Chamomile mango tea actually tasted quite nice, but it went through him like a bullet train, and he had to duck inside to use the bathroom. Had he been aware before now that the Church had Italian tile in its bathrooms? He was sure he’d have remembered a detail like that. He was washing his hands at the sink, and after noticing that they had those blue LED things attached to the tap so the water coming out looked neon blue (now he knew who bought shit like that), he noticed he looked a little flushed. He stared at himself in the mirror a moment, wondering if the lighting just had a reddish tinge to it, but then he listened to his heart; he could hear it pounding in his ears, feel it making his chest vibrate like a hollow drum, and he wondered why this was happening so soon.

Roan had his secrets, and he knew it. He didn’t want to tell him he got in a fight last night, probably because he partially transformed, or because his life was in genuine danger, or both. But Paris had a secret of his own. His last routine check up, typical after he was through his viral cycle, his doctor had some news for him that wasn’t that shocking but was still depressing. She told him, very kindly, that she had detected a heart murmur, and suspected the blood flow to his heart was now being affected. He was tiger strain and approaching thirty - it wasn’t a surprise. Heart valve problems and blood flow irregularities were common with tiger strain; according to his doctor, it was usually the valves that went first, and aortic dissection killed many a tiger. She was very kind - she said it was “early days” and was probably not going to be a real problem for up to a year; all he had to do was watch that he didn’t exercise too strenuously, and expect some heart palpitations (although she advised him to come in if they started to get really frequent or really bad). She suspected that he wouldn’t notice until he was near the high point of his viral cycle.

He hadn’t told Roan. He told him he got a clean bill of health and praised his continued luck. Roan was relieved and held him for the longest time, so long he felt horrible for lying to him. But he didn’t want Ro to worry or worse yet, coddle him somehow. So what if he was on borrowed time? He had been since he contracted this virus, and since he met Roan.

Which was the funny thing, funny in a bitterly ironic sort of way. He’d never been brave enough to commit suicide, but he still chased death, afraid of this thing inside him. And when he met Roan, he had almost achieved his goal, although he was unaware of it. Roan knew he smelled like he was in the transition phase, but he also thought he smelled sick. After he spent the night in the police transformation tank, Roan took him to this special clinic that was for the treatment of infecteds with other medical problems. It had a waiting list, but Roan knew the right people and got him in. He had pneumonia, apparently, and according to the doctors who saw him, he was suffering from malnutrition. Which sounded insane, but apparently due to his wonky metabolism he didn’t have enough fat in his body to tolerate another transition, and he was one or two away from a fatal heart attack or organ malfunction. By that time he was too medicated to say “Let it happen”, and he stayed in that clinic for weeks while they cured his pneumonia and got him back up to fighting strength. By that time he’d figured out he wanted to live, as Roan had visited him as often as he could, brought him books (from his own collection, which he didn’t know at the time), and sometimes called to talk to him when he was on boring stake outs, just to have the company, and somewhere in all those days Paris had fallen in love with him, although he wasn’t sure when. It just sort of struck him one day that he loved him, and rather than be shocking, it struck him as bizarrely commonplace. Who couldn’t love a guy like him? Besides, he’d given him his life back, and love was the least possible response.

But that was how life tripped you up, wasn’t it? As soon as you were content with what you had, it took it away. He was glad to have some semblance of a life, and now the walls were closing in, and the death he had chased had now turned around and was charging at him. He could have been angry about it, or depressed, but mostly he was just weary. It was almost too predictable.

He closed his eyes and took deep breaths through his nose, letting them out slowly through his mouth, trying to get his heart to just slow the fuck down. That was much harder to will than you would have thought. Maybe he’d had too much sugar and caffeine this morning.

He splashed cold water on his face and rubbed it in, hoping to absorb it through his pores, and he thought his heart rate finally went down. He hoped his face was less flushed, but he wasn’t sure.

Roan had told him about the narrow side hall leading to Eli’s pretentious private office, so he slipped down it, coming to a huge door that he knocked on quite loudly. He thought he heard the strains of Sportscenter leaking through the cracks. “Who is it?” Eli shouted in replied.

Paris didn’t answer. He turned the knob, found the door unlocked, and walked in. He found Eli sitting on a overstuffed sofa, watching a flat screen t.v. hidden within an open cabinet, drinking a Coors Light. He looked at him, indignation twisting his features, but when he realized who had just barged in he paused himself in mid-rise and sat back down on the couch, grabbing the remote and bringing the volume down. “What the hell are you doing here?” he asked.

“And good afternoon to you too,” Paris replied cheerfully. “I need the time sheets of Jordan DeSoto for the last month and a half.”

He loved the way Eli looked at him, like he was the millipede he just found in his chicken salad. He still hadn’t forgiven him for threatening to lock him in cage with his tiger, had he? Well he hoped Eli knew that offer was still on the table. “Why Jordan? McKichan can’t be suspicious of that … loser.”

“You don’t like him.”

It wasn’t a question, but Eli treated it as such. “He’s a terminal fuck up.” Paris entertained the idea of telling Eli that his own brother actually thought of him that way, but decided there wasn’t a point. He wasn’t sure Eli had a sense of irony. Or humor. Or dress sense, judging from his unfortunate choice of beige Dockers and a pale pink short sleeved shirt. He still had the slightly spiky Eurotrash hair going on too, which just didn’t go with anything from the neck down. Every time he saw him, Eli brought home the fact that he had much more money than sense.

He levered himself off the couch, leaving his beer and remote behind, and walked over to a desk that looked like it was made for a grown up, not Eli. He started working on his computer, but didn’t sit down.

“So why did you hire him if he’s such a fuck up?”

He snorted derisively. “I know you play for the other team now, but you can’t be that stupid.”

Paris smirked at his snide little comment, but he suddenly realized his head felt very light, like someone was pumping it full of hydrogen, and the room started a slow but obvious tilt. He sat on the arm of the sofa before the dizziness could fully overwhelm him. “To make Mia happy.”

“More like to shut her up, but same difference. She thought maybe I could put in a good word for him with Tom, get him in one of his businesses, but she apparently doesn’t understand our relationship.”

Tom was his much more respectable brother, and as far as Paris knew, they barely talked before Eli had managed to get himself infected. Now that he was genuinely infected he probably didn’t take his calls for any reason. “Is he good at his job?”

Eli shrugged, and started to print out the documents. “A chimp could mow a lawn.”

“Wow. You should slap that on his resume.”

He glared at him. “He’s hung over when he isn’t drunk, and he’s a total bastard in any state. If he wasn’t Mia’s brother, I’d have fired his ass already.”

“He doesn’t like infecteds, or just you?”

He sighed heavily, glancing at the t.v. instead of him. “Is there any difference?”

“A bit, yeah - you’re not every infected. Does he blame you for Mia’s infection?”

Eli’s neck stiffened, and it was clear he wasn’t trying not to react to that. “Mia was infected before she got here, so I don’t see how he could.”

“But he hates your fucking guts.”

Another shrug, but far too deliberate to be causal. “Probably. He’s an ungrateful bastard.” He checked the print outs, which continued. There must have been five pages already.

Over dinner last night, before he went to meet with Barlow, Roan had told him he didn’t think the person threatening Eli and the killer were one and the same. Roan figured that since the killer was framing Eli, he wouldn’t kill him off, and then there was the fact that the killer hadn’t warned anyone else with a threatening note before doing the deed, so why would Eli warrant one? As far as Ro was concerned - and he agreed with him - someone was taking advantage of the killings to put the fear of god into Eli. A spurned lover, perhaps, or an irate brother of a lover. But as soon as they told Eli he was probably just the victim of harassment and not being stalked by an actual killer, he’d stop funding the investigation. So they weren’t going to tell him right away.

There was the question of how the harasser knew of the killings, but that was simple enough, at least according to Roan: Eli knew. He knew as soon as Patrick was shot, and he probably mentioned it to someone, but he didn’t care about the killings until he himself was threatened. So much for caring about “his people”, but neither of them were shocked that Eli was a selfish hypocrite.

Outside he could hear the hum of the lawnmower, but Eli had flimsy yellow curtains drawn over the window, letting in light but blocking out most of the heat and any prying eyes. Staring at the yellow light made him feel even dizzier, although he didn’t know why.

The printing finally stopped, and Eli gathered up the pages, bringing them over to him. As soon as he came within arm’s reach, he made to grab the papers, but paused, making Eli stand there uncomfortably close to him. “Is there a garden shed? Somewhere where Jordan gets his tools?”

“Yeah, out back, past the gazebo.”

He took the papers. “I didn’t even know you had a gazebo.”

“No reason you should.” He’d turned away, but Paris heard the sneer in his voice.

Just for a laugh, he growled low in his throat, and Eli jumped , startled, turning around so fast he nearly gave himself whiplash. Paris grinned at him, all teeth and ill will, as he managed to stand and not fall over. “Don’t fuck with me, Eli. Roan isn’t the only one who can bust your balls.”

Eli’s eyes flashed with annoyance. “Aren’t you fags supposed to be effeminate?”

Ooh, he used the “f” word. He wouldn’t do that in front of Roan, but he felt it was safe to use in front of the bi. What, he didn’t think he would be offended? Paris took a couple of steps towards him, saying nothing, and Eli suddenly realized he may have made a mistake, eyes widening slightly as he took a corresponding number of steps back, bumping into his own desk. “Do I look effeminate to you?” He waited for him to respond, but when he didn’t, he prompted, “Well, do I?”

Eli finally understood it wasn’t a rhetorical question. “No, no of course not.”

“Goddamn right. I’m a fucking tiger, Eli, and we don’t take shit from little pussycats like you. And get that word out of your vocabulary before I’m forced to smash your face in. We’re only your employees until we solve this case, and then it’s open season on you again, bud. Keep that in mind.”

He nodded hastily, clearly wanting to say something nasty but too scared to do so. Paris had height and muscle mass on him, and the reminder that he was a tiger - and the corresponding memory of threatening to lock him in the cage with it - made him shut the fuck up. He probably should have done that two minutes ago.

He left Eli’s office and walked through the Church’s main building, passing through several “sitting rooms”, a dining room that was mostly for show, and the sterile, stainless steel heavy kitchen before finding a back door he could actually leave through. He folded up the papers as best he could and shoved them in his pocket, where they fit very awkwardly but would do. He was still light headed, but now it was kind of pleasant; it was almost like a contact high.

The “backyard” of the Church was almost a solid acre, which was impressive for a city location. It was walled off by a seven foot high wooden fence, stained to a warm reddish brown. The lawn was as smooth and weed free as a golf course, with small, highly landscaped little “islands”, usually following a theme: one was filled with roses in all hues, another full of azaleas that were mostly in white and reds, another with various kinds of long ornamental grass. The gazebo was latticed and painted a bright white, big enough to hold a barbecue and several people to clean it, and just past a small, koi stocked pond with a fountain that looked like a heap of rocks, was a small shed. It was painted the same reddish brown color as the fence, so it kind of blended in, but it looked so nice and new someone could have lived in it. Well, if it wasn’t the size of a walk in closet.

There was a shiny new hasp and padlock, but both were open so he didn’t have to break it. Inside it looked just like a tool shed, with weed eaters, edgers, and other large tools lined up against the wall, with a variety of saws and clippers hanging up on the right side. There was a kind of utilitarian table set up against the far wall, where a huge tool kit sat, along with a couple of random tackle boxes. Jordan left a scuffed brown leather jacket in here, right below the calendar picture of a hard faced blonde with artificially inflated breasts in a red bikini that barely covered anything, and proved she’d had a full body wax.

The toolbox wasn’t locked, so he opened it up and had a look. It had the usual assortment of tools, all haphazardly placed and in varying states of wear, but when he removed the first level and started searching amongst the others, he found something interesting: a red permanent marker. The type that was used by the person who wrote “Your next” on the article about Ashley Cryer’s death? Since he could still hear the buzz of the lawnmower growing farther and farther away, he decide to search the pockets of the leather jacket. There was nothing in it but a half filled pack of crumpled Marlboros and a cheap red plastic lighter. He must have kept his wallet with him.

He called Roan while he continued searching the levels of the tool box. Roan picked up after the fourth ring. “How’s it going?” he asked, without preamble.

“Guess what I found in Jordan’s tool kit? A red marker.”

“Really? That wasn’t very smooth of him.”

“There’s also a stack of newspaper in the back corner, for recycling, I imagine.”

“I imagine. I’m going to guess he’s not a bright guy.”

Paris found what looked like a small aerosol bottle, but something wasn’t right about it. He screwed off the cap, and caught a whiff of strong whiskey. “He drinks a lot. How are things with you?”

“Well, I’m standing in the lobby of a bank, watching a bike messenger called Elvez and Noah drink lattes at an outdoor table at the Starbucks across the street.”

“Why are you standing in a bank?”

“The windows are mirrored; they can’t see me watching them through binoculars.”

Made sense. “And the tellers haven’t called the cops on you yet?”

“You won’t believe this, but the security guard’s an old cop I used to know. We didn’t get along, mind you, but he knows I’m a detective, and he told the others I’m harmless. So I’m being tolerated.”

Paris had finally gotten to the lowest level of the tool kit, and beside a plumber’s wrench was a red, grease stained rag. It looked to be covering something, so he pulled at it, only to find it weighted down. “So nothing of note yet?”

Roan sighed in a way that suggested he had hoped something - anything - would happen. “Not really. I’ve been trying to lip read, but it’s harder than it looks. So, what do you want for dinner tonight? Should I pick something up?”

Man - you knew a stakeout was unbelievably boring when he started thinking about dinner. But Paris smiled, remembering the time he was in the hospital, and Roan started talking about this crazy Greek restaurant he’d take him to as soon as he was out of there. He kept his word too, he did, and the place was even more fucking nuts than he’d said. It was like a living Monty Python sketch. When it burned down a couple of months after that, it was sad, but not really a surprise. That was the place where he first tried ouzo, which he never really acquired a taste for, and where he first kissed Roan in public, which he did acquire more of a taste for. “I’ll be done sooner than you. I should probably do the picking up.”

“Fine, but no tofu. Stop that.”

“Oh come on, it’s not that bad.”

“Look, we’re cats, okay? Carnivores. Don’t make me smack you.”

He snorted humorously. “You wouldn’t even have known it was tofu if I didn’t -” He paused sharply as he finally loosened the rag and pulled it free of the thing weighing it down.

“What?” All the lightness in Ro’s tone had fled as he sensed something was wrong.

“Jordan has a gun in his tool case.” Paris stared at it, trying to figure out what it was. He didn’t know his weapons like Roan, so all he could say for sure was it was a compact black handgun. He supposed if he picked it up he could figure out what it was, but even he knew the first rule of finding a weapon that may have been used in a crime was you never fucking touched it. Let the forensic guys and the cops do that. “I thought it was grease on the rag he wrapped it in, but it’s gun oil. It’s been cleaned recently.”

“Get out of there now,” Roan said, his voice all business. “I’ll call Murphy, have her send out some blues. Do you have his time sheets?”

“Yeah.” He threw the rag over the gun and started putting the tool box back together. This wasn’t proof Jordan was the killer - all it proved was he hid a gun in his tool kit. Why? Maybe he really was planning to kill Eli. Maybe he wanted him to stew in his own juices for a bit before taking him out. Or maybe there was a very good reason he couldn’t think of right at the moment.

“Check them. Was he working the day Ashley was killed?”

Paris headed out of the tool shed and was walking across the back lawn before he bothered to check. He wedged the phone between his shoulder and ear and unfolded the papers. That info was on the last page, and as he checked, he felt a sudden twinge of anxiety, and his heart decided to do laps around his chest again. He wished he could tell it to stop that. “No, he wasn’t. It looks like he works maybe three days a week, if that.”

Roan started listing dates for him to check, and they were all negative: he was not at work at the times of any shootings. He was at work the day Eli was threatened, but he’d have to be to deliver the message, wouldn’t he?

Paris sat on the back steps of the Church, listening to the distant hum of the mower out front, feeling his heart thump against his chest walls. “Is he our guy?”

Roan didn’t answer that right away. “It’s looking really bad for him at this rate. Let’s see what alibis he can come up with. Ballistics will be able to tell us if that’s the gun or not, and then it won’t matter if he gets the Pope to vouch for him, he’s fucked on toast.” There was a brief pause, followed by a distant, “Sorry ma’am. But he’s probably heard worse on the internet.”

That made him smile. Ro’s apologies often sounded woefully insincere. “Cursing in front of children? What a bad influence you are.”

“I’m a rebel,” he replied, deadpan, and Paris found it hard not to laugh. He paused, long enough to get serious on him. “You okay?”

He knew he meant here, sharing the grounds with a possible serial/spree killer (he really didn’t know how you parsed those definitions), but for a moment he wondered if he could hear his racing pulse over the phone. The lion was coming out more and more now, and Paris thought that Ro just didn’t realize the control he had there. He didn’t care if the cats in them were mindless creatures of pure instinct - he knew Roan. And he knew that his willpower could force the beast back down. Ro had a good shot at controlling it because he was a born fighter, and he bet the cat in him would back down if it really came to that. If Ro was afraid, it was probably mostly due to him being afraid of himself. Paris knew that the tiger was stronger than he was, in almost every sense of the term. But he knew that in the battle between Ro and the lion, the lion didn’t have a shot in hell. But did he know that? Roan doubted, and Paris didn’t know why. His rare sense of insecurity rearing its ugly head, he supposed. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he lied, and rested his head down on his knees, assuming a crash position in hopes the dizziness would fade. He was glad these weren’t videophones. “Do we think Jordan could hack a system though? If he hated Eli so much he would frame him, why go through New Horizons? He could use his contacts here.”

Roan thought of that moment, and Paris could just picture that computer like mind of his clicking away behind his eyes, considering theories and discarding them with a rapidity that would have made other investigators jealous. “Two possibilities,” he finally said. “One: he wanted to keep himself off the suspect list, and the more disconnected the killings were from the Church, the better. Or two - and I admit, this one bugs the hell out of me, but may be more possible.”

“What?”

“He’s not working alone. There’s more than one killer.”

Paris wondered if the sudden nausea he felt was related to his erratic heart. Or maybe it was due to the fact that he was now wondering if Jordan had any connection at all with Humanity First. He bet as soon as Roan called Murphy he’d start checking that, because that was how he worked.

He hung up so Ro could call Murphy, and heard the hum of the lawnmower motor change, becoming louder, nearing him in a slow but deliberate manner. He sat up and waited for Jordan to come around the opposite side of the complex, which he did eventually. He probably wasn’t anyone’s preconceived idea of a crazed killer. He was of average height, maybe five seven at best, with short, wavy brown hair now plastered down to his scalp by sweat, and a slender but soft build that was shown off thanks to the fact that he was shirtless, only wearing worn jeans that sagged down towards his ass, showing a good inch of gray boxers, and overly expensive Nikes. He was also listening to an iPod, clipped to the front of his baggy jeans. His chest was underdeveloped to the point that it was almost concave, with a sparse, mangy smattering of brown hair dusted across it like fallen shreds of tobacco, and a doughy stomach that swelled ever so slightly, the promise of a beer belly just starting to grow. He was definitely the type of guy that should have kept his shirt on under any circumstances. He glanced at him as he pushed the lawnmower by, and while Paris gave him a tight but insincere smile, Jordan’s return glance was curiously hostile, thin lips curving down into a scythe of a scowl. He just didn’t like infecteds at all, did he?

He was just digging his own grave deeper and deeper. Paris supposed that he should get up and try and turn his charm on him, see if he could weasel some reason out of him before the cops came to take him away and dug the jackboots into his ribs.

But today, he just wasn’t feeling that kind.

He stared at himself in the plastic mirror over the sink, hoping that he could see a shadow of what the others had seen. He stared deep into his own eyes, until he could see the thin, erose line of gold around his pupils, the only place where the green of his iris gave way, and he tried to see the lion lurking there behind them. He couldn’t see anything but himself, of course, but at what point was the separation? Was there one? He was beginning to think that it was a convenient excuse in his own mind, that there was no such thing as his desires and the beast’s desires - they were all one thing, and he only created the separation in his own head because it made him feel better.

He did the best he could washing the blood off his neck and out of his hair even though he couldn’t see it; he could feel it though, smell it, saw the water in the sink turn pinkish-red as he poured water over it. At one point a reasonably attractive Asian resident came into the men’s room, and when he was at an adjoining sink, washing his hands, he showed him the back of his neck and asked, “Did I get all the blood off?”

If it wasn’t a hospital, that probably would have earned him a much stranger look than he actually got.

Whenever he went out on a surveillance detail, even when it was unlikely anyone would spot him, he carried a duffle with him that he called his “recon kit”. It was full of plain t-shirts in various colors, windbreakers and light linen jackets, gimme caps and cheap sunglasses. Cheap disguise techniques, yes, but usually surprisingly effective. Unless there was something really striking about you, people just went on bare surface appearance, and as long as he covered most of his hair (occasionally someone commented on his hair color) and hid his eyes (he knew that green wasn’t exactly common), he was just an average joe, a nobody, someone you passed a million times a day without a second glance. Looking ordinary was a boon to a detective.

It was also a boon to a man who often got other people’s blood on him. He could dump the jacket and the shirt, exchange them for something in the kit, and he just had to hope he had no blood on his pants, and if he did, that he was able to get out of them before Paris noticed. He wasn’t going to tell him about this if he could at all avoid it.

Of course he had to answer a few questions, but Matt’s story that Sam - apparently Sam Merton, and Roan was relatively certain he had heard of a cop named Merton - was trying to kill him before Roan showed up was backed up by Sam’s full scale freak out in the ER. They had to give him a tracheotomy so he could breathe (okay, maybe he punched him a bit too hard), and as soon as he could he breathe, he got violent with a nurse and actually tried to storm off, picking up a scalpel and trying to stab someone with it. He was doped to the heavens and his arms and legs restrained so they could finish working on him - he did have a bullet wound, after all.

Leonard was such a wreck he admitted everything - including catching the cat that was nailed to Matt’s door - as long as the cops promised to keep “the freak” away from him. “What the fuck is he?” Roan could hear him screeching from the room down the hall. “He ain’t human!” He didn’t know what answers the cops gave him, if any.

Seb had recovered his Sig Sauer, and since it hadn’t been fired, he gave it back to him. Before he could leave, Gordo pulled him aside, into a quiet part of the lobby between the vending machines and a more private waiting room. Gordo looked uncomfortable for a long moment, as if he wasn’t sure how to say what he wanted to say, but Roan just let him squirm. He wasn’t going to help him - he honestly didn’t want to know what he was going to tell him. Finally, Gordo spit it out. “Are you … all right?”

He shrugged. “Coupla bruises; I’ve had worse.”

“No, I didn’t mean that. I mean …you’re in control, right? This isn’t your … it’s not that point of the viral cycle, is it?”

He didn’t want to say “that time of the month”, did he? Not to a man, at any rate. “No. Why? What did you see?”

Gordo glanced away nervously, rubbed his mouth as if he suddenly needed a smoke or a drink. When he looked back at him, it was with great trepidation. “You really have no idea what happened to you?”

“I felt it - I couldn’t see it.”

He sighed heavily, his breath reeking of coffee. “Well, your eyes, they were … something happened to the pupils. They were barely there and they weren‘t exactly round. And your face was … the veins were standing out on your neck and cheeks, and it looked like your jaw was … it didn’t look right. Your teeth looked … bigger. It’s hard to explain. It wasn’t too dramatically different, it was just … bizarre. I mean, you didn’t look like a wolf man or something, it was just … … incorrect. If you get what I mean.”

He remembered feeling the muscles in his face twitch, but he didn’t remember feeling the teeth change, or his jaw. But as long as his jaw didn’t break or dislocate, he probably wouldn’t have known if it had changed. If the lion’s teeth started to come out, he’d have felt the pain, tasted the blood … but he was gone on adrenaline, and he did taste blood, didn’t he? But he chalked that up to the choking. Had his jaw actually shifted? Had the teeth started to come out? The thought panicked him, mainly because he really hadn’t felt it. He had the urge to touch his jaw, but he fought it down. He saw it in the mirror - it looked normal, except suddenly he had some stubble come back. Maybe the hair growth came with the partial change.

Roan still didn’t escape clean. He was almost out the doors when Matt shouted his name. He turned with great reluctance, not sure what he was going to say, not sure he wanted to hear it anyways. He had fresh stitches in his cheek, but very slender bandages patched up the cut on his throat. His eye was now a deep purplish-black, swollen until the eye was half shut, but his fully open eye had the light glaze of good painkillers. Matt didn’t say anything as he approached, he just suddenly hugged him, nearly collapsing in his arms. “Thank you,” he said quietly. He was afraid he was going to start to cry, but Matt managed to keep it down to a couple of sniffles, the drugs keeping him on an even keel. When Matt let him go, he attempted to smile, but failed. Admiration shone in his eyes, and it made Roan‘s skin want to crawl off and find a nice, quiet hiding place. “I owe you my life.”

“No, you don’t,” Roan countered, not unkindly. “Just do me a favor, and stay away from the crack heads.”

He nodded, wiping errant tears away with the back of his hand. Matt looked at him with something akin to wonder; he was no longer freaked out by what he’d seen. Roan wondered if it was the drugs, the puppy crush, or a combination of the two. “I got that lesson, believe me. Look, if I can ever do something for you -”

“You’ll be the first to know,” he replied, quickly turning and heading for the door. He really didn’t want to face either gratitude or a come on at this point. “I know where you work.”

Matt waved at him as he went, and he felt somewhat bad for him. He bet Matt was just the type of guy who habitually dated fucked up men - he probably tried to “save” them, and then wondered why it never worked. If he thought he’d actually listen, he would have told him that you were lucky to save yourself in this life, but he didn’t think he’d listen. The co-dependant never did.

On the drive home he let PJ Harvey rage from him and The Dead Milkmen be snarky for him as he tried to clear his head and think of nothing, just let the music fill it. He dumped his bloody shirt and jacket in the first dumpster he saw, trading them for a clean green t-shirt and a dark windbreaker from the kit. Would Paris notice? It was possible, as he was the more fashion sensible between them, but he was hoping he could get away with it.

As it was, he caught a break. He got home to find Paris had fallen asleep on the couch watching television. As he came in, Par was sprawled loosely on the sofa, one arm draped over the side and touching the carpet, a rerun of South Park playing on the screen. That just reminded him that some of the cops - supposedly behind his back, but still rather obviously - used to refer to him bitchily as “Big Gay Roan”. That pissed him off so much that one day he just wanted to show up wearing nothing but pink satin hot pants and a t-shirt reading “Ass Bandit”. Of course he didn’t - like he’d ever wear satin hot pants! (He just didn’t have the legs for them) - but the “stairs” incident happened only a month later, so he never really got a chance to refine his plan.

He got out of his jeans and tossed them in the washer, glad Paris would never get a chance to discover the bloodstains, and went upstairs to shower and shave off the new stubble, as well as trim off about two inches of his hair, which also looked a bit longer and bushier than before (it could have been his imagination, but he just wasn’t sure).

He was okay - he was Human. And it was a very poorly lit area of the parking lot; maybe what Gordo, Seb, and Leonard thought they saw they didn’t really see. His pupils had probably contracted drastically due to the sudden brightness of the flashlights, and as for the veins standing out … sure, that probably happened when his muscles changed. It was easy to explain, and that thing with his teeth … no, damn it, he would have felt that, and there would have been more blood in his mouth. It wasn’t that the teeth changed when you transformed more than an entire new set grew in over the old - you essentially had two rows of teeth, more like sharks than cats. And it fucking hurt, and since it cut your gums to shit it always bled a lot. That’s why you always woke up after a transformation tasting blood, your gums as sore as if a dental hygienist with a pick and a grudge had just gotten through with you. Maybe his jaw distended slightly, which might look pretty weird, but there was no way that his teeth had started to come in.

Although it was odd to wake someone up to get them to bed, he did just that. Paris asked him how it went, and he told him an acceptable bullshit story about a sloppy crime scene but a relatively quick arrest. He also told him that the cops had discovered Matt had a stalker and that he and his friend had shot him out of jealousy or because he shoved Matt out of the way of the bullet. Either way, they were both in custody, and Par seemed so relieved by it that he felt guilty for leaving so much out.

But obviously not that guilty, as he fell asleep while Par was brushing his teeth. Adrenaline crash could be a dramatic thing.

He dreamed he was running, the street disappearing beneath his feet as if it ceased to exist the moment he was done with it, the view changing unpredictably from low to the ground to higher above, but his speed and his gait never changed. He loped past apartment buildings so tall they seemed to be propping up the canopy of the sky, which had the odd washed out blue half-light of a false dawn. The buildings soon gave way to open fields, although the stinging scent of wet asphalt, exhaust, and too many humans bedeviled him, haunted him like a bad memory, following him into the tall grass where their smell should have brushed away. His muscles stretched and his lungs pulled in air like bellows, but there was no tiring, no pain of exertion; only exhilaration, as if he was free from his cage at last. Finally there was the scent of water and earth, of compost and chlorophyll, but the smell of the human lingered. It was rank and fetid, sweat and blood and fear and sex and rage, and he realized dimly that the scent was clinging to him. He was the scent, and it disgusted him.

With no transition at all, he’d gone from the razor blade grass to a home, a staircase he climbed with the softest steps, and he realized that a new scent was pulling him, something familiar and welcome, something that made his stomach feel like it was full of fluttering birds. Once again he was simply there, standing over Paris, asleep on the bed, the sheets and blanket tangled around his waist and legs like a partially constructed cocoon. His flesh was warm, the blood beneath a slow but steady roar, and he put his head on his chest and listened to that heart thumping away inside its rib cage, something in its rhythm suggesting a desire to get out and run. Paris touched his face, ran his hand through his hair and held on, while lifting his own head and baring his throat to him. He kissed the skin, tasting the salt of it, feeling the pulse of a vein beneath his lips, and then bit deep, his fangs sinking into his neck and the blood roaring from him and into his mouth, slaking the thirst that had turned his own throat into sandpaper.

Roan instantly woke up, his own subconscious emergency eject system kicking in - he’d had enough nightmares in his life that he’d taught himself to wake up once his dreams turned terrible, although it didn’t always work as quick as he hoped - and he had to check that Par was alive and breathing and had an intact throat. Paris’s back was to him, curled up in a semi-fetal position, hogging almost all the covers (as usual), his breathing deep and regular.

He stumbled off to the bathroom, and stared at himself in the mirror over the sink, trying to will the animal inside him to make an appearance. It didn’t, but he knew that it was in there somewhere, a shadow behind his eyes. “If you touch Paris, if you hurt him, this is over,” he snarled to his own reflection. He made a gun of his thumb and forefinger and shoved them beneath his chin at just the right angle, so that if it were a real gun, pulling the trigger would have blasted off the top of his skull. “Bang - our brains all over the ceiling. Heal that, asshole.”

If he was wrong, if there was no actual beast, then he was simply talking to himself. But that was okay, as his other self clearly needed the message anyways.

Was he a lion who dreamed he was a man or man who dreamed he was a lion? Oh fuck it, he hated bullshit questions like that anyways.

***

When he woke up, the sunlight streaming in through the window and the birds singing so noisily outside he felt like roaring out the window to make them shut up, he had a single moment of panic, since he was alone. But the smells of coffee and toast were wafting up from downstairs, and any momentary fear that the beast was as naturally contrarian as he was faded away.

Roan wandered downstairs in only his sweatpants, deciding he’d rather see that Paris was genuinely okay and didn’t think anything was strange about him before bothering to get dressed for the day. What the hell was he doing today anyways? He could do some more checking on Barlow, maybe run that skip trace, but he had hit a dead end on leads as far as the killer went. Since all of this could be done on computer he didn’t need to show up at the office; he could just stay home in his sweatpants.

He had to admit it - sometimes this job was pretty damn good.

One of the most annoying things about Paris was that he was often a “morning person”, one of those people who were inexplicably awake and happy to be so, full of energy and pep even without an intravenous caffeine drip. Roan personally wanted to beat all those freaky people with a sock full of wood screws, so of course his boyfriend would turn out to be one of them - that was just how the world worked. Paris was as happy and chirpy as the birds outside, and had decided to make French toast for breakfast. He made gourmet style French toast too, perhaps reflective of his better than middle class background; no thin slices of regular white bread for him. He got actual baguettes and sliced them thick, so a single piece of his French toast was about the size of a pancake stack at an IHOP, and on top of that he dusted them with a cinnamon/nutmeg/powdered sugar mixture, and brought out the “real” maple syrup, which he always bought in Canada, because he said the American stuff was shit (“Vermont can kiss my ass”.) It was another thing Paris was inexplicably passionate about, but who really cared since his French toast rocked?

Paris told him a couple of interesting things during breakfast. Namely that a deliveryman had brought a coffee basket from the Starbucks this morning, which had a small note on it that simply said “Thanks”. He thought it was very sweet that he was getting gift baskets from the puppy, but he wondered if it wasn’t time to start dusting off the restraining order. Paris was just kidding, of course, but he really hoped Matt didn’t do that again.

The other interesting thing was the plate run on Barlow. Keisha had done it when she got in this morning, and it turned up the fact that Barlow had gotten himself a parking ticket over a week ago back on Pine Street. What was interesting about that? It was issued the day before Melissa Prescott was murdered - and she lived on Park Street, which was just over from Pine. Son of a bitch; they just placed him in the area prior to the shooting. He was sure that Barlow wasn’t doing any of the dirty work … but it didn’t mean he couldn’t scout. Still, it was circumstantial at best, and he could always claim he wasn’t driving the car; his wife or one of his kids could have been, or at least he could say that.

Which made him suddenly wonder how old Barlow’s kids were.

Paris didn’t know, so Roan interrupted his breakfast to go get his laptop and have a look. Tim had a ten year old daughter, Sierra, and a seventeen year old son, Troy. What did Troy think of his Dad’s anti-cat feelings? Was he sucked up in it too? Would Tim groom his own son as a “soldier” for the cause? It’d be interesting to find out.

Roan had gotten a bit complacent, though, and while he was helping Paris load up the dishwasher, Par gasped and grabbed him, turning his back towards him. “Oh my god! Where did you get those?”

He tried to look over his own shoulder, but was kind of limited. “Get what? Don’t tell me I have a tattoo.”

“I wish. These are some very ugly bruises.” He brushed his fingertips lightly low on his back, and Roan felt a tiny ache at even that gentle pressure. Oh shit, he should have worn a shirt - he forgot all about the kidney punches Sam gave him. (And why? Did he not piss some blood this morning? Jesus, sometimes he was a moron.) “Do they hurt? Who did this to you?”

“Well … I kinda helped apprehend my shooter last night,” he said, settling on a partial truth. “He didn’t go quietly.”

Paris let him go, if only to scowl at him. “And you were going to tell me this when?”

“Possibly never, if I could at all avoid it.”

The evil look he got from Paris presaged a lecture (he knew it by heart), but before he could start, the phone rang, and Roan lunged for it like a lifeline. He didn’t get saved by the bell often, but when it happened, he was glad about it.

It took him a moment to recognize the caller, who was on a cell phone with a semi-crappy connection. It was Juan Marquez, the exterminator who was Patrick Farley’s neighbor. He prefaced his statement with lots of hesitation, saying he thought of something but it was kind of stupid and probably not important, but Roan coaxed him into telling him what he had just thought of. “So yesterday there was a UPS guy at the apartment,” he said, with an almost constant crackle in the background. “And he parked his truck right out front, in what’s ‘sposed to be the fire lane. All the UPS and FedEx guys park there; they just run in and run out, so no one thinks too much about it, know what I mean? But the day before Patrick got capped, I came home from work and saw a UPS guy in the lobby, where all our mailboxes are. But I didn’t see a truck out front; I didn’t see a truck anywhere. They’re pretty distinctive, ya know, hard to miss, but there was just the guy. I thought it was weird at the time, but I really didn’t think about it until I saw the UPS guy yesterday. You said to call you if I thought of anything strange around the time Pat was killed, so I thought I should.”

“Thank you, I appreciate it.” And he really did: a fake UPS guy. Motherfucker, that was perfect. Who else could get slightly paranoid, stranger wary infecteds to open a door? And who, when asked if they saw someone strange, would ever report seeing a UPS guy? They weren’t strange, even if seen leaving a recent crime scene.

This was why you canvased people in person, in the hopes you could gain the trust of a good witness, one that would make your job infinitely easier. He asked Paris to put the scolding on hold while he called Murphy, and she was a little grumpy, as New Horizons was going to make them take them to court to get the list of clients. She asked him to go talk to them, thinking they’d be more amenable to someone like them. He decided to overlook the “someone like them” comment, the slight edge to it, as they were both a “them” in other people’s contexts, both being homosexual. Also cops (admittedly him formerly).

He was tempted to start chanting, “One of us, one of us,” but she sounded like she might have him arrested if he did.

After getting off the line with her, not committing one way or the other about talking to the New Horizons people, he started searching through their entire list of suspects - and honestly there were quite a few, including all the names of the Humanity First people they managed to uncover - and to speed up the process he divided the list in half, with Paris volunteering to do the other half. What he was looking for was someone who worked in any kind of mail delivery capacity: UPS, post office, FedEx, courier even. He didn’t think the killer just pulled the whole UPS angle out of his ass. Yes it was brilliant, but he had a feeling he knew that from personal experience, from the way people reacted in such a blasé manner to his arrival. If that didn’t pan out, he was willing to go to delivery professions of less “official” capacity - pizza guys and newspaper deliverers, if necessary - but he thought the connection would grow tenuous to the breaking point by then.

It would have been nice if he got a hit right away, but things like that rarely happened outside of cop shows. It took them hours of sitting in front of their respective computers, until their butts went numb, but they got two solid hits and a partial third. Reese Campbell, the copy shop manager who had hosted the Humanity First recruiting meeting for “Kevin”, had worked at the post office for six years before quitting and going off on the career path that led him to Kinko’s; Jordan DeSoto, Mia DeSoto’s brother (Eli’s quasi-girlfriend), worked at FedEx as a delivery driver before being fired for being drunk on the job (classy); Noah Hammond, Karen Hammond’s oldest son, worked as a bicycle messenger downtown.

So much for the lazy day half-dressed in front of the computer. These guys had all vaulted into the best bets category, and if any of them were expert computer hackers, that would pretty much cement them as the only suspect. The only one who had been on their radar at all was Reese; he’d discarded the DeSoto’s for now since he wasn’t terribly interested in getting in the middle of Eli and his bitter current girlfriend, and only Paris had followed up on the Hammonds in any respect.

They needed to get on these guys and start narrowing them down now. Roan called the Kinko’s and asked to speak to the manager; he put it on speaker, and as soon as a man responded, hung up. Paris confirmed that was Reese’s voice. So they knew where he was, and where Reese would most likely be for the next few hours. This left Jordan and Noah up for grabs.

Jordan was currently unemployed, although he apparently functioned as something of a handyman around the Church (a sop thrown by Eli to his girlfriend, surely), and Roan called the service Noah worked for, and confirmed he was working today. What was left now was checking these men out, staking them out and trailing them if necessary. Nothing too intensive, just enough to see if there was even a smidgen of possibility they were cold blooded murderers.

There was no choice in the matter. Roan knew he was too well known at the Church, and his hanging around would cause obvious consternation; Paris was generally liked there, and no one made a big deal about him working for a detective agency, whereas Eli and Stovak liked to point out Roan was a “failed cop”. Paris was the only one who could observe Jordan without too much suspicion. That left him chasing around the city after a bicycle messenger, and that was going to be a shitload of fun.

They worked out possible covers and stories, how often they were going to keep in touch, and Paris left first, giving him a quick kiss before grabbing his leather jacket and heading out to the GTO, with the warning that they were going to talk about last night later. (Roan was taking the bike, damn it, as it only made sense if he was going to be chasing after a guy on another type of bike.) Roan changed into nondescript clothes, shoving as much as hair up in his Toronto Maple Leafs cap as possible, and dug out a pair of deep black Ray Bans to hide his eyes. He couldn’t take the recon kit with him on the bike, so he was just going to have to do his best not to get noticed.

But he found himself wondering about something. Downtown area. It was a long shot, but sometimes they were all you had.

He called Matt’s apartment, and his roommate told him he was staying at a friend’s place because he was so freaked out about last night. But the roommate gave him the number of where Matt was staying (at the apartment of a woman named Candy), and he called it. It was Matt that picked up, and when he heard it was Roan he went from sounding slightly irritated to frighteningly cheerful.

Before he could get started on some digressive ramble that would probably sidetrack into profuse thank yous, he asked him if they got a lot of bike messengers at the Starbucks. Matt scoffed. “Are you kidding? Shit yeah, those guys are comin’ in all the time. Not that I’m complaining, ‘cause some of them look pretty good in those shorts, y‘know.”

“I bet. You know any by name?”

“Some of ‘em, yeah. They’re mostly straight, though, so it’s casual.”

“You don’t know one named Noah, do you?”

“No.” He paused suddenly. “But I think he’s that creepy guy that I sometimes see with Elvez.”

“Elvez?”

“Oh, that’s what we call him; I think his real name’s Adam or something, but we all call him Elvez ‘cause he looks kinda like a Spanish Elvis, y’know?”

Cute. “Is Noah a regular?”

“No, he never comes in. We see him standing outside the window with his bike, but it’s always Elvez who comes in. I don’t know why. I just figured that maybe he had some kind of dislike of Starbucks commercially, but would still drink the coffee if someone bought it for him.”

“But Elvez is a regular.”

“Fuck yeah; every single week day, although Noah‘s only with him about half the time. Venti skinny double shot espresso.”

“What time does Elvez show up? Does he have a regular time?”

Matt snorted humorously. “Of course he does. He usually stops in, like, at a quarter to one on the dot, unless traffic’s really shitty or he had a job way the hell on the other side of the city.”

He glanced at his watch, and realized he could actually beat Elvez there if he made tracks now. “Thanks, Matt. Oh, and thanks for the gift, but stop sending me stuff. I just did my job, okay? I appreciate the gesture, but it feels weird.”

“Your job? You’re not a cop. Since when is helping me part of your job?” Okay, that was a point for him. “Few people have ever stuck their neck out for me. I really appreciate it, y’know.” He paused briefly, then asked, “This stuff about that Noah guy - is this related to Ashley’s case at all?”

“You know I can’t tell you that.”

“Y’know that sounds like a yes to me.”

“Can’t do anything about that. Stay out of trouble.” He then hung up and dry washed his face before grabbing a brown canvas jacket and heading out to the garage.

This was horrible. This killer, if he stuck to his usual pattern, was due to strike within the next couple of days, but the list of potential victims was far too big. Even if Murph got the list of clients at New Horizons - unlikely without a court order, as the infected were naturally wary of cops - there was no way they could figure out who might be in the pool of most likely victims before the killer showed them. What they needed was a miracle, and he knew they didn’t exist, no matter what various churches said.

Sikorski called him before he got back on the road. The VIN of the Jeep used in his shooting was traced to a Jeep that had been stolen off a car lot a couple hours before. They were reviewing security tapes, hoping they caught the guys responsible for the theft and therefore the shooting. He wondered why Gordo was calling him since he was on the kitty crime beat, and that was when he was informed that they were treating this as a kitty hate crime for the lack of any other motive. “Of course if it turns out to be a gay hate crime, that’ll get flipped to another department,” Gordo said. “Or if they shot at you because you’re a P.I., that’ll just get chalked up to public service.”

Very funny.

Of course Roan had a problem with the term “hate crime” - was there any such thing as a “love crime” or even a “like crime”? Yes, it was just semantics, but it annoyed him. A lot of things about being a cop had annoyed him, actually; it was a shock he’d lasted as long as he had.

Paris called, sounding giddy, like he’d had two Red Bulls too many. It took a while, but he finally got Barlow on IM, and he’d gotten him to agree to meet him at a place called TJ’s Pub at seven thirty tonight. They hadn’t discussed anything of note, mainly because Par felt he had to reel him in slowly - being far too gung ho and anxious to jump into the kitty killing would be a huge warning sign that he was being set up. Roan agreed with that, as anxious as he was to get on with all of this. Par knew people; he had an almost intuitive grasp of their limits, what they could abide and what they couldn’t. He had no doubt he could play Barlow like a finely tuned violin, and that it would be fun to hear. Although on the other hand it would be frustrating, because Roan liked to think that, when it got down to it, he was an excellent liar when he put his mind to it - you had to be if you were a private investigator, as it came with the job. But Paris made him feel like a rank amateur, like he hadn’t the slightest idea what it actually took to successfully con people. Paris was the big leagues, and he felt like the Triple A minors at best. But then again, being a pretty face helped immensely.

That was just basic psychology. People felt safer and more trusting of the aesthetically pleasing, they let their guards drop easier, and you didn’t have to be a gay man or a straight female to appreciate how handsome and impossibly well put together Paris was. Roan supposed he wasn’t that bad looking - at least he wasn’t horribly repulsive - but people never dropped their guards that fast around him ever. Except Tanika, but she seemed to be laboring under the misapprehension that he was a hero or a celebrity or something. For some reason, it made him feel bad.

He stopped at his favorite Chinese restaurant, the Bamboo Gardens, and let the friendly owner, Mr. Wing, practice his somewhat broken English on him. The food here was great, he’d been coming here since they opened three years ago, and he knew Wing and his family by sight, just as they knew him. They had no idea he was an ex-cop, a detective, an infected, nothing like that - they just knew him as the red haired guy with the strange name who tipped really well. And he was happy with that kind of friendly anonymity.

He stocked up on everything he and Paris liked - Mongolian beef, kung pao chicken, princess beef, fried won tons, hot and sour soup, vegetarian egg rolls - and took it home, so they could have lunch and discuss strategy for the meet with Barlow tonight. Not that there was much to discuss, as Paris knew what he was doing. But he liked to feel included somehow.

The IMs between Barlow and Paris was just as bland as Par had said, committing to almost nothing and not really mentioning the kitty problem by name, but he supposed Barlow might be wary of discussing this on line anyways, as it was just too easy to sink someone that way. He’d especially be aware of the lack of computer safety if he had had something to do with the New Horizons firewall breach.

The Mustang had been towed home, it was sitting in the driveway looking like a beating victim, and while they ate Paris told him how he was pretty sure he could fix it up, it would just take a while. He’d been down at the auto wrecking yard already, talking with his friend Rodrigo (another car rebuilding enthusiast who worked at the yard), and it seemed a ‘73 Jaguar convertible model had just been brought in. Paris waxed on about this eagerly, as if it meant something, as it clearly did to him. But Roan honestly didn’t care about cars, classic or otherwise. Still, he pretended to care, because that’s what you did in a relationship - you humored your mates even when their obsessions struck you as frankly bizarre. He suspected Par felt the exact same way about his book collection and fondness for punk.

He got a call during lunch, a lawyer he knew wanting to hire him to do a skip trace on a client who’d flown the coop, and he wondered when his life had gotten so complicated that the boring, regular detective shit like this would seem so appealing.

His Sig Sauer had been returned along with the car (it was protocol to examine any weapon that had been fired, even when it was in self-defense), and he was glad to have it back, although he wondered if he should actually bother to wear it tonight. He wasn’t expecting Barlow to try anything, nor did he think his shooters would return, but he knew it was exactly when he wasn’t expecting anything that things had a tendency to occur. So he loaded it up and put the Beretta away for another day.

He rented a well used Ford Taurus, grey in color but dingy from desperately needing a wash, so he had an anonymous car with which to follow Paris to the bar. Paris took his bike, which made him feel slightly possessive - well, it was his bike, damn it, and he’d have rather been on it than in this bland Taurus - but the Taurus had a CD player in it, so he was able to listen to Pansy Division and Dead Moon on the long drive to TJ’s Pub.

Just to indulge his paranoia, he let Paris reach the bar five minutes ahead of him, so by the time he parked the Taurus in the lot of the small, roadhouse style bar, Paris was already inside and meeting with Barlow, as Paris decided to be fashionably late (by only four minutes, though, so it seemed accidental).

He could hear the noise of a faint television over the wire, as well as rumblings from the other patrons of the bar, although none as well as Par and Barlow. Paris was so cool butter wouldn’t have melted in his mouth. He feigned interest in the football game on the t.v. and batted about small talk with Tim like they were just a couple of guys getting together for a drink after work. They had a beer and talked about the weather and local politics before getting to anything substantive, and then Par turned the conversation on to Tim. Tim was married and lived in Summerbrook (a pre-fab, upper middle class housing enclave in the suburbs), had a wife named Shelly and two kids, and Tim worked for the MetLife branch office. Just from the tone of voice, Roan picked up that he wasn’t happy with something in that mix if not all of it, and it somehow figured that an anti-cat activist would work for an insurance company. (They must have paid out a lot in cat claims.)

Paris went about asking what Tim expected of him in a sort of sideways fashion. Tim was equally oblique, simply saying that “radical cat activists” had made the city and its outskirts unsafe for normal people, and they wanted to take their cities and towns back. Paris asked if that meant violence, and after some hedging, Tim pointed out that the cats had resorted to violence first, since they hurt and kill people when loose, and that wasn’t counting infecting innocents. Damn, Roan had no idea those damn cats were so nefarious or organized. Why didn’t they invite him to the meetings? It was because he was Scottish, wasn’t it? Discriminating bastards.

He was startled by his cell phone ringing, but it was okay, as the conversation had gone on for about an hour now, and he didn’t even have a beer or a television to watch to cut the boredom. Paris was extracting some good stuff out of Tim, there was just the usual bullshit in between, and he was finding it difficult not to yawn. The phone at least woke him up. Since Tim was currently expressing disbelief at Paris’s statement that he didn’t have a girlfriend at the moment (and that wasn’t even a lie), he decided to answer the phone, figuring it was Murphy complaining about the New Horizons people.

There was a tremendous crackle of static, a bad cell phone connection, and somewhere in all that broken noise he heard a small voice asking, “Roan?”

“Yeah. Can you speak up? This connection’s shitty.”

More static, and some of the opening syllables were lost. “ - in trouble. I think I may have gotten you in trouble too, I didn’t mean to, I didn’t know -”

“Who is this?”

“Matt, Matt Skour -” A huge burst of static obliterated the last syllable, but he knew what it was.

Oh terrific, Chatty Cathy. But as the white noise receded somewhat, he heard him sniff loudly. Had he been using coke again, or was he crying? “What’s wrong? Has something happened?”

Some crackling, but a bit better than before. “I came home from work, and I found the neighbor cat nailed to my front door. He left a note, saying he saw me with my new boyfriend, and he was going to do to me what he did to him -”

“Wait, wait. Who? And what did he do to your boyfriend?”

Another loud sniff. “He thought you were boyfriend - that’s why he shot you. Or maybe he was really aiming for me and settled for you, I dunno …”

Roan turned down the audio feed on Par and Tim’s discussion. It wasn’t important right now anyways. “Who are we talking about, Matt? I need a name.”

“I don’t know it … not really. Everybody calls him Rambo, ‘cause he used to be in the Marines, but I’ve heard him called Sam before.”

“And this idiot shot me?”

“Yeah, I think so … fuck, he nailed Mrs. Pretsky’s cat to my fucking door! I think he’s following me too, or at least Leonard is. I took off before I could get cornered, but I still think I’m being followed - “

This was so much information to digest he felt like shouting at Matt to make more sense, but he knew it wouldn’t help. He had to put this all in order. “Where are you now? Can you get somewhere safe?”

He laughed breathlessly. “What the hell is safe? He’s a fucking psycho crackhead who thinks he loves me so much he has to kill me.”

Oh wonderful. Had he ended up in the middle of a domestic dispute? No wonder he got shot. There were no enemies like former lovers. “You have nowhere you can go?”

“I don’t think so. I only have a few friends, I don’t want him killing them.”

“Okay. Get to County General, or get to the cop shop on Grant. Can you do that?”

“What? I ain’t going to County, my mom’s there - “

“And so are a bunch of cops at any given time,” he interrupted sharply. “If Sam wants to try something there, fine, but he’ll be tasered or given a dose of Ativan within a minute. Have you called the cops, reported the cat on your door?”

He scoffed, and it was almost lost in a rip of static. “No. As soon as I saw it and got the sense I was being watched, I got the fuck outta there.”

“You need to call the cops and report this. It’s still animal cruelty, and if he’s making threats towards you, it’s worse than that. Do you know where he lives? What he drives?”

“No. I barely know this freak! I met him at a club back when I was using, he bought meth from my dealer. I thought he was creepy but I shared a hit with him. I shouldn’t have, y’know, but it’s too late to do something about that now.”

“And that was it? He was convinced he loved you?” It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility. There were complete psychos who believed they were destined to be with people they saw on a t.v. screen or sitting in a Starbucks sipping a latte. You just had to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, when their meds wore off or what was left of their lucidity decided to take a long vacation.

“Yeah. Lucky me.”

“And he’s a real crackhead?”

“Oh yeah, total Bobby and Whitney time. He stopped bothering me after a while, and I thought maybe he finally listened to me, y’know, or overdosed or something, but I guess he was just hibernating. God, what a nightmare.”

The fact that he was really a crackhead added a fun new level of psychosis to everything. Crack and meth really did a number on your brain; it fucked you up but good. Cops used to think an angry perp on PCP was hard to subdue? They seemed like arthritic old ladies compared to an enraged crackhead or methhead. No fear, no pain, nothing approaching sanity. Drugs could be so much fun. “Who’s Leonard?”

“His junkie sidekick. I don’t know what his story is, if he’s a boyfriend or a fuck buddy or just a Smithers, but wherever Rambo is, he’s kinda always there. It’s creepy.”

“You need to call the police now and report the cat and the threat; you may also want to mention that you think he’s following you and implied he shot me. If necessary they can take you into protective custody.”

“I don’t like cops,” he replied bitterly. “Not the ones around here. I’ve given them enough entertainment for one lifetime.”

That was an interesting - and ominous - thing to say. “You’ve been abused by them?”

“In a manner of speaking, yeah. They all had a good laugh when I tried to report what Rambo did to …” he trailed off, sniffing once more. Roan heard a horn honk in the background. “Doesn’t matter. Rambo claimed his brother was a cop anyways. If I call, he might find out.”

Wow - Chatty Cathy could actually shut down. He was so scared he was doing so right now. “He’s hurt you?”

He was quiet for so long only the street noises and the occasional scratch of static let him know the line was still open. “Once, yeah. Can you help me?”

“I’m on a surveillance case right now. I’ll get to County as soon as I can, but I need you to get there right now. I’ll send some friends on ahead of me, okay? Matt, you have to do this - I’ll be there ASAP.” After thirty seconds without a response, he was forced to repeat, “Okay?”

With a sigh of defeat, he replied, “Yeah, okay.”

As soon as he hung up, Roan checked the audio feed - it sounded like Paris was wrapping things up with Tim - and called Sikorski back. “I’m going off shift, McKichan,” he complained.

“Then find someone who’s friendly to get to County General as of a minute ago.” He told him precisely why, which made Sikorski groan like his ulcer was flaring up.

“So you were shot because this kid’s psycho crack addict ex-boyfriend thought you were fucking him?”

“I don’t think he’s an ex-boyfriend, just an obsessed stalker.”

“Lovely. How do you get into these situations, Roan?”

“Clean living and good luck, I suspect. This kid is afraid of cops as much as this psycho, so I need plainclothes, okay? Also, no homophobes.”

“You’re going to guilt me into doing this, aren’t you?”

“Can I?”

Another sigh. “You owe me big time, Roan. He’s the club kid looking guy, right? Lots of piercing?”

“Yeah. Lanky, blond with purple highlights, tattooed, slightly flamboyant and a bit femme.”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“Oh sure you don’t, butchy,” he taunted sarcastically. “Just go, now. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Don’t be long, or you get to tell Connie why I’m late for dinner.”

“Yeah, she’s a real dragon lady. Move.”

Paris wrapped things up, and he soon saw him come out of the bar, zipping up his leather jacket and donning his helmet before straddling the bike. He was such a pro he didn’t even glance towards the Taurus, although he said, under his breath “I suckered him too well. I didn’t think he was ever going to shut up.”

Paris took off without further comment, and Roan knew he was headed to the 7-11 two blocks over, as they had decided to meet their afterwards to discuss what had occurred. But Roan stayed there on the off chance Tim would leave the bar shortly after Paris, and he did. He was in shadowy, poorly lit part of the lot so no one could see him in the car, and he watched Tim get into a Range Rover. He wrote the license plate down in his notebook, glad that so much experience with stake outs and surveillance had allowed him to write legibly in complete blackness.

By the time he pulled into the back lot of the 7-11, Paris was leaning on the bike, sipping a Slurpee out of a cardboard cup that looked as big as one of those comically large mayonnaise jars they had down at the Costco. As soon as he got out of the car and walked towards him, Paris raised his eyebrows in mock amusement, and said, “We get anything legally actionable on tape?”

“Borderline. He admitted he wants you for acts of violence - all we need him to do is seal the deal and get specific. Do you remember my friend at the DMV?”

He thought about that a moment, holding out the huge cup of sugary slush in tacit invitation of a drink. Roan shook his head. “Keisha, right? ”

“Yeah, her. Go home, call her, see if she’ll run this plate for me.” He handed Paris the notepad with Tim’s license plate written on it.

“Barlow’s?”

“Yep.”

“Why me? Where are you going?”

“Gordo called me while I was listening. He needs me to go over a cat crime scene. Shouldn’t take me too long.” He had to lie to him, mainly because he knew if he told him the truth, Paris would want to come along, and if he actually met the guy who’d shot him, he’d probably reach down his throat and pull his lungs out.

Paris rolled his eyes and sighed, accepting it but not liking it. It was an easy lie to swallow, because Gordo had done it enough, and at all times of the day or night. It didn’t matter that he technically wasn’t a cop anymore - Par was still something of a cop widower. “Be careful,” he told him wearily, leaning in and giving him a quick kiss on the corner of his mouth. He tasted like Coke, which wasn’t really a good thing, as Coke always made his salivary glands hurt. “Don’t be too late.”

“I won’t, promise.” But the way Paris’s eyes coolly appraised him, he suspected that of quite possibly being a lie.

The traffic was on his side, and he reached County General in record time. He found himself looking around the lot for an unmarked sedan, but then figured Gordo might have come in his own car, a dented little Infiniti that seemed far too silly to be a veteran cop’s car, but he didn’t see it. Could he have actually beaten him here? There’s no way he’d park in the underground garage, was there?

Roan was still wandering the lot, headed towards the sprawling rectangle of the hospital, when the wind brought a snatch of angry conversation to his ears. “ - fucking hands off me you trog -” The insult ended in a dull noise that could only be flesh hitting flesh.

He followed the voices to the dead side of the building, the one where an entire wing of the hospital had been shut down for refurbishing, so there were no lights at all on this side. The lot wrapped around this side and went around to the back, but had been cordoned off with saw horses as some paltry attempt was made to fill potholes large enough to swallow a Honda.

His eyes adjusted to the darkness, and he saw a guy built like a refrigerator leaning against the dead wing … only no, he wasn’t. Matt was sandwiched between him and the wall, the guy’s left arm laying flat again his chest as he held something up against the base of his throat. It was hard to see since the blade was as dark as a K-Bar, but it was a large, wicked looking hunting knife, the kind that could gut a deer with little trouble, and he was pressing it so firmly into Matt’s throat he could see a shine of wetness that indicated the skin had been broken. It was a shallow slice, but only for now - one quick tug or a single deep push, and Matt’s blood would either be spurting like a fire hose or his head would hit the ground independent of his body. Roan considered sniping the guy, just putting a round in him from this angle, but there was almost no way he could take down Rambo - Sam; Rambo was just too silly, even if it was apt - without potentially killing Matt as well. It would have been better if Sam was threatening him with a gun; a shot to paralyze would have kept him from being able to pull the trigger.

He got the sense that someone was trying to sneak up on him - this would be Leonard, yes? - and he decided to let it happen. He needed to get closer to Sam to disarm him safely. He felt something hard poke into spine, as a voice snarled in his ear, “Make a move, make a sound, and you’re dead.”

He actually put his gun flush against his back? What an amateur move. Had he actually ever held a gun, or did he only know of them from Tarantino films? Moron. “One word for you tough guy: Altoids. What have you been doing, eating road kill?” His breath was pretty bad; he thought he smelled rot, and figured it was his teeth. Heavy meth and crack usage was not friendly to teeth or your appearance in general. The harsh chemicals ate away your teeth, making them crumble like old drywall, while it pitted your face like the surface of the moon. After a while, you could tell the habitual users on sight alone.

“Shut the fuck up,” Leonard snarled, as he frisked him roughly and inexpertly with one hand, the other continuing to press the gun into his back. (This idiot would be easy to disarm.) This was a bit of a stretch for old Leonard, as he was a couple inches shorter than him and apparently didn’t have much of a reach, but after doing something that seemed like copping a feel, he found his Sig Sauer and pulled it. “Plannin’ on shootin’ us?”

“Only if you asked nicely.”

He shoved him violently, making him stumble forward. If he’d wanted to disarm him, he could have now, but it was still too soon. Leonard smelled faintly of blood, and just a bit of cordite. Even though he was the driver, he was the one who took the bullet yesterday, wasn‘t he? The bullet missed Sam but hit Leonard, and because he couldn‘t go to the hospital about it, the wound was still open. Not fatal, but give it time. “Move it, funny man,” he growled unnecessarily, then added with a shout, “Sam, look what we got here.”

Sam looked their way, not letting up pressure on Matt. Matt had clearly been angry, which was good because that was often more useful than fear, but when he saw him panic flashed through his eyes, along with what could have been an apology. Roan tried to reassure him with his eyes, let him know that this was all part of his plan, but he didn’t know if he got that.

Sam stared at him appraisingly as Leonard frog marched him closer - again an idiot move; these guys were not rocket scientists - and Roan got a good look at his shooter. He was a muscle head, one of those obsessive weightlifter types who long ago crossed the line from toned to grotesque, which also meant he could be a ‘roid rager. Terrific. His head was block shaped, his scalp shaved clean, his eyes glittery black dots like chips of polished onyx. In spite of his unnaturally carved body, there was something doughy about his face, which was pitted with both acne scars and the kind of pits that ate into the face of heavy meth users, making his cheeks look like they were starting to collapse in. “How the fuck are you up and around?” Sam demanded, his voice sounding scratchy. Had he smoked up recently? Maybe; Roan swore he could smell the sour chemicals of crack exuding through his pores. “I shot you.”

“Badly. You can’t shoot for shit, can you Sam?” Yes, he was provoking him. If Sam turned his anger away from Matt and on to him, he could end this charade.

Sam’s expression sharpened, moving from crazed to crazed and contemptuous. “I can cut real well. Wanna see?” He increased the pressure on the knife, and Matt leaned his head back as far as he could, as if trying to avoid the blade.

“Afraid to pick on someone your own size? I guess I should have figured that.”

That made him glare at him. “What, you mean you?” He snickered, although there was no actual humor in it. “You overestimate yourself, string bean.”

Sam was easily twice his weight and a half a foot taller than him, and yet Roan had no doubt he could kick his muscled ass. He just had to get him to move that knife off Matt’s throat. “You’re a pussy, Sam. You can’t even face me to kill me. But then again, I bet you lost your balls long ago, huh? Shrunk ‘em to the size of raisins. You really should have quit the ‘roids while you still had your dick.”

That was it. Insult a man’s dick, and you plucked a nerve that was hard to ignore. Sam continued to glower at him, and Leonard jabbed the gun barrel in his back and snapped, “Shut the fuck up!” Matt seemed to be sending a “Don’t!” look to him, but Roan ignored it in exchange for locking eyes with Sam.

Sam finally embraced the challenge. “Oh, you think so, huh?” He moved, taking the knife away from Matt’s throat and grabbing him by his hair before slamming his head back into the wall and dropping him to the asphalt. Matt was still conscious, but dazed. “Let’s -”

Roan didn’t wait for him to finish his threat. He spun, ripping the Glock out of Leonard’s hands as he turned and smashing a flattened palm into Leonard’s eagle beak nose, shattering it, his warm blood spurting over his palm. “Fuck!” He screamed, staggering back and grabbing his bleeding nose.

Sam had screamed as he lunged, so Roan knew Sam had launched himself at him, probably knife first. He spun aside and Sam sailed past him, coming to a quick stop and turning as Roan raised the weapon and fired, blasting a hole in Sam’s chest. He seemed to waver for a moment, looking down and seeing the blood that was now spreading out all over his skin tight gray tank top, and Roan figured he might have nicked a lung. He didn’t get the heart, although god knows he had reason for a kill.

Sam then looked at him in disbelief. “You fucker,” he spat, and threw his knife at him.

It wasn’t a throwing knife, but Sam actually threw it quite well, and it had a chance of actually hitting and doing some damage, except Roan turned aside and let it fly past harmlessly. But it was then Sam moved, much faster than you’d think a guy his size could, and wrapped an arm as thick as an average man’s leg around his throat from behind. “You dirty cocksucker,” he snarled, his breath redolent of something akin to ammonia. Roan felt his blood soaking though his coat.

Sam started to squeeze off his air supply, and Roan put the Glock point blank against Sam’s meaty thigh and pulled the trigger, only to feel the gun pull hard, like something had clogged the firing mechanism. Nothing had, it was simply the gun had picked an excellent time to jam. Motherfucker.

He let the rage come, wash over him, as he threw his head back hard and caught Sam in the bridge of his nose. He kept slamming his head back, ignoring the pain, as he broke his nose and continued to drive the cartilage shards deeper into his head, the blood running warm down the back of Roan’s neck. In spite of it being poisoned with drugs, his blood smelled oddly good.

Sam punched him in the kidneys, rabbit punches that seemed to numb him from the waist down - or would have, if his muscles didn’t knot and release, a strange kind of warmth infusing him as adrenaline flooded his body and every sight and every smell became acutely sharp, almost painfully so. Sam shoved him away, but Roan turned instantly with a growl deep in his throat, and punched Sam in the neck, hard enough to nearly crush his larynx.

It wasn’t what he wanted to do. He wanted to grab his throat and rip it out in one big chunk, feel the hot blood pour down his own throat as he ground the flesh beneath his teeth …

In spite of the drugs artificially propping him up, you needed to breathe to keep going, and Sam couldn’t. He started choking, bending over at the waist and grabbing his throat as he struggled to catch a breath,

He sensed Leonard’s attack coming, the clumsy charge to come to the aid of his friend, and while Roan, slightly detached from himself, found it amusing, the beast in him didn’t. He spun with a roar and met Leonard’s charge with his own, catching the scrawny man in a tackle and throwing him to the ground hard enough to break something in him with a crack like a snapping twig. He stared down into the rodential man’s face, growling, feeling the muscles in his face twitch and jump as if anxious to get out, and the smell of fear coming from Leonard was as sour and pungent as piss - perhaps it was piss. His pale blue eyes were wide with abject horror as he stared up at him, mouth agape as if frozen in a scream, blood from his ruined nose streaming down his face. Leonard’s mouth eventually started to work as if he was trying to say something, but nothing came out but a series of ineffectual squeaks. Roan heard a noise like the rumble of a jet engine, and realized his own growling had filled his head like a curse. He saw his hand was gripping the top of Leonard’s head, tangled in his greasy mop of black hair, and he was thinking idly how easy it would be to twist his head off, just rip it away clean. His blood smelled much better than Sam’s, less toxic, as if his flesh was slightly less poisoned, no matter the state of his teeth.

There was a noise near the cordon, and two separate beams of light stabbed towards them. “Police! Nobody fucking move!” Sikorski’s familiar voice shouted, and Roan squinted at the bright lights, smelling the flesh of two clean people, and wondering which one he should take out first.

What?!

It was hard to come back to himself - in fact, it was almost fucking impossible. The beast was out and didn’t want to go back in. It wanted to feed; it wanted to rend flesh from bones and make everyone who made it hurt pay. And the worst part was Roan kind of wanted it to do it; he was almost inclined to let go.

Gordo and Seb lowered their flashlights, but he could still see with crystal clarity, and the shock on their faces told him they had seen something on his face that they wished they hadn’t. “Roan, are - are you okay?” Gordo asked, trying to hide the surprise in his voice and failing miserably.

What had they seen? He almost didn’t want to know. He made to speak, but then suddenly realized he was still growling. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, trying to force the beast back inside its cage. It didn’t want to go, and Roan wasn’t sure he wasn’t shoving some part of himself back in with it. When he opened his eyes, he was sure he was back inside himself - the pain in his kidneys was proof of that. He’d probably be pissing blood for the next couple of days. “I’m fine,” he finally said. “Where the fuck have you guys been?”

“We got cornered by the desk sergeant on the way out,” Gordo said, trying hard to sound normal, but there was a thread of tension in his voice that couldn’t be covered.

Roan got up off Leonard, who instantly shoved himself backwards down the pavement as if trying to reach the cops before Roan could change his mind and rip his head off. He was making unintelligible noises, and it was now obvious he had pissed himself in fear.

Looking at him and Sam, who was now on all fours, still choking and hacking loudly, trying very hard to catch a breath, Seb commented dryly, “At least we’re right next to the hospital.” But even as cool as Seb was, he wasn’t looking him in the eye.

He turned to see how Matt was, and while he had a long but shallow cut across his throat, a much shorter and deeper cut down his left cheek, and his right eye was swelling, he looked relatively okay. Only he was staring at Roan in wide eyed shock, and he seemed to want to say something, but couldn’t yet muster up the ability.