate - living a life of quiet, lonely desperation, with the underlying fear that he might get outed if he crossed any sort of lines. How did he live that way? He didn’t get it; he had no idea how anyone could be that hard on themselves just to make other people happy.

Kevin was a quasi-friend, as he still wasn’t sure how friendly he could be with Roan (he was always looking over his shoulder), and never in public. But he was very good about giving Roan access to the police computer system. He should probably invite him over to dinner when they had Randi over - that wasn’t public, and he’d probably fall head over heels in love with Paris on first sight. Maybe that would encourage him to get out of the closet.

The sky had turned a pale shade of indigo by the time he reached headquarters, a “modern” sprawling cinderblock complex that managed to look oppressive and depressing as all hell in spite of efforts to make it “friendlier” by adding ornamental trees in little concrete islands around the parking lot, with bright white rocks that seemed to glow in low light. If your life was going well, you wouldn’t be here; a precinct house could never look friendly enough to overcome its basic function of locking people up.

Inside it was busy, with the usual assortment of perps in various stages of sobriety and belligerence, almost rivaling the assorted disbelief and belligerence of people here to bail someone out or accompanying the newly arrested. The assortment of smells was unpleasant and nearly overwhelming. But a couple of the cops looked up and scowled, recognizing him, and Gordo appeared in the doorway of the corridor leading to the “special” cells, and waved him over. He cut through the crowd, only the people who recognized him bothering to hurry to get out of his way, and joined him there.

As soon as the door closed, sealing off a great deal of noise and smells, Gordo bitched, “I thought you’d be here five minutes ago.”

“Traffic is hell this time of night. So what type of cat is he?”

“Leopard … I think. He’s spotted.”

“That’s a leopard all right.” That was kind of a shame; he’d really been holding out hope that Eli would turn out to be a house cat or something; maybe a skunk.

He followed him down a cool corridor of easy to hose down cement, although the air was redolent of that curious odor of industrial soap, vomit, body odor, and piss, with the lingering tang of cat; many different ones, all blending into a sharp, indefinable stink.

A metal door opened into what could best be called an antechamber, with a concrete floor and industrial white painted walls, and a guard’s observation post, where a pudgy uniformed woman sat, observing the cell block on the monitors. Each cell was separated from others by soundproofed portable walls, but the cats could still smell each other and generally spent their nights (or days) pacing in agitation. A quick glance showed that six of the twenty available cells were occupied, five by cats in various states and one by a woman curled up in a fetal position on the floor, one who had probably just metamorphosed out of her cat form. Also in the room was Sikorski’s usual partner, the almost abnormally calm and stoic Detective Sebastian “Seb” Estes (if he was white, he could have very well been Joe Friday), a guy from the tech branch he only knew as Allen, Officer Jeremy Brown, a cop he knew (and loathed ), and the Chief herself, Julia Matthews. Chief Matthews stepped forward, and gave him a courteous if slightly strained smile. “Thank you for coming in, Roan.”

“Anything for you, Chief.” And she was yards better than McClarty, who retired ahead of a minor scandal involving all those “good” families whose rebellious offspring’s names he kept off the books. The first female chief of this particular precinct, she ran a really tight ship, as if appearing as anything less than a ball buster might open her up to charges that she was too “weak” to run the place. She was on the far side of forty, her almond brown hair cut almost military short, her uniform seemingly so starched and tailored you could have cut yourself on its crisp edges. She was above average in height, almost six feet tall in flats, and fairly solidly built; she claimed that that’s just “how Montana farm girls turned out“, but Roan knew that was just deflective self-deprecation. She was a good cop; he didn’t hold it against her that she asked for his badge after that whole Jenkins’ incident, and she always seemed shocked that he didn’t resent her for it. But how could he? She was simply doing her job, and he had already concluded that he couldn’t remain on the force. It seemed like a momentary lapse of reason that he ever even became a cop; he suspected he only had because people told him he couldn’t.

Little Allen - not an insult; at barely five five he was the shortest person in the room - stepped forward with what looked like a thick, square dustpan on the end of a pole, the dustpan coated with a thick layer of a whitish-orange compound that smelled of antiseptic, filling amalgam, and plaster. “You know how to use one of these, I presume? You -”

“Yeah, I know the drill,” he said, taking it from Allen. The dustpan thing was the “bite plate”, the thing he had to make Eli the cat bite so they could get an accurate bite print. The stuff set pretty fast and tasted nasty, so after a cat bit it it was more than likely to let go quickly, but there had been instances where the cat tore the whole thing to pieces. You had to be careful - which was also why it was on a long pole, so you didn’t have to get too close to the bars. “What cage is he in?”

“3-B,” the female officer at the observation post reported, sounding so bored she could have been half asleep. The name patch on her uniform shirt said Stahl. “Go in, take a right; he’s the second one down.”

He nodded, and headed to the metal door plastered with all the warning signs in English and Spanish. “Got it.” Stahl hit a button that unlocked the inner door with a mechanical clank, and then he was within the small maze of cat cages, the tiny wing smelling like a disreputable zoo. The door clanked shut behind him and locked with an ominous thunk.

As he walked the aisle around the cages, he remembered bringing Paris here when he was homeless and living in his car, on the verge of a shift but having nowhere to go. Paris was just getting his sanity back, his self, and he told him he hated police stations and hospitals, he hated places where there were so many people he could hurt if things went wrong. Roan had to soothingly talk him in here, and promised him he would watch from the monitors and make sure he didn’t get out and hurt anyone; he promised he’d watch him all night. Roan had no intention of doing so, because even a tiger had no hope of getting out of here, and certainly not into the heart of the station. But as soon as his shift was over, he did come back, and the poor schlub on watch duty was more than happy to cede the chair to him. He told himself he just wanted to see what an actual tiger looked like, if they looked like the ones you saw in zoos, and yes, they did, or Paris did at any rate. He was the most magnificent cat he’d ever seen in his entire life, as well as one of the largest - no wonder he was worried about hurting someone.

He did end up watching him all night. He just hadn’t meant to.

As cats went, Eli wasn’t that big, just as he wasn’t in real life. He was a lean, almost scrawny leopard, wheat colored fur short, his spots mere suggestions on his thin coat, ghost echoes of circles like the rings of enlarged moles. His lean, almost vulpine shaped head turned towards him and he snarled, stopping his restless pacing to run snarling at the bars, reaching a paw through to try and swipe at him.

Roan was too far back for the cat to even get close to scratching him, but he swore he could almost see Eli’s arrogance in those yellowish eyes, something more Human than cat, and something in him bristled. “Back down, Eli,” he snapped. “Be a good loser for once.”

The cat looked up at him and snarled, black lips pulling over ivory teeth, and Roan snarled back, the growl rising easily to his throat. He crouched down so he could be at eye level with him, and the cat’s ears went back flat against its head in what could very well have been confusion, if cats were even capable of that. Roan felt his snarl and growl become one, a thrumming like the engine of his bike, and the leopard charged forward again with a roar, and Roan roared right back, stopping it in its track.

It was a roar, although it was also half angry scream, and it scoured his throat raw the moment it was pushed out. But the growl continued throughout it all, and Roan didn’t know how. He didn’t know a lot of things, actually. He was feeling oddly dizzy, almost detached from himself, and he felt his anger like a physical entity inside his own body, making his muscles bunch together beneath his skin, smooth fibers flowing into hard knots. He leaned forward on his hands, now on all fours, closer to the cage than he should have been, and somehow he roared once more, the force of the noise making blood well up in his throat, as he felt the muscles in his back tense, the hair on his neck bristle as his lips pulled back and revealed his teeth to the cat, growling as he moved forward slowly towards the bars of the cage.

The Eli leopard backed up, its posture one of submission, but that wasn’t enough for him. His blood pounded in his ears as his head seemed to swim in its own internal fog, and he could feel his muscles become liquid steel as the anger rose inside him, drowning his vision in red as he realized this cat had to die; he wanted to feel its warm blood gush in his mouth as he ripped open its throat, and -

What the fuck?!

It was an effort of will to reassert himself over the beast in his system, the one rising up to take him over, and he nearly threw himself backwards, shoving himself away from the cage as he panted for breath and finally stopped growling. What the fuck was that? What the fuck was that?! His own blood was coppery in his mouth, his throat ached as if it had been rubbed with a steel scouring brush. His muscle shifted back into their usual places as -

- his muscles shifted?

He looked at his hands, almost expecting to see fur and claws, but they were just hands; he could see the black curl of his Leo tattoo and his ghost scar, and he could see his hands were shaking. His whole body was quivering, and again it was an effort of will to make it stop, and it was almost painful since his muscles wanted to spasm. He felt like he was coming back to himself, but he had no idea where or when he had gone. He didn’t even remember dropping the bite plate.

His head spun, swam, and he felt almost unable to deal with his own thought processes. Was he going to become ..? Was he going to change? That was impossible; the change couldn’t be forced, it couldn’t be controlled or made to happen outside the viral cycle. It couldn’t happen; it had never happened.

(He felt the muscles move. He didn’t roar; he couldn’t make that noise. The second one wasn’t even remotely Human. He had no idea where all that rage had come from, or why he was so mad.)

His first urge was to run, to get as far away from here and cats as he could, to barricade himself in his house and try to hold on to his humanity against an enemy that lived inside his own body, in his own head, but that was such a chickenshit reaction he was ashamed of it. He swallowed down his own blood, the very act of swallowing making him wince in pain, and he picked up the bite plate as he got up to his knees and shoved the thing sideways through the bars, only turning it level once it was inside. “Come on and bite the thing, you stupid cat,” he grumbled, and his voice was gravelly hoarse, painful to listen to.

The leopard had laid down on the floor of its cage, its head down on its paws like a person in a guillotine waiting for the blade to come down. He jabbed the plate at its face, annoying it, and finally it raised its head and bit the thing, but it was strangely perfunctory, with almost no aggression in it at all. After he pulled the plate out of the bars, it resumed its submissive posture, its tail twitching in mild irritation.

Roan used the wall to get back to his feet, and as he walked back to the exit, he saw something that horrified him to his very core: the other cats were all in submissive postures. The lion, the panther … he had a feeling if he walked the entire block, they would all be that way. They had somehow all heard him, or smelled him, or … no, no, he couldn’t deal with this. It suddenly felt as if the air was thickening, the walls closing in on him.

The door unlocked mechanically several seconds after he’d reached it, almost as if no one had wanted to let him in. As he stepped inside the antechamber, he saw a sea of faces all staring at him in abject horror, standing as far back from him inside the room as possible. Even Stahl was standing up from her station, although duty dictated she couldn’t move anywhere.

He shoved the bite plate in Allen’s hand, who nearly flinched away from him as he did so, and finally Gordo asked, the shock making his voice reedy, “Roan, what the fuck was that?”

Not sure he could keep his poker face intact, his vocal inflections flat, he still managed to spit out, “I had to establish dominance. I guess I’m done here.” He quickly left the room and no one challenged him, no one made to follow, and he simply plunged through the crowd outside, elbowing people aside as he tried to leave the building as fast as he could without breaking into a run. His heart was pounding triple time, a beat that seemed to reverberate inside his head and his eyeballs, and he wondered if this was a heart attack. He wondered if he’d mind if it was.

He barely made it back to the Mustang before he doubled over and vomited on the asphalt.